I needed a new project for my 33rd year to push myself into – besides the permanent, recurring ones such as get back in shape, spend less, get out of debt, learn another language – and am inspired tonight to start a photo365 project. Taking a photo every day for the next year isn’t going to be easy (although I expect my iPhone and it’s fairly capable post-processing and uploading tools to be heavily relied upon) but it will force me further into a hobby that I’ve found fulfilling recently, and hopefully squeeze a little creativity out of what lately feels like a dried up husk of toil and drudgery. With that, I present the kickoff photo, an appropriate choice that expresses the goals of the project rather well, I think.

Cheers to 2010. May it bring everything we’re all hoping and praying for.

Update: You can subscribe to a feed of just Photo 365 posts here.

• Sitting down for our traditional Christmas Eve meal: oil fondue and creme br?ªl?©e. #
• AMC is showing White Christmas on continuous loop all day. At midnight it switches to the Grizwolds. Brilliant! #
• Drinking our morning coffee while Mom plays Christmas carols on the piano. Happy Christmas Eve! #
• A little new snow last night, and another homemade breakfast this morning. It’s good to be home for the holidays. #
• AT&T has the fastest 3G network in a 12-city test. Huh. I am definitely not in one of those 12 today. http://qtwt.us/blkp #
• Watching Top Gear with me Dad on BBC America while Danielle gives Mum a massage. #
• Helping Mom make soup – Grama’s favorite recipe – which mostly involves her chopping vegetables and me stealing bites of carrot. #
• Driving into the office with Dad to help him clean out his desk and make room for his replacement. #
• Drinks at the Iron Horse Pub while we wait for our Double Front chicken order to cook. Just a typical Missoula evening. #
• Lunch at MacKenzie River Pizza, easily the best pizza in the universe. And yes, I’ve been to both New York and Italy. #
• Coffee around the fireplace, Mom’s homemade blueberry pancakes, card games around the big rough-cut farm table. #
• Playing xbox on my Dad’s 56″ plasma and it’s kind of… not big enough. Missing my projector setup. #
• Home on Mom and Dad’s couch, where I plan to stay for the next ten days. #
• Passing thru Moses Lake, starting to see a few other vehicles under 10,000 GVW. #
• Getting on the freeway, headed home to Montana for the holidays. #

• Want your AT&T phone to keep working for the next few days? Switch off 3G now. Internet terrorists are planning a DOS attack tomorrow. #
• Lady in the office parking garage sitting in your van listening to Glenn Beck and eating your breakfast – I know your shameful secret now! #
• Listening to Toni Braxton Christmas songs and packing for my trip home. #
• My grocery store is now on Twitter. I think that’s beyond my daily limit for ingesting mundane information. #
• In a tedious meeting that is being totally drowned out and overrun by the seagulls outside the window. Nature: 1, Work: 0. #
• Riding the bus for a couple days really makes me appreciate my car. #
• If you haven’t revisited your Facebook privacy settings since the recent big policy change, you should. Here’s how: http://qtwt.us/vtip #
• Finally figured out that Bluetooth headphones on the bus means simultaneous music and web surfing bliss. #
• Apparently AT&T actually has the best wireless network in America, and iPhone users eat the bandwidth like candy. http://ow.ly/M3yL #
• Pictures from the Seattle Motorcycle Show on Saturday: http://ow.ly/LZlj #
• Pictures of ice-covered Snoqualmie Falls from this afternoon. Nature is a pretty amazing decorator. http://ow.ly/LHJO #
• Braving the rioting halls and shrieking crowds at Alderwood Mall for a quick errand. This place is an Amazon commercial waiting to happen. #
• Once again it’s snowing at my house in North City and nowhere else. #
• Helping a few families get a Christmas photo at Help Portrait Seattle. #
• Survived another week. Gold star for me. #
• Taking a tea-and-gingerbread break between meetings. #
• Decided I like Saints Row 2 enough to keep it for $14. Next game will ship today. GameFly rules. #

You may recall our first adventure into the fat-fingered, confused and/or lazy folks that wormed their way into my email inbox because my address is too simple and obvious to really belong to someone. It’s been several months and I have another great batch to share, as apparently my email address continues to be the “party line” account for an entire of community of people named Brian (or not). The transgressions span the scale from “innocuous typing mistake” to “borderline identity theft” although I’m not really sure it counts as identify theft when someone gives you their personal information by emailing it directly to your (apparently only semi-private) work address.

The source of many of these gems of modern communication is creating an account on some website, using my address as the contact email, and then needing to either confirm the address or recover a lost password. Both are activities that fundamentally require access to the email address provided to the site, so I’m confused why anyone would thrown down a bogus one yet still go to the trouble of completing the registration form.

For example, YouTube user brandonzeula is never going to upload any videos because all his account management messages come to me:

Also, “rude.com” user “panties1877″ will not see his registration process completed. It is a shame that someone who is obviously such a classy guy – who likely listens to Brahms concertos in his Oxford-adjacent den, soaking in the aroma of fine cigars, leather-bound books and dark mahogany as he slowly pickles his liver in well-aged scotch with quiet dignity – will not successfully partake in the live XXX webcams of “rude.com” (which I have purposely not provided a link to as I doubt any of my readers are sufficiently high-caliber enough to be awarded a coveted invitation to this prestigious site).

Plant Bad Seeds, Reap A Poor Harvest

Further illustrating the issue is this message intended for Brian Berry of Decatur, Illinois, who apparently has the time and inclination to create a shopping account but would prefer not to receive any communication about his account or orders and instead directs that to me. Am I expected to call him (at 217-233-6136, natch) with daily order tracking updates when he starts receiving garden irrigation supplies this spring?

What’s My Name Again?

These are selections from what must be thousands of websites where my address is used to create an account, one which probably never gets activated or used because, well, I get the important emails. People like “Brott66″, “chain the invinceble”, “Bribhoycelts”, “big red dogg” and Brian Seshabo might want to consider whether creating the account at all is worth their (obviously extremely valuable) time.

Proud (Yet Surprised) Father

I’m not sure if these are subtle hints about upcoming child custody cases I should expect subpeonas for, but I’ve also been receiving parenting-related emails from Sintia Domingues in Pennsauken, New Jersey (Google says it’s a suburb of Philadelphia). Our baby is currently the size of a pumpkin and our subscription to American Baby should begin arriving in 4-6 weeks.

Good Luck On Your Interview

Brian Dobson, who apparently lives within commuting distance of Tulsa, Oklahoma, must not have been very serious about this opening for a Fleet Mechanic at the local Pepsi Bottling facility, because he provided my email address in his contact information. I considered filling out the survey for him and sharing with Pepsi the details of his prison time and illegal immigrant status, or his sordid affair with a young heiress to the Coca Cola fortune, but unlike Mr. Dobson, I don’t wish to spend time filling out job applications for employers I want not to call me back.

Printer Ink Is A Scam Anyway

A little closer to home, Brian McNeill spent nearly $100 on inkjet cartridges for his Hewlett Packard 564XL, shipped to his door in Redmond, WA. While Mr. McNeill is a savvy enough shopper to have scored free next-day shipping and that $8.10 instant ink rebate, he falls squarely into the “noob” category for 1) ordering from the manufacturer instead of shopping the aftermarket, and 2) not having his own email address.

The Bill-Paying Adventures of Brian Hicks

Stretching closer to the creepy-stalker-slash-identity-thief area, several of my internet alter-egos have made me a recurring part of their lives by (thoughtfully, so thoughtfully!) sending me their bills. I’m able to learn a great deal about Mr. Hicks from his bills, notably that his Norton antivirus software is set to auto-renew annually and charge his credit card ending in x2788, that his Geico policy was canceled in October due to nonpayment, and that he signed a 2-year contract with Alltel to get a $100 rebate on his new Samsung Delve.

Brian Jones Gets An iPhone

I get Mr. Jones’s AT&T bill emails every month and have for the past 2 years, but I was excited in October to see he ponied up for a new iPhone 3GS. I’ve really been enjoying mine – maybe I should give him a call and we can compare apps.

Brian Parker Fails At Shopping

Somewhere in the greater Dallas-Fort Worth area, Brian Parker is probably getting very frustrated that no one ever replies to his emails. As an electrical contractor, he used the email account provided by his ISP (Road Runner broadband) to create an account with Taurus Commercial, a Dallas-based contractor, but strangely sent my email address in the reply-to field, meaning Taurus replied to me, not to him. He requested support from Bluebeam Software when activating their software, but likely never received a reply as he 1) gave them my address as his own and 2) likely missed earlier communications from Bluebeam for the same reason and his order was never fulfilled in the first place.

Still shopping (and still failing), Brian Parker made some email offers on Craigslist items, but I’d guess they never led to successful transactions as he directed the seller’s replies to me. In the third one, he gave them not only a false email address, but also apparently an invalid phone number! I guess he didn’t want the bike that badly after all.

From Around The Globe

As though the antics of my fellow Americans weren’t ridiculous enough, let’s take a quick jump to some of the more exotic locales where my email address is getting play on Glasgow dating sites (sites who send me birthday wishes every year on September 19th), registering for Australian fantasy football, and taking a weekend holiday in Suffolk.

That’s all for today, but at the rate new random, misguided messages arrive in my inbox I’m sure it won’t be long before another batch becomes post-worthy. Until then, don’t email your bills to strangers, and check your reply-to fields, kids!

I walked through the Seattle Motorcycle Show today, along with Curtis, Flora and Gabe (who became my defacto motorbike models) taking in all the incredible custom fabrication work, amazing hand painting, and beautiful industrial design at this year’s show, plus building a mental wishlist for myself. Curtis has his eye on a Harley Sportster so we spent a good part of our tour near a Harley section of some type, but I caught some nice shots of other makes, as well. It was an excellent show but I think it’s really cruel that they hold it in December, getting us all excited to ride our own machines when it’s just too bloody cold to let it be any fun.

Gallery slideshow is here.