The Tribe has Spoken

The result of the poll for whether my blog should have theme music is 6 for and 4 against. However, in reading the comments, most of those that voted for theme music also said that they would pause the theme music, thus I took that as a "it might bother me, but I don't want to tell you how to run your blog." So I'm discontinuing it for now, but might bring back the music at a later date and time if I go through blog music withdrawals.

I did find the next new thing in web-site advertising - pay per play online audio ads. Everyone should stop and say Ooooh! That's right, if the Adsense, Infolinks, Kontera, and Widgetbucks ads don't drive you up a wall, the pay per play audio ads will finish you off. Take a look at these. Audio ads play for 5 seconds automatically when someone visits a web-site and then every 3 minutes thereafter. Ooooh! So not only can I inundate you with ads all over my blog, I can make you listen to them too! And for each audio ad you hear, I get paid a few pennies! No clicking involved!

I've run into a problem though; Scoonie says she will never look at or read my blog again if I add the audio ads; something about her volume on her computer being set to blaring and didn't want to make all the hair on her head stand on end. Oh well, since I don't want to alienate my loyal readership, I guess I will keep looking for the next big thing.

Those are big CD's...Right!

Well it's Father's Day and what would Father's Day be without a nice story. So here goes. Yesterday Scoonie took me out on a pre-Father's Day date. We went to Cafe Rio, Radio Shack, Best Buy, 7-11, and Deseret Industries. You might wonder why we did that, but here's more information. Scoonie generously gave me her old I-pod to see if I can get my 1970 stereo at work play I-tunes. Turns out that if you use the Auxilary connections in the back and turn the dial on the radio to Auxilary, you can listen to I-tunes...the only problem, the voice track either doesn't work on some songs or sounds like it is in a tin can. Thus, the stops at Radio Shack and Best Buy - it turns out that, according to the guy at Best Buy, music technology has become more sophisticated over the years and the radio we are plugging the I-pod into is probably not compatible, go figure. The 7-11 stop was to fill up my Miata with gas and to pick up a slurpee for me and a drink for Scoonie (it gets warm when you drive around with the top of your convertible down in Las Vegas in the summer-time.)

So why the stop at Deseret Industries? They've got records and the records are dirt cheap. Twenty five cents a record cheap. So we're going through the stack of records and they have a nice selection of Guy Lombardo and Christmas music, not to mention the polynesian selection, but I ended up with the following:

1) The King James version of Old Testament books of Ruth, 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel, 1 Kings, 2 Kings, 1 Chronicles, 2 Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, and Job all narrated by Alexander Scourby (I must say this was quite the find)
2) My Fair Lady
3) Simon & Garfunkel "Sounds of Silence"
4) Show Stoppers in Dance Time (includes medleys from South Pacific, Oklahoma, Carousel, Show Boat, and the King and I)
5) The Best of Ferrante & Teicher (includes Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head, He Ain't Heavy He's My Brother, By the Time I Get to Phoenix, Love Theme from Romeo & Juliet, Mozart Piano Concerto No 21, The Sound of Silence, Midnight Cowboy, Lay Lady Lay, Something, Honey, Sunny, Little Green Apples, El Condor Pasa, MacArthur Park, Close to You, Born Free, For Once in My Life, Going Out of My Head, Can't Stop Loving You, and A Familiar Concerto - I don't recognize half the songs, but the few I recognize are good ones.)
6) Ferrante & Teicher The People's Choice (includes Hello Dolly, Everybody Loves Somebody, The Girl from Ipanema, And I love Her, Call Me Irresponsible, People, Wives and Lovers, Charade, Love Me with all Your Heart, Georgia on My Mind, The Seventh Dawn, and The James Bond Theme - The James Bond Theme just pushed this record over the top on this one)
7) Happy Days are Here Again (includes Happy Days are Here Again, Hello Hello Hello!, Golden Slippers, Deep in the Heart of Texas, Sing a Little Melody, Alabama Jubilee, Four Leaf Clover, You are My Sunshine, There's Something Nice, Ma - She's Makin' Eyes at Me - You Are My Sunshine made this record a no brainer)

I did purchase one more additional record, a record that makes it the find of all Deseret Industry finds and made the whole trip that much more special; here are the pics:


That's right, Bill Cosby's first record! It was recorded live at The Bitter End and includes the following bits:

1) A Nut in Every Car
2) Toss of the Coin
3) Little Tiny Hairs
4) Noah: Right!
5) Noah: And the Neighbor
6) Noah: Me and You, Lord
7) Superman
8) Hoof and Mouth
9) Greasy Kid Stuff
10) The Difference Between Men and Women
11) The Pep Talk
12) Karate

On the back of the record cover Allan Sherman writes, "Bill Cosby's 'Noah'...is a masterpiece, even though nobody has heard it yet...It's going to be a classic, and that means two things: first, a lot of comics will steal it, even though no one will ever do it as well as Bill; and second, if Bill wanted to, he could make a living for the rest of his life just from the excitement and joy this one great bit will create. But Bill, if I am any judge of talent, will keep coming up with fresh, new material and will grow everyday in stature and importance on the American comedy scene." Yeah, good call Allan.

So, to top off this wonderful day, we came home and unloaded all the goodies we got at Deseret Industries for $15 (Scoonie picked up a couple of other things too that's why the total is so much) and one of the little Guests visting us this weekend saw the bag of records, picked up one of the records, looked at it and then remarked, "Those are big CD's". To which Scoonie replied, "Right!"

Dr. Phil at My House

Some of you are aware that we have two guests until Monday evening. These guests are Fred's and Jr's age. They have been here since Friday and we had our first melt-down this evening. With the schedule they've been running and all the fun they've been having it was only a matter of time. Fred started blowing up at Scoonie so I carried her out of the room and discussed things with her. Turns out the oldest guest had done some things that made Fred feel bad. These things included saying Fred was as fat as one of her cousins and that Fred had bigger feet than her. Guest one had also said that she could hula hoop for 99 minutes when Fred had said something about hula hooping for 17 minutes.

I decided after a lengthy discussion with Fred that it would be best if Fred would tell Guest one how she was feeling. I invited Guest one in and started the conversation off with what Fred had been feeling. I then let Guest one explain that she didn't mean to make Fred feel she was fat and let Guest one explain her side of the story. I continued to moderate. After awhile, Fred opened up some more and Guest one explained some more and at the end they had a hug.

Yeah for Dr. Phil!

El Cid to PETA, really?

Um, El Cid to PETA, change your name to TAPE, and while you're at it, your current acronym stands for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, why not have your acronym stand for Tame Animals People Eat or something like that?

Why am I blabbering about PETA? Well, while looking at the web-site Digg.com, I came across this article. The article discusses how PETA recently requested the jam band Phish to change its name to the "Sea Kittens". That sounds just as cool as "Phish", right? Actually, I can see attendance at the band's concerts increasing because of the name change - no, really...just imagine the conversation with Joe Teenager and his parents. Parents: "Where are you off to Joe?" Joe: "I'm going to see the Sea Kittens." Parents: "Okay, well while you are at Sea World, could you pick me up a Shamu fridge magnet?" Joe: "Uh, umm, I'll see what I can find. Later." You see, parents will be perfectly willing to let their children see the "Sea Kittens" concerts; whereas "Phish" sounds a lot like "Fish" which I'm sure parents would interpret as their children cursing at them unintelligably. Besides, kittens are cute and cuddly, just ask Jr.

So how does PETA rationalize the name change? In their words,"because few people are aware that fish are actually smart animals with personalities." Oh I know fish have personalities - how do you think Fiesty got his name? But wait, there's more, "For example, they communicate and develop relationships with one another, feel pain when injured (their lips are particularly sensitive, and they use them like we use our fingers), show affection by gently rubbing against other fish, and even grieve when other fish they like die..." Actually, there's some debate at my house as to whether Fiesty grieved when our other fish Golda died...well, it's more like a debate of whether Fiesty murdered Golda, but I don't need to give Scoonie material like this...she'll just run wild with it.

Let's get back to the point. Really PETA? I'm sure you love all the free publicity about this, but REALLY? Leave the Phish alone, afterall, they are an endangered species too! If you don't believe me, look up the term "jam band" and tell me how many you find living in 2009.

Blog Flashback

I've been at this blogging stuff for 18 days now and I think it's time to take a walk down memory lane. That's right, this post is like the TV episode where the main characters sit and reflect on situations that they got into in the past and the TV screen wiggles and shakes and then you see a potpourri of flashbacks from episodes past. The episodes tended to be goofy and I'm pretty sure the producers did it to (a) save on production costs, (b) give the actors a day off, and (c) catch the viewers up on episodes that they missed.

So for all of those who missed it, here's what I've blogged about for the last 18 days:

The all consuming epic talk about the worldwide recession found on Craigslist for an xtreme amount of money. Not as much as you would spend on a stripper who sold healthcare on Craigslist, but maybe as much as Barry and Harry would spend debating on the sound of theme music to get re-elected. But if you could get humans to produce water instead of gas, things would get bigger and better!

So there you have it, my last 18 days in a short potpourri flashback.

Next up, blog optimization. Scoonie's been complaining about my ad set-up - something about ads are obnoxious when you want to read a blog and that's the reason why you are on the blog and you have to scroll past them and they get in the way. However, in my mind, that's what needs to happen if you want people to see them and to get results from placing them there. Not that anyone generally acknowledges them anyway, I've seen the stats - I know what you guys are up to on my site - big brother is always watching. Basically, I've been playing around with the ads and the different types. I currently have four different ad services running on my site...they are - in no particular order - Adsense from Google, Infolinks, Kontera, and Widgetbucks. I am interested in your feedback too - let me know which ones you like and notice and which ones you want to take a figurative pack of explosives to. In the mean time, I will continue to blog and explore ways to optimize my site.