So I haven’t been commenting on blogs the past week for the most part. I’ve been busy (which is a good, good thing). The bad news is that I haven’t been able to do much fun stuff with the exception of making myself stop working late yesterday afternoon to go swimming at my mother’s with Abbe, the kids, and Holly and her son, Caden. In the process though, I’ve launched a new game arcade (FlashGameFever.com – still under construction a lil’ bit) with Sage, designed a WordPress blog template for Climate Skateboards, worked on several projects with Porn Site Terry, completing a rather tricky Joomla template implementation, and continued work with Dixon Hill on theFamilyRegistry.com. Here’s some pics from yesterday… check out Viv jumping off the diving board for the first time!

• Web Site Story – thanks Mel
• So That’s Where That Condom Went – thanks jenijen
• Robo-geisha – thanks Mel
• Dead Gnome
• DO NOT PUSH THE BIG RED SHINY BUTTON!
• xkcd : Extrapolation
• Like Human Fly Paper
• 8 Awesome Cases of Internet Vigilantism

Links for my geeky homies…

• LRO’s First Moon Images

Mom came to the rescue yesterday, stocking me up with tons of groceries. Seeing a full fridge was a relief unto itself.

I finished the first group of fixes for Sageth.com yesterday, finished a few more pages for Climate Skateboards, made a few small updates for the Battleship New Jersey, did a blog post on Sore Thumbs Blog, and ran into a problem with Facebook Connect code (a permissions issue and I just didn’t feel like bothering my host) for my blog (and ultimately read how much easier the Google Friend Connector is and went with that).

One of my good friends is a porn site owner. Well, sort of a porn site, celebrity nudes really – NitroVideo.com. I’ve been working for Terry for nearly two years now – doing lots of PHP, MySQL, but mostly PERL coding. Pornsite Terry has been encouraging me to stay at home and really give my own business a real run. He gave me some advice for working out of my home that I finally followed yesterday.

1. Get up at the same time every day
2. Take a shower every morning
3. Run
4. Get out of the house at least once a day

And yesterday I didn’t get a chance to do the run, but I did everything else. I took Viv with me to the Pinelands Library and worked on my laptop while she played on the library computers and read to herself. I think Viv liked seeing her Daddy in a different spot than camped on the couch with a laptop in front of him. People might frown on his business, but the fact of the matter is, he has given me work and been supportive of me during the entire time we have worked together. I got phone calls from him just to check on me during the darkest times when my kids moved away and I was at the nadir of my depression. Say what you will, but Terry is a good dude. Here is A chat with Pornsite Terry…

The kids and I have been reading some good books at bedtime from the ‘brary lately… 006 and a Half, Skippyjon Jones, and Cabbage Moon.

• My First Dictionary – thanks Mel
• Happy Wars
• Black Spock Dances to the Jacksons
• Shirtless Biden Washes Trans Am in White House Driveway – thanks Karen
• The Meat Ship
• Let’s Be Friends

I’ve been having trouble staying asleep the past few nights, I think all because of the kids’ arrival this weekend. Them coming home is something I’ve been wishing for the past 2 years. Having them in my life on a daily basis is just so vital to all of our happiness. That said, it is also a huge paradigm change for my life and most importantly, the kids.

My ultra-awesome cousin, Justin, will be traveling with Van and Viv (he’s listed as the primary relative for my Aunt who works for the airline), and to say I’m grateful to Justin is the understatement of the century. Say hi to Justin on Twitter, he rocks and hopefully, he’ll teach me to snowboard sometime soon.

I got some work done on NitroVideo (fixed some formatting from a PERL script) and also built out the search tag cloud admin area for zeropercentcards.com. Just need to work on the YUI menu flyouts and then I will be very close to completion on the ZPC site, which will be awesome.

Movie reviews…

Man On Wire – this movie is so great. The different characters that helped Philippe Petit accomplish his tight rope walk between the World Trade Center towers are such demonstrative story tellers (especially Petit himself), you almost don’t need the footage of Petit practicing his walk and then ultimately cross the gap.

Quarantine – I didn’t have high hopes and I’ll say I was mildly surprised. I’m curious to see [Rec], which was the original Spanish film. If you like horror, you’ll probably dig this film.

Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari – this movie, like Nosferatu conveys an otherworldly eerieness. The silence and the jerky motion on the screen parlay into a really great scare. I thought the tinting that was used on various acts was really interesting and was also impressed at how avante garde the sets were.

• Weatherman with a green tie – thanks Mel
• WTF Blanket – thanks Alex
• The Jesus Christ Sponge – thanks Alex
• Fearless Baby Ducks – thanks Mel
• Real books that look like they have been photoshopped
• Family Guy Yelled at By Christian Bale – thanks Carly
• Tampon Flash Drive – thanks Chris

Yeah, it’s the weekend, so now I can work some more. Not only did I work 3 hours last night on a PERL script that was having issues for NitroVideo, but I will be working on getting a plug-in for Drupal to work with a cloud file API (for the day job) that has to be done by Monday, and I also have some AJAX work to do for zeropercentcards to get done this weekend. Truth is with the upcoming possibly wrist surgery, late property taxes, the COMPLETELY uncovered root canal (thank you dental insurance, that was fucking awesome), roof repair, … yeah I need the money. But I was hoping to have some time this weekend to clean the house and get ready for Van and Viv’s arrival next Saturday. I’ll just have to try and find time to clean during the week.

I know what you’re saying, “hey Van why are you blogging if you’re so busy, huh?” First off, fuck you, and secondly, this took me 10 minutes, so suck it.

Here some changes I’d love to see on Facebook… they’ve added the “Like” feature, so you can tell your friends that you like what they’re doing or posting… I also think there needs to be an “I Really Don’t Give a Shit” option as well.

And then there’s the appaholic friends that send you non-stop flair, super pokes, and other inane bullshit… there’s the Ignore button, but that doesn’t really send the clear message that is truly needed… that’s why the Cut the Shit button is needed… this is an app that myself and the other developers at last week’s hackathon think is sorely needed…

My co-workers love my desk…

• QWERTY drums
• White Wedding Literal Version, RHCP Under the Bridge Literal Version

I had a fairly productive evening : I figured out how to attach YUI listener events to normal HTML form objects (hint, use a DIV tag kids!), I helped troubleshoot a meddlesome CGI script that started sucking up all the MySQL connections on a client’s website, finished watching Weeds Season 2 (great ending to the season, got Season 3 on order from the ‘brary already), finished watching Sputnik Mania (not bad and I finally saw what Daniel Schorr from NPR looks like) and started The Children of Huang Shi (not terrible, but not really all that great).

“This is not the sound of a new man or crispy realization
It’s the sound of the unlocking and the lift away
Your love will be
Safe with me”
Bon Iver ~ re: Stacks

This is a clear example of why you don’t want to ever be my therapist or probably my friend either… below is an undoctored picture of my good friend Franki listening intently at an artist talk featuring Michael Gross… she has a thoughtful look on her face… harmless right?

And then I decided to do this… hope someone gets the Family Ties joke…

• What a Wonderful World – thanks Carla, is it just me, or am I so jaded as a YouTube junkie that I was waiting for a tiger to come maul the cute little pair?
• Winne the Pooh worships Satan – thanks jenijen
• Jumbohostel
• The Finest Elmo Rap Ever – thanks jenijen
• xkcd : Base System
• Hamburger Bed! – oh man