I once posted about how I'd like to stop using hair product. That day is no closer, sadly. But I just started using some stuff called Sumotech. SUMO!!!

Me and my buddy Mike Fraietta decided to have stuffed animals made in our likenesses because the world hasn't been creeped out enough. Mine just got delivered:

I asked them to put a kitten in the pocket.

And my username's on the back.

If you want to cuddle up to one, let me know.

I received an email this morning from LinkedIn that summarized a year's worth of job changes among my contacts with a large graphic full of smiling faces.

In all, 40% of my LinkedIn contacts changed jobs in 2010. Am I naive to think that's really high? Yes, I'm part of the trend (having changed jobs in June), but I didn't know that so many others had done the same.

Have you received this email yet? What percentage of your contacts jumped ship?

The Mac App Store launched a few days ago, and one of the first apps I grabbed was the official Twitter one because I use the site obsessively. The app is clean, simple, responsive and a dream to use.

But it's broken.

The app doesn't show my mentions, only my replies. If someone replies to me, I will see it in the Mentions pane. If someone replies to me, but places someone else's @username first, I won't see it in my Mentions pane. If someone refers to me within the context of the tweet, but doesn't address the tweet to me, I won't see it. This makes the app worthless to me, as Twitter.com aggregates all instances of my @username into the same pane.

Here's an example. Using HootSuite, here's what the Mentions column looks like. See that tweet from @tcabeen in the center? I'm the second @username the tweet is addressed to, but it still migrates to the column. This is good.

Here's the Mentions pane in the Twitter for Mac app. The tweet from @tcabeen is nowhere to be found, even though it includes my @username. This is bad.

I don't want to set up a search for my @username within the app in order to see my mentions. Unless, of course, there will be a Pro version of the app that includes all uses of a person's username. Sneaky, Twitter. Very sneaky.

(Thanks to Monika Sue Ellen Runstrom for pointing this out!)

There's a restaurant/brewpub place in Boulder called the Boulder Draft House. It was pretty sweet. I was going to have an Ignite Boulder planning dinner there next week, but one of my friends had heard it closed down.

So I Googled the place, went to the site and didn't see anything. But considering that many business websites are onerous to update, I clicked on the Twitter icon at the bottom of the page, expecting to see a tweet or two about their closure.

Instead, it was a bunch of tweets from weeks and weeks ago and nothing that would suggest they had gone under. I called the place and their VM was full. Someone finally verified that the Draft House dream was over by visiting the place and seeing a sign.

The point of this post is this: If you bothered to create a Twitter account for your business (to announce specials, live music or hosted events), you should at least tell folks when you shut down. Yeah, it might be embarrassing, but it's an easy way to control the message and bid adieu to your followers (i.e. former customers).

I'll miss the Draft House. Just like I miss Redfish (which is what used to be there). I hope that space isn't cursed. Or maybe I do, since it could give me the chance to be the paranormal investigator that I've always wanted to be.

UPDATE:

Looks like they got the message:

I like that my friends periodically appear on the covers of magazines. Makes my heart go pitter-pat. (Yes, I just wrote that.)

Here's my buddy Rick Griffith on the cover of Westword. He was awesome enough to speak at our sold-out TEDxBoulder last year (which I helped organize), and it's gratifying to see him conquering Colorado.

Story is here.

I believe in luck. And I concede that the number 13 is usually a harbinger of roaring disaster. So it was with a subtle timidity of the soul that I approached Ignite Boulder 13, perhaps our most festive event thus far.

We tried a lot of new things, often pinning our hopes on the community’s willingness to accept winking, well-intentioned change.

We wanted to make our sponsors a more significant part of the night, so we added interstitial slides with a sprig of humor. We wanted to loop in local stuff that we believe in, so we provided info tables up front. We wanted to create an atmosphere of winter whimsy, so we pushed folks to get all dressed up. We wanted to create a spectacle, so we added inflatable decorations at both ends of the venue.

It worked. It rocked.

I love how the event has developed over time and am eager to announce the date for the next one. (Working on it.) I talk about Ignite a lot in person (so I’ve been told), so I’ll try to rein it in as a New Year’s resolution.

It’s a big, brassy part of my life – you’ll have to excuse my ardor.

(Photo credit: Yann Ropars)

I can safely say that I have worn hair product every day for the past 9 years at least. Not kidding. I've used different brands, sure, but I don't think I've ever gone out in public without something making it shiny.

I have lately started to wonder if I could go a week without hair product. No, this isn't one of those posts where I proclaim my intention and begin tracking it. I'm just pontificating or whatever.

My hair is super thick and grows straight out, so hair product (and weekly haircuts) are the only factors that keep it from wigging out. But I know a bunch of dudes (and bros) who don't bother with the stuff and actually look pretty fresh.

So it's on my mind. And in my hair.

I'm using Redken Outplay lately, just in case you want to achieve my coif for some silly reason:

As someone who recently turned 30, this one made me stop and consider how true it is. Rawr.

(Found on Reddit)

I started playing Farmville last month or maybe in September because I wanted to better understand the motivations behind people who play the game. I'd surely talked smack about it before, having associated it with Facebook spam. So, on a lark, I linked my profile to the game and began in earnest.

Here's what I've learned so far:

• I like that you can play it pretty passively - seeding crops and leaving them for most of the day, returning at night to harvest them and start the process over again.
• Too many of the game's cooler items can only be purchased with FarmVille cash, a form of currency that is much harder to come by than FarmVille coins, which can be generated fairly easily.
• I'm very tempted to spend real dollars on FarmVille cash because I really, really want some of the stuff you can only buy with them. I've resisted so far, but I totally understand the compulsion now.
• I am really good at hiding my game activities from my friends' News Feeds, but it requires great vigilance. The game prompts you to share accomplishments ALL THE TIME, but I have yet to share a single game action with any of my friends, for fear of annoying them.
• It's hard to get pigs. I wanted a whole army of pigs, but I've only been able to harness the piggy power of one.

That's all for now. I'm currently Level 25 and focused on growing sunflowers, having mastered both peppers and grapes. My Pops grows peppers, so I thought it'd be cool if I carried on the legacy digitally.