Frenzied Daddy

First, my best chuckle of the day: what’s Bush’s position on Roe vs Wade?
He doesn’t care how people get out of New Orleans.
thanks

Wishease.com is a service that I had set up as a generic wish-list, after someone pointed out that they had about four different online wishlists in addition to a paper wishlist, and no way to keep track of what they had purchased other people from their lists. And I thought it’d be a good place to sharpen my skills with search engine optimization and web design. However, I think the site is, er, dull.

How would you improve the look of this site?

I feel like I’m blogwhoring, because I’m writing about Hilary Duff again; my post about the Lizzie Macguire movie is one of my most-commented posts. And now I’m mentioning her again. Oh, well, C’est La Vie.

Some people apparently think that the relationship between Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes is a publicity stunt; drumming up media attention for their movies. And I suppose this sort of love interest has been happening since movie studios realized the kind of publicity they can get from their stars’ relationships outside the studio.

Do you think that this happens with ‘hate relationships’ too? I’ve been reflecting on the alleged feud between Hilary Duff and Lindsay Lohan. They’re both talented lovely girls who I imagine will be with us for a while, and I can’t help but wonder if this catfight is a way to keep their names in front of us (kind of like this post, natch).

Just got this in the mail, and thought I’d send it to you. Enjoy!

Saturday, September 24th, 10:00-5:00, Recycled Gardens will be lowering prices to ONLY $3.00 per gallon to encourage planting at what is truly THE BEST time of year for gardening. This price is for everything except specially tagged mature trees and shrubs (which always work out to cost LESS than the per gallon price). And, because we’re seriously overstocked, there will be a large Bargain Bin stuffed with plants everybody should own, as well as several unidentified ones to add a little mystery.

Speaking of stuffed… because Fall is our favorite time of year, we’ll also be celebrating with an Oktoberfest party featuring Turtle Island Food’s vegan sausages, sauerkraut, Widmer Brothers ales and all the other traditional trimmings and games–test your stamina at the Stein Holding Contest for a chance to win $50.00! Plus, we’ll have some of the fantastic recycled garden art of several Cracked Pots’ artists for sale too so you can decorate your garden and keep it looking good all year.

So grab your checkbook (NO plastic please) and come on out to join in the FUN at Recycled Gardens!

Here’s something to cheer you up while you’re waiting in line ( Wednesday, Sept 7 post)

Click quickly, I couldn’t make the permalink/archive link work. :S

Dork Tidings has a new meme up; three things that make you happy. In this time and place, that sounds like a mighty good thing. So I’m going to play too.

1. First, my loving, lovely, talented, inspiring wife. She makes me happy every day I draw breath. And my two talented, inspiring, lovely, amazing daughters. And the rest of my family, just so I don’t use up all three of the things talking about my terrific family.
2. Second, when I carry the girls on my arm, for instance Miss K, tucked into my elbow with her legs at my hip and her arms around me. Because of the way I carry them (Miss B did it when she was a toddler too), she wraps one hand around my bicep and the other she braces against my pectoral. Then, because I’m holding her on a slant, she leans into the wind caused by me walking, and smiles while the wind plays with her hair. It reminds me of the “I’m King of the World!!” moment in Titanic.
3. Third, and I’m going to combine these two topics because they’re tied together in my mind as sources of stability in my life, running and writing. Though I haven’t been running lately (for one reason or another), it made me happy when I was. Because I could feel the difference when I had to chase Miss B around the playground, because I felt better about myself, and because I was accomplishing stuff. The same is true for writing; I feel like I’m accomplishing stuff, I feel better about myself, and I don’t feel as alone as I do when I’m not writing.
   Yes, I know that I’m not really alone. But writing breaks down the walls I tend to pull up around myself.

Another example of something I thought of a few months ago, and I missed my window of opportunity.

Who ever heard of a splog? It turns out that “someone” has coined that shortening of “spam blogs.” I s’pose it’s analogous to moblogs. Given that blogs were really high in google recently (they’ve dropped down some) due to the interlinkedness of them, it makes sense that someone would create a totally product-driven weblog. You know, ten posts about “enlarge your mortgage!” and the like.

No freakin’ way. That’s amazing.

Well, this portland wireless review is pretty cool, but it didn’t list the Cedar Hills Crossing connection from the Personal Telco Project. I came down (here) to use their wireless while the girls played at our friend L’s house. Thank you, L!

But I can’t say as I recommend it. I’m sitting at Starbucks®, using the Apple Store network from across the foyer. The PTP connection inside is great, but they need *ahem* more outlets; I’m out of battery juice, it’s too well lit, and I can’t see my screen. Oh well, beggers can’t be choosers.

…updated…

On the advice of our friend R, I’ve moved down the street to the Coffee People across from the Beaverton Fred Meyer. Nice soft cushy leather couch, wireless g, and some sweet tunes.

I’ve been reading on WebProWorld about search engine optimization, and how to achieve higher rankings in search engines. This is important to me because I have a few “irons in the fire” that, frankly, aren’t getting very hot. I was casually looking over some of the posts, letting ideas soak into this walnut sized sponge (complete with holes) I call a brain, and I came to some other consultant’s website via a link in his signature. (Those of you who browse forums know what I mean).

I hit his site, and the first thing I noticed was that he was verbose. I mean, maximum verbosity. Totally spewing out words and phrases and clauses. I don’t do that. As much as I tell people “content is king; you need lots of new, fresh content” to score highly in google- as much as I tell people that content is important to build readership (and really, that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? Building readership?), my consultant site was pretty sparse. Like a content desert.

Another thing he did was have the ‘validation’ code on each page; the World Wide Web Consortium has made HTML parsers available, and you can make sure that your HTML is not “broken.” This is important because, well, user browsers can be forgiving of missing a tag here or a quote there, but in general, you want robots to read it properly. And if you hire someone to build you a house, you don’t want gaps between the sheetrock, do you? No, I didn’t think so. So it’s important to have a professional Web Designer/Programmer with a properly built site. It’s “up to spec.”

So I’ve spent last night and this morning going over Argh Webworks and making sure it validates. And omigod it was embarrassing. But it’s better now. This stuff really is harder than it looks.

Doing this has brought me to a realization. To make myself a better Webdesigner/Programmer, I need to focus on having all my pages validate. The little validator I use with Firefox (it’s an expansion) is good, but the W3 one is better. This’ll help solidify my professional appearance. And speaking of professional appearance; I need to rework that site again (Argh Webworks), because while I dislike black sites with a lot of images, my plain jane white and purple one isn’t good enough. And I need some more action words and nouns. I mean words.