I should not have wasted my time with this, but so be it… I started putting every letter into Google Instant Search and here’s what I got. I’m curious if you get the same (I’m thinking you might not, because for ‘l’, I got “Long Island Railroad”, but that was the only one that really seemed location-based).

Let me know if you find anything surprising about the results.

If you really want to play a fun game, try to guess in the comments before you look.

Here, I’ll put a picture in the middle and at the end so you don’t accidentally see the answers when you scroll.

Say hello to my little friend.

@roniweiss Thank you for bundling me up! It's awfully hard when one's hands are cemented in their pockets.

February 21, 2012 3:29 pm via HootSuiteReplyRetweetFavorite

@RoamingGnome

Travelocity Gnome

Quebec, Quebec

The List

a – amazon

b – best buy

c – craigslist

d – dictionary

e – espn

f – Facebook

g – google

h – hotmail

i – ikea

j – jetblue

k – kayak

l – lirr

m – mapquest

n – netflix

o – oldnavy

p – pandora

q – quotes

r – redbox

s – skype

t – target

u – usps

v – verizon

w – walmart

x – x factor

y – youtube

z – zappos

Bonhomme in the Winter Carnival Parade

Season 2 RT @roniweiss OK... At what point does #DowntonAbbey transcend being simply a pre-World War I soap opera?

February 20, 2012 11:13 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@ACarlton

Allison Carlton

Note: I watched half of the pilot. That’s all I could get through feeling no connection to any of the characters and with no further encouragement from the masses.

Count me one for two when it comes to ostensibly girly things. This weekend, I wrote a piece on the inevitability (and desirability) of Pinterest for the RW Social blog. While it has been seen as a female-centric site, if Pinterest and businesses are smart, it’ll will expand beyond its current U.S. demo.

Downton Abbey. The new hit show on ITV and PBS. A “Masterpiece Classic”. A slice of life in pre-World War I Britain that lets us into the lives of the upper crust and those who keep them comfortable.

I expected Mad Men; I got Days of Our Lives.

@roniweiss Much better production value than any soap opera that I've ever seen.

February 20, 2012 11:18 pm via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@ShannonNeff

Shannon Neff

Sharing my opinion, I was criticized for an unfair stance given my open obsession with The OC, but my problem with Downton isn’t melodrama, it’s scope of characters and length of scenes. The show is paced like any soap opera that I’ve seen in a hospital waiting room (generally the only time soaps come into my life). Brief scenes that give you a tidbit of information, then move on to another character. And boy, are there a lot of characters. Characters I couldn’t have cared less about. Conniving characters, dickish characters (Spoiler alert: Apparently, the disabled weren’t treated well in 1910′s UK) and a hapless Lord of the Manor. Who was I supposed to care about? What relationships were supposed to draw me in? Am I supposed to feel bad for a guy that can’t do his job? It’s wonderful having accommodations for the disabled when you can, but halfway into the show (as far as I got), I was lead to believe that all of the jerky characters were right, that the new valet really wasn’t up to the task, esp. for the times.

I am well aware that I’m in the minority on this (and quite possibly controversial on my above thoughts on workers with disabilities). I’d love for you to tell me what I’m missing about Downton and why I should give it more of a chance than I did. Otherwise… I’m moving on to Breaking Bad.

E. Van Duzer, M. Stabile, R. Weiss, A., J. Festa, R. Van Duzer

Social Media Week was crazy. I highly recommend being aware of it in the future, wherever you are. I can’t speak to the quality anywhere else but in NYC, the diversity was immense. I found it extremely funny that there were points that I was convinced that the people at the respective events had no clue that the event was part of the umbrella of SMW.

I met many, many amazing people over the course of this week. While this is heartening, such networking and possibility can really take its toll on my psyche. Stressed out, talking to my friend Jessie Festa, she demanded that I write 10 things I love about my life as a positivity exercise. I figured I’d share it with you and offer you the chance to do the same, whether through comments or via your own posts, etc. If you do write your own post, please share the link below.

It’s an interesting exercise to me, as I think you can learn a great deal about someone by knowing what they value. If you come to any conclusions based on my responses, don’t hesitate to vocalize.

And, thus, my list:

• i love the fact that i have space in my room
• i love having my own bathroom
• i love that i am meeting great, new, interesting people
• i love that i still have people that believe in me
• i love that i’m getting to go to cool places
• i love that i have a very cool business card that people like
• i love that i’m living in a time with internet
• i love that there are so many different delicious foods out there, some of which i’ve never tried
• i love that it’s quiet right now (other than the clickity clack of my typing)
• i love the feeling of a calm, deep breath

FYI, be on the lookout, my Quebec posts will be coming up shortly. The Ice Hotel and the Winter Carnival in Quebec, my first forays into Nordic spas and much more…

Thanks, as always, to Sharon Burian for feeling that such things are worth her time.

Aaaand, a second, albeit derivative one for Steve Gast.

Only in a frightening, subzero climate could the natives revere a snowman. While I’ve had a good time in Quebec thus far, there is a grim spectre that looms over this town. Even worse, he will be ever-present on my press pass tomorrow during the Winter Carnival.

He is known only as “good man” (the literal translation of ‘bonhomme‘). It comes from bonhomme de neige (which means ‘snowman’), but this frightening monstrosity conjures up images of Venkman and Egon fighting a similar-looking fellow with a sailor hat.

I know not what I shall do if I run across him in the flesh tomorrow, but I feel that the Quebec Tourism office should have provided  us proton packs or garlic or whatever can chase off a Frankenstein’s monster of slushy ice. If that hasn’t make you quake in your boots, perhaps a wink from the snow-man himself will.

I thought I’d break this down a bit, as I’ve been somewhat mixed in my own opinions.

…the workers assembling iPhones, iPads and other devices often labor in harsh conditions, according to employees inside those plants, worker advocates and documents published by companies themselves. Problems are as varied as onerous work environments and serious — sometimes deadly — safety problems.

Employees work excessive overtime, in some cases seven days a week, and live in crowded dorms. Some say they stand so long that their legs swell until they can hardly walk. Under-age workers have helped build Apple’s products, and the company’s suppliers have improperly disposed of hazardous waste and falsified records, according to company reports and advocacy groups that, within China, are often considered reliable, independent monitors.

In China, Human Costs Are Built Into an iPad by Charles Duhigg and David Barboza, The New York Times - January 25, 2012

There’s nothing fun about reading something like this on your MacBook. I really have no idea what I’m supposed to do as a consumer when something like this happens. Do I boycott all Apple products until they do something radical to change it? Well, supposedly they are. Apple CEO Tim Cook responded with this:

We are focused on educating workers about their rights, so they are empowered to speak up when they see unsafe conditions or unfair treatment. As you know, more than a million people have been trained by our program.

We will continue to dig deeper, and we will undoubtedly find more issues. What we will not do — and never have done — is stand still or turn a blind eye to problems in our supply chain. On this you have my word. You can follow our progress at apple.com/supplierresponsibility.

What am I supposed to think? Apple can’t just snap its fingers and make working conditions better in China. Are they really working on it? Is this just an easy out? I have no idea.

In a nutshell: As Cook implies earlier in the above e-mail, most Apple employees don’t know what really is/isn’t going on unless they’re actually there. So how can I?

While I’m lumping these three companies together, it needs to be noted that they are in very different circumstances with disparate corporate philosophies. Google is, in some ways, the one people hold at the highest standard, as along with being massively influential they make the strong statement of “Don’t Be Evil“.

Google recently announced that they have changed their Terms of Service (TOS). Every Google product you use can interact with any other for the purposes of having better information to advertise to you better. The only way to opt-out is to get the hell off of Google.

I’ve had a lot of problems with Google as of late. Google+ is a huge waste of time that causes me to get into stupid debates that I don’t want to get involved in. They’ve used their muscle to try to get G+ further spread by complicating their searches with “personal results”. I also haven’t been enamored with their corporate folks that I’ve seen at conferences.

Google seeks to give information. People with love messing with Siri, but what if Siri really could answer which job you should take? That’s exactly what Google wants to be for you (or at least what Eric Schmidt sees it as). And maybe you want that. But forcing you to opt into that experience is not something that everyone wants.

If this is that big of a deal, where is the government to come in and restrict, or at least force you to have the option to not be a part of that? Like SOPA/PIPA, I think the only way this will really change is if there’s a massive enough outcry. But if there is a change, I think that it’ll be on the Google end. Google is already trying to reframe what this Terms of Use change actually means. Will they change the change? They would, if people stay loudly upset.

In a nutshell: Google is trying to anticipate what users want before they want it or know they can have it. If enough people tell them they really don’t want it, they’ll have no choice but to change policy.

The one that bothers me the most of these three is the Twitter situation, because it’s a position that Twitter hasn’t intentionally put themselves into. Apple is in China to save money; Google is trying to customize their experience to stay ahead of the game. Twitter is just doing what they do, which runs them into trouble in other countries.

Twitter recently announced that they have set up a new system to block specific tweets and users in specific countries. They’ve yet to use it, but they feel it’s a scalpel as opposed to a sledgehammer (with the alternative being globally blocking something). Free speech groups have had a varied reaction. Some feel that Twitter’s commitment to report what they’re censoring (which they’ve said they’ll do on Chilling Effects) is valuable, whereas others feel that the policy is too loose and will make it so future Arab Springs will not be able to take place.

5 years ago, Thailand blocked YouTube for having videos that mocked the Thai king (which is against Thai law). The ban was lifted by YouTube making a deal to make sure videos of this nature would not be seen in Thailand. In other parts of the world (cough China cough), sites like Facebook and Twitter get blocked and unblocked with regularity. Part of the reason is because, whether the West agrees with it or not, speech is legally limited in some places. There are lots of problems with oversimplifying the difficult spot that Twitter is in:

1. We expect companies to be law-abiding. Laws change country to country and this is not easy to deal with.
2. If they don’t comply, they’ll get blocked (See: Google in China). If they do comply, even in a limited, transparent capacity, they get called censors.
3. “Free speech” may be a universally declared human right, but it means different things around the world. Look at the above example with Thailand. Twitter also cites how France and Germany have very specific laws against pro-Nazi propaganda. What about hate speech? It’s hard for me to believe that everyone really believes in free speech as much as they claim.

People in countries where Twitter is blocked/limited have found ways around the restrictions that their countries have placed on them. I hope and believe that this will not impede the users in restricted countries any more than they were before.

In a nutshell: If this becomes a problem, I will speak out, but as of now, I think this is the smartest path for Twitter to take.

I got the logos via a Google Image Search. They all have their own interesting stories.

The Apple logo is from a ZDNet article, Why I Shall Never Buy Another Apple iProduct by Zach Whittaker.

The Google ‘Evil’ logo is from The Stuttering Brain, from a piece from 2008 about how Google is not banning ads that claim to have a cure for stuttering, which is against the ad laws of the UK.

The Twitter logo is from the Reporters Without Borders open letter to Twitter, re: censorship.

Agree? Disagree? I left out Facebook Timeline. If people want me to talk about that a bit, I will. Otherwise, I’m moving on to whatever controversies lie ahead…

I’m in LA for a little bit. Heading to Quebec on Feb. 2nd, so watch out for that…

In the meantime, the LA Times Travel Show is this weekend at the LA Convention Center.

Here are a few reasons you should go:

1) I’ll be there.

2) There’s a cars.com booth where you get free 10-minute massages.

3) People I know (who I would like to call friends, but I dunno if they’d agree), such as Johnny Jet and Leon Logothetis will be speaking.

4) All of the other sorts of reasons one would go to something like this: ziplining, seeing the host of Man v. Food and information on lots of travel destinations, not to mention swag swag swag! (If you’re lucky, you can win an OC lunch box from the Newport Beach booth! Check out mine!)

FYI: You can use the ‘LATPR’ coupon code to get the price down to $8 if you buy online.

I’ve never been into the alcohol. As you can see in many videos of mine (take “Roni takes a shot“, for one), it just isn’t my thing. But I’ve always been interested in how alcoholic drinks are made, both on the backend and mixology fronts. And strangely enough, while I’ve always thought that even the smell of beer was repugnant, I actually am curious to try Newport Storm’s blueberry beer again. Crisp and light. Nothing like the piss smell that I normally associate with beer.

Going to Newport Storm allowed me to see some of the process behind making rum. After tasting each of the different steps along the way (and trying some of the beers), I went back to see the aging rum barrels. I gleefully exclaimed that I felt like I was on a pirate ship.

The whole experience was exactly what I pictured. A knowledgeable, friendly tour guide (in the form of Lindsay), tasting of different products and a thorough explanation of how it all went down.

You can see a video of my experience below.

Some things I learned:

• The rum comes out of the still at 180 proof (90% alcohol).
• It’s proofed to 108, added to oak barrels and aged 2 years. The flavor and color come the from barrel, which are used bourbon barrels.
• The oaky smoke of the rum comes from the barrel, which is charred on the interior. Vanilla is a natural chemical in oak wood, which can be tasted in the rum.
• After 2 years, it’s taken out of the barrel, filtered and labelled from the individual barrel number. Each rum is only from one barrel.

“What cheer?”

- Motto of Providence, RI

At some point in my Rhode Island trip planning, it became possible that I’d visit Providence. I was somewhat upset that it took as long as it did for me to realize/remember that Providence is home to Brown and RISD. Was Brown to check off another Ivy League visit? Was RISD to appease Sharon Burian, who makes my headers and avatars? Nothing of the sort. I’m a huge fan of The OC and I wanted to see where Summer Roberts and Seth Cohen were to attend college. But Providence is much more than a city referenced in a long-cancelled show. It’s a strange sort of place that mixes a small town feel, a West Coast wannabe vibe and an up-and-coming city bravado.

John McCauley of Deer Tick

I was there during the 375th birthday of the Rhode Island capital. At the celebration at PPAC (pronounced ‘PEE-pack’, standing for Providence Performing Arts Center), the crowd celebrated through performance displays (apropos), including a set by Deer Tick (a band I’d that never heard of, but the crowd clearly had).

On the walk up to College Hill, I noticed that there was an Occupy Providence movement in the local park. I asked them what the biggest difference between them and Occupy Wall Street was. “We weren’t shut down and our police are nicer.”

Brown University

The Museum of Art at RISD is a must-see. If I were to pick one museum for someone to go to as a CliffsNotes experience, this would be it. The variety of eras and styles is curated so well. Not only are the pieces of interest, but the way they are housed is comparable to how I’ve seen them in much larger museums, just in a scaled-down sort of way.

RISD Museum of Art

I also had a chance to stop and eat at a hard-to-pin-down restaurant. I’m not even entirely sure what its name was. The Fez? The Red Fez? Either way, they’re on Peck St. Here’s their Yelp page. I’m not the only one singing their praises. A varied menu with spins on traditional items. Chicken wings and mac & cheese sound humdrum? Not how you get them there. And how many restaurants serve the aforementioned items as well as banh mi sandwiches? Providence in all of its quirkiness.

More pictures of my Providence trip available in my Providence Flickr set.

Tomorrow: My visit the the Newport Storm Brewery.

I’m going to play a little game. I hope you indulge me.

I’ll go onto my Twitter feed, see tweets that annoy me and explain to you why they do.

Let’s play.

Ah. Also, just because I don’t like one of your tweets doesn’t mean I don’t like you. I’m just finding things that annoy me, not taking note of who is saying what.

1) Quotation marks

We live & we learn “@adventurousness: @waegook_tom @sillyamerica @whereswaldner Good lesson for y posting nude photos on FB is a bad idea”

January 24, 2012 3:08 pm via Twitter for MacReplyRetweetFavorite

@BAbackpacker

Breakaway Backpacker

I blame TweetDeck and other programs for making this a default, but I hate the quotation mark thing. Whenever I put a tweet up, I go and remove them and put up ‘RT’.

#awww RT @ACarlton A life of adventure that I can share with someone special. Our story could be a book! #nuts

January 24, 2012 3:47 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@roniweiss

Roni Weiss

2) Useless quotes that I don’t care about

A great deal of talent is lost to the world for want of a little courage."--Sydney Smith,

January 24, 2012 3:51 pm via HootSuiteReplyRetweetFavorite

@gwnunnadventure

Greg Nunn

I like humorous quotes, to be sure, but there are so many that try to be profound that mean little-to-nothing if you parse them. The above one also has bits of…

3) Spelling and grammar errors

Wind really howling in #SAntaFe

January 24, 2012 3:48 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@santafetraveler

TheSantaFeTraveler

Hi my #nuts people! Im here better late than never!

January 24, 2012 3:58 pm via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@TOR0706

Victoria Elizabeth

What can I say, I’m a stickler. There’s a line between txtspk and just not making an effort. If I ever have any mistakes anywhere, please please please tell me.

This is actually harder than I thought… It would seem that I’ve stopped following the people who do the more annoying stuff. I’m going to have to go hunting now…

4) Links that aren’t clear what they are

I'm not the only one! http://t.co/UPmWqoPZ

January 24, 2012 4:08 pm via HootSuiteReplyRetweetFavorite

@Kelsye

Kelsye

What is this? It’s gimmicky making someone have to click to see what it is. And how often is it disappointing? (This one is a WTF sort of picture. Not sure why it’s a link and not an image.)

5) Overhashtagging

Hungry for #humor? Check out my *new* post: The Dominican #Papaya Milkshake Scam! #travel #lechosa #food http://t.co/dHa17BP7

January 24, 2012 4:10 pm via PluggioReplyRetweetFavorite

@chickybus

Lisa E

That’s five hashtags. And are there that many people who are on the lookout for the #papaya? I would think if you were that papaya obsessed, you’d probably be fine just searching for the word itself. (I wrote a post about Overhashtagging over on the RW Social site.)

Am I being too sensitive? Do any of these drive you crazy, too? What else makes you consider unfollowing someone?