It is with incredible pride and a stomach full of butterflies that I make this announcement.

This Friday, yours truly will participate in a qualifying match on the incredibly popular design competition Layer Tennis. Contestants have 15 minutes to exchange artwork, be it Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, collage, pencil drawings, whatevs, in 10 volleys. I imagine it will be the shortest three hours of my adult life.

No, it’s not the main event. The main event goes to well-established members of the designerati. In fact, one of the main event contestants this week is Tom Muller, whose work has been an inspiration to me for a while now. Just to know that my work—my dashed-off, half-assed, holy-crap-I-have-to-get-this-uploaded-in-45-seconds work—will share a domain name with his is humbling.

Once I know the actual link for the competition, I will update this post. UPDATE: If this default HTML index is to be believed, I’m pretty sure my match will be found at here. UPDATE UPDATE: Yes, that is the correct link. It will be live Wednesday afternoon. During the match, like most contestants, I will be twittering my ass off. I also hope to have some manner of webcam going so you can watch my frantic pixel pushing—more on that soon.

Also, the best way to follow the match is via Twitter. If you follow @layertennis, you’ll know immediately when volleys are posted.

Finally, I will need your help. Twitter users can comment on the match by including #lyt in their tweets, and they’ll appear on the Layer Tennis discussion page. The crowd is your opportunity to start a virtual wave for me, and I’ll be watching the discussion while I wait for the next volley. Tweet your cheers and help me make it through the competition; just don’t forget to put #lyt in your tweet.

I’d like right now to thank my boss now for allowing me to use precious PTO time at the office so I can take advantage of fiber-optic internet and a 30″ monitor. To my co-workers: thank you for staying out of my way.

I’ll see you on the internet on Friday.

Now, about learning Python in three days so I can use Nodebox…

You wouldn’t think I would offer up a Moment of Silence for a sports announcer, given that I am hardly a sports fan. Harry Kalas, though, had one of the most unmistakeable voices you’ve ever heard, and his was one of my favorites. His voice, to me, is synonymous with sports, like Howard Cosell’s. And I can only assume he was a humble man, willing to bring the voice of NFL Films to the Animal Planet Puppy Bowl, of all things. I rarely watch sports, but living in Chicago, I hear sports all the time. Sports will sound different to me now. (I hope Harry and Don LaFontaine are getting along wherever they are now.)

Moment of silence for Harry Kalas.

I looked all over for some online footage of an actual NFL Film narrated by Mr. Kalas, but instead, I’ll have to honor him with is shitty Coors ad:

I’ve seen a lot of posts and tweets the past few days about how to tell if you have the Conficker worm, how to get rid of it, etc.

I also ran a test today to make sure that I don’t have it. Here are the results of that test:

Yep, virus free.