So yeah, I’m back. Let’s not make too big a deal out of it. I’m still working for Nieman Reports. I’m still bumming around Boston, though I now live in Somerville. I’ve officially owned this domain for more than a year, and I figured that it’s worth doing something with it again as long as I’m paying for it. My goal is to write some kind of essay at least every two weeks. Will I miss that? Most likely, but I think it’s important to have goals all the same.

In other news, the following things exist: seitzwrites.tumblr.com and twitter.com/seitzwrites. The former is going to be used for pictures and other random thoughts, while the latter will not be used, but is registered so that no one else can have it. I’m territorial like that.

Image via Metalsucks.net

So I took  a couple days off there, but I’m back with the cover art for the upcoming Skeletonwitch Album “Breathing the Fire,” which showed up on MetalSucks the other day. I’d lay more praise upon the band, but I think I already did that plenty a few months back. Besides, I think those guys already summed it up well enough for me.

Which brings me to my next point. I’ve been making that whole Google migration over the last couple of weeks, and I’m pretty damn impressed with all of it so far. In fact, I was completely blown away when I discovered Google Apps. It completely changed my whole concept of what Google has been doing, and frankly, I  think they’re on the right path.

The main idea is to use things like GMail and Google Docs for the Apps concept (basically it’s a way to load these online applications as if they were programs on the hard drive, not online), but Chrome lets you make an App out of anything. For instance, I’ve got the WordPress Dashboard saved to my desktop as an App, so I can launch right into that and post updates any time I want (not that I use it that often, but still).

The other App that I’m big on now is the music player from Lala.com, which is pretty much the greatest site ever with the worst name ever. Basically, my music is almost all on the internet now, so I can listen wherever I want  (without needing the external hard drive to carry all 103 gigabytes). I highly recommend checking it out. I’m basically off of iTunes now, thanks to this. You can even buy web only songs for 10 cents each (I swear I don’t work for them).

Obviously, this isn’t actually that huge. I mean, essentially, it’s just a shortcut. But for some reason, looking at things this way makes so much more sense to me. Like I said, it’s about changing the way I use the internet.

Alright, this has been a pretty scatterbrained post so far. Thanks for bearing with me, but I think I’m just going to close it off here.

Aside from GMail, this is really my first foray into Google’s non-search features. I’ve alway been a little leery of their online based apps, though I honestly couldn’t tell you why. Things I save online are probably safer than on my 4-year-old laptop.

But I’m right in the process of downloading and setting up a lot more google-based software. I’m starting to realize that I might as well get onboard with what everyone else has already started doing.

There are two big reasons for this:

For one, I’m looking for a new computer. I might end up just getting a netbook, in which case I’ll need to rely more on online software and applications for this kind of stuff. Even if I don’t go the mini route, I’d still like to be up to date on what kind of technology is available before I start fresh on a new computer. It might help eliminate some of the unneccesary software that I usually end up downloading or installing.

The other big reason is my new job. We’re working on the fall issue now, and I’ve been fact checking articles that deal with things like “cloud computing” and other social media aspects. Basically, it got me realizing that, for as much as I profess to enjoy technology, I’m pretty much a year or two behind.

So my hope is that, bolstered by the Harvard money I’m going to be making, I can start catching back up with the rest of society on the hardware side. In the meantime I’ll work on picking up the pace with software.

Stay tuned…

Does anyone who a priest who’s certified to do electrical work? I’ll also settle for an electrician who can recite The Exorcist by heart, seeing as that’d probably be easier to come by.

(Sorry folks, I just haven’t had the time or energy to finish a full update in a while.)

He is, or was, a girl’s soccer coach in Scituate, Massachusetts. He, like so many other champions of greatness in the history of this fine country, lost his job for speaking the truth in a letter to parents before the season. He also renamed their team “Green Death” and compared the play he expected to Michael Vick’s pit bulls. I first heard about his story on Deadspin, who got their details from the Patriot-Ledger (where you can get the full text of his email to parents). I then saw it on PTI this afternoon, and, if my knowledge of how these things work is correct, he will soon be quoted by internet commenters and SportsCenter anchors in equal measure (See: “Boom goes the dynamite”).

And if he gets enough publicity, he’s just about guaranteed to be coaching another youth sports team, or writing a column, for someone who has a sense of humor. I’d expect him to replace Calipari in Memphis, personally.

If I were one of those parents, I’d just be happy that the only Law & Order: SVU character he resembles is Chris Meloni.

I was all set to close up shop for the weekend to enjoy a lot of beer and hockey, when I get an email from my internet friend Eric, linking me to the single greatest thing to ever happen. Vince Offer (nee Vince Shlomi), better known as the shamwow guy, was arrested for allegedly beating a hooker in his South Beach hotel room.

Again, the ShamWow! guy was arrested in Miami for beating a hooker in his hotel room.

I last wrote about Vince and his fight against Scientology back in January. That’s been an oddly popular article for people interested in his case, but nothing beats this for pure comedy production. Seriously, go watch either of his infomericals and try to find a single description of his products that can’t be made funny by adding a joke about beating hookers.

“You know the Germans make good stuff…for beating hookers.”

“We’re going to [beat this hooker] in real time”

“You with me camera guy? Because I’m going to beat this hooker.”

“You’re going to love my nuts…unless you’re a South Beach hooker.”

“You know we can’t do this all day…because I have to go beat a hooker”

The possibilities are endless.

Somewhere, Billy Mays is stroking his beard and laughing maniacally.

Apparently this site got its 1000th visit at some point on Sunday, March 22. Because I’m too lazy to figure out who was the lucky 1000th visitor, I’m going to go ahead and assume that it was the resident of Monchengladbach, Germany who landed on my page full of swimsuit models.

Danke schoen, mein freund. Meine entschuldigung für die nicht mit David Hasselhoff. E-Mail mir und ich werde ihnen eine flasche unseres besten bier, Miller High Life, der champagner des biers.

As I was driving home from seeing my older brother, my mom called to ask what I wanted for dinner. The two options were homemade pizza, or Sonny’s Bar-B-Q. For those of you whose homestates won the Civil War, Sonny’s is a chain of barbecue restaurants based out of Gainesville, Fla. (home of the University of Florida, where I was born). The Fort Myers location is just shy of five minutes from my house, and it’s possibly my favorite restaurant in the world.

Basically, they do real pit-smoked barbecue, mainly focused on Pork and Ribs. I’ve been told they have a salad bar, but I’ve never thought to notice it. They also have the best Sweet Tea I’ve ever tasted (although watching them pour a whole bag of sugar into the batch can almost give you ocular diabetes). The big reason we all loved sonny’s back in high school was that they do all-you-can-eat meals all day every day for pulled pork, sliced pork, sliced beef, and sliced turkey. Through a series of retrospectively obvious conclusions, we decided to hold a eating contest, apropriately dubbed “The Match of the Millenium.” I won’t get into the rules, but I consider myself a good eater, and I was out after three plates of pulled pork. The winner finished eight.

But I digress. The options presented to me as I bombed down Alligator Alley were homemade pizza or Sonny’s. I said yes:

That, dear readers, is a BBQ pulled pork Pizza, made with a mix of delicious barbecue, blatant disregard for public health, and love. I’ve got some pictures of the process after the jump (not safe for vegans):

I’m just going to present these in a slightly creepy food-porn striptease. Here is the pizza before being cooked:

We put the toppings under the cheese so that it wouldn’t get too dried out. There’s nothing worse than overcooked pork. But the really distressing, potentially dangerous part of this is what’s going on under all that cheese:

So what are you looking at there? Well, it’s a pizza crust on the bottom (obviously) with Sonny’s famous sweet sauce instead of tomato sauce. On top of that is roughly 3/4 pound of pulled pork, which was previously saturated with the same sauce. Then, becuase I have no regard for decency, there’s about a pint or so of baked beans spread over the whole thing. Before cooking, it was about an inch and an a half thick, and very little of that was crust.

I ate two pieces for dinner and felt like I was going to die. Fortunately for you, there are no after pictures of my gut.

So all in all, a good vacation.

I do find it interesting that all of the pictures I used are the exact ones available on the Sports Illustrated Website, but I’ve still been getting plenty of hits from Google Images searches. I’m assuming that it’s just some weird quirk of how they’re listed on the website, because I can’t possibly be more popular than SI in google’s eyes.

In a restrained act of celebration meant to preserve the innocence and/or jobs of my readers by keeping it off the front page, there is a bonus picture of Brooklyn Decker after the jump:

Thank you for reading.

UPDATE: as certain individuals, who may or may not have given birth to me, have seen fit to question my assertion that google images is responsible for the hits, I’ll give you the raw numbers: I have gotten a total of 98 pageviews from Google Images (72 unique) on the post in question. From facebook, I’ve gotten two. In fact, the next highest source after google images was straight-up google, which had eight.

But, just to mess with me, Boston decided that today should be a warm day, with sunshine and everything, after months stacked upon months of cold, bitter winter. And naturally, while I was out walking around enjoying the day, everybody was out with their dogs. I think they did it to taunt me, because tonight/tomorrow’s forecast calls for snow and rain. So if my flight ends up delayed, I’m going to be the guy you see on the news going apeshit in Logan Airport.

Tivo it for me.