That Ted Murphy, he went and brightened up my day today. He sent out a tweet around noon. I totally missed the part about plugging my blog for doing this too. I only saw that he wanted people to make some crazy Pringles photos. He wants them for a presentation. I can see where he is going with this. His influence online in networks like Twitter and Utterz give him reach, reach and influence. So he puts an idea out there on Twitter, “hey send me photos showing that you love Pringles!” That is a pretty innocuous request, many people like Pringles, own a camera and can do a crazy photo.

So, On the way home I picked up a ton of Pringles, I mean, if I’m gonna do something like this I am gonna do it up big. I got the small ones for sandwich bags and the large tubes as well (for the beach). I took some photos while I was in Target and then as I was checking out the woman at the register said, “Boy you must really love Pringles.” I said, “Yes I do!” I would have gotten more flavors if there were more in the store. But I got all that they had.

Once home I started arranging the Pringles on the Lazy Susan, I was going to try for a spinning photo but settled for a spinning video.

I took some photos of Allison and of Eva with their Pringles and then Allison took some of me taking a huge bite of a stack of Pringles. Here are the other photos.

Needless to say, we had a lot of fun with the Pringles.

Now you might be saying to yourself, why would you buy Pringles because someone Twittered about it? Well, mainly because the idea behind it was a cool on and Pringles are just fun. This definitely got me out of my funk from yesterday. Although a Pogo would still be nice.

After that we went out tonight with our friend Meghan. She took us out because she wanted to thank me for helping her with the family slide show that I helped her make for her parent’s 50th wedding anniversary. We went out to Red Robin. We are completely stuffed. We had an awesome time. We got bottomless steak fries and I asked for Mayo and made Fry Sauce. And they didn’t charge for the Mayo either. I’m still working on the details of the Fry Sauce Recipe Challenge and will announce that contest sometime after vacation and all the conventions that I have coming up.

But this post is about Unique Blog Designs. These guys have created the blog designs for John Chow, ShoeMoney and Fat Man Unleashed. They are all pretty awesome.

To celebrate the first birthday Unique Blog Designs is having a contest. Here are the rules.

Official Contest Rules

* The contest runs from 12:00AM PST Friday, August 22nd, 2008 to 11:59PM Sunday, August 31, 2008.
* Winners will be chosen Monday, September 1, 2008 through a random drawing.
* Only one (1) comment entry per person and one (1) blog entry per person. The total number of entries any person can receive is six (6) entries.
* Prizes include (1) grand prize of an Apple iPod Touch 8GB ($299 value) and three (3) copies of our new UBD Citrus WordPress Theme ($99 value) - coming next week.
* Contest is open to everyone world-wide.

Here is how you enter

Entering the UBD 1-Year Anniversary Contest is super simple!

* For one (1) contest entry - just reply to this post with a comment. Only one comment per person will be counted.
* For five (5) contest entries - write a blog post about the UBD 1-Year Anniversary Contest and link back to this post. If your blog post does not appear under the “Pingbacks,” leave a comment with a URL to the post.

And here are the prizes!!!

Grand Prize - Brand New 8GB iPod Touch ($299 value) and One (1) Copy of our New UBD Citrus WordPress Theme (coming next week).

Three (3) runner-up prizes include copies of our new UBD Citrus WordPress Theme.

The winner will be randomly chosen Monday, September 1st, 2008. We will draw the winner via streaming video from the UBD office.

Do you remember when cameras like this were the fastest way to see the photos that you took? I remember using a camera like this at my grandmother’s house when I was really young. It was amazing to take a picture and then watch as the image slowly appeared on the film. The other day I heard about a device that I want, but most certainly do not need and cannot think of enough applications for it to justify it. It is called the Polaroid PoGo Instant Mobile Printer. The device can print photos via bluetooth all with zero ink. It uses the ZINK paper, Zink stand for Zero Ink. The printer works by heating the paper which is embedded with crystals of magenta, cyan and yellow. You can connect the device via USB to a pictbridge enabled camera or it can receive images via bluetooth and in 60 seconds an image will print. While this may not capture the wonder of the original Polaroids it certainly is some cool tech. Can you think of applications for such a device? Leave me a comment and let me know.

IZEAFest 2008 is coming up in two weeks. I am a moderator for the Big Money Bloggers. I’ll be moderating a panel that consists of Stephanie Agresta, John Chow, Neil Patel & Jeremy Schoemaker. These are some big money bloggers who have decided to come and speak to the attendees of IZEAFest and hopefully impart some of their wisdom. I have the task, honor, privilege of being the person to ask the questions of these panelists and I wanted to ask you who are readers of this blog if you had questions for John, Neil, Jeremy or Stephanie leave them in the comments and I will try and get them asked.

Other than that today I am totally burnt out. I have nothing but demos every day till vacation. Each one is “Special”, I hate to say it but I am burnt out over everything however there is light at the end of the tunnel, finally and I’ll be moving to the new position in October. But in the meantime, if someone would like to cheer me up, A PoGo and some Zink would be sweet pick me ups. I kid. But seriously buy me the fun toy.

Rough Seas had one of Michael’s best covers ever. Seeing him playing the nerdy scientist guy was so much fun to watch. I loved the voice over part about being a subordinate person and the tough part is that sometimes you have to get dominated just as Michael gets tossed into a wall by the thugs.

In this episode we saw the return of Virgil, the episode with the tons of money in a boat. Virgil is back to ask for Michael’s help on behalf of his buddy’s daughter. Virgil is hoping to catch back up with Madeline. Michael agrees to help the daughter but nixes and chance that Virgil can meet up Madelina. The buddy’s daughter works for an organization that sends antibiotics to poor countries. Apparently they spend all their money buying the medications that they can’t ship the meds properly so they are sent by boat and then are hijacked by pirates. It is Michael’s task to retrieve these meds from the pirates. To do so he has to have them caught red handed.

At the same time as this is going on Michael is trying to find out about that sniper rifle from the previous episode. So he turns to his favorite ex-gunrunner, Fi. Fi knows a guy named Seymour who can help. Seymour is a spastic freak, he’s dangerous and unpredictable. Seymour pulls Michael into a gun buy that goes bad, then he calls him in again and also invites Michael to a party, all the while not giving Michael what he needs. Finally in the end he attacks Michael because when he asked around about the rifle he found out that all people connected to maintaining and modifying the rifle had been eliminated. Michael does get a name however, another piece of the puzzle.

The yogurt references were back this week and Michael’s fridge was used for the fake heist. No one told Michael of course and his reaction on the boat when he saw his fridge was priceless. The plan was to flush the pirates out, find where they stash their booty and get them arrested after the meds were securely in Michael’s hands. To do this we call upon Charles Finley. I like the Chuck Finley character because that means that Sam gets something to do in the episode. And more Bruce Campbell is never a bad thing.

Sam goes in as Finley to try and recruit the pirates to hijack some major league steroids (and yes major league was not an accidental description by me.) Sam gets in with the bad guys and brings in Michael’s character of the week as a scientist who would be able to movie the drugs properly. Michael is then “recruited” by the pirates and a new heist is staged.

Sam and Virgil make up some drugs and pack them so they look pretty dangerous. They find a place for Michael’s yogurt while they use his fridge in the heist. The pirates hit the boat and Michael “takes out” Virgil to keep him alive the pirates take the fake drugs and go to the warehouse to store them. The warehouse is big, like Indiana Jones big and the real meds are spread out all over the warehouse.

So now the team needs to flush out the real meds and they do so by convincing the pirates that Chuck Finley is some sort of Keyser Soze character and will kill the pirates, take their stash and disappear. This convinces the pirates to move the stuff. And in one of the more fun parts of the episode you see Michael reveal that he is not a nerdy weakling and that he in fact is the mastermind. Then he takes off with the meds and returns them tot he rightful owners.

Throughout the episode Madeline tries to connect with Virgil. However, “Virgil attracts bullets” so he was forbidden from seeing Madeline. However, after the heist Michael has a change of heart and lets Virgil and Madeline spend time together.

Overall this was a great episode. I loved the characters and the action was decent. And of course the return of the yogurt was worth it too.

Recap / Review Spoilers, you should know the drill by now.

Overall this was not a super strong episode of Psych. Sure the police and Shawn and Gus did work together during the episode, which is always good. There was some interaction with Henry, which is also decent. But I felt something lacking in this episode that I couldn’t put my finger on.

The episode dealt with Chief Vick and her sister. Vick’s sister is a commander in the Coast Guard and these two took sibling rivalry really far. Shawn not only solves the crime but helps to bring these two sisters together for a brief period of time.

Shawn and Gus are out on a boat with Chief Vick and they are overtaken by a Coast Guard boat. Here we meet Vick’s sister. Both women are dominant and they have little good to say about the other. Now wait a minute, didn’t Lassiter and Juliette spend last week with the Coast Guard in a windowless room for seasickness. It would have been fun to introduce us to Vick’s sister last week (without knowing who she was), but I think water episodes are just more costly.

Overall the story didn’t interest me much, the sibling rivalry was contrived. We don’t know much about Chief Vick either. I didn’t even realize that she was married and we haven’t seen her kid since last season.

What I did like about the episode was Lassiter’s infatuation with Vick’s sister. The final moments when Vick’s sister practically drags Lassiter out of the station were priceless. Let’s hope that this relationship gets Lassie out of his slump and he becomes more like his old self. I liked the confident Lassiter and not this whipped guy.

The stories are certainly more about the characters and relationships this season. Shawn is more of a psychic relationship counselor than a detective too. While this is good and we learn more about Shawn it can be overdone.

Not the worst but not the best either.