I didn’t want to sell it to the first person to email me … that’s boring. So I wrote this in the post: “If you want the ticket, send an email with a haiku about the Avett Brothers. Best haiku gets the ticket.”

Here are the haikus I got:

Hark! Honey on ears
sight, smell, touch, taste envious.
Avett Bros. good sound.

— Sean S.

Retarded are you
In the request that you have
For avett tickets

— Chris S.

Which begat:

Chris didn't mean it
He needs me to reconnect
Him to the beauty

— Kathleen M.

Avett Brothers sing,
soulful music together,
dancing righteously.

— Max B.

Sold yesterdays tickets by accident
Very sad
Makes me cry like the Avett Brothers
when all the pretty girls in their songs dump them

— Kathleen V.

the avetts are here
for truth and love they shall sing
they are fucking rad!

— Taylor R.

joe magically makes
a pretty girl from denver
so very happy

and

poor, starving, artist
can't afford pricey ticket
i'll buy you a drink...

and

ears full of music
ticket with my name on it
joe's my new best friend

— Jackie

And the winner:

bearded brothers play
by guitars grace, tasty lick
paint smile on my face

— Joshua W.

The bot-spammers are now winning over on COTweets, so I went and created a new Colorado group-tweet list, ColoradoTweets, that works in much the same way, but has a few more rules that should help keep it from turning into a noisy ugly hot mess.

To break it down:

• Only tweets that *start* with (as opposed to contain) @ColoradoTweets will be published. This fixes one of COTweeters’ weaknesses.
• Any tweet with “RT” in it, or “Follow Friday” (and variants) will be ignored.
• If @ColoradoTweets isn’t following you, you can tweet to it, but those tweets won’t be broadcast to the group until @ColoradoTweets follows you.
• Abusing the list with repetitive, promotional tweets, is a sure ticket to a blocking.

The goal here is to have a list that takes the pulse of Colorado folk on twitter, that can help people who have questions about something Colorado, and is interesting. Thoughts? Post ‘em here.

-Joe

We’ve got a bunch of journalists in from other newspapers, which means more people, which means the newsroom is sounding more alive than ever. Woop.

Today the Denver Post’s home-page got a HTML nip-and-tuck treatment — it now loads lot faster, and for those who know why this matters, we exchanged about 50% of the tables on the site for CSS. Then there’s the Akamai caching of our apps servers, another app server transfer, twitter and feed scrapers, this online quiz app I gotta get out the door … it goes on. I sent 42 emails today, had four meetings, and worked overtime. Answered four phone calls, and made another three. I hardly ever talk on the phone at my job. Talked with the guy from the Weather Channel about the Denver Weather-O-Meter — the Weather Channel had been the worst at forecasting Denver weather … until this week, when they somehow turned it around and got out of the cellar.

Sixteen months ago, when Denver got notice it would be the location of the DNC, I was skeptical about all the effort and attention the Post was putting into this one-off event. I’m still slightly skeptical, but man this is going to be fun.

Oh yeah, and also, I converted my mom’s resume from a Claris Works document (.cwk) into an .rtf today. For those who don’t remember, Claris Works was acquired by Filemaker back in 1998. I’m a champ.

It’s a strong local effort for a newspaper that calls itself the voice of freakin’ Colorado, and I love me a good strong local effort.

It’s this weekend, and this year it’s two days instead of one. You can buy a two-day pass for $22 (with service charge). Apparently there is no option if you only want to go one day. That’s kind of a lame way to “keep things simple,” and I hope I’m wrong about it, but from surfing the Denver Post Underground Music Showcase website I can’t see any other way.

So, yeah. If you have the means, you oughta go.

Two days later a reporter (Brian Malnes) and a photog (Karl Gehring) were among the few dozen at the monthly tetris match, and today there’s an article about Tetris League in the Denver Post.

I felt a little nervous about it, what with me working for the Post and all. My co-workers on the online team knew I play competitive tetris, and some of them knew I was pretty good at it (according to the Tetris League site I’m the best player to never have won it all). But if there’s any video game out there that’s a contender for an Olympic sport, it’s tetris. And if any ship is going to sail into Olympic-land, it’s going to be flying the Tetris League flag. Tetris League. Last Wednesday of every month. Check it out.

My friends Holiday and Mia were in town for Mia’s 30th birthday, and I got three days on the slopes with them and their crew.

I also stuck some sweet shots with my camera on the slopes — here are a couple of them:

There was a crew of carebears on the mountain that day that I ran into at a few different points.
Blue bear at the top of the slope:

I was with blue bear as he had trouble going down the slope, and shot this photo right as he met up with the bears that had waited behind for him:

Salina I’m as nowhere as I can be / would you add some somewhere to me, aww Kansas I’m kneeling, aw Kansas please.

Cleveland I ain’t never felt something so strong / been believing the words to my songs, Ohio I’m leaving, Ohio I’m gone.

…

Poughkeepsie hang up the telephone / I won’t answer your phone calls no more, New York quit calling, New York leave me be.

Changing the plans that I’ve been setting off / I’m scared by the way that my life’s getting gone, Carolina one day I’ll, some day I’ll come home,

Carolina one day I’ll, some day I’ll come home.

The Avett Brothers are a three-piece bluegrass / rock band from Concord, North Carolina (near my old Winston-Salem roaming grounds).

They played Saturday night in Denver, view the video from this song here, here or here.