Booked

We are so booked this trip to Texas. I’m working, which has to be a priority, but on top of that we’re also trying to visit and see as many people as possible. I’m just hoping for a few minutes of actual down time to get rest. I don’t expect it but I’m going to be an optimist.

Also, I’m wondering how I’m going to bring everything with me that I’d like to bring – it seems that I have too many things to bring, some work related, some personal, but all seem important. I will, however, only be bringing my Bible with me and a few books to bring to some friends that I’d like to share.

Should be fun!

Holy Percussive Ingenuity Batman!

We just got back from Stomp. As I expected I was impressed. There was a lot of stuff that I remembered from the first show I saw around 6 years ago, but also a lot of fun new stuff – and, since it had been six years there was plenty of time for me to forget some of it so it could be new again. There was a lot more comedy than I recall from before so that was good. I was also good to hear our friends the Kaes laugh as well and I’m sure that Kailey and Trystan are just hungry to start their own Stomp routines.

Good stuff! Definitely worth going to see if they come to your area. Sell and organ if you have to. Organs aren’t as cool as drums anyway 😉

Happy Marriage Birthday John and Becca

Happy anniversary to my brother and sister-in-law! They (amazlingly?) allowed me to be in the wedding as the best man. Of course already being married to the grooms sister qualified me for other perks such as playing a brief practical joke wherein I lost the wedding ring for the bride.

Thanks for not killing me after that little stunt 🙂

The Pordcast: Broken Hearts and Wah-wah Pedals

The sad, sad tale of a young man in search of love, but instead only getting a note saying it’s all over. This pordcast might make you laugh at how stupid young love is, and how less sophisticated men get even if they’ve gotten past that ‘young love’ stage. Much less rambling than before and also, quite nice 70’s music with a brief performance from Randell and the Wah-wah Pappas.

You can download the Pordcast here.

Red, White and Itchy

So, last Wednesday I did a brilliant thing: I went riding my bike for one half hour. Exercise is good. I did not wear a shirt because I wanted to keep my fantastic physique off white (darker than Michael Jackson) rather than white, whiter and whitest. I didn’t (and here’s the stupid part) wear any sun screen because there was no reason to because I wasn’t going to be out that long. Don’t even get me started about how dangerous that was in the skin cancer department because I was just trying to darken up a little for a boat party next weekend.

So, now I’m rather itchy on my back and last night I couldn’t sleep for a while due to feeling like I was going to go jump off of a bridge [with lots of water under it], a small chair and the bottom step of my stairs so that I could end the agony. Jessica helped me make an oatmeal bath and I was finally able to rest.

However… the itch is back on my back – why did I have to try to beat the white by going red?

Labor and Delivery Video

No, I don’t have one. Yes, people are hitting my site whilst searching for the term on the ‘Inkernet.’ Who, in their right mind, wants to watch that? If you are pregnant, looking for that video, please consider going to a pregnancy preparation class or checking your local library. Labor and Delivery is often long and if you downloaded a real time video of that on the Internet it would take a long time. Secondly, being in the same room with my wife as she labored to get our little pumkin girl was really intense – you wouldnt’ want to see that.

In fact, while my bride was huffing, puffing and blowing the hospital down she got this look so intense on her face that I was litterally scared. I thought, “Self, if you ever see that look on her face in a non-labor and delivery situation – run. FAST!” This is because inside of Jessica muscles were doing things that were so intense that only Arnold Schwarteneiger and a small handfull of body building men could possibly understand: she was pushing with all of her might. Of course it was all worth it when the Abigator came out – but dont’ look for those sorts of videos online. If you have to check out Yahoo’s nifty online video search.

What to Wear in Court II

Some time I wrote about a site that allowed folks to put captions on things and the entry had the title: What to Wear to Court. Bad move on my part. Now folks are coming to my site looking for clothing advice. If you’re reading this looking clothing advice, you’re on the wrong blog. I recommend the following outfit for 99% of your life: T-Shirt (white, black or possibly blue) with Jeans (blue, loose fitting preferred). When you go to court, you can wear a button up shirt, but don’t lose the jeans! Clothes in court are half of the battle. The other half is whether or not you’re the guilty one or not. If you’re a juror, make sure you wear your sunglasses in so that they don’t see you looking at anything but the person in the stand or the judge or attorneys.

Oh, and make sure you have on clean underwear in case the defendent escapes and kills you – your mom will be proud 😉

note: this is a joke article and if I’m ever called to a jury I will do my civic duties with pride and honor – attorneys please don’t weed me out because I like to laugh

Territorial

When Jessica and I were dating we were rather defensive around each others ex’s with the exception of two people: Jeremy Telling and Glory ‘Bucky’ Bucknell. Jeremy was the bass player in my band and Bucky was Jess’ best friend for part of our dating time. Once, while I was over at Jessica’s parents’ house in Nevada her ex boyfriend showed up out of the blue to ‘say hi.’ It so happened that I was fixing something that was broken in the house with my “Swiss Army” knife and so I came out to ‘meet’ him and kept the knife out and played with it while he was there.

I’m such a goober, I couldn’t have stabbed an animal if it was attacking me let alone another human being. I just wanted him to get the message that this was my woman and that he best move along and say, “hi,” to someone else. So, what is your favorite (or worst) ‘ex’ story? I’m a faux macho man/knife hunter – are you a killa gangsta, too?

Search Engine Optimization Verses Usability

Recently a client of mine hired a search engine optimization (SEO) company to help get their site optimized for search engines. What blows me away is that sometimes practices that may help in ranking a little bit blow the crud out of usability. One recommendation the company made was to use images and have ‘alt’ attributes to help increase ranking. However, the client’s site is already heavy on the graphics and so if they add more images they will actually increase the download time so much that users will need a personal vacation to the water cooler, a trip to the bahamas or maybe could serve a life sentence in San Quentin before the thing loads up.

If you want to get good search engine ranking, do yourself a favor, hire a designer who knows symantic markup, get a nice design that folks might just link to for the appearance, and keep it clean. Write good content that the search engines will eat up, people will link to, and that informs actual readers of valuable information. None of what I’m writing here is new, revolutionary or a secret, however, SEO firms insist on magical markup and stupid hacks. Wake up folks!