G3

Some poor Canadian named Mike Rowe decided to put out a shingle for website design. His domain name is MikeRoweSoft.com. Makes sense.

Somebody in Redmond didn’t like this, for some reason. The Microsoft Lawyers are after Mike Rowe for copyright infringement.

I never knew copyrights covered homonyms. This should serve as fair warning to people with similarly litiginous names…

- Red ‘Hat’ Lennox
- ‘Sonny’ Mike Rose Istems
- Paul M. Pilot
- Sergeo Protector
- Saul Airus

I saw Cheaper by the Dozen last night, at the request of my wife.

For fans of the book or the 1950 movie, note the following commonalities:

1) They have the same title.
2) There are 12 kids.

Other than that, this new offering by Steve Martin has nothing to do with the original book or plot.

I found the movie to be mild family entertainment with very little compelling content. There was little conflict that really felt genuine, and the acting seemed at times to be reduced to “now it’s time for my line.” Bonny Hunt played the most genuine character in the cast, in direct opposition to Hillary Duff, who seemed to be posing for Teen Beat more than actually, you know, like, acting.

While it was nice to have a “safe” movie to take my son to, what it lacked in objectionable material it also lacked in substance. The biggest dramatic moments centered around a frog. No, really.

On a scale of 1 to 10, I give it a C.

Here’s a prototype for a blogazine format I’ve been envisioning for the site:

Blogazine Layout Concept

Note that the prototype is IE-friendly only. Mozilla-compliance will come later.

I’d like your feedback on the main section approach. (Ignore the right-hand column stuff, since it isn’t in place for this layout. Assume it’ll be there in the real thing.)

This account came from Sgt. Steve Kafton, who is currently serving in Iraq. I posted another story of his in early January, but this event actually preceeded that one.

An excerpt:

“Deeper into the neighborhood the whole scene began to remind me too much of the movie “Blackhawk Down”. I caught fleeting glimpses of pick-up trucks paralleling us two blocks over and saw shadowy figures dashing furtively through narrow alleyways. Was my imagination playing with me or were we in for trouble? I strained to listen over the noise of the truck for the “pop, pop, pop” of automatic rifle fire that would most likely be the first clue we were under attack. I prayed it would not be a large ka-boom from a rocket propelled grenade that was our first clue.”
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Well, I got tired of seeing the niftier version of the site only on some semi-hidden page. So, I’ve gone and overwritten the default pages with the stuff I have so far. I decided to do this today since I was at a “stop here before you go and really bork it up” milestone.

I’ve modified the main, category-archive, date-based-archive, indvidual-entry-archive, and comments pages to use the new schtuff.

Some things I’ve done (most of which aren’t really very visible) are:
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Your brain can forget the unpleasant stuff : here

Stay out of the smog….it can kill your brain.

Oh yah…and Sony stuff. Sony packs 45 hours of music on a mini-disk.

Sauron lives, and he does toy marketing. From the Eye that brought you orcs and ringwraiths, try some of these middle-earthy products:

- The most respected wizard character ever written in fantasy literature is now immortalized with a oversized, spring-loaded noggin: Gandalf as a Bobble Head. Perfect next to the Taco Bell dog in the back window of your ‘87 Ford Escort hatchback.

- Why use “plush” just for cuddly teddy bears when you can use it in the recreation of a gangly, maniacal, schitzophrenic murderer? Get thee a Talking Gollum Plush Doll. I’m sure the kiddies will sleep so much better at night with this thing under their pillow.

- But for the coup-de-grace of creepy toys, there can be nothing so horrifying as the Lord of the Rings Barbie and Ken set.

The very effort of containing Barbie and Tolkien in the same thought… I had to take three Legolas Elven Action Migraine Relief Tablets to stave off the ensuing headache.

Word on the streets in Denmark is that the Extend-O-Happiness DVD version of Lord of the Rings: Return of the King will be a whopping 4 hours and 15 minutes:

Possible running time for Lord of the Rings: Return of the King Extended Edition DVD

At least with a DVD you can pause it to recycle that 64oz coke you drank. Not to mention refills on popcorn.

Well, I reached the first milestone in the quest for a more interoperable website this weekend. I got a test version of the main page validating as HTML 4.01 Strict compliant, as well as getting the CSS to validate as well. You can check for yourself down near the bottom of the links area.

One issue I’m running into is the content of blog entries sometimes not validating. So, in order to get around that I may be installing a Movable Type plugin called MTValidate that should allow the entry author to see any validation issues before his post is saved. We’ll see how that goes. I also may install the MTMacro plugin because I’m tired of typing in <acronym title=”whatever“>W</acronym> all over the place.

Anyhoo, I’m getting there! :-p

This was emailed to me by a friend of our family. Their son-in-law is a MP sergeant in Iraq, and he sent this story of how God used what seemed to be a series of irritating problems to keep him alive. Here’s an excerpt…

“As their shrinking silhouettes merged with the edge of the neighborhood, a large, dirty mushroom cloud erupted from the earth and rose skyward. 15 seconds later the blast wave reached us and rumbled the ground as it passed. Someone had just detonated a large IED (improvised explosive devise) on the convoy that passed us.”

The story in full…
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