Stephanie is quickly becoming a real designer. I’ll explain what I mean via a “conversation” she and I had this morning, but I have to set something up first. Stephanie and I each have our own alarm clock on our own side of the bed. Hers goes “Beedeebeedeebeet, beedeebeedeebeet, beedeebeedeebeet,” and mine goes, “Kreee, kreee, kreee, kreee.”

And now, our conversation. We were laying in bed, asleep, and…

Alarm clock: Beedeebeedeebeet, beedeebeedeebeet, beedeebeedeebeet
Josh: (Imitates alarm clock) Beedeebeedeebeet, beedeebeedeebeet, beedeebeedeebeet
Stephanie: (Gets up, hits snooze, and lays back down) Joshua.
Josh: Huh?
Stephanie: If your alarm clock was a font, it would be Helvetica, and mine would be Helvetica Neue. (Falls back asleep.)

And that was our “conversation.”

I’ve written several blog entries about how much email I send. For instance, late in 2003 I publicly admitted that I had sent 4600+ emails that year. I’ve also written about particular days in which I’ve sent strangely high amounts of email. All these figures count every kind of email I send (personal, professional, etc), but they only count ones that I’ve typed myself. No automation.

Let me break it down like this, in super-geeky-way-too-much-detail-push-up-your-glasses-and-snort fashion:

In 2003 I sent 4600+ emails.
In 2004 I sent 3501 emails. Perhaps I was in a slump.
In 2005 I sent 4571 emails. I was pickin’ it back up.

I’m proud to announce that this is a record-breaking year. So far this year (so far mind you) I have sent 5060 emails. 5060!!! It’s June 20th, and I’ve sent more since January 1st, 2006 than I sent in the entire year of 2005. What is that… almost 30 emails per day on average? Including weekends. Yeah.

I guess I’m hitting my stride.

If I keep up this trend, by 2010 I’ll be doing about 550 a day. Maybe by the time I’m on my deathbed, over half the Internet’s email traffic will be me. I’ll be there, wheezing and typing, thinking, “Just one more…”

Tomorrow is my good budddy Kevin Hendricks’ birthday. I was thinking about Kevin recently because another friend of mine and I were talking about radio shows, and somehow I got around to telling him about how I was once kidnapped while on the air at a college radio station, and my cohort Kevin was held hostage in the station itself. This all happened live on our radio show, Mission Control. He was aghast until I explained that it was done by people we knew, and it was a practical joke. Then I remembered I still have the recordings of that event, so I shared them with him, and he really liked them.

I went back and listened to them myself, too. I’ve gotta tell ya, Kevin totally takes the cake in this recording. His timing is right on, his reactions are perfect (and totally unrehearsed). It was our best show ever. So for anyone out there who enjoyed Mission Control, didn’t enjoy Mission Control because WBCS’ signal was too weak, or took part in the kidnapping itself, enjoy. It’s been over seven years since that event, but I feel like it was… well… maybe like it was three.

Happy Birthday, Kevin!

Mission Control – The Kidnapping (3/22/99) (5.4 MB zip file)

Read Kevin’s retelling of the event (see “03.22.99 – Monday”), written later that same night.

Update (6/15): two of the “terrorists” involved in this event have responded privately to me today, and I have been supplied with a local copy of a website written around the time of these events, chronicling what happened from the perspective of one of the lead terrorists, who we’ll call “Nate.” Because that’s his name. Read his twisted account of the events, view exclusive photos taken amidst the chaos of that dark night, and understand the mind of a dangerous criminal!