Another 1SE for 2021

It’s another year of mostly dog walks and shoes. But we did do a couple trips, attended a couple shows. So that’s something.

1 Second Every Day 2020

I'm making a podcast at TheGildedPlaylist.com

My buddies and I have decided to create yet another music podcast. Like a Phoenix, this podcast has risen from the depths of the quarantine to, at best, entertain our 3 listeners and, at worst, give the 5 of us something to obsess over during the week. Only the strongest survive to be part of the Gilded Playlist. Check it out at TheGildedPlaylist.com.

• We turned our quarantine boredom into just what we all needed — another music podcast!
• Each week, 4 friends anonymously nominate songs to a shared playlist. 
• After days of consideration, votes of yay/nay for each song are submitted secretly to our commissioner.
• The podcast is recorded as these friends finally break their monk-like silence, discuss their nominations, their votes and discover which songs received 100% approval and hence move onto … The Gilded Playlist. 
• Listen to the podcast and the playlists at … TheGildedPlaylist.com

Here’s my 1 Second Everyday for 2019

2018's year-end compilation - 1 second every day #1se

A few more hospitals, a few more new Jordans ... same amount of pets.

My 2017 compilation video.

Here’s my compilation video. 1 second every day. 2017. Okay, it’s mostly planes and pets.

Is Blizzard's Heroes of the Storm's matchmaking still broken?

Anyone care to guess who won this game?

I didn't have a teammate above level 24. And I had at least 5 times as many games played as all my teammates.

Uh, yeah. We lost. Hard.

I had been on quite the losing streak lately due to the old 0 healers vs. 1 healer team comp issue. So I thought I'd switch over to LiLi.

Wins are in green. Losses are ... not in green.

Suddenly I was on the 1-healer team. And there were no healers on the other team. Huzzah!

And then I saw my teammates spend the first 10 minutes of the game all grouping in one lane while I scrambled to rotate to empty lanes to keep pace with the opposing team's XP. Gaining XP early is generally regarded as a good strategy.

And then we got to level 10. And my teammates inexplicably split up. Everyone was running around on their own grabbing watch towers, trying to do solo coin turn ins and other terrible ideas.

And the opposing team stayed together as a rolling 5-person death ball ... easily picking off all my solo teammates.

I think I typed "group up" into the allied chat 10 times during the game. I even started forecasting teammate deaths as they ran off on their own. No one seemed to care.

Blowout loss. Morale low.

I couldn't help but do some investigating. Here's what I found ...

My team:

Me:

See any big differences there in terms of Player Level and games played?

And now let's have a look at the opposing team:

Not exactly mind-blowing that they understood the fundamentals of laning early and then grouping late.

In case you missed it, all of the above adds up this:

Is this what I should continue to expect from Quick Match matchmaking?

Turns out the Apple Watch battery is great

I take back everything I said in my previous post. Seems that my first day with the Apple Watch was not at all like a normal day. Probably too much fussing with the settings.

In the last week, I've commonly woken up at 7am, done an hour long outdoor activity with GPS and heart rate and all that and gone to bed around 11pm. I've had the normal amount of updates received and texts sent from the phone. 

And with all that activity, my watch is usually around 30% when I go to bed. 

And my phone easily lasts all day too. No mid day charge required. Seems an iPhone 6 (regular) can easily handle an all day blue tooth connection. 

Thumbs up all around for the Apple Watch. Excelsior!

Power reading from early evening on a normal day.

My First Day With The Apple Watch

I liked Siri. I love the Apple Watch.

So it's been about 24 hours. Here's the thing: I was the guy that used Siri. I'd be on a dog walk and I'd ask Siri to read me a new message. I'd be driving the car and I'd use Siri to remind me to watch a movie later that night. I used what I thought was one of the most useful tools out there ... all the time.

I've come to learn that I'm the only person on the planet that used Siri. And the Apple Watch is a very useful and very accessible visual version of Siri.

Getting an update and seeing it quickly on your watch is as fantastic as I thought it'd be.

As much as I love my phone ... and I use it all the time, I really do like the idea of keeping it in my pocket more often.

The watch allows you to do just that.

1. Get a wrist tap (and a sound too if you like).
2. Glance at your wrist.
3. If it's an update from ESPN, read it and hit dismiss. Or don't even read it. Just lower your wrist.
4. If it's a text or something you want to respond to, quickly respond by dictating your response aloud. Or by choosing from a pre-set number of quick responses. (You can also set up your own quick responses by the way).
5. Phone stays in pocket throughout.

And your phone doesn't even bother lighting up assuming you get the update on your watch. The phone and the watch are pretty much one device. One is not a copy of the other. 

Siri on your wrist is even better than Siri on your phone.

I know no one uses her, but you can simply raise your wrist and say "Hey Siri, set my calendar for the Bulls game tomorrow at 5pm." Then press OK.

And that's that. The calendar is set. No need to pause in between "Hey Siri" and whatever you're going to say. No need to listen to Siri dictate it back to you. No need to press anything at all to engage Siri. 

I'm begging you people. Use Siri. If not now, when?

Customization overload. In a good way.

This is the screen that allows you to customize the "modular" watch face.

All of the gray boxes can be set to whatever you want: calendar, date, temperature, stopwatch, activity, battery life, world clock. It's fantastic. Only issue is I can't figure out the perfect item for my lower right box. What's more ridiculous than first world problems? 0th world problems?

And that's just the one watch face. There are many to choose from.

I'd consider using a lot of the available faces. And you can color coordinate each face. I like the blue for the second hand on the face above. And yet I like yellow for the "modular" watch face.

The apps and features are mostly great. If not a little clunky here and there.

You kinda get that nostalgic feeling of using the iPhone 1 here and there. In such cases, I recommend just removing that app from the watch and waiting for an update.

Some apps really make sense though.

I love having the ongoing heart rate tracker.

Not pictured, but also awesome, the watch dings if you've sat around for too long and reminds you to get up and move around for a couple minutes. It also tells you "Hey, you're good. Sit on back down."

You can always have the temp on your watch face. Clicking it though brings up the hourly which I think is laid out really well.

Shazam. The watch is perfect for it. No more awkwardly holding your phone upside down in the direction of the speaker. Bonus: Shazam can even hear what TV show you're watching.

Not advertised clearly, but the "What's Playing" glance can control music, podcasts, 3rd party apps (like Downcast) nicely ... you can control whatever is playing.

The iPhone app is required for making serious updates to your settings.

Not that I mind that. It makes a lot of sense. I mean, you *can* update the settings on your watch, but why ... when a great full phone size interface is waiting.

Easily move your apps around and put them where you want them.

Adjust which apps use "Glances" on your watch ... the feature that you can access at any time by swiping up from the bottom. And then view the latest score, tweet, weather, etc.

Battery life is *NOT* going to be an issue.

Maybe it's just because I'm fussing over my watch wayyyyyyy more than I will be down the line, but my watch is at 59% at 1pm. 

• I woke up at 7am.
• Did quite a bit of app updates and settings adjustments while watching Chelsea.
• Used the watch to track a 3 mile walk with Steve.
• And now I'm here.

I think I'll have to take the watch off before bed time to charge it. Maybe I'm wrong. We'll see.

Oh and your iPhone requires a constant bluetooth connection to the watch in order to take advantage of all the functionality. My iPhone battery life was at 60% after the dog walk. I'm charging it right now. Which is a bummer because I recently remarked on just how amazing the battery life was on an iPhone 6 with iOS 8. I was battery-life-carefree for months now. Looks like those days are over. Seems the watch will put me back into battery watch mode.

Hopefully software updates can help with this. We'll see. This is the only major downside I've found so far. Which I could certainly see being enough of a reason for a potential buyer to become ... not a potential buyer.

Turns out I was way off about the battery - both for the iPhone and the watch. See my updated post here.

Obviously *I* love the dang thing.

As ridiculous as it sounds, it's so convenient to quickly take in info by just raising your wrist. Somehow it feels 1,000% easier than reaching into your pocket, pulling out your phone and pushing the home button to see the same info. (See the 0th world problem reference above.)

However, if you don't think the watch is for you, it probably isn't. Trust your instincts. Battery life is potentially a big problem for both the watch and the phone. And certain apps are downright not ready for use.

But, as an "Apple Guy" that likes to stay current, I'm in. I mean, just look at it!

Story of Glory - World of Warcraft Noobs Cruise

This is my favorite story of my days playing WoW and I recently submitted it to DLC with the hopes it'll be read on the air. Figured I should post it here as well.

When 5 of my college buddies and I decided to buy World of Warcraft and start a guild themed around the movie Point Break, safe to say we were ... impatient.

We all got to level 10 or 20 or so and decided it was time for our Horde guild to take it to the Alliance.

Keeping in mind we were on a PVP server, we somehow didn't die to any of the hundreds of level 30+ Alliance players between Orgrimmar and Stormwind and made our way to the dock - the dock for the Alliance.

Still don't know how we all made our way here without dying.

We snuck our way onto the Alliance ship that departs from the Alliance friendly dock and eventually lands in a neutral spot on the Horde side.

We literally hid from the NPC guards until the ship departed and then, since we couldn't attack the Alliance players on the boat right away, we'd "befriend them" by dancing and doing other things. The Alliance players, while confused, would always end up dancing too and "hanging out" with us.

Then, the loading screen would appear. And the Noobs Cruise began. Me and the guildies (Johnny Utah, Angelo Pappas and the like) would take advantage of our PVP server and massacre our new Alliance friends on their own ship.

For non WoW players, the loading screen represented the programmed transition from the Alliance friendly side of the game to a neutral PVP zone. That is, the transition from us not being allowed to attack Alliance players over to ... game on.

We made 3 or 4 laps that night and massacred a dozen or so confused Alliance players who never knew they had set sail on ... the Noobs Cruise.

Grommet napping in the cabin waiting for the cruise to begin.

Horns on Jam by Michael Jackson vs. Horns on Uptown Funk by Bruno Mars

Not that I'm upset about Bruno Mars attempting to make this kind of music popular again, but hard to deny the similarities in the horns.

Jam by Michael Jackson (4 minute 50 second mark)

Uptown Funk by Bruno Mars (1 minute 16 second mark)

It ain't too much for me to funk you up ... if you will.

The best Tom (Thomas Jackson) Cruise movies

So Rolling Stone put out this list: http://bit.ly/bestTJmovies

We could go back and forth about the specific rankings for a long time, but the top 10 seems pretty easy to lay out, right? These are objectively the "classic" Cruise movies that also came along with some critical acclaim and are generally liked by the public.

How is this not the top 10 (in no particular order)?

Jerry Maguire
Rain Man
Top Gun
M:I 1
Color of Money
A Few Good Men
Collateral
Risky Business
Born on The 4th of July
Magnolia

And my personal top 10 (make that 11) would be:

Jerry Maguire
Rain Man
Top Gun
M:I 3
Oblivion
A Few Good Men
Collateral
Vanilla Sky
Minority Report
War of The Worlds
Days of Thunder

Lip Sync Battle. For your consideration, Jimmy Fallon.

The video below (along with this one) has been our most watched YouTube item in months. It's just all so good. And all hail Jo Go-Lev.



And repeated viewings of that video inspired the one below. Pardon my language but I had to at least try to do The D proud.


Lip sync battle. For your consideration, Jimmy Fallon. from Luke Johnson on Vimeo.

How to rule on every NFL challenge in 60 seconds

I was just watching Monday Night Football and there was a pass in the backfield from Michael Vick to LeSean McCoy that was batted down by a defensive lineman.  Everyone gave up on the play except for 2 Redskins who picked up what they thought was a fumble (backwards pass) and then did the slowest 90 yard run for a touchdown ever.

Chip Kelly challenged the ruling on the field of a backward pass.

ESPN then showed the replay 3 or 4 times.  Then they cut to commercial.  They came back from commercial and showed the replay SIX MORE TIMES!

The refs still weren't done with their official review.  How is this possible?

I looked up the rules for review here and this is what it says:

See that highlighted part? It says the play on the field will stand UNLESS there is indisputable visual evidence that the call should be reversed.  Do you know how easy this makes things?  This means there is no other way to handle a review other than this:

You're welcome, NFL.

Please Hold

I've been getting this interaction a lot lately when calling places with operators ...

Person: "Hello, how may I direct your call?"
Me: "[Extremely clear answer where I also indicate who I am and why I'm calling]"
Person: "Okay ... please hold."
Me: "Okay."
[Hold music]

[Comes back.]
Person: "I'm sorry, this is my first day. Please continue to hold."
Me: "Okay."
[Hold Music]

[Comes back.]
Person: "Please continue to hold."
Me: "Okay."
[Hold Music]

[Comes back.]
Person: "How can I direct your call?"
Me: "I was already on hold waiting for [so and so]."
Person: "Please hold."
Me: "Okay."
[Hold Music]

[Comes back.]
Person: "Please continue to hold."
Me: "Yeah, I was holding. I figured that's what the hold music was meant to do ... have me continue to hold. Count me in for some more holding!"
[Hold Music]

[Comes back.]
Person: "Please hold."
Me: "Thank God you came back. In the last 15 seconds since I heard your voice, I was beginning to wonder if that hold music was trying to insinuate that I should hang up ... or worse."
[Hold Music]

[Comes back.]
Person: "Continue to hold."
Me: "Look. It's getting bad out here in Hold Land. Is the sun still shining where you are? Is there food? And laughter?"
[Hold Music]

[Comes back.]
Person: "Okay, here's [who you asked to speak to.]"
Me: "Chaos. Reigns."
[Phone clicks.]
Person: "Hi, Luke."
Me: "Oh, hey, Tom! Listen. About those TPS reports ..."

All I'm saying is ... I already agreed to hold. I don't care if it's your first day and I don't need all the check ins. I'll hold. That's what speaker phones are for.

F You, Footloose Remake

Look.  I was already livid with the Footloose remake because ... it's a Footloose remake.  A film that spawned this scene (that Zach and I have repeatedly re-enacted on the streets of Aspen by the way):

Which in turn spawned this spoof:

... is clearly without reproach.

But then they did something absolutely horrific.  They stole the Friday Night Lights signature music and style for their preview:

That's it.  That's the last straw.  You've now treaded on 2 untouchable classics: Footloose and Friday Night Lights.  In the words of Coach Taylor ... You have a nice day.

Looks like my marathon training kinda worked

So my marathon training is all based on doing my longest run one month away from marathon day.  Leading up to that super long run and following that long run, I'll add/subtract 20 minutes from my run length every weekend.  So I'll do a 100 minute, 120 minute, 140 minute, 160 minute, 180 minute, 160 minute, 140 minute ... you get the idea.  It's like a bell curve of run lengths.

Here's how it mapped out.  Not too shabby.

My Three Least Favorite Harry Potter Cliches

So now that the Potter series is over (book form and film form), let's talk about the 3 most annoying recurring themes.

1. We all knew Harry Potter wasn't going to die in books 1 - 6. J.K. made it clear from the start that there are 7 years of school and there will be 7 books in the end. And yet every book the plot was always basically "uh oh, someone's out to kill Harry. Watch out!" Severus, Voldemort, Sirius Black ... it didn't matter. I wasn't worried. I knew book 5 wasn't going to be Hermione Granger and the Frizzy Hair. I knew book 6 wasn't going to be Ron Weasley and the Lack of Confidence.
2. Ron and Harry always sass Hermione when she says something with confidence. "Harry, get started on the tent." ... followed by Harry going "A tent? Where am I going to be able to find a tent!?" We're in book 7, Harry. Haven't you learned that Hermione has everything figured out at all times? PLUS we're talking about magic here. When Hermione says tent or gum drop or elephant that poops ice cream, I don't think it's a stretch to realize she can manifest anything in the world. And furthemore, Hermione's the only one that's actually good at magic.
3. Expelliarmus. F'ing expelliarmus. It's the only spell Dumbledore's Army knows. The Death Eaters can leave fangy clouds, turn into flying smoke monsters, split their soul into 7 pieces so they are basically invincible and actually kill people with their spells, but they can't fight off expelliarmus - the first f'ing spell you learn at Hogwarts. I thought you guys were pros, Death Eaters. Hold onto your wands, you f'ing rookies ... and you might have actually won this thing.

The Best iTunes Marathon Smart Playlist

So I've already documented the best smart playlist of all time - my Master Playlist. One place though where the master playlist won't do ... is while running.

When it comes to distance running, I break things into 3 phases:

1. Running1 - Songs to kick start your run early in the morning and get you going. Upbeat songs that might lean towards having a long lead in. Think "Rock and Roll Ain't Noise Polution" by AC/DC or "Knocked Up" by Kings of Leon.
2. Running2 - I use these playlists when running half marathons and marathons and my secret to a good long run is keeping a good pace in the middle of the race. These songs tend to have a nice groove and often end up being the highlight of my run. Think "Use Me" by Bill Withers or "Covered in Rain" by John Mayer (what was once my most played song ever).
3. Running3 - Now that Running2 has effectively saved you from burning out at Mile 20, these are the drop dead adrenaline songs that are gonna bring you into the finish. Think "See Through Head" by The Hives or "Positive Tension" by Bloc Party.

So use the comments field in iTunes to label your songs as Running1, Running2 or Running3 according to the rules above and you'll have laid the ground work.

Now time to load the playlist. I like to be surprised by what's coming on next on my run, but obviously not totally surprised (I mean, we can't have a Running3 at the beginning of the run - am I RIGHT!?!?). So to load your playlist, first figure out how long you're going to be running for - let's say 2 hours. Divid the time into thirds (ish) - let's say 45 minutes for each third. Then set up 1 playlist to randomly pull 45 minutes of Running1, another playlist to pull 45 minutes of Running2, and another to pull 45 minutes of Running3.

Load all three of these playlists into one final playlist in order (so all the Running1s are first, Running2s are second, etc.) and voila!

You now have a random (and yet predictable) set of tunes that are going to pump you up, set your pace and let you finish strong (TWSS).

For example, here's what my system just spit out for tomorrow's Aspen Half Marathon:

Easy, right? What? I have too much time on my hands. Okay, fine. Ruin my fun.

Don't drink and ride

In the afore mentioned carbon footprint killing bike ride, I remember having my water bottle with me. Looks like I found a well camouflaged replacement for the ride home.


Yes. There was still beer in it.


For what it's worth, the "silver bullet" didn't seem to help my speed at all.

Location:E Hyman Ave,Aspen,United States