Elliott C. Back: Internet & Technology

Last weekend I had the experience of being in my first car accident, which cause minimal damage to the car and extreme embarassment for the driver. No one was hurt, but we had to turn back from our trip to Mount Rainier to get another car, which I drove safely to the mountain.

What happened was our driver turned off the freeway, was distracted by a falling CD case, and ran over the kerb at about 60 miles per hour, causing the tire to dimple out at that place:

Wish me a happy 21

So here’s what I did on my 21^th birthday:

Last night I turned 21, and went to a bar/club in Seattle called “Chopstix.” It’s on Roy and Queen-Anne, North of where I work, and has a dueling pianos theme. The entertainment was good, and there were 9 other Amazon.com people with me.

Some highlights of the evening included being sung a birthday song about my “tiny member” for my embarrassment and the club’s amusement while I sat on one of the pianos and listened, being bought a few drinks by these mid-thirties bored housewives who thought I looked really adorable, and having the coworker who brought me here get called “my hot date” in front of the club… which she wasn’t, but all the Amazon.com people were quite amused.

Those housewives were funny, though, and since they’d bought me drinks, I went over and said hello and talked to them for a little bit. One of them kept mussing my hair, lol, and they got a picture of me. For some reason, mother-types seem to like me.

“Bloggers reach world from Ithaca” has gone live at The Ithacan, a newpaper run by students at the Ithaca College, NY. The article features a number of local bloggers–Shane, Tiffany, and Zeke–as well as myself. The article tries to introduce blogging to the local community, offers some suggestions for starting your own blog, and comments about how a blog can be used for political commentary, gay rights activism, classes and technology, or everyday life in Ithaca.

My bit shows how unfocused by blogging is by mentioning all the disparate sites I run:

College bloggers have even found that their sites can be beneficial for class. Elliott Back runs more than one site. As a junior computer science major at Cornell, and an international student from Canada, his sites range from a blog for a class he TAs, to a blog all about Asian topics. His main page, elliottback.com, has links to all of these.

“I do it to connect with people and to meet new people,” he said. “With an audience, it feels like you write something and it does something.”

It’s a small newspaper, and a minor mention, but it’s flattering that the article highlights the sense of community that us half-dozen Ithaca bloggers have! That’s the most important thing to mention, in my mind–and that the article avoids including a picture of me!