pete the pit bull
2006.01.29 23.13
I was with Heather today traveling to Home Depot when we spotted this emaciated chocolate brown pit bull walking along Front Street. I rarely see stray dogs around here so it was quite shocking to see this poor little pooch. I am definitely affected by all the negative media coverage that pit bulls have received over the years. Even though this dog is very gentle and cautious, I'm still skittish about him. He's in my basement while Chew is in the kitchen. They didn't seem to be buddy-buddying so they'll be living separate lives until I figure out where Pete is going. Yeah, I'm calling him Pete.
u name it sign makers
2006.01.26 9.12
|
U Name It 1 Poydras St New Orleans, LA 70130 Phone: 504-525-2040 Mon-Sat 10A-9P, Sun 11A-7P |
You can try calling up U Name It at the phone number I have listed 504-525-2040. You will need lots of patience, however. I get either a busy signal or the phone just rings with no answer everytime I call. They don't appear to have a Web site, unfortunately. The shop is located at the top level of the Riverfront Mall in an open shop area. Check the map when you get to the mall, perhaps? I like their work so much that I've decided they deserve the Super Genius Seal of approval. They may also receive the Super Genius Polar Bear of approval in the event I can't find them a seal because seals are so slippery and whatnot.
google adsense rocks
2006.01.25 12.04
I actually have a different blog article that's still in draft that I was working on last night, but in the meantime -- I was checking on my Google Adsense statistics today and was quite happy to see that this site has been doing really well. Check out these statistics and earnings compared to the other sites that I'm running.
MarkShields.com: 44,056 impressions, 465 clicks, $65.41 earnings
TheRealWorldAustin.com: 64,449 impressions, 215 clicks, $20.39 earnings
MarkWahlberg.com: 92,729 impressions, 80 clicks, $15.76 earnings
TheRealWorldPhilly Gallery: 11,834 impressions, 28 clicks, $8.41 earnings
MarkWahlberg.com Old Forum: 3,490 impressions, 9 clicks, $1.78 earnings
TheRealWorldPhilly Forum: 2,148 impressions, 9 clicks, $1.73 earnings
Quark.name: 243 impressions, 3 clicks, $0.08 earnings
QueryLetters.net: 10 impressions, 0 clicks, $0.00 earnings
$113.57 total earnings for January 1 thru 25, 2006
The MarkWahlberg ads are just keywords that show up on the top of the page, so there's a slight difference in how those are presented. I'm sure if I put the full-on big banners that it would perform better. I want to keep the ads on there low-profile and unobtrusive, so there's my disclaimer on that.
I really enjoy the Google Adsense program and it's so easy to implement. They do all the hard work for you, practically. Direct deposit transfers and the whole works. It costs nothing to sign up and their terms of service are very easy to follow. Anyway, yeah, I'm ranting about how great they are. If you have a site without it you've got to at least check this out.
my pinball daze
2006.01.22 6.58
Check out this guy who linked to my Google Video submission where I'm playing pinball on my three pinball machines. I miss those machines. My Alien Poker machine in the basement is still in need of some diode checking love. Soon. Very soon.happy birthday chew-chew
2006.01.20 10.59
Today's is Chew-Chew's 7th birthday. That's 49 years old in dog years. I can't believe he's already over the hill. This morning he got three snacks after our morning walk instead of the usual one.I plan to head to Barcelona, Spain in June with my dad. We're staying at the Barcelo Atenea Mar hotel. I mention this now so I will be constantly reminded that I need to work on my abs and do a lot of cardio so I can walk around bare chested. I'm running five miles tonight, that's for sure. I don't know what I'm going to do about my ghostly white skin situation. Hopefully I'll think of something in mid-May that involves the spray-on tan thing like they had in the Friends episode ''The One With Ross' Tan. ''
Tanning Salon Guy: Alright Mr. Geller. Right this way. So, how dark do you wanna be?
We have one, two or three.
Ross: Well... I like how you look, what are you?
Tanning Salon Guy: Puerto Rican.
Ross: Two, I think a two.
Later...
Ross: It sprayed me before I even got to 3 Mississippi.
Tanning Salon Employee: Mississippi? I said count to 5.
Ross: Mississippilessly?
how do tattoo artists practice?
2006.01.19 21.10
I went to Nocturne last night after a lot of mental duress involving what I should wear and whether or not I'd have fun going solo. I had fun. I danced my ass off, actually. It's still in the club. I did this after I had a tough workout involving deadlifts and lunges. Those two exercises in particular are ones that I love to hate and hate to love. I'm afraid I went a bit overboard on the beer. I drank four. I woke up this morning with a long agenda of things to do as I prepare for the transition to Minnesota. I also woke up with a giant friggin' headache. Ugh.Here's a picture of me at my company's holiday party last month. I'm carrying the wine I won. It's in this cool carrier thing they got from The Container Store. That's my brother-in-law Frank to the right. He won an iPod Shuffle. I'd never won anything at these parties before, so yay! We drank this wine on Christmas with the family. My review? Eeew! It was... bad. I wondered if we left it out for a few days if it could get much worse. Still, the carrier thingy more than makes up for it. Oh, hey, you can see half of my sister's face to the far right. I think she was picking her nose. Hmmm. Ummm. Yes, that's a framed picture of a butt on the wall. Don't fear the nakie. Hey, I'm nakie right now while I'm typing this. Okay. I'm oversharing. Look at the picture.
embedding google video is easy
2006.01.19 14.40
Here's my slightly revised podcast episode one. It's now only nine minutes long. I noticed I was repeating myself a lot, there were some parts that were boring, and I needed to punch up the funny in the captions. Also, I made a mistake with the dates here and there. 2006. So confusing! I updated the video in my previous blog entry. You can also check it out here in your browsers thanks to the magic of embedded Google Video.
feeling minnesota
2006.01.18 11.04
No, I'm not referring to the Keanu Reeves flick released in 1996. I'm talking about picking up and moving to work in MN through the end of the year. It's not really moving. Granted, I have a lot of stuff that I've ferried to Philadelphia from Houston, but I'm going to UPS everything to wherever I end up. The reason why I'm shifting location is that my client has a new project for me starting February 6, 2006. The catch is that the work is primarily in Minnetonka, Minnesota. I'm getting the shivers just thinking about the weather. They have Chipotle there, however. Mmmm. I have a few obstacles that I need to work through until I can split Philly. My dog, for one thing. He's had some problems with grade 2 mast cell tumors over the last month. Very scary. Poor Chewy. :-( Wherever I go needs to accept him. I also have to work around how people are going to look at the Philly place I'm staying at (to rent) while he's still here. I *think* I have most of this figured out. Mostly. Bleah. And I *knew* I shouldn't have joined a new gym last month. Durh. So little time -- so many contracts to break.TV in bedroom halves sex life
2006.01.17 10.57
Jan 16, 2006 — ROME (Reuters) - Thinking of buying a TV for the bedroom? Think again — it could ruin your sex life.So, this raises a few questions for me. Among them:A study by an Italian sexologist has found that couples who have a TV set in their bedroom have sex half as often as those who don't.
"If there's no television in the bedroom, the frequency (of sexual intercourse) doubles," said Serenella Salomoni whose team of psychologists questioned 523 Italian couples to see what effect television had on their sex lives.
On average, Italians who live without TV in the bedroom have sex twice a week, or eight times a month. This drops to an average of four times a month for those with a TV, the study found.
For the over-50s the effect is even more marked, with the average of seven couplings a month falling to just 1.5 times.
The study found certain programmes are far more likely to impede passion than others. Violent films will put a stop to sexual relations for half of all couples, while reality shows stem passion for a third of couples.
- What about the couples that watch adult entertainment on the TV?
- Shouldn't the presence of a mistress (this is Italy) be included in these statistics?
- Exactly how does one become a licensed sexologist? Is there a master's course?
- Has Serenella Salomoni ever succumbed to salmonella?
the tax man cometh back
2006.01.16 6.16
It's that time of year again. Check out how my Houston taxes have fared since 2005:346.50 -- 2005 Subdivision Maintenance Fee 615.37 -- 2005 Windfern Forest Municipal Utility District 855.90 -- 2005 Harris County Property Tax 1866.97 -- 2005 Cy-Fair Independent School District ------- 3684.74 Total 371.00 -- 2006 Subdivision Maintenance Fee 584.08 -- 2006 Windfern Forest Municipal Utility District 862.52 -- 2006 Harris County Property Tax 1877.40 -- 2006 Cy-Fair Independent School District ------- 3695.00 TotalWell, looks like the cost of living in Harris County didn't go up as much as last year thanks to a tiny break from the Windfern Forest Municipal Utility District -- better known as the water and sewage district but not called that because the words water and sewage don't sound as cool as municipal utilities.
time machine road trip podcast
2006.01.15 21.54
The first MarkShields.com Super Genius Podcast is now available. Check out episode 1: The Time Machine Road Trip. I'll have the XML feed for you to paste into iTunes later on, but for now you can either download the file and import it manually or just use Windows MediaPlayer to play it.Right-click here and choose ''Save Target As'' to download the iPod video file
Click here to stream the Windows MediaPlayer version -- requires a broadband connection
the time traveller
2006.01.14 8.32
I arrived in Houston on Friday night and had dinner with my father at Texas Land and Cattle. My usual now consists of the spicy Caesar salad with no croutons and the Chipotle Tuna with garlic mashed potatoes. That meal is hottish, okay? Eat it. Hottish is my new word. Use it. After dinner, I struggled to find the will to go to Number's Nightclub and I nearly made it. The problem was that my Eclipse wouldn't start. Pfft.The next morning I went to my secret storage facility and traded up the Mitsubishi Eclipse for the DeLorean DMC-12 and got to work on buying a new set of tires. NTW didn't have any Goodyear brand tires that fit the D. Instead, I opted for the similar named BF Goodrich tires. The white wall lettering of the text on the tire is very similar to the Goodyear lettering. As long as the word Good is visible then I'm down with the substitution. I had the NTW boys carefully remove my old tires which I picked up on Sunday. FYI, there's nothing physically wrong with these tires. As I mentioned in an earlier blog entry, I'd prefer to have tires that were manufactured in the last 10 years when I'm driving great distances. I'm thinking that I was going to sell the old tires to one of my Back to the Future brothers. The sales guy talked me into getting an alignment. This lasted for all of ten minutes after I drove away. The car quickly went back to pulling ever so slightly to the right. I guess that's normal. I'd prefer to drift to the right and into a ditch instead of drifting to the left and hitting an oncoming car and totally dying. Good to know. They never tell you this stuff, do they?
I got more serious about working on the time machine when Sunday rolled around. I spread out all of my movie car replica pieces across the kitchen table and any available surface area. This made me realize that I have a lot of untested time circuit equipment. I read up on how a 12-volt car battery works and was quite pleased to learn that DC current is safe and easy to handle. This gave me the balls to take my external battery jump box and use the battery clamps to hook directly to the positive and negative wires of my equipment. Don't let them touch, though. As in the word of Ghostbusters… don't cross the streams! I could test each piece individually, but when hooked together nothing worked. I couldn't figure out what the problem was until I realized that my electronics whiz that created the equipment (Bruce Coulombe) had apparently rewired everything to accommodate the new remote control. I have a replica remote, just like the one Doc has in the parking lot, which can turn the time circuits on and off. This meant the positive and negative of everything had to go through the sound box which is the other main part in the car. I decided that I'd work on the external stuff for the rest of Sunday and would concentrate on the electronics the next morning. My new aluminum vents look f'ing awesome on the car. I use a metallic black spray paint to give the vents that slightly burned up from going through wormholes look. Not easy to do. I repainted a few other parts while I was getting crazy with the metallic black paint. Everything was left out overnight to dry.
The next morning came major rewiring. Everything needed its positive and negative wires separated. I had to constantly remind myself what the hell I was doing. Yay. Bonus learning for me occurred when I went to test this giant bank of green, yellow, and red LEDs that are mounted above the driver's left shoulder. I've never tested them before and they've been in the car since I got it in 1999. They came with a wonky butchered box and inside that is a power pack from a cordless phone. This contraption never worked. I hooked the LEDs up to my battery clamps briefly and it seemed to work fine. Pretty! That was nice. When I finally finished wiring everything, I did a few tests adding each electronic part until I had them all going. I noticed some of the lights weren't fully illuminated when I had everything on at once. I was troubleshooting things when I noticed the wire leading to my aforementioned bank of LEDs was starting to smoke. I'm talking Marlboro Reds thick gray smoke. I yanked off the power and decided that hooking up those LEDs was a terrible idea. Everything was cool after that minor scare. I briefly tried out this other flux capacitor that I bought off ebay only to find out that the light fluxing animation sucked. It only had two sets of lights blinking back and forth. How stupid! Everyone knows you need at least three of them to make it look like the lights are blinking toward the center. So, that disappointed me a bit. I need to talk to Bruce about what he was thinking with that. I finished up all my external parts and internal parts work early in the evening. At this point I was quite giddy so I packed my bags and went to bed around 10 PM.
While sleeping, I dreamt that I left for Dallas more than a few times. In my dream I was going through high anxiety because my car previously had a sh*tcan engine that was mistreated by its former owners over the years. It was prone to overheating which is why I am always stressed out when I drive the car any great distance. In 2004, I had the engine completely replaced with the high performance 200 horsepower upgrade from Delorean Houston. Still, that didn't stop me from wondering if things were going to go badly when I got past the 50 mile trip barrier that I'd never been able to break before. It turns out that my fears were for naught. The car drove to Dallas like a champ without batting an eye. My speedometer briefly freaked out about 60 miles south of Dallas, but that turned out to be temporary. I found the convention center only after making several phone calls to a woman named Gretchen), I figured I'd try to check into the hotel early and clean up the car. This guy saw me at some point. When I left Houston, it was raining off and on. It was also pitch dark until 7:30 AM which I thought was weird. The rain bothered me more, I think. Anyway, I drove to a Super Target and bought some cleaning supplies and a few toiletry items. I'd neglected to pack these up when I left Philly last Friday. I gave the DeLorean a good wipe down outside the hotel and then drove it to the convention center.
The loading process by which we got the car onto the stage was somewhat tedious and annoying, but I learned that I simply needed to listen to John (The Director) and do what he said. The car was pushed inside the stage and lighting setup guys who took every opportunity to make the usual comments about the car that I hear all the time. The car was placed to the far left of the stage at a slight angle. Pyrotechnics and dry ice would be involved in someway. Tomorrow would be the rehearsals so now that the car was in place I was free to do whatever I wanted to do. I'd planned on working on my website and filming some video for my first podcast. That didn't go so well since I forgot my camera's charger and my external harddrive power supply was on literally on the blink. It wouldn't power up my drive. It just blinked. The fault is in the power supply, however, so I'm not too worried. Stupid Maxtor drives. That's all I'm saying. Urgh. I got some coffee at a nearby Starbucks and ate one of their pseudo-healthy sandwiches. Later that night after stopping back in the convention center to see the kabuki drop had been installed, I returned to the hotel and some tuna and did my laundry. Exciting, yes I know.
The next morning I slept in but got up in time to enjoy the complimentary Marriot breakfast. It's so good. I can't wait until tomorrow morning rolls around again so I can eat there again. I'm typing all of this on Wednesday night, incidentally. Better to do this now than to wait until I forget some of the more boring details. This is an interesting trip I'd like to remember since I'm burning up three vacation days taking it. I decided that I'd walk to a nearby CompUSA to see if they had a power charger for my camera's battery and possibly a replacement enclosure for my stupid dead Maxtor harddrive. I found a generic charger unit, so that was cool. I stopped at a place called The Server Store and talked to a guy there about backup solutions. I'm definitely thinking about getting an SATA (Serial ATA) Raid 0 or 1 controller for an X PCI slot. I believe this means Express PCI, although my computer only has normal PCI slots. Slots are a weird technology in themselves since they come and go in popularity. Cheap SATA drives can be had for cheap and I can use them to manage video just like I want. The server dude also recommended a company called LACIE which sells prepackaged backup solutions. I took his card and wondered if I'd ever set foot there again. I appreciate the advice so expect me to plug his site in a separate blog entry in exchange for the (hopefully) good advice.
I almost forgot to mention that I spent nearly an hour in an antique shop that I walked by. I was looking for interesting old telephones or possible some quaint old electronic. I found mostly just crap. Still, it was fun to browse such classic stuff. My next stop was a Spy toys shop. This total redneck dude and his petite girlfriend were looking at buying practically everything in there. I was wondering what their goals were. I saw this awesome viewfinder thing that lets you clearly see who's outside using a beveled mirror of some sort. The diameter of the viewfinder is about the same width as a doorknob. I want one! I didn't buy one from there, though. Must check that out on the internets. Instead, I ate at Buffalo Wild Wings and had the grilled chicken tenders (no breading – awesome!) with the hottest sauce they have called Blazin'. I also got some popcorn shrimp but promised myself I'd only eat of third of them. This petite hostess (girls are petite here, apparently) was chatting with this guy who was sitting at a table next to her podium. He was listening to a CD and making goofy dance moves. I noticed that he didn't seem to be ordering anything, so it didn't surprise me when a manager eventually asked him to get ass outside if he wasn't going to be buying anything. I noticed he left and asked the hostess and my waitress ''Where did the nice dancing man go?'' They laughed. I'm so funny, I should be paid money. Hey, that rhymed!
The director called me just as I was walking into the conference center for the 2:30 PM rehearsals. They were having a problem with the passenger door. It tends to stick after you open and close it. If you lock and unlock the door, however, it's fine for another opening and closing. Then it sticks again. I tried to explain this the day before, but in practice it turns out that I needed to be there for the tutorial. I taught Mr. Curl (the passenger) how to rock the lock and get the door to open whenever he wanted. I stuck around for the rest of the day with only one quick break back to the hotel where I retrieved my car key and battery post screw. Yes, I removed the battery screw because it makes me feel better about leaving the car in weird places. I was worried that the rehearsal was a bit flat as far as the performances were going, but those fears washed away when they started the real deal at 5:30 PM. The company had a real family type philosophy about it that I really appreciated. My company has a bit of that going for it here and there. It was considerably more like this before we were bought my a larger company an incorporated into their ways. Still, I'm happy. It's always interesting to see what another company that writes software does during these kinds of meetings. Once the show was over, a handful of audience members wanted to check out the DeLorean and sit in the cockpit. They handed out boxed models of my car with their company logo stickered to the little hood. I got one! Toys! Yay! Heh. Ummm. After the gawking was over, the ramp to let my car off the stage was reassembled and in only a quarter of the time it took to get it on the stage we had the car back outside and I was driving away. Great experience and I really liked the people who put it together. A shout out to Laura who contacted me thanks to my friends at BTTF.com. Good times.
transformers movie ilm test clip
2006.01.11 7.32
TRANSFORMERS! More than meets the eye. This is my cue laden blog entry that has some footage that I found floating on the net. Check out the Is It Real Or Is It Fake Transformer Test Movie. It's a car in disguise. No, wait, it's a robot disguised as a car. Oh! It's BOTH! What started as a toy action figure line and cartoon tie-in is now live film complete with visible sprockets and an obviously bad test actor reacting to the transformation! View the clip to the right and think what this could mean to a possible game or maybe straight to DVD or VHS releases. Perhaps a theatrical release? Who knows. I was never big on the transformers, myself. The Power Rangers, however...
are you sirius?
2006.01.04 13.43
A few days ago I bought a Bose speaker system for my computer in Philadelphia, but after some rethinking I'm returning it tomorrow. In its place, I'm getting the Sirius S50 Satellite Radio Receiver System Pack! Yeah, baby! I'm aware that this unit is not a true portable satellite receiver. It is designed to dock with either your car or a home dock which isn't yet available. I plan to bypass these troubles by mocking up a portable docking unit by using parts from Radio Shack. Hopefully it won't end up looking like a giant contraption but I've got a good feeling that I can pull it off. I'll update regularly on my progress and (hopefully) provided details so anyone can build one themselves. Stern's show either starts the 9th or 16th this month, so I'm in a bit of a rush to finish this up.
I'll be in Houston starting this Friday night all through next week. My DeLorean has a gig in Dallas that I'm going to attend. I'm going to drive which will be a world record distance for the DeLorean. My previous record was my weekly 50 mile roundtrip although that was using my old sh*tcan engine. I upgraded the car with a new zero mile performance upgrade engine about a year ago. I'm thinking about getting new Goodyear tires before I leave just in case and having the classic Goodyear Eagle GT retires retired temporarily. The manufacturer stopped selling these in the mid-90s and there is a bit of a novelty in having tires that are 1985-vintage still on your car. The novelty wears off when I think about having a tire blow out. I'm going with new tires, then. As far as the event goes, I don't know much about it other than they plan to reveal the car on stage at the end of a ''Back to the Future'' skit. It'll be a kabuki drop that reveals the car on a turntable and the doors will open as the car spins to a stop and two execs get out. Nice! As long as we work out the glitch with the passenger door getting sticky after it's been opened once, we should be cool. I'll be working on the car this weekend to prepare some of the cosmetic electronics as well as working out how the new aluminum vents will attach to the trunk lid. I plan to do a few ''from the road'' type video shoots with my camera that I'm going to put into my first MarkShields.com podcast. I'm preparing MarkShields.com Episode 0 as you read this, however. Watch this space for the XML feed URL that you can add to your iTunes. Whenever I update you'll automatically get the latest and greatest podcast from moi. I hope.
