Gone Fishin'

Several co-workers and I were discussing the latest famous deaths in the news recently at lunch today. At first it started out with our amazement that the rule of three had been broken (Ed, Farrah, then Michael, and then, out of the blue, Billy). Then we regressed to the discussions about Michael and some of the bad jokes we'd heard, including ones that he hadn't really died.

I know that Micheal has a very loyal following around the world (and that there are more than a few conspiracy theorists out there as well). I decided to test this notion with a post that simply stated "Michael Jackson is not dead" as the title. I did this right after lunch then we sat back to see who would take the bait.

Less than two hours later, someone from Singapore no less, arrived at my blog via a search for "Michael Jackson Not Dead" on Google's Blog search. We all thought it was rather funny; not all of us have perfect senses of humor.

I just checked my stats and in less than 10 hours from the time I posted it, that one post has drawn another 10 posts. I just modified it to include that fact that Miley and Britney are still OK, thank goodness, but I'm curious to see if that draws any more traffic.

Why am I doing this? Outside of the general perversion, it's an interesting statement about how to add traffic to your site -- though perhaps not the most ethical. One could simply scan through Google Trends site , or countless others, and write a quick snippet (or just a title as in my case) and you'd see traffic soar (a four-fold increase so far for my blog today from normal traffic patterns!). Add in a pay-per-impression advertising plan (instead of the AdSense pay-per-click I have here), and you could make a bit of money.

Just something to divert our minds from a slow day at the office I guess...

Michael Jackson is not dead!

And there are untrue rumors that Miley Cyrus is dead as well. Finally, someone said that Britney Spears is dead too, but I don't believe them. Such silly stuff you find on the Internet these days.

Gotcha! :-)

Pick on someone your own size!

There's something about the mosquitoes in Michigan the past few years. This picture is that of my son's swollen eye caused by a single mosquito bite last year. It was pretty nasty. Both of my son's have had this kind of reaction the past several years to mosquitoes. A single bite will cause their whole hand to swell up almost to the point of them not being able to form a fist. Or a bite on the leg will form a welt as large and puffy as if someone slit open the skin and stuffed an errant golf ball under their skin before closing the wound. It's kind of freaky. Thankfully, nothing life-threatening so far, but freaky nonetheless. In the picture, less than 24 hours after the bite, my son was unable to open his left eye.

Based on anecdotal evidence and conversations with friends and neighbors, I think this is really getting worse. Many others have stated that they too are getting more and more allergic to being bitten. There's a actual condition called Skeeter Syndrome that involves the extreme swelling like my sons are experiencing, but it also involves a fever. I don't recall any of that.

It's interesting that neither my daughter, my wife, nor I get this much extreme swelling, but with my oldest son's allergy to peanuts, that might be some evidence of a slighted immune system that might allow this kinds of condition. My younger son has no diagnosed allergies at this point. With his body reacting so aggressively toward a little mosquito bite...maybe we'll have to get him tested further.

Did I already say that it's just the female mosquito that does the biting? Apparently the males are content to snack on the nectar of juicy fruit... Go figure.

Home Page 2.0

A number of web pages have undergone some updating over the last few years. Cooler, more high-tech graphics. Drag and Drop features. Stir in a little bit of AJAX, some RSS, a bit of tweeting and call it good. Not so for the folks over at advertising agency BooneOakley. Instead, they decided to completely rethink and re-image the corporate web page...AS A YOUTUBE VIDEO!

This is by far the most innovative, think outside the box, attention grabbing thing I've seen in a while.

Literal Videos

Remember watching all of those 80's videos on MTV back when the M stood for Music? Remember how some of the lyrics were a little hard to figure out? Well, wonder no more. Well, OK. Maybe you'll need to keep wondering a little about what the original lyrics were, but the Literal Lyrics versions of those classics make a lot more sense to me. Like this one:



You can find a whole slew (is that a word) of others that are sure to bring back memories by searching for Literal Lyrics at YouTube.

I'm dying...

...but first a little background.

About 6 months ago, my wife got this crazy idea about throwing me a surprise birthday party. She hates surprises herself, but she decided to inflict a little pain on me. So she goes about tracking down and contacting family, co-workers and friends (some of which I've not seen in about 10 years), setting up this elaborate ruse. She's immediately archiving any emails (so that I don’t' accidentally see them on our shared computer). She's using non-sense file names on the documents she saves and putting them in folders (both logical and physically) that I would never look in. She's cutting people off on the phone if I'm around. She's using my Google-ing tricks I've taught her in the past to dig up people when she doesn't even know where they live.

She didn't want to do it in April (the month of my birthday), because I would expect it more then. By having it in June, she could play it off as the kids' party. There were clues, in retrospect, that I should've latched on to, but as I related today to a co-worker who was unable to attend, I didn't have a picture to piece the puzzle together.

• My mother-in-law is up from North Carolina (like she is usually every year or so, either in the summer around the middle and oldest's birthdays, or the fall around the time of my youngest's birthday) – nothing unusual.
• Having a kids' party is fairly normal, though I thought she had sworn off anything big last year.
• Lots of chairs showing up in the garage - no biggie - they were for the kid's party.
• Not needing help with invites, cake, etc - no concern - she likes to be in control of those things and I figured her preparation was enough that it was all under control.
• No cake the morning of the party - explained by the fact that my step-mom was supplying it and would bring it with her when she came
• My oldest got to invite a friend to the party (we were keeping it small). My middle child got to invite a friend to the party, but when he called, my wife told him to tell his friend that he had to be here by 11:15. 11:15? I thought that the party didn't start until 12:30. "That'll give them time to play alone before the party," my wife said. OK, believable.
• My wife's grandparents were in from Florida, and she had convinced a few relatives that they rarely see to come to the party and she wanted it to be a surprise for him. I was supposed to take him out of the house for an hour when he got to the house that morning so that when we came back it would be a surprise that the relatives were already there. OK, I can help with that.
• "No, you don't need to park down at the school," I heard my wife tell my mom. My mom's funny that way sometimes :-)
• "Not sure how we're gonna fit 51 people in the house if it rains" – I never kept track of how many people came to the kids' parties in the past.
• A ham in the fridge and then the oven that I didn't seem to notice. I was busy with other things.
• We spent several weekends before the party getting the outside spruced up and the inside cleaned. – needed to be done anyway, and I think that I was the one pushing the outside more anyway.
• I never saw the invites. She found the invites at the last minute and got them mailed out the same day (or something close to that), so there was no time to show me ahead of time. Plausible. (She did find a blank one to show me a couple of weeks ago to stave off any lingering curiosity she thought might be building.

The morning started with a little rain. Just enough to have us all panicked about what we were going to do if it kept up. Grandpa arrived and I did my duty taking him out for some last minute items from Costco (so his relatives could sneak in ahead of us). She had told everyone to arrive between 10:30 (when I was taking Grandpa away) and 11:15 (since I was supposed to be back at 11:30) or they'd need to wait until 12:00 so that they didn't pull up as I did and ruin the surprise in case I was late.

When we got back and headed up to the house, I tried to let Grandpa in first, but he held the door for me. Not wanting to be too aggressive, I obliged and went in. SURPRISE!!! I looked around and saw a bunch of family sitting on chairs and the couch. Then I kept scanning and saw co-workers, and then the friend from 10 years ago (I think I literally did a double-take!). Wait a minute... As the flashes of paparazzi cameras started lighting up the room, I think it finally set in, that I had been tricked! it was a surprise for ME!

I didn't even realize that it was JUST my party until almost the end of the gathering. With the exception of my co-workers and a few old friends, everyone else would've shown up for the kids' party. I thought the additional friends were just an add-on to the KIDS' party. Now I feel a little bad that I didn't spend more time mingling with everyone because they were ALL there for ME.

It was good to see old friends, and that so many people showed up – for ME! I was truly surprised, and pleased.

As the day went on, I started learning little bits about the planning of this charade. I think other than the final surprise, what shocked me the most was that all three kids kept the secret for a lot longer than I thought possible. My youngest reminded me later (he's not yet 6), that if I ever had any secrets for him to keep, he'd do a great job of it.

I made the comment to my wife last week when she was trying to convince me to go to her reunion this summer with her that I didn't like big crowds of people -- and I don't like being the center of attention, either.

So, back to my dying comment… What I should've said was that I was dying to say "THANKS" to my wife and kids and all who helped prepare for the party, and all of you who were part of the surprise. Thanks, for being part of my party. Thanks for keeping the surprise. Thanks for being there. Thanks for the presents (that you weren't supposed to bring). Thanks for the food. Thanks for being some part of my past 40 years. I hope you'll all be there for some part of the next 40!

PS. If you're missing a container, let us know. We have a few leftovers.

PPS. I have no life-threatening illnesses that I know about at this time :-)

FREE MOVIE SCREENINGS!

A couple of months ago, the family and I visited the Detroit Zoo for Earth Day. We had a blast (as usual), but one of the most interesting things that we got while we were there was a set of passes to a free screening of Disney's Earth. The movie was cool, but used a lot of footage from The Discover Channel's Planet Earth series. Seeing it in a large theater was worth it though.

When we left the movie that night, I made a mental note to look for more free screenings. A quick Google Search later, I had located a couple sites that seemed to be what I was looking for. One of them, Film Metro, seemed to draw my attention for some reason. I setup a free Change Detection alert to watch the Detroit site for new movies as they were added to the screenings list.

A few short days later I got an alert that a new movie had been posted. Too late though. By the time I checked my email and got to the site, all of the passes were reserved. Shucks. Then came the next alert. Darn. Missed that one too. Strike two. People must sit on the refresh button on their computer just waiting for the passes.

Then, on the third email, I found that they had the new Start Trek movie available. I'm not a big Trekie and couldn't make it the night of the screening anyway, but I found a friend at work who was quick enough to snag a pass (admit two). He said it was a great movie, by the way. I asked him about the experience -- I still had not even signed up on the Film Metro site yet, I was just lurking, waiting for the right movie before I committed. He reported no issues. It was very smooth.

Back to lurking for a while... Movies came and went when my wife and I couldn't make the dates. That's one thing that makes it a little hard. The screening are mostly during the week, and there is not often a lot of heads up -- a few days mostly -- before the actual screening.

Last week, The Proposal showed up on the list. Again, until the kids are out of school (this Thursday!), it was hard to get my wife and I out, so I offered it up to my mom and sister. Once again, SOMEONE ELSE enjoyed the movie... :-( They said it was even worth paying to see again :-)

Oh well. If I can't get out to see them (yet), I thought I'd at least share the wealth...

Head on over to the Film Metro site and see if there's a screening that you'd like to see. If you live in the Detroit area, you can go directly to the Film Metro Detroit site. You'll need to check back often or setup an alert or something to catch changes though, because they do go quick...
Happy FREE movie watching!

Get those creative juices flowin'

OK, so you've got this great idea for a business. You've got the business plan nailed. You've got financing secured. You've got employees to help you grow the business. You've got space leased. You've got... NOTHING! Not until you have a logo that will get you noticed and bring in the customers. That's where the Logo Tournament site comes in.

Enter a few details about your business, your customer demographics, your graphic tastes and pony up a mere $250 (or more) and you've got extremely creative people from all over the world at your service to create the perfect logo to make you the next Business Person of the Year!

For all you get, the $250 will seem like nothing, and you'll be rewarded many times over. There are independent artists, small ad agencies, and even graphic design students submitting entries. You get to provide real-time feedback to the creators, rank the entries, and even see other entries provided for other contests by each person submitting an entry for your Logo Contest.

Whether you're in need of a logo for a new business venture, an update of an existing logo, or just need a little creative spark, the first place to start might be to see what others are gaining from the site. Head on over to the Contests page to see details and entries for current contests.

Check out the site, then polish your business plan and go conquer the world!