Once upon a time, I built a digital picture frame out of on old Thinkpad laptop I was given by my father. He even helped me out by making an awesome maple picture frame and custom mat for it. The results were awesome.

Unfortunately, it only hung on my wall for about a week before my cat decided to try to tug on the power cable hard enough to actually rip it off the wall. The motherboard popped off its mount, severing the LCD cable, and rendering the picture frame dead. I couldn’t bear to give up on it, so it sat in my closet for a few years until I finally decided I needed to resurrect it.

This weekend I put the final touches on the new frame. Using an old ex-Amazon laptop I purchased at a special employee-only sale, I’ve brought it back to life.

Read on for more details.

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Since I was just about sick of my old blog theme, I spent some time this weekend and worked up a new one.

It’s heavily based on Tarski, with a few local tweaks. Tarski worked out great as a base, and I highly recommend it.

Yes, I’m back from hiding with another empty promise to blog more often. :)

This one is a pretty simple and “obvious” hack. Last week Cool Tools posted a link to a simple and very ingenous device for holding those extra cords behind your desk, the Keep-a-Cable cord organizer.

While I could have just bought a pack for $5 and be done with it (and I encourage you to do so if you’re so inclined rather than rather blatantly ripping off their idea like I did), I’m just not that kind of guy. I can’t look at a flat 5-cent piece of stamped plastic and not want to make my own.

So I did. Details below the fold.

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After 2 years, 7 months, and 7 days at Amazon.com, I’ve decided to make a major career change.

May 16th was my last day at Amazon. After about a week of a half of vacation I’m starting all over today at blist.com, a small, early-stage startup in Pioneer Square, Seattle. My tentative job title is “Technical Project Manager”, but my actual work will encompass so much more. I’m looking forward to working with such a young, ambitious company and getting the chance to leverage my skills and experience in ways that will hopefully help make them very successful.

In my tenure at Amazon, I had the opportunity to work with so many awesome people that I can’t count how many people I need to thank. I still love Amazon and all it’s hard working employees, but this opportunity at blist was too good to pass up. They’re small, scrappy, and have a grand vision of the future, probably much like Amazon did when it was starting out. It’s a big jump, but it should be a great ride, and I look forward to being able to accomplish some great things.

Photo borrowed from TheMahers Seattle Lunch2.0 photoset on flickr