I was watching Extreme Home Makeover on ABC and they were local (in Raleigh). The local Lego artist they used was named Nathan. Was that Nathan Sawaya from brickartist.com? His site shows some awesome work and the stuff Nathan did for the show was great too. It must be him – how many pro Lego builders are there named Nathan? Anyone know if he is local (in NC)? His domain info says he is in NY.

I even wrote about some of his work over at Candy Addict last year: Necco Human Heart.

[tags]geek, Lego, abc, makeover[/tags]

While browsing the local thrift store I came across a brand new, in-the-box Antworks illuminated kit. They sell for $30 at ThinkGeek! it was missing the AC adapter only. I grabbed it for the measly $4 selling price and my universal AC adapter I had at home worked just fine with it (after just a little dremeling). I order the ants for it online for another $4 and they should be here anytime. My daughter is so excited to have an antfarm. Should be fun. I’ll be posting pics of it once the ants arrive. Maybe even do a daily or semi-daily picture of it or maybe make a time-lapse movie of it. Fun, fun!

I love thrift stores.
[tags]geek, ant, ants, antworks, antfarm, thrift, thrift store, thrift stores[/tags]

I posted recently on Candy Addict looking for someone to redesign the site completely (via a WordPress theme) and one of the responses I got via my contact form was so funny I just had to share. This is the actual email I received – I can’t make this stuff up. I only changed the “NICKNAME” of the guy.

Is this the latest internet scam? I kept waiting for the line where he says he is the son of the webdesigner for the king of Nigeria. Or maybe he is a spy and “webdesigner” is his secret identity? I feel all James Bond-ish. Maybe it’s just that he’s French, but since when are the French so secretive and covert?

Hi Brian,

This is my proposal to you, valid till Jan-10:
____________________________________
PROPOSAL:
I will design a new candyaddict.com prototype portal (about 2/3 of the definitive one) before the end of January.

If you like my new candyaddict.com prototype portal, we will negotiate then the fee/payment (50/50 should be ok), and then we will work for the definitive design.

No compromise from you, nor from me, but I will appreciate that if you contract another web-designer you notice it to me asap to stop any further job.

No pre-fees.

This definitive job could be ready to publish & promote at the end of February.

I understand that your main income from candyaddict.com comes from referrals, this implies a special strategy in design and marketing tools/implementations to promote the portal, and this is included in my design offer.

I will not send you for now a portfolio, nor an identifiable identity, but my nickname “NICKNAME”.

I will not invoice you, you will pay me in any e-currency as e-gold.com or similar. If you really need an invoice, I will be forced to charge you an extra fee of about 500 US$, and my invoice will come from a “STATE webdesign inc.”

Please note that my native language is french, so I might need from your team some text-syntax final check, or I can order it myself for an extra fee.

No personal meetings, no phone contact, only e-mail.

Final fee should be around 1000 US$.
____________________________________

Let me know your comments about this proposal.

NICKNAME
Webdesigner

[tags]geek, designer, designers, WordPress, scam, funny, ridiculous, weird, spy, hilarious[/tags]