Chicago

Those close to me are well familiar with my hermit like habits. This is only amplified by my refusal to imbibe, my dislike for small talk, and my inability to produce any form of stimulating conversation. Rarely in my life do I feel comfortable in a new environment. That was until Chicago.
I’ve [...]

lemon block

Operator: What is your e-mail sir?
Me: ryan at em double u three design dot com
Operator: r – y – a – n @ n – w – 3 . com
Me: no, r – y – a – n – @ – m “as in mimesis” – W “as in Worcestershire” – “the number” 3 – [...]

recess is in

Bullied at the pump. Wall Street is sinking. Unemployment is jumpy. Foreclosing the inevitable.
Damn…I guess I won’t buy my boat.
We are about to enter (or as many state “are already in”) a recession. What got us here in the first place? Sure you have the rising middle class overseas, [...]

Fighting the Inevitable

From High School through the first 4 years of my marriage, I’ve been unable to break the 155 pound barrier. As many of you have noticed, that is not currently the case. Since taking a desk job, my weight has increased at an accelerated amount. I’m not near enough of a weight [...]

fawder

Post fawder’s day celebrations lead to reminiscing moments of being a father (and of course of my own pops, see this post for that dedication)

Losing to myself

My goal in gaining “Ryan Barlow” dominance, in the organic google search rankings, has reached a point where I am now number 1 and number 2. I can’t help but feel that I am losing to myself. I’ll have to settle for being the number 1 Ryan Barlow, and the number 2 Ryan [...]

distracted

My waning diligence in blog writing can be directly linked to the launch of my companies redesigned website at bbqcovers.com. I apologize to the faithful few who have continued to visit my site (even though we all know you came out of habit rather than out of loyalty).
new site

old site

Advertising

Quote:
“Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy s**t (edited for mother) we don’t need. We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War’s a spiritual war… our Great Depression is our lives.”
Bloggers Note:
I loved [...]

the pact

In order to motivate myself to continue writing “Lemons”, and convince James (the renowned no reader**) to read “The Foundation” series (see figure 1), a pact was made between two brothers. For every day James reads more than 10 pages, the very next day, I’ve committed to write 5 pages of screenplay towards “Lemons”. [...]

Safe Are We?

A simulated “Safari” in San Antonio produces some nice close up photos of animals native to Africa.

note: Forgive the double post (a similar post was made at my family website), but some of these pictures were passed up in the family screening that I felt deserved some blog attention.

not so Compact Disk

A couple of months ago, I rid myself of our DVD player. All movies that I watch are now file driven. It was an easy move, since most of the movies I own, I inherited from my previous job. However, something I have been hesitant to clean out are my compact disks [...]

Organic Ryan

“Would the real Ryan Barlow please step forward” says the spider
339,999 pseudo Ryan Barlow’s hush, as the true egotistical Ryan Barlow steps forward and finally separates himself from the crowd.
“Damn you” cries the Youtube Ryan Barlow
“oh man” mopes the imposter myspace Ryan Barlow
“He’s where he belongs” concedes the LinkedIn Ryan Barlow
—————-Ladies and Gentleman, [...]

bar-Cubemeister: A tribute to Rubik and the Master thereof

Growing up, bragging rights were not difficult to come by. My uncle had written a number 1 country music song. My family inherited “George” a skeleton used in the movie “Journey to the Center of the Earth”. My parents speak Klingon (maybe that isn’t something I should brag about). But my [...]

National Bracket Association

currently I’m getting ready for school, still training at my new job, trying to get my house sold, working out my insurance, organizing 6 years of paperwork, helping shoot a short film for a friend, working on a music video, writing a screen play, and trying to capture the essence of Austin. So, what [...]

interspective

I feel as though I’m running out of things to do on the internet. Digg has lost its flavor, blog hopping has lost its zeal, e-mail has become a medium of p3nis 3nlargement ads and false rumor proliferation. Even so, I probably waste a good 2 hours a day (actually more, I’m too [...]

update

I thought I would update everyone on where james and I stand on each of our projects.
tradingloop.com – this has taken the back burner right now. We have all the details worked out, we’re just looking for a good programmer to do our database and parametric search programming. If you have any recommendations, [...]

add on

An old friend of mine (who makes an excellent burger), John Cowgill contacted me to reminisce of the good ol’ college days. We had spent a many hours at a call center playing add on (I draw one thing, then he adds to it, then I add to it, etc. etc.) I was [...]

warning: policital issue

To be fair, you all have warning that this is an anti-anti immigration post. You’ll also notice that I don’t allow comments on my posts, so this will be a one sided argument. So if you choose to continue to read this post, please keep in mind, these are my views and don’t [...]

sabadoodle

Imagine that you’ve been asked to give a talk, sermon, or lesson in church. You spend hours, perhaps weeks, studying, praying, working hard, to come up with what words you feel will inspire the congregation. The night before, you forgo a night of parties, movies, entertainment in general, just to get a good [...]

sarandermis

Last night I dreamed that someone replaced my skin with Saran wrap. My intestines were just bulging out and the wrap was about to break. That was until I was sent flying in the air making an infinity symbol around a floating open box.
Anybody know of a good discount exorcist?
pt.2
this is [...]

egosurf

My online narcissism dramatically increased the day the domain name ryanbarlow.com became available. Unfortunately, even with this advantage, I am still unable to occupy the “top” ryan barlow organic google search result. I held the number 2 spot for some time, until I stopped blogging. This inactivity dropped me to number 8. [...]

Urinal Mugging

Problem:One of my irrational fears is getting mugged at a urinal. I’m in a public restroom, my face is to the wall (strictly following proper bathroom etiquette), a hand is occupied. The distance between my head and the wall is close enough that any mugger need just elbow my head and my face [...]

bissextile

I was born in a bissextile year. My age has been divisible by ‘4′ 7 times. You’ll have to forgive my disturbing superstitious behavior, but I can’t help but say and believe “This is my year”.
An apology to all those who accidentally read this post title as “bisexual”,
Project Updates———tradingloop.com – We’ve finished the [...]

three degrees of occupational happiness

3. A job that makes money. 2. A job that involves your interests and makes money.1. Your dream job.
This is way oversimplified, but best describes my views on occupations. Obviously right now I’m at the 3rd degree of occupational happiness. I’m not particularly interested in protecting outdoor furniture, but it [...]

thought of school

It was four months ago that I entered a heated discussion with one of the directors of my previous employer. It was very upsetting to me, but helped me realize that I had to break away from the stagnant/semi-comfortable life I had accustomed myself to. That led to a month of once again [...]

Hunting Hat Parallels

Occasionally, I like to throw in a classic read into the mix of nightstand books (making up for the lack of reading my high school english curricula – back in the day). This months classic…Catcher in the Rye, caught me off guard, and I ended up enjoying the story far more than I expected. [...]

RE/A influenza

Have you ever felt as though every muscle in your body was going to turn inside out? Is inflammation making it difficult to breath? Do you have ridiculous fever chills running through your body? Do you find it difficult to muster enough energy to eruct whatever is causing your stomach to churn, [...]