Hey-eyyy.

Ho-ohhhh.

Put yo hains in da a-yair.

(more…)

There was a time when I was all the rage.

I used to be… “the man.” I’m not sure if you understand how studly I was, so let me put it into perspective for you.

1. Women’s fertility rates would go sky high if someone said a word that rhymed with “Wayne”. Scientists have often speculated that the Baby Boomer generation was caused by the return of soldiers from WWII but in reality, it was the increased popularity of John Wayne.
2. I could impregnate a woman just by walking past them in the grocery store. That’s why I sent other people in my stead.
3. Offers for my DNA samples were in the six figures.
4. Chuck Norris sent in a SASE to me for my 12-part program, “How to increase your manliness” and flunked out, saying “that kind of manliness just isn’t possible.”
5. George Clooney, Tom Cruise, Mel Gibson, Sean Connery and Arnold Schwarzenegger each took stud lessons from me.  Each of them have fallen from stud graces and it’s not a coincidence that their fall started when they stopped paying me.
6. The term “Stud Poker” was originally inspired by my high school nickname.

After a time, I saw clues that indicated… maybe I wasn’t such a stud after all. The looks I would get from some people seemed to say “pshaw, he ain’t that hot.” At first, I pitied these poor souls who couldn’t understand the greatness standing right in front of them. It’s as if they could walk right by a Mona Lisa or ignore one of the Great Pyramids. Clearly they didn’t “Get it”.

But then this perception continued, and it happened with more people. I started to suspect that maybe, just maybe, all this greatness was concocted by none other than yours truly, and that it was all in my head.

Was it possible that I suffered from narcissicm? Was a self-deluded egotistical fool? Was *I* the poor soul that deserved such pity?

This gave me great pause.

(pause)

And then, while looking through old car repair receipts, I found the answer. I discovered the clue that poured insight into the change that happened with me.

Funny thing is – I’d easily pay 1.4 hrs of labor to get it replaced.

Yeah, it’s been… oh, more than a month since my last installment of this weakly weekly series. I’m sorry. It’s beyond my control. You could paypal me though. I’m not above bribery for writing more.

Riding the bus

If you’ve been following my tweets or utterz, like I told you to, you’d know I started riding the bus to work when I can. I’m targeting 4 days per week because there are always those times when errands or schedules mandate mobility.

My initial impetus is cash savings. You see, I’m a greedy white male conservative that only cares about the green in my wallet, right? The greener my wallet, the happier I am. If the earth is green, I’m fine with that, but it’s not like I’m going to mess up my day to save the earth. My electric bill at home shot up over the last few months from low $200’s to mid $400s. I needz mah dough, yo. I’ve been riding about two weeks and I definitely noticed NOT filling up the car.

What am I saving? Well, according to Google, the most efficient route from home to work is exactly 10.0 miles. Times two makes it 20 miles. My car gets 15-18 mpg (I think… I should check that out, but according to my calculations of miles driven per tank, that’s about right), so at $4/gallon, I would spend about $5 a day in gas. However, that “most efficient route” is full of traffic, and there’s way too much stop-n-go idling. Not only does it take forever, it decreases the usable gas mileage. There’s another route that’s 12 miles that is a little better. The fastest way to work is to use the toll road, but it jumps up to 18 miles one-way, which effectively doubles my usage of gas (estimating). 36 miles at 15mpg is > 2 gallons per day. I’m guessing right now that I’m actually saving somewhere between $80-120 a month by riding the bus. The bus costs $1 per day for unlimited riding, less if I buy a monthly pass.

There have been other benefits, such as additional “quiet time” or “organizing time”. I can work on my blackberry or my laptop while someone else takes care of the driving, the signaling, the cutting people off, and yelling at other drivers. Since the actual time it takes to get to work is longer, I have plenty of time to go over the previous day’s missed emails, catch up on blogs, write a blog if I feel extra sparky, or (gasp) even do something that might be called work. But although my commute time increases, my productivity increases with it.

When I drive to work, about the only thing I do with my time is call into utterz. Don’t get me wrong – I love utterz and still make time to call in, but I want to be able to do more. About the only thing that would optimize my time on the bus even more would be fold-out desks or table surfaces. A laptop on a lap isn’t that comfortable.  Since two objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time, and one of these objects is my belly, (not removable at this time), I resort to extreme measures.

Another benefit is the adoption of patience. Yes, patience. I’ll let that idea sink in for a little bit. Ya done yet? WHY NOT! DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND PATIENCE!?!?!? COME ON, NOW! TELL ME YOU UNDERSTAND PATIENCE! I AIN’T GOT ALL DAY!

There’s something about being on someone else’s schedule, having to be there early (5-10mins is the recommended window), and taking things s-l-o-w. You get more time for YOU. You notice the weather, the other citizens milling about, the trash on the ground, (pick it up, please), and you get to explore your thoughts. You reflect on the day so far. You have time to plan for the day ahead. The interruptions lessen because it’s just you and the bench. Or you and the bus seat. If I need some calm meditation time, I can close my eyes and center my thoughts. I drive out the low hum of the bus and the high whine of the engines. I halt my incessant wondering of “where’s he going when he gets off the bus?” and “does she have kids?” and “what’s his greatest accomplishment in life so far?” I open my mind for the Universe to send me signals and answers to the subconscious questions I’ve built up over the previous 24 hours.

So far, the Universe hasn’t answered back with the winning lottery numbers. But I’ll keep listening.

I’ll be there’s an 11 in there somewhere, too.

Best of LOLcats

I have one reader who mainly comes here just for the LOLcats. I think we all know who she is, but I’m too lazy to do an intervention. My favorite this week is a tie between the zombies one and the OMG LOLcat dog.

(btw, send your mycoke codes to Avi)

I’m an 1111 freak.

“What’s 1111?” I hear you say? (if you didn’t just say that, you’re either really cool because you already heard about 1111, or you’re not very interested in what I blog about, and that in itself can be kind of cool, but it gets old very quick)

1111 is the phenomenon where you notice 11:11 on clocks, emails, tickets, or just about anywhere.  Some people feel a pull to actually look at the clock for some reason and when they do, it shows 11:11.  Or they just glance at the clock randomly, but more often than not, it happens to be 11:11.  After the second or third time, you start thinking it’s more than just a coincidence.

A couple of years ago, I confided in my wife what was happening to me.  I didn’t want her to think I was crazy, but I also didn’t want to keep it a secret any longer.  I hadn’t heard of any “phenomenon” or “craze” whatsoever.  I just thought it was a weird coincidence.

A few weeks later, she was at a local bookstore that caters to the metaphysical, astrological and general ethereal universalityness and asked the clerk if she had heard of anything like it.  Another customer in the store overheard her query and pointed her to a book about 11:11.  She picked it up for me and I proceeded to read up on how I wasn’t the only one who was seeing this in a digital form in one way or another

Always one to share, I decided to make a website about it last year but I’ve let it sit, always being pulled in other directions or forgetting about it.  I figured if this really is a phenomenon that’s sweeping the world, I might as well get on the front end of it.  Plus, since it isn’t a very active site, I can practice my Wordpress Upgrade skillz (I just upgraded it to WP 2.6.1).

I just wrote my first real story there and so I suppose today is a “guest post” day for me.  I owe guest posts to about five people from my whalliversary earlier this summer, so I want you to know I haven’t forgotten!

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to go view that post, give me your thoughts, and also give me feedback about the look and feel of the site.  Suggestions welcome!

Last night was so funny.

Before our pool league, we were discussing “rumors” or “facts” about this teacher or that teacher at our daughter’s new high school.  She was saying what she heard about teacher X or teacher Y and we (my wife and I) challenged her on whether or not she should believe other students, or at least not completely believe everything she hears.

My 14yr old daughter cocked her head, put on a faux-insulted smirk and said “Dad, I’m not that gullible…” and our niece Kaili said “What’s ‘gullible’?“  And you KNOW that as soon as someone asks THAT QUESTION, they’re in for a little ride.

I was too slow to respond (yeah, I know! impossible, right?!!?).  Caitlin pointed up at a patch of ceiling right above our niece’s head and said “There’s a gullible right up there.” 

I was barely able to contain my shock that my daughter knew a NEW way of pulling “the gullible trick” on someone.  So we went along with it and looked, pushing Kaili to look as well.  And look she did.

“Wait, where?” Kaili inquired.

“Right up there.  There’s a gullible right above you,” Caitlin responded.  She was reveling in her enjoyment of verbally torturing Kaili with her superior vocabulary.  She glanced over at mom and me, with her all-knowing eyes saying “look at me, I can trick her!”

At this point I needed to chime in.  I told both of them in a severely matter-of-fact manner, “you know, they removed the word ‘gullible’ from the dictionary a couple of months ago…” and Caitlin, who had been the instigator and predator in this particular word battle, opened her eyes wiiiiide and said “they did?!?!  Why did they do that?!!!!”

Oh, we had some fun with that response for the three seconds it took for her to realize she had been had.  Her expression went from the look of sheer elitist contentment to awe and surprise at having a word removed, to indignant mock offense at being taken.  In the same way she was taking someone else just a moment ago.

A quick shout of “DAD!!!!” and a playful slap to the shoulder let me know she knew her place, and was appreciative of the lesson.  Then she looked over to Kaili and said “being gullible means you’ll believe anything” and smiled all the bigger, probably thinking to herself “yeah, even stuff your dad tells you.”

Speaking of gullible, I’m being anxiously impressed by the more recent spam comments.  They’re really starting to look real!  It seems they’re taking information from the blog article and submitting a comment that actually seems related to the content.

Take a look at this one, put on a post of mine about XP

The comment has decent english, is related to the post, has vernacular such as btw and a smiley, and the only thing that makes it suspicious is the name and email.  ARGH!  Why are they improving!

I’m just glad I have my blog set up to approve all new commenters.  You don’t get in unlessI approve, but once I approve you, you’re good to go from then on.  Not only does it help cut down on the annoying comments like the above, but it also lets me welcome new readers.

I have so many ideas of how to make this a cool, graphical multimedia and interesting blog post, but I just don’t have time.  So here’s a recap.

1. On Monday we drove out to in the middle of nowhere (1.5hrs drive) to some relative’s land in Bastrop so we could see the Perseid meteor shower (tips on viewing) without all the light pollution, noise, etc.  We packed a nice picnic, 2 dogs, 3 kids, 3 flashlights, tons of drinks and left the house around 7:15pm.  We got on the land just after dark.
2. Two of the kids were too freaked out by tall trees, tall grass, and honest-to-goodness-actual darkness, so we couldn’t stay.  Wife and I got about a 2 minute glimpse of the sky from out there and we could see millions of stars vs just the couple hundred you can see from the city.  Dangnabbit!   But what are you going to do? Force them to face their fears right that minute?  Nah.  So we went home. 
3. Setting a family policy that kids can no longer watch Blair Witch Project, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, or Friday the 13th movies.
4. Got back home around 10:30pm so we went out on the trampoline and stare up for a while to see what we could see (that’s what the bear did).  Ended up seeing nada - lots of cloud cover and we just got tired looking.  And we were tired-looking.
5. Last night (Tuesday), we watched Nim’s Island (awesome movie!) and then went back out on the trampoline.  We saw several satellites, MARS (pretty sure we saw it), and some airplanes.  And then I saw a HUGE shooting star over to the side and tried to tell the wife - “HEY LOOK!” but it was gone.

Take a look at this video if you want to see more about it - it has some really cool photos, great info, and tips on watching.  I think you can still see the shower tonight if you try.

I think Google is getting in on the Green, Environment, We Need To Reduce Our Dependency on Foreign Oil bandwagon.  I’m tagging this as a “conspiracy theory” because it’s sexy to do so.

As you may have learned from my Twitters and Utterz, I’ve started riding the bus to work.  I’m actually typing this on my laptop on the bus on the way home.  They really need to put some work desks in.  I’m serious.  Since when is a laptop supposed to actually go on your lap?!??  If they’d just put in a few airline-style workdesks or maybe just a table or something for a couple seats, I bet more professionals might find it worthwhile.

But I digest.

Reason #1: Google helps people ride the bus

So one of the things I’ve been using Google for is to find the next few times for my local bus stop.  It’s pretty amazing!  The bus stop just shows up on google maps, and when you click on it, it tells you the next two or three times that the bus should be there.

About the only thing that would be cooler is if I could give it a range of times and have it alert me 15m before the bus automatically and then magically “know” when I’m on it or in my car so it stops bothering me.

Google helps people plan walks

I noticed this today when trying to get directions out to a very secluded place out in the country where we could watch the Persoid Meteor Shower Monday night.  We really wanted to get out of the city, away from light pollution and really be able to see the stars and comet debris that is supposed to be drifting into our atmosphere over the next couple of days.

This land is way out in Bastrop, TX.  I’ve been there maybe once.  But it would be perfect for what we want, so I got the address and googled it.

The first thing I noticed was that it was 50+ miles away.

The second thing I noticed was that it offered a “Walking” dropdown.  Um, what?  So naturally I tried it out and it was actually shorter to walk!  I saved more than a full mile (2 percent, for those of you keeping track) of my horizontal traveling if I just chose to walk instead.

 Of course, the trip would take 17.5 hours, but I’m saving A FULL MILE.

I also noticed that the actual journey changed quite a bit.  When going by car, the route looked like this (blue line is the car route):

yet if I walked, the rout changed I went through a lot of side streets, trees, or secret military installations. (Tip: any time a map does NOT indicate that it’s part of a secret military installation, chances are it might be a secret military installation.  I mean, it’s not like they’re going to advertise it, right?)

And here’s the revised walking-enhanced route (same blue line):

So since Google is going to start pushing Walking as an option, that’s another nail in the Conspiracy Theory coffin.

There’s only one known blog post about this Conspiracy Theory

One of the biggest tip-off’s on conspiracy theories is how few people know about it.  Think about it - have you ever heard of this before now?  And I bet if you Google about conspiracy theories that involve Google, you just KNOW they’re filtering them out. And they’re probably reporting you to themselves somehow.  If something weird or unnatural happens to the author of that one blog post, then you’re guaranteed to be smelling like a Conspiracy Theory.

For example, that single author might be all-of-a-sudden unfunny.  Or he might be “delayed” in his video blogs for a month with little to no explanation.  It could be anything!  Maybe *I’m* the “dead man walking” Google-style.

BE AWARE, PEOPLE!  Trust no-one.

‘cept me.  You can trust me.

If you think you’ve waited a long time for this DITL, just wait until you’re waiting until the END of the DITL.

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Today I became the slave to my domains.

By the way, in case you didn’t know, this is what it looks like when I’m frustrated:

(side note: this is also what it looks like if my laptop were filled with flour and it exploded while I was sighing.)

I did a boo-boo on 40+ of my 100+ domains and didn’t know it until today. Metalmom asked me a question about an email she received about her domain last night. The email itself puzzled me a little, and just for grins, I checked her website from my blackberry while riding the bus this morning and I couldn’t reach it.

Then I tried another one of the websites I host, http://jennefer.net, and it had the same problem. And another site? Same problem. Even simple redirects to Blogger/Blogspot sites like I do for Sourpuss was hosed.

As I checked them, I discovered that all had “parking pages” on them, not the blogs or redirects I had so lovingly set up. Then it hit me – a couple of days ago. I was in my 1 & 1 account cleaning up my domains. I had specified for the domains to not be auto-renewed, but what I didn’t know at the time was that by doing so,

1. 1&1 would change the DNS settings to their own parking pages
   Result: breaking whatever sites I had on them at the time
2. Domain registration would be set to Public vs Private
   Result: my personal information such as home address, phone, email, etc would be revealed in WHOIS
3. I would lose the ability to manage the domain from my control panel
   Result: I would panic because I couldn’t fix it myself, and instead I have to wait on 1&1 Billing personnel. Metalmom remains whimpering in a fetal position while her blog is “down” for some.

This is very frustrating.

To be fair, the “cancel auto-renew” process did alert me at the time that I would lose private registration, but I thought that would be for when the domain period expired, NOT immediately. And they absolutely did not indicate whatsoever that they would be changing all my DNS settings for these domains to a parking page, which is the Big Bad Part.

However, even after four phone calls to support and billing, the requirement is upon ME to fax them with my customer ID, contract ID, package name, PASSWORD (what tha?) and the list of domains I want put back on auto-renew. I still have no idea how long it will take for them to fix the problem, but I at least was able to fix Metalmom’s site, and hopefully it won’t take too long for DNS to propagate through teh internetz.

I’ve sent the fax and am now waiting for them to fix the problem.

Waiting.

Waiting.

I’ve been told that I have great eyes. 

Technically they’re hazel, but they change from brown to green based on many things ranging from my mood, environment, clothing, financial state or presidential candidate’s economic policy.

Tribal knowledge tells me that when my eyes are green, I’m happier.  I have no scientific proof, log books, journals or tweets indicating a solid trend or causal effect.  But I have plenty of hyperbole and heresay that tell me when my eyes are green, it means I’m in a GREAT mood. 

Hmm, maybe I should make sure to wear sunglasses when playing poker.

My awesome eyes started their awesomeness when I was awesome as a young awesome child full of awesomeosity:

Oops, too young, and the picture is too fuzzy and doesn’t give enough detail.  Let me try again:

Ah, that’s better.

Sometimes I have my eyes tilted to the side:

Sometimes the eyes drift over to left for no reason:

Sometimes they’re protected in a silvery coating that reflects everything, from recording devices held up by a random appendage to a green trash container

And sometimes one eye decides to go off all on its own:

And if you REALLY wanted to look deep within my soul, now there’s a device that can do it.

(click for obscenely larger versions)

I know you *THOUGHT* these are from the Hubble Space Telescope, looking astronomically distant, beyond a distant galaxy and glimpsing the eye of God Himself while he peers into our Universe, but alas, it is only my own eyes.  But I repeat myself.

During my most recent trip to the optometrist (a new one we switched to), they have this Optomap thingy that takes a super high definition picture of the INSIDE of your eye. It supposedly helps them discover potential disease or maladies with your eyes better than just a visual examination by the doctor.

Either way, I found it quite cool.

More importantly, I’ve given you the above super obscenely large versions of the inside of my eye so you can finally have the computer wallpaper you’ve always dreamed of.