Tag Archive for: Features

Do You Have the Time?

After being watch-less for about a year I finally decided to get the battery replaced on my watch. I didn’t want to make the trip to the mall. I detest that place. It’s full of annoying cell-phone people trying to get me to change my service provider, annoying high school boys, even more annoying middle school girls, and slow old people. Well, I couldn’t think of any place that would replace a watch battery besides a place like Target. I run into Target only to be told that they will only install a new battery if it was purchased at Target. I don’t remember where I purchased my watch, but I know it’s not a Target watch. So, it looks like I’m heading to the mall after all.

So I make the trip up to the mall. It wasn’t as bad as usual there because it was the middle of the day during the week. Though many schools were still out on winter break, I tried to get up and go before the lazy high schoolers would be waking up. I get there and the guy tells me it will be $15.95 for the replacement. The battery costs what, $3 at the most? That means the other $13 went towards paying for his labor, all 2 minutes of it, literally. Wish I got $6.50 a minute in my job. That would be nice. Anyway, he hands me back my watch and I inspect it. He set the date, the day, month, and time in those two minutes. I confirmed the correct time with his giant clock and some other watches at the stand. This guy was good, he disassembled my watch, replaced the battery, and set all the proper time functions in two minutes. I paid and was on my way, with nothing but time on my hands… err, wrist. I get home, trying to get used to the weight on my wrist again, and notice something. The time is wrong! My watch was a good 5 minutes slow to every clock in my room. My alarm clock, the clock on my computer, DVR, and my phone. So my question is, how can a guy who’s sole purpose is keeping the correct time not have the correct time? It was his time, his clocks and watches that were wrong. They were five minutes off. I don’t have much faith in a time keeper who can’t keep time. What’s next, arsonist fire-fighters? Fat exercise instructors? Good pop singers? The world might as well end. At least I’ll know the proper time when it does.

Obama Wins Iowa

Barack Obama won the Iowa caucus tonight.

With all Democratic precincts reporting, Obama had the support of 38 percent of voters, compared to 30 percent for John Edwards and 29 percent for Hillary Clinton.

“The numbers tell us this was a debate between change and experience, and change won,” said CNN political analyst Bill Schneider.

It doesn’t surprise me that he won, he is a great choice for a candidate. What surprises me is that Hillary came in third. I was expecting her to be number two. What a ticket Obama and Edwards would be. Two young, energetic, smart guys. I would totally vote for that ticket. Make sure you donate to Obama’s campaign!

Happy New Year!

Just wanted to wish everyone a happy new year. May 2008 be a great year for everyone. I’ve not made any resolutions this year, yet. We’ll see.

New Years Eve was fun. My old college roommate Charlie was in town with his girlfriend Lauren. He had some people over and it was good to catch up with both of them. Made me realize how much I miss college and hanging out with the group of people that I used to be close with. Charlie is hopping around the country in a Med School program. Lauren is still in Springfield, but the rest of my friends from college are spread around the country, most being in Kansas City, but some in Chicago. For those still in college, don’t take these years for granted. You’ll meet some great people while you’re there and will miss them when you part ways. Enjoy it while you can. Live those moments to the fullest.

Someone in the Habari IRC channel said this today and I think it’s perfect, so I’ll say it again here:

May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you’re wonderful, and don’t forget to make some art — write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.

Gifts Galore

Well, Christmas has come and gone. It was a good one. I was given seasons 4-7 of The West Wing. I love this show so much. It’s such a smart, funny, well-acted show. I also got a bunch of Best Buy gift cards. I spent those today when I went to buy an external hard drive. I got a 500gb MyBook. I reformatted it and partitioned it so both the pc and the Mac can use it. The Mac partition will be used with Time Machine. My Christmas prank on my sister was great. She got me good as well and gave me this really cool picture of the first pitch on opening day of the first Cardinals game at the new Busch Stadium. It’s very cool. Can’t wait to hang it somewhere. My other sister got me a cool Cardinals baseball (well, it was from my nephew) and the Wii Zapper which I am using to play Medal of Honor: Heroes 2 and, of course, Link’s Crossbow Training. It was a great Christmas. I hope everyone else had a great holiday as well.

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Traffic Spike

These past few days I’ve had a huge influx of traffic. The reason behind it is someone stumbled upon an article I posted back in 2005 and liked it and thus it was shared with thousands upon thousands of people around the internet. On Tuesday I had about 900 visits, Wednesday went up to 7,110, and today so far I’m at 2,243 and it’s not even 9 am. WordPress is known for not handling large traffic spikes, especially on shared hosting (which is what I’m on). Luckily, after Tuesday’s small influx to 900 visits I decided to download and enable WP Super Cache. It has worked quite well and my site has been loading fast and the server seems to be handling all the traffic quite well. So, we shall see how long this traffic spike will last and how the shared hosting of HostGator handles it.