My kitty sings songs out it’s ass!

here kitty kitty kittyOh man, I’ll bet PETA is gonna get pissed when they find out people are sticking an iPod Nano up their kitty’s poop shoot.

OK, all attempts at cheap humor asside, this, to me is a rediculous product and it pains me to think of how many people actually buy them. What purpose do these serve? …….. I can’t think of one! It’s not cute, it doesn’t help the sound any, it’s not like it’ll fit in your pocket. Oh, I know what will come out next, a cage for you to carry the kitty with the iPod in it’s ass. [I'll finish this post after I run to the patent office.]

Four things…

I’ll have you know, I’m only posting this because it was my good buddy Doug who sent it. Pretty much anybody else and I’d have told them to go pound sand…

Doug “tagged” me for the “Four Things” meme. Here is my list:

Four jobs that I’ve had
- Fish market manage
- Telemarketing (for 2 weeks)
- Retail clothing store (for 2 weeks)
- Web designer / Internet Marketing

Four movies I can watch over and over
- Rounders
- Fight Club
- Remember the Titans
- That Thing You Do!

Four places I have lived
- Long Beach, CA
- Redondo Beach, CA
- Lawndale, CA
- Henderson, NV
Four TV shows I like to watch
- 24
- Any Poker Tournament
- Deadwood
- That ’70s Show

Four foods that I like
- Memphis BBQ (King Pork)
- Fatburger (Chili-Cheese Burger & Skinny Frys)
- Country Fried Steak & Eggs
- Pizza, Pepperoni & Sausage

Four websites I visit daily
- puregenio.us
- pixeltrafficwatcher.com
- google.com (adsense / analytics / gmail)
- fullcontactpoker.com

Four things I want to do before I die
- Skydive
- Scuba Dive in Hawaii
- Buy a million dollar home
- Win a World Series of Poker bracelet

Four people I’m tagging
- Jason Murphy
- Charles Larssen
- Craig Remeika
- Poodle

OMG! I got Syphillis!! No, wait, that’s Mono…

I got the pox!OK, actually, the cute little plushy is actually Syphillis.

Man, I just love ThinkGeek! They have some of the craziest toys! They have these Infectuously Cute Plush Microbes! I just want to collect them all! But seriously, how are you going to pick just one? They have head lice, E. Coli, Acne, Gonorrhea, Flesh Eating Disease and a bunch more. These are so going on my Wishlist!!

Pick some of these little cuties up for Valentines Day! What better way to say I Love You than by giving that someone special the gift of Gonorrhea. It really is the gift that keeps on giving!

Movies on the PSP

Watching movies on the PSP is pretty darn cool. Throw on a pair of headphones, pop in a flick and you have your own portable movie theater. My problem is, I’m already such a DVD junkie, getting hooked on buying movies for the PSP could be a baaaaaaad thing. What I need to do is make sure I buy DVDs that I may want to watch on the big screen. But, if it’s something that I’m certain the wife will never want to see, buying it for the PSP might not be a bad idea…

I’m just looking for the prices to start falling on the movies so I can pick them up for about $10 each. At $20, I really have to think about it… I did find this site that you can sign up and download movies for the PSP. I haven’t tried it yet, but, it looks pretty cool. I may have to give this a shot.

How do they do that?

My wife Chris is one of the most squeamish people I’ve ever met in my life. She doesn’t watch any sort of remotely scary movie. She faints at the sight of blood. The list goes on and on…

But, when it comes to protecting her kids, she’s about as tough as they come. When either of our kids gets hurt, she’s right there to take care of them, patch them up and send them on their way. Once she knows the kids are fine she turns in to a pile of Jello. But during the crisis, she’s like a rock. I got a demonstration of that again last night.

It was around 10:30 and we were both sitting at our computers. We were just getting ready to head to bed when we heard one of the kids walking around. It’s our daughter, Blake. She’s on her way to the bathroom. She’s throwing up. As soon as she hears this, my wife springs in to action and heads for Blake’s room. We find that there is a splash zone by the door and her bed looks like she was bunking with Linda Blair. I take one step towards the room and realize I can go no further. I explain to Chris that if I try to help, I’m actually going to make things worse. The smell of vomit will force me to vomit in about 0.00000000012 seconds (rounding up). I just can’t handle it. Chris, on the other hand, dove in like a champ. Took the sheets off the bed, cleaned the floor, washed the bedding and basically held it all together.

As for me… I blew up the air matress so Blake could sleep in our room.

I’m such a trooper.  :-/

Here’s a question for ya…

Let me set the stage…

It’s Sunday morning and you’ve just woken up. You go to your socks and underwear drawer to find out that you have exactly ZERO pairs of underwear left. You are faced with a decision… Do I:

- Wear Saturday’s underwear
- Rifle through the hamper for a pair that “looks” clean
- Go free ballin’

Talk about life’s tough choices!

My server issues appear to be behind me

The life cycle of most web projects looks something like this:

- Come up with an idea.
- Buy a domain name.
- Write some code.
- Write some content.
- Signup for hosting somewhere.
- Upload code.
- Do some advertising.

That’s all well and good for MOST projects. Not exactly the way things worked out for one of my recent projects, though.

A couple months back I started working on a site called PixelTrafficWatcher.com. I came up with the idea for the site right after finding the MillionDollarHomePage and setting up my own pixel based advertising site. About the same time I launched PTW, I started having issues with my then current hosting company. They were having database issues and my sites would all be dead for 15-30 minutes at a clip several times a day. If I contacted support they would restart MySQL and tell me the problem was fixed. I explained that they have removed the symptoms, but the problem is in fact still there. Proof that I was right would show up a few hours later when the sites would all be dead again. So, after a week of having my sites be down 3-5 times a day, I could take it no longer and I moved all my sites away from that hosting company and on to a new account set up at 1 and 1 hosting. (it’s been about 2 months and so far I’m nothing but thrilled with their service!). Instead of putting PTW on the server at 1 and 1, since it is a VERY database intensive site, I decided to get the site it’s own hosting package at a different host who I’ve worked with in the past. At that point, all seemed to be right in the world…

I got an email one Saturday afternoon 2 weeks ago with the following subject line:
pixeltrafficwatcher.com overloading our server

Turns out, I am getting so much traffic to the site, their server had basically stopped sending out email entirely. So, anybody else using that server was having a hell of a time. Oops.

After putting some thought in to how I wanted to solve the issue, I decided to go with getting my own server and placing just the one site on there for now. Then, I’d watch it and see how it performs. I bought a server and Todd was kind enough to configure it for me. On Monday evening it was installed and ready to go. I copied all the files over, moved the database (no small task here) and did some basic testing. We agreed to wait until Tuesday morning before switching the DNS to point to the new server. After switching the DNS we ran in to about a dozen issues throughout that first day. It was not much fun and a bit nerve wracking considering I have large amounts of traffic hitting the site all day long. But, by the end of the day, all seemed to be in order and back to normal. Then, Wednesday went by with absolutely zero issues. The server is up and running at about 1.5 requests per second and the CPU usage is at about 1%. I think this should allow for plenty of growth from the site. And, if it continues the way it’s been going, I’ll need the extra processing power.

I’ve got my fingers crossed that my server issues are behind me. I owe you big time, Todd. Thanks!

It’s 2006, are people STILL this stupid?

Ya know, I can’t decide who’s the bigger idiot. The people who send spam or the people who receive, open, read and follow any sort of instructions inside. There are compelling arguments for both, but in the end, it’s probably the readers that are the worst. Let me just give a little example. Tonight, I received an email (caught by my spam filter. Thank you Spam Arrest) that had the following information:

From: Luckyday Lottery Netherlands
Subject Line: WINNINGS NOTIFICATION

Normally I’d just click the lil delete button and send this obvious gem off to the bit bucket. But, it sorta caught my eye and got me thinking about what type of absolute idiot is actually going to believe they’ve won something and start reading what’s inside. My curiosity got the best of me and I was forced to open the email to see what it is I’ve won. Oh, I am sooo glad I did. This sucker is priceless! Let’s disect, shall we? Everything in bold is taken directly from the spam, unedited:

From: The Lottery Co-ordinator
Government Accredited Licensed lottery promoters.
International Promotions/Prize Award Department
Lucky Day lottery Nederland.

Well, this sounds official enough. It says right there it’s from “Government Accredited Licensed lottery promoters”, you KNOW it must be good.

DEAR SIR/MADAM,

RESULTS FOR CATEGORY “A” DRAWS; Congratulatulations to you as we bring to
your notice, the results of the Category “A” draws of LUCKY DAY LOTTERY
NEDERLAND.

First off, if I won, they should know if I’m a sir or madam, but I’ll let that slide… Second, what the hell is “Congratulatulations”? I’m not sure either, but I will do my best to work it in to conversation from now on… it’s a goody!

It goes on to say that I’ve won a million Euro and that the next step is for me to contact my claim agent immediately. They are nice enough to provide numbers in the Netherlands and an email address at netscape.net. They also have a “.nl” website that I didn’t bother visiting.

For due processing and remittance of your prize money to a designated account of your choice.

N.B. Any breach of confidentiality on the part of the winners will result to disqualification. This is a notification email. Contact your claims agent.

OK, let me get this straight… I’m gonna have to give somebody in the Netherlands my banking info. Oh, and by the way, don’t mention this to anybody. Oh, I’m sure this is on the up-and-up…

Come on people! If you receive an email like the one above and even for a SECOND believe that you have won anything and aren’t about to be caught in the middle of some big ‘ol scam, please, please, PLEASE unplug your computer, take it outside to the curb and set it down. Go back in the house, make a sign that reads, “Please take this computer. I am far too stupid to be trusted with it!” Go back outside and affix it to the computer. That’ll be all for now.

What makes a movie good?

Last night I could NOT sleep. I went to bed at 11:00PM, then turned on the TV after not being able to fall asleep. Flipping channels I ran in to a movie on TNT that I absolutely love. Remember the Titans. It combines a lot of things I enjoy in a movie all rolled in to one. I like movies about groups of people coming together and overcoming their differences in the quest for a common goal. I also like team sports movies. And, if the movie is based on actual events, that is a big plus for me as well. This movie has all 3.

OK, now the admission portion of the blog… No matter how many times I see this movie, it always makes me cry at the exact same spot. The captain of the football team, Gary, gets in a bad accident and is paralyzed. When they show the hospital scene where his friend Julius comes in and tells Gary’s mother that he’s sorry and then goes in and visits with Gary… Man, it kills me EVERY time… Not “blubbering on the floor in the fetal position”, but I do shed a tear or two.

So, to my monsterous readerbase I ask this question; Are there movies that, no matter how many times you see them, they still make you cry?

And for any of you tough guys who say you don’t cry in movies; screw you.

Now playing on the iMeat

An unsuspecting mom in Hawaii put an iPod video on layaway for her son. She pays for it just before Christmas, takes it home and wraps it up. On Christmas morning, the son unwraps the gift and is thrilled!! He opens the box and inside, instead of an iPod, he found some sort of mystery meat. I couldn’t make this stuff up… Read about it here.

Apparently, when the kid put on the headphones and pushed play, it kept playing Fish Heads, several songs by Phish& Fishbone.

Next Page →