Yesterday BLP (aka my buddy Bill from Dixon Hill) came over to discuss one of my favorite clients, EMS, have some lunch at Zinc Cafe (wow the asparagus and skirt steak salad ruled!), and then spend a few hours playing guitar together. I needed that. Every time I talk to Bill, I feel better. The guy just knows his stuff but also wants to make sure you understand it as well. We game-planned a slew of changes for our client and listened to some of my most embarrassing selections from my iTunes collection (wow, how did THAT much Aldo Nova get in there?).

I got the new cleaner Wheelies design up and implored my good buddy LarryMac to stop using Comic Sans (note to self, perhaps this is the impetus to remove Comic Sans from CKEditor in my furiousCMS installs). The email I got back from LarryMac made my day too, “this is the nicest thing anyone has done for me today!”). I improved a processor hog of a query for EMS by a factor of 300% reducing page load time from about 10 secs to less than 3 (need to stress test it a bit more still, but I think I fixed it!) And also, I fixed an extremely frustrating Vidiscript uploader problem for Pornsite Terry on one of his sites (NSFW).

Had a great lesson with Jan. The Phils won again. NJ’s own Frankie Edgar upset B.J. Penn. Mom returned home from her cruise and picked up that farting, peeing, and constantly licking things cocker spaniel of hers.

I didn’t have time to fit in a run yesterday, so today… it’s on. Also, today concludes the end of a frustrating season for the Flyers – a do or die game against the Rangers, winner gets the 8 seed in the Easter Conference playoffs. A part of me is actually rooting against the orange and black – I want change for next season.

• Llamas
• Inappropriate Mowgli Clock is Inappropriate
• Tiger Woods, You Suck!
• Texas Stadium Implodes

Small Business/Tech Links…

• Tweetie 2 For Mac is still Coming

Although taking some time off during the week felt good at the time, I think I need to regulate my fun time to the weekends as much as possible. This weekend has been devoured by work after all the end of camp stuff going on last week and the Phils game. That said, I’m really enjoying my work lately -starting a new project for Hope For Humanity : Malawi, new project for NY/NJ Baykeeper (this has a special place in my heart given growing up sailing with my Dad), nearly ready to launch furiousCMS.com (still need to retake that stock photo background that’s serving as a placeholder right now), lots of cool stuff for FlashGameFever.com, continued work on the next release of theFamilyRegistry.com, and plenty of work for Porn Site Terry, the Battleship NJ, and all my other clients.

Abbe told me that she waited on a shorter UFC fighter last night at D&B’s. Through process of elimination and showing her some photos via Google image search this morning, found out it was Frankie Edgar! I had a feeling it was him, given his Toms River, NJ roots.

Bubs has really been enjoying Project Panda, which we picked up at the library last week. I need to mention this book to my friend from Atlanta, Sarah who I believe actually works at the Wolong Panda Reserve in China. Seriously, how cool is that? She rescues pandas in China.

On top of recapturing some of my weekend, I also really need to get back onto the yoga mat and once my back has fully recovered from the fall on the torch, start punishing myself with some runs again. I love the fact that I’m still recovering from a baby shower, one week later.

• Top 5 Funniest Fake Facebook Pages
• Smell the Glove: an Artshow Dedicated to Spinal Tap
• Shitbag From Tomorrow

here’s Jack about to beat my ass

I got a lot done, but was reading God is not Great in bed by 10pm and asleep about an hour afterwards. This rest will come in handy as my kinetic short people will be here tomorrow! I was productive though: taught a guitar lesson (and Carolyn brought me a box of dark chocolate mints from Reilly’s), a quick fix for the Battleship NJ, phone meeting with the owner of NitroVideo (who it turns out is a ranked Brazillian Jujitsu Fighter), fix for a new client, cleaned the lizard cage, did yoga, and watched a good film.

If you’ve never read mamatulip’s blog, you should go punch yourself in the face. Below is a transcript of an email exchange mamatulip and I had yesterday which displays the wit and the power that will rock your ass in half.

My comment on her blog post : i caught my big fat cat peeing in the corner of my front room the other day for no damn good reason. at least your cat has a reason.
mamatulip : And what reason would that be?!
me : He just can’t stand how much Dave [mamatulip's husband] rocks. That makes me poop in the basement too.

mamatulip : Don’t tell anyone, but…me too.
me : Was it really Chewy [mamatulip's cat]? Do you really have a cat? Or is he much akin to Tyler Durden?
mamatulip : Bwahaha! (I wish)
me : this little email chain would make a fine blog post you know
mamatulip : only you could find gold fodder amongst cat shit.
me : somewhere in jersey there is a man curtseying to the north [she's Canadian]
mamatulip : curtsying? listen van, don’t make me go all chuck norris on you. man up.
me : ok, i’ll fart in approval and slap some A-1 steak sauce on my balls
mamatulip : now that’s more like it.

Movie Review…
The Jacks were not happy with my movie selection last night. La Faute à Fidel! (Blame it on Fidel) is not only another subtitled French film, but also about a scowling little 9 year old French school girl struggling with her parents’ decision to become communists in the early 1970s involved with Chilean Allende supporters. I don’t think you can upset an NFL linebacker than that… well maybe if it was animated too. Nina Kervel-Bey is a really, really talented young actress. The film was decent, the idea of a movie about political upheaval told from a 9 year old perspective was refreshing.

• Nuclear blast door art
• The Muppets Revive Another Classic
• Cube Wars Just Got Cooler – (thanks Bill)
• Creative Ads Around the World – (thanks Chris)
• Beyond the Lanes

I spent the majority of the weekend working on the couch, but I did get a few visits in with Mom and Dad, a nice 4 mile run, got some of the house decorated for Christmas, finished It Will All Be Over Soon (I think), had a meeting with a new client, finished Enemy at the Gates, and a short 10 mile on the bike (mostly to just go post a guitar lesson flyer at Murphy’s).

One of the things that just flat out humbled me was an email I received from my guitar student’s mom. It absolutely served as impetus to get the flyer up and find some more students. I enjoy teaching a lot. Seeing kids learn this instrument I love so much is great, but the witnessing the difference the instrument makes on the kid’s life is the best part. I also got a package in the mail from another sweet blogger filled with some Christmas stuff and a few things for my kids.

my boys

I watched a terrible movie, Domino – the story of the real life Domino Harvey behind it was sort of interesting, but the movie was crazy cut aways and over the top stupidity and shit blowing up. Maybe if I hadn’t know the real story behind her I possibly could have enjoyed a dumb Hollywood action movie, but it seemed like such a disservice to what could have been a fairly interesting film.

• Wikipedia’s List of unusual deaths – the 1320′s were apparently a popular time to die via the anus. I will be sure to never set a time machine for that decade.
• The Gömböc
• Things Other People Accomplished When They Were Your Age – “Benjamin Franklin invented the Franklin stove.” oh, like who couldn’t see that one coming, I mean who else would invent the Franklin stove. “English navigator George Vancouver explored Vancouver island.” Ditto.
• Oh oh oh, I know what I want for Xmas now.
• Is Europe a Country?
• Stop Motion Drums and Piano (thanks Franki)
• Gizoogle – (thanks Franki for this one too) – here’s my blog translated. “Barre chords is tough on new guitar playa hands . Yippie yo, you can’t see my flow. I’m . Yippie yo, you can’t see my flow.”

It’s a rainy day today, but I got my outside stuff done this weekend already. Last night I finished off the last of those damn rocks. I drug out the last of some bulk trash that needed to go to the curb this morning. I scooped the dog poop. Hopefully Yogi’s delicate toes will appreciate the soft soil instead of those rocks in his “office”. Yogi is one of those dogs that hates it if he’s seen dropping the deuce. Which I do appreciate, because that means he always goes as far away as possible to take care of business. Whereas, my parents’ cocker spaniel would crap on your foot if you didn’t yell at him.

I had two invitations last night to get out of the house. One was a happy hour for a departing consultant that will be a loss for the company, she was funny and pretty cool. The other invite was from my parents for dinner. Dad is home safe from the sail up to Nova Scotia and back. When I get in these funks, I would rather stay in my home and work on work, work on projects around the house, or exercise. When I don’t feel happy with myself, I don’t like putting myself in the eyes of others.

My father-in-law called me last night, the kids were staying over there to give Dana a night off. I had called earlier and got her on her cell. I didn’t want to bother them. Although things aren’t weird at all with my in-laws, I don’t like myself and don’t really know why anyone else would either, ergo…yeah, I’m a mess. I got to talk to Bubs for about a nanosecond and Viv for a while. Their cousin Julian got on the phone and talked to me too. That picked me up a bit, but I’m still not heading out to happy hour anytime soon.

I worked hard last night and finished propagating the look and feel across the entire Curtain Rods OSC site. I think it looks pretty darn good now. I have a whole new appreciation for using code snippets in DW CS3 now. This morning I looked at the blog and thought, “man, I didn’t get any comments at all yesterday?” Then I found out why, there’s some sort of bug with WP 2.2 and named permalinks. I reverted back to the default permalink style (post id), so if you notice a broken link from post to post – that’s why.

I watched The Host last night before bed and it was decent. I did however make the mistake of listening to the English Audio. The dubbing is pretty bad and after turning on the subtitles about 5 minutes through, I discovered a new game of laughing at two different translations for the same movie. A friend of mine just returned from being in Seoul for a long time, I need to ask her if she saw any thing weird on the Han river. Although this isn’t the highest accolade, The Host is probably the best monster movie since Aliens. When you compare it to the other monster movies of recent years, it’s like being considered the MMA champ of 80 year olds. That said, this actually is a great movie.

• Lenticular Clouds
• Schaeffer the Darklord
• CYE : Peeing Sitting Down – this show is the best IMHO