I was more-or-less dependent on Vitamin Water Energy for the entirety of my first semester at RPI. As the second semester began, however, Energy’s guarana-derived caffeine began having less and less of an effect on me. This was not good for productivity!

Luckily, the folks at Glaceau, Coca-Cola, and Truvia have come up with a new solution!

I first discovered Vitamin Water 10 when flying home for spring break from Albany. Vitamin Water 10 is “naturally” sweetened with Truvia, a stevia based product derived from some exotic South/Central American plant. The result is amazing! Energy 10 has a much stronger flavor than the old Energy. It tastes like it has 10x more sugar. This Truvia stuff is pretty good. Not only does it taste better, but each serving is reduced to 10 calories from 50.

The Truvia sweetened Vitamin Water seems to have an even stronger kick than the old fructose based stuff. Once again, I’m able to stay up for hours on end, creating awkward sleep cycles.

Thanks to Glaceau, Coca-Cola, and Truvia for enabling my bad sleeping habits!

This blog has been sporting Obama ’08 logos in the header since January 25th 2008, when my favorite buddy Kucinich dropped out. Smaller Biden text was added on August 23rd, when he was announced as the VP candidate.

Given that the election occurred on November 2nd, and Obama was inaugurated in January, it’s well passed time to revert to the old, non-political header. The Obama header is being preserved, however, for 2012 purposes.

Within the last two days, I’ve noticed a salvo of Scott Murphy ads appearing on just about every web page I visit. If you’re not from the Capitol region, Scott Murphy is the democratic candidate for New York’s 20th congressional seat. He’s running against Jim Tedisco for the seat vacated by Kirsten Gillibrand when she was selected to become Hillary Clinton’s successor in the senate. The special election takes place today (March 31st).

Murphy appears to have spent a small fortune on these google ads. I literally see them everywhere. I usually don’t pay attention to ads, and there’s usually enough variation in the ads I look at. But Google seems to be targeting this ads to Capitol region IPs rather extensively; as literally one out of every two Google ads I see is from Scott Murphy. Jalopnik, ScoreHero, Ten-Tenths, VirtualR, YouTube… It’s really astounding. I wasn’t even aware the Google Ads API allowed for targeting by region like this.

This form of localized online advertising will probably become the norm in elections to come. It’s kind of interesting that its all starting with this special election near my college home. Rather ironically, however, I’d like to point out that RPI doesn’t actually sit in New York’s 20th, meaning Google’s geo-location algorithm is either a little off, or intentionally broad (so that it encompasses work places whose employees may live in the 20th but work in the 21st).