Tag Archive for: General

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My Favorite 5 Posts Over the Last 5 Years

5yranniversaryIt’s hard to imagine that today is my 5 year anniversary of this blog. I’ve never posted anything groundbreaking or life-changing, but I do have some favorite posts from the past 5 years. They are nothing spectacular, but they were fun to write and put out there for the world to see. Here are my favorite 5 (in no particular order).

The New Rules of Blogging
This post is quite old and not many people will understand it. It was basically an inside joke with some members of the WordPress and Habari communities. The post was inspired by someone that we all found completely annoying and we hated her blogging style. This post was created as a joke.

The Game
I really love this post, but not as much as I love baseball. I was excited about baseball season starting and was bored when I was working in the computer labs in college, so I wrote this. It was even featured on StLToday when the season began a couple seasons later.

The Best Hip Hop Albums
Everyone knows that I love music, especially hip hop. In 2006 I put together some of my favorite albums of all time. 3 years later and I’d still say this list is the same. Maybe that’s because I’m still waiting for the sure-to-be-a-classic Chico and the Man album.

Three Generations of Cardinals Fans
This isn’t so much a post as an image. One of my favorites. My nephew, my dad, and me.

The World Can be Saved by the Bell
Last, but certainly not least, is my favorite post of all time. Anyone who really knows me knows I am a freak when it comes to Saved by the Bell. I think it’s the best show in the world (only slightly kidding here) and have seen every episode too many times to count. Heck, if I could get away with having the theme song as my ringtone without looking like a total geek I would.

So there you have it, my favorite 5 posts from the past 5 years. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading them as much as I have writing them.

Happy Blogiversary

On October 4th I will have been using WordPress for 5 years. Piece of Shep has actually been around a little bit longer, but that was in my Blogger days. I never imported those old posts because they were mostly drunken college ramblings. WordPress has served me well over the years, though I will admit I have looked for alternative platforms lately. It’s kind of hard to switch platforms when you’re this deep in and when you rely on certain plugins. I have been keeping a close eye on Habari and can’t wait to see how the development progresses.

Because this month is my Blogiversary, I will (hopefully) be posting a bit more, including one that features some of my favorite posts of the past 5 years. I find it hard to categorize my blog other than personal. I write about technology, music, TV, and rant about pretty much everything. This of course makes my blog limited in exposure. When you visit and read a post you really are getting a piece of me. Most of my readers are people I know in real life or from the internet. I’d like to thank all my readers for continuing to read and look forward to what the future brings.

Panic at the Discold

Starting sometime last week, around Monday or Tuesday, I started feeling a fluttering in my chest. The feeling was the feeling you get when you are extremely nervous or when you have a lot of anxiety. I didn’t think anything of this at first because who hasn’t felt that feeling every once in a while. But it kept happening. Over and over. Several times a day. It was starting to freak me out a bit. It was almost as if I was having miniature panic attacks for no reason. But I wasn’t. My heart was beating normally. I wasn’t feeling anything else besides these bursts of fluttering several times a day. I figured I’d give it a few more days before I would make an appointment with a doctor.

Last night I finally voiced my concerns with a couple of people. My friend Trix told me to make an appointment with a doctor right away. My friend Brittney reacted a bit differently. I told her what I was feeling via IM and her response was one of shock. She was feeling the exact same thing I was. I thought this was very odd but didn’t really think anything of it. I decided to tell my mom what I was feeling and that I may need to see a doctor. As I’m telling her, her eyes get wide and she tells me she has felt the exact same thing. This was really starting to get weird. What was causing this feeling in people? Especially Brittney, who lives in Wisconsin. This is too much to be a coincidence. My mom then goes on to explain how it freaked her out at first as well but then she overheard two ladies talking about having the same exact feeling. What is going on here? Why are all these people feeling this and why haven’t I heard something about this from others? It turns out one of the ladies my mom overheard, and her husband, were feeling this and went to the doctor. The doctor told them that because St. Louis has had such a warm winter with temperatures well above the norm, our bodies didn’t know how to react last week when the temperature dropped to zero. I mean, we’ve had weather in the 50’s, 60’s and even 70’s when it should be in the 20’s and 30’s. As it so happens, the feeling started when the cold hit, but I would have never attributed it to the weather. My friend that lives in Wisconsin hasn’t had a warm winter. But the temperatures have been record lows, so I would assume it can do the same as it did to me.

I’m going to keep monitoring just to make sure it’s nothing else, but a huge weight was lifted from my shoulders when I found out others were having the feeling and that it was all caused by the weather. Very strange.

Pieces of Shep

Inspired by my friend Trix, I decided to let you, my loyal reader(s) in on some pieces of me that you might not know.

I collect the board game Monopoly.  I’ve done this for several years.  I have only purchased 1 of the 20+ versions of the board game I have.  I didn’t intend to start collecting them.  It is my favorite game and one year for Christmas I received 3 or 4 versions from various family members.  Since then, I’ve been getting them on a regular basis as gifts.  My favorite has to be the St. Louis Cardinals version or the Classic version that comes in a wood box.  The only one I purchased for myself was an edition from 1935, which is the first year they were mass-produced by a game manufacturing company.

I have a BSEd in History but I work as a web developer.  Finding a job teaching high school social studies is hard as it is an overpopulated field.  Will I go back to teaching?  I’m not quite sure yet.  I also work part time as a teacher for Sylvan Learning Center.

The worst job I ever had was working at my family’s restaurant. It was the summer before my freshman year of high school.  Most of the time I did maintenance jobs around the building.  This was not an easy task on a building that was built before the Civil War.  When I wasn’t in the blistering heat (that was a hot summer!) doing maintenance, I was in the kitchen either cutting strawberries or wrapping potatoes in foil.  Fun stuff, I know.

I love the TV show Saved by the Bell.  Yeah, if you read this blog, you already know that.  It’s a guilty pleasure of mine and reminds me of a much simpler time.

The only movie to ever scare me as a kid was The Exorcist.  That movie was ahead of its time.

I wish I was still in college.  I love the college environment and would love to go back.  I also love learning and would love to take all the classes I wanted to while I was in school but didn’t have the time to take them.  I would also love to teach at the collegiate level.  I’d need to get my PhD in order to be a professor in history though, and I don’t have the time or the money for that right now.  I don’t even have the time or money to start my Master’s.  Some day…

Well, there you have it.  Some things about me you might not have known.  I hope you learned a little more about me and now realize I’m more awesome than you once thought. ;)

Wint-O-Hot

I’ve had this pain in my left shoulder and going up neck for the past couple days. Last night I decided to put some Icy-Hot on it. I love how much it soothes the muscle but I hate the smell of it. Why? Because it has a wintergreen smell. It smells exactly like Life Savers’ Wint-o-green flavored candy. Why in the world do you make a muscle cream smell like wintergreen candy? What is the point of this? Is the smell supposed to relax me further? Honestly, it just made me want to lick my shoulder. Luckily, I can’t reach my shoulder with my tongue, otherwise it might have happened. I really don’t understand it. What’s next, fungal cream that smells like cotton candy? There has to be a better scent out there for this. Or how about, no scent at all! That way, I don’t get my creams and candies confused. This may have an adverse effect on my Lifesavers enjoyment as well. Next time I get some Lifesavers, am I going to rub them over my body expecting some nice muscle relaxation? I really don’t want my muscle cream smelling like candy, so, makers of Icy-Hot, please change the scent of your product.