6 Degrees Of Me

Thanks for this one chaz!

Popularity: 5%

this came from an IM conversation that I had with one of my buddies about using cellblock:

(10:44:19) malabokid: i just wanted to point out your fav pic
(10:44:31) michael_decerbo: haha, i love it
(10:44:39) michael_decerbo: [line ommitted]
(10:44:47) malabokid: yo. send one from your phone
(10:44:53) malabokid: degreesofme @ cellblock.com
(10:45:08) michael_decerbo: my phone has 600 pictures of the inside of my pocket on it

Popularity: 5%

What in God’s name is a Cellblock you ask? Scroll down and check out the left side of this page and see if you notice anything different. Depending upon your browser of choice you’ll notice a little window with rotating pictures in it. If you’re using the superior browser (firefox) you’ll see a pretty decent sized window down there:

If you’re using the buggy browser, you won’t:

Cell block is a service that allows you to take pictures on your phone and send them directly to any website/blog/myspace page that you have the plugin installed on.

Or, if you don’t have a website, you can just create a cellblock and then share the site with others right from cellblock

So how does this work in your everyday life? Let’s say you go out to a bar/pub with a group of your friends or you celebrate a bday party for your family; well you and everyone else with a camera enabled phone can take pictures and send them directly to your personally created cell block, created just for that occassion.

So now that I’ve told you what cellblock is all about, why not try it out? You can cellblock this site by taking any pic from your phone and sending it to degreesofme @ cellblock.com. I have taken off the moderator option so that your picture shows up pretty soon after your send it so please keep the pictures you send here clean.

Having issues sending a pic to an email address from your phone? It’s not uncommon:

(10:48:02) michael_decerbo: this is somewhat embarassing but I don’t know how to send the picture to an email address
(10:49:40) malabokid: haha. u can either
(10:49:51) malabokid: 1. create a contact with the email address as the number
(10:49:55) malabokid: or
(10:50:16) malabokid: 2. enter the address in the TO: location

be the block

Popularity: 11%

Picture it: Winter 1993. My parents had told me when I was younger, that if I ever came home too late after a night out, that I would most likely be locked out. Well it happened one night. I had gone out with some of my friends earlier in the night and came home a little later than usual. I put my key in the door, turned the knob, and realized that the door was deadbolted.

I rang the doorbell ever so slightly and waited a few seconds. Nothing. Then I scoured the yard for something, anything to get me out of the bitter cold. I found a few pebbles lodged in the frozen dirt and lodged them out with a stick. This was really the last opportunity that I had to gain entry into the house.

No, I wasn’t going to break a window, I was going to throw the pebbles at my little sister’s window with the hopes that the sound of one of them would shake her out of her deep slumber. After throwing the fifth pebble and hearing the sound of what I thought was a cracked window, I decided that this plan of action wasn’t going to cut it.

I looked around for options and realized that I still had a chance to protect my self from the elements. Our old house had a garage that was separate from the rest of the structure. I went into the garage to see if I could find somewhere decent to spend the night. I hadn’t started driving yet so I didn’t have any keys but luckily the door to my mom’s car was open. I got in the backseat and shut the door.

I remember it being so cold out that I couldn’t see past my breath when I exhaled. I lay there for what seemed to be 1/2 an hour, continually telling myself that the heat from my body would warm the car up like an oven and eventually make the backseat toasty and fine. After a few more minutes the fear of hypothermia urged me to find warmer surroundings.

It was about 12.30am by this point and I started to think about other places to stay. I had an open invitation to my buddy Jimmy’s house but he lived over a mile away. I wasn’t sure if it was a good idea to take the chance of going up to his place but while I was debating the thought I realized that my body had locked into autopilot and I was already on my way.

I reached his house and out of habit went to his back door and rang the bell. No answer. I trudged around to the front and gave the door another light ring tried to peer inside. From the look of the house, it appeared that everyone had gone and left the house deserted. I was a dejected man.

I turned away from Jimmy’s house, put my hands in my pockets and started walking home. I had made it about 100 feet away when out of nowhere I was blinded by police lights. This was pre-Rodney King, so I wasn’t looking out of the corner of my eye for the nearest escape route. I approached the car and addressed the officers. It was SO cold at that point that they didn’t even bother getting out of the car to check me out.

They were in the process of asking me where I was coming from and where I was going when I saw Jimmy’s dad, Dr. Lee, walking towards us in a bathrobe and house slippers.

I know him officers. He’s my boy’s friend. I’ll take care of this from here.

And with that, he put his arm over my shoulder and turned me towards his house. While we were walking back his whispers in my ear:

I thought you were a robber, mon… I almost shot you!

He opens up his robe just a little bit and when I look down I see that he has a HUGE pistol, like the Joker’s from the first Batman, sticking out of the band in his panjama pants. Apparently he had gotten a little suspicious when he heard the back door ring and grabbed his gun. When he saw me peering in, through the front door, he had already positioned himself in a halfway knelt stance and had the sights of his gun pointed at my forehead.

That might not be alarming to most of you but from what I had heard about Dr. Lee, I knew that I had narrowly avoided certain death. Jimmy had told me a story about a neighborhood raccoon that had been killing their cats at random for some time. Dr. Lee saw the raccoon out of an attic window. It was rummaging in the back of his garage about 300 feet away. A quick aim from his gun and pull of the trigger and the raccoon was dead. When Jimmy went outside to check on the status of the animal he found a dead raccoon with a bullet hole literally “right between the eyes”. Luckily Dr. Lee was a bit more patient with humans and I was able to avoid a sure demise from his unwavering hands.

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