Are you pregnant or know someone who’s expecting? Are you tired of guessing your baby’s due date?
Leave it to 160over90′s very own Stephen Penning to predict your unborn baby’s date and time of birth! He’s considered the Miss Cleo of the baby date predicting world.
In the world of branding, Apple goes to the head of the class. With its rapidly improving technology, its sleek and sophisticated designs, and the endlessly charming “I am a Mac” commercials, it simply cannot miss. However, lately I have been a little frustrated with my friends at Apple. How these guys can create the wonderfulness that is the Iphone and then make it damn near impossible to fix, is lame in my book.
I don’t mind paying the cost of the phone, but I expect that if worst comes to worst and it breaks, I will be getting a brand new phone for cost or cheaper. With the Iphone it costs you more! I know this because I had a little incident a couple months ago involving my birthday, my Iphone, a bar, alcohol and well, a toilet. Needless to say the phone broke and the replacement cost twice as much as the original. So imagine my dismay when I was walking to work the other day and my phone jumped out of my clutzy hands and landed square on the sidewalk. The image in this post gives you a sense of my horror (imagine that being your Iphone). How I longed for the skip back 7 sec feature that I use so frequently on my DVR, but alas this is real reality.
Lucky for me it was only the top screen that broke, the phone itself was fine. So I began my research to figure out the quickest and cheapest method of fixing my phone. I was shocked to see the countless number of people in my predicament. I reviewed over and over the youtube videos of how to fix it yourself. This seemed like the cheapest option, but a little risky as you can cause permanent damage if not done properly. Other options included sending my little guy away via FedEx to the MacMedics or others like them. But that would mean being without him for longer than I was comfortable. So, despite my colleague, Jim Walls’ skepticism, I ended up trying out a local guy via a Craig’s List ad. I know, sounds crazy, right? Well “Scotty” came to my place yesterday and in about 3min. brought my beloved Iphone back to life, and since I had the working screen from my first phone that got “water damage” he was able to charge me only $60! Now, as Jim also pointed out, the screen that I swipe my finger across and the screen that I hold up to my face, did spend a brief time in the toilet, but I feel this is a small price to pay for the peace of mind of having my best buddy back and good as new 
.
Ad people, I’ve discovered, are good drinking buddies. Maybe it’s just my fondness for Beer Friday. Or maybe it’s because of the spontaneous creativity (read: dance party) that tends to arise after a couple of drinks. In case you were wondering what happens when you give a few 160over90 creatives wine, a pen and paper…here’s the answer. Portraits of (most of) the ladies of 160over90, penned on Ro’s customized stationery—compliments of 160over90 “Ladies Night” (cue Kool & the Gang).
Monet had his haystack series. Picasso had his blue period. We have this. *
Ro Fahmie worked as a historical impersonator at an Old Timey Civil-War era town for three years. (If you’re nice to her you might be able to convince her to churn you a pot of butter).
Michelle Prescott
Marina Schoger
Margherita Urbani is in possession of an American Flag patterned do-rag. And a green card.
Lindsay Hendler
Lindsey Borda
Laura Walczak is the shortest of 6 cousins on her dad's side of the family, at 5'8"
Anna Hartley
More Anna
Bridgett Yarusso
Danielle DeWolf
Gretchen Schottin has not lost a game of Monopoly in ten years. It is speculated that she protects this record by keeping a stash of Monopoly money up her sleeve on the off chance that she might encounter a Monopoly board.
Jenn Miller has the most difficult head to draw of all of the ladies at 160. Nobody is quite sure why, but it probably has something to do with the occult.
More Jenn
Jillian Jeffers
Lisa Loeb/Alien Kelly/Kelly Dorsey
Sarah Riddle
Terez Kunkel has the smallest head of anyone in the agency, and probably the biggest hair, according to Kelly Dorsey.
*drawings by Margherita Urbani, Kelly Dorsey, Anna Hartley, Laura Walczak and Sarah Riddle.
This week the unique antics of the Wilkes University Colonel mascot were recognized by the Times Leader, a daily newspaper based in Wilkes-Barre, PA. As we first shared last month, this spring the Colonel traveled throughout Northeastern Pennsylvania to surprise individual high school seniors and showcase the Wilkes educational philosophy of personal attention.
Check out the Times Leader story here to learn more about the initiative and hear directly from students on how it feels to be “punked” by the Colonel when you least expect it.
I know someone who owns one of those ubiquitous “Signs by Tomorrow” shops. I imagine the signs are affordable, and strip mall small business owners probably spend as much time there as they do their local Kinko’s or Staples. The signs are pretty utilitarian, of course: plain, plastic signs with plain, plastic typefaces, and—for a few extra bucks—some clip art with a steaming cup of coffee or shamrocks or something. They get the job done, but if I were building a legit business, I’d work as hard as possible to upgrade to some real signage before too long. Real, handmade, handcrafted, handpainted–whatever. Just so I can feel the hand of the artist in there somehow. Great sign design is virtually a lost art.
There was a day and an age where even fast food restaurants (ESPECIALLY fast food restaurants) took great care in crafting signage to lure travelers in off the byway. Now, the joint with the best burgers in all the land (Five Guys) throws up soulless signage that makes them look like a boardwalk dollar store on the verge of bankruptcy. I know you take a lot of pride in your fries, fellas, but how about fixing up the place a little?
So it was with a heavy heart that I learned that the Arby’s in Folsom, PA (known as a landmark to my wife and I as “Big Hat Arby’s”), closed its doors forever last week, and mercilessly tore down its self-aggrandizing 1000-gallon hat sign. I should have seen it coming when they started selling Fajita Flatbread Melts.
This thing was almost bigger than the store itself. When I was a kid, the words lit up in sections to draw you down the sign, until the blinking “is delicious” drove the oh-so-simple point home. Copywriting at its least convincing, made most convincing through some neon acrobatics. Over time, the sign stopped animating, then whole words stopped lighting up, but it was still a comforting presence along MacDade Boulevard. I remember driving past a similar Big Hat in Santa Monica back around 2001 proudly displaying a sign reading “thanks everyone, you saved the hat.” I imagine some sort of citizen’s group launched an a counteroffensive to save an endangered Hat, and I remembered hoping my Hat back home was never threatened by the same wrecking ball. Sadly, corporate must have stripped ours down in the cover of night. Or else I would have been out there like Tank Man, bravely clutching two sacks of French Dips (a secret menu item if you know the handshake).
Big hat, you will be missed. As for the curly fries, horsey sauce, and jamocha shakes, I’ll see you at the Arby’s in Norwood. The one with the plain sign.
Props to Flickr user army.arch for the photo. Check out his fantastic Flickr set of 900 classic signs here. And if you’ve got a Big Montana-like hankerin’ for 137 Big Hat shots, look no further than an entire Flickr group dedicated to said Stetson.
With the new iPhone 3GS coming out in a couple of weeks I thought it would be a good time to warn everyone about the dangers hidden within the iPhone. Let me start at the beginning…
Some weeks back we all became enamored of keyboard cat. You could hear his tune through out the office. This quickly led to the discovery of an iPhone application called Cat Piano. It is a cute program with a piano keyboard that plays cat meows in corresponding notes. I was hooked and I had to have a Cat Piano of my own. What could be more fun?
Later that night at home I played my dog Theo a sweet serenade of meows and growls. He was unimpressed. I laid on the keys some more – pouring my heart and soul into this meow-medley. Still, no reaction. Then without any kind of warning my cat attacked me. She savaged my arm and hand with eight swift bites. The pain was tremendous and I could tell she was out for blood. In the back of my mind I could hear the keyboard cat’s song “Doo de do do, doo de do doo” mocking my pain. Why didn’t this application come with some kind of warning or disclaimer?
As I cleaned my wounds I reflected on what had just transpired. I was overcome by an immense feeling of stupidity for having not considered how a cat would feel about strange meows coming from the phone in my hands. Did she feel scared or threatened? Not being able to translate meows I wonder if I insulted her or said something terrible about her mother. I guess I will never know. Concern was my next emotion after reading on the interwebs that 80 percent of all cat bites get infected. Possible infections include: Pasteurella, Actinomyces, Propionibacterium, Bacteroides, Fusobacterium, Clostridium, Wolinella, Peptostreptococcus, Staphylococcus & Streptococcus. Shockingly, people have been hospitalized for leaving a common house cat bite untreated. Scary stuff!
A trip to the doctor the next day left me left me with a sore arm from a tetanus shot and a 5-day course of broad-spectrum antibiotics. So with that said I encourage you to have fun with your new iPhone 3GS, just be careful.
