Report: Big boost for blogs in 2004 | CNET News.com

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Report: Big boost for blogs in 2004 | CNET News.com

Googlewhacking?

I have been introduced to a new term this evening, ladies and gentlemen: Googlewhacking.

Hmmm, you ask, "Isn't this a family blog?" Easy, killer... this is a term used to define an instance when two words are entered into Google's search engine, and one single solitare result returns.

It's MUCH HARDER then you would think to actually achieve this. Give it a try when you have a month to spare. Thanks to googlewhacking.com (yes, this is a real site) I found this term: Google Search: gigabit infatuations

The best part about gigabit infatuations is that someone paid to be in their sponsored links section!

This is a Google world we live in, isn't it? 60 minuntes did an article on the recently gone public Google. Their next venture has something to do with a cell phone with a UPC reader so you can bar-scan your favorite items at the Giant Supermarket and Google will tell you if Wegman's has it for cheaper.

What's next?

Ladybug, ladybug!

We had a suprise visit from Mrs. Ladybug a few nights ago. Paige was completely taken with her! There was just one thing she didn't like - when the ladybug crawled between her fingers! It was so much fun to watch her! All pictures here.

Order in the court!

These are from a book called Disorder in the American Courts, and are things people actually said in court, word for word, taken down and now published by court reporters that had the torment of staying calm while these exchanges were actually taking place.

Q: Are you sexually active?
A: No, I just lie there.
________________________________
Q: What is your date of birth?
A: July 15.
Q: What year?
A: Every year.
______________________________________
Q: What gear were you in at the moment of the impact?
A: Gucci sweats and Reeboks.
______________________________________
Q: This myasthenia gravis, does it affect your memory at all?
A: Yes.
Q: And in what ways does it affect your memory?
A: I forget.
Q: You forget? Can you give us an example of something that you've forgotten?
_____________________________________
Q: How old is your son, the one living with you?
A: Thirty-eight or thirty-five, I can't remember which.
Q: How long has he lived with you?
A: Forty-five years.
_____________________________________
Q: What was the first thing your husband said to you when he woke up that
morning?
A: He said, "Where am I, Cathy?"
Q: And why did that upset you?
A: My name is Susan.
______________________________________
Q: Do you know if your daughter has ever been involved in voodoo or the occult?
A: We both do.
Q: Voodoo?
A: We do.
Q: You do?
A: Yes, voodoo.
______________________________________
Q: Now doctor, isn't it true that when a person dies in his sleep, he
doesn't know about it until the next morning?
A: Did you actually pass the bar exam?
___________________________________
Q: The youngest son, the twenty-year-old, how old is he?
_____________________________________
Q: Were you present when your picture was taken?
______________________________________
Q: So the date of conception (of the baby) was August 8th?
A: Yes.
Q: And what were you doing at that time?
______________________________________
Q: She had three children, right?
A: Yes.
Q: How many were boys?
A: None.
Q: Were there any girls?
______________________________________
Q: How was your first marriage terminated?
A: By death.
Q: And by whose death was it terminated?
______________________________________
Q: Can you describe the individual?
A: He was about medium height and had a beard.
Q: Was this a male, or a female?
______________________________________
Q: Is your appearance here this morning pursuant to a deposition notice
which I sent to your attorney?
A: No, this is how I dress when I go to work.
______________________________________
Q: Doctor, how many autopsies have you performed on dead people?
A: All my autopsies are performed on dead people.
______________________________________
Q: ALL your responses MUST be oral, OK? What school did you go to?
A: Oral.
______________________________________
Q: Do you recall the time that you examined the body?
A: The autopsy started around 8:30 p.m.
Q: And Mr. Dennington was dead at the time?
A: No, he was sitting on the table wondering why I was doing an autopsy.
______________________________________
Q: Are you qualified to give a urine sample?
______________________________________
Q: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse?
A: No.
Q: Did you check for blood pressure?
A: No.
Q: Did you check for breathing?
A: No.
Q: So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy?
A: No.
Q: How can you be so sure, Doctor?
A: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.
Q: But could the patient have still been alive, nevertheless?
A: Yes, it is possible that he could have been alive and practicing law somewhere

One Billion Pixel Image

This is a stitched-together image of Bryce Point in Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah. It consists of 196 separate photographs taken with a 6 megapixel digital camera, and then stitched together into one seamless composite.

The final image is 40,784 x 26,800 pixels in size, and contains about 1.09 billion pixels...a little more than one gigapixel.

This image is roughly 100 times sharper then human eyes with 20/20 vision see naturally. If it were printed out, it would be 11 feet wide, or 12 pieces of paper printed landscape with no margins.

Here is a strip of the image. It is only an inch tall, but look at how wide it is!

Here is the site I saw it on...

A Central Park Birthday Celebration in Winter

A wonderful birthday surprise for Mom's (hand over mouth & mumbling) birthday! We were blessed with snow falling the moment she arrived! All pictures are here. We love you Mamma San.

All pictures here.

Christmas In Pennsylvania

Santa stopped by alright! Everyone was so generous and thoughtful with their gifts.

Pictures Here.

PENNDOT Victory Junction/NASCAR Specialty Plates

PA is jumping on the NASCAR bandwagon with newly released license plates.

Here is an example of one.

The philoranthopic part of all this is that "A portion of the Victory Junction/NASCAR specialty plate fees will go to Victory Junction."

THIS IS THE BEST EVER:

I swear to god this is question and answer posted on the PA DOT website:

"If my driver is no longer racing, is my plate still valid?"

Yes.

You gotta love rednecks!

NASCAR Specialty Plates

Some new pictures...

All Pictures Here.

Will Santa and his 8 reindeer visit your house this Christmas?

Not likely. And for the five specific reasons I have listed below.

1. No known species of reindeer can fly. BUT there are 300,000 species of living organisms yet to be classified, and while most of these are insects and germs, this does not COMPLETELY rule out flying reindeer which only Santa has ever seen.

2. There are 2 billion children (persons under 1 in the world. BUT since Santa doesn't (appear) to handle the Muslim, Hindu, Jewish and Buddhist children, that reduces the workload to to 15% of the total - 378 million according to Population Reference Bureau. At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that's 91.8 million homes. One presumes there's at least one good child in each.

3. Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west (which seems logical). This works out to 822.6 visits per second. This is to say that for each Christian household with good children, Santa has 1/1000th of a second to park, hop out of the sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left, get back up the chimney, get back into the sleigh and move on to the next house. Assuming that each of these 91.8 million stops are evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false but for the purposes of our calculations we will accept), we are now talking about .78 miles per household, a total trip of 75-1/2 million miles, not counting stops to do what most of us must do at least once every 31 hours, plus feeding and etc. This means that Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second, 3,000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man- made vehicle on earth, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a pokey 27.4 miles per second - a conventional reindeer can run, tops, 15 miles per hour.

4.The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium-sized Lego set (2 pounds), the sleigh is carrying 321,300 tons, not counting Santa, who is invariably described as overweight. On land, conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that "flying reindeer" (see point #1) could pull TEN TIMES the normal amount, we cannot do the job with eight, or even nine. We need 214,200 reindeer. This increases the payload - not even counting the weight of the sleigh - to 353,430 tons. Again, for comparison - this is four times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth.

5. 353,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance - this will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as space crafts reentering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer will absorb 14.3 QUINTILLION joules of energy. Per second. Each. In short, they will burst into flame almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them, and create deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team will be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second. Santa, meanwhile, will be subjected to centrifugal forces 17,500.06 times greater than gravity. A 250-pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of his sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force.

This WAS Jeopardy!

Tonight was the end. Ken Jennings lost on his 75th appearance on the popular ABC gameshow. But not before he scooped up more then $2.5 million in winnings.

He averaged more then $30,000 per show, but lost to a real estate broker who looked like she just got out of a 1987 movie. Two miscues in the double jeopardy round by Ken where he was incorrect in giving Alex the correct question started his crash and burn.

Then this final jeopardy question but the proverbial nail in the coffin.



Who knew the question was H&R Block? (besides the girl from Threes Company?)

Of course he went out in style....

Thanskgiving

A very family Thanksgiving.

All pictures here.

Duke Gardens

Duke Gardens, Hillsborough NJ

The whole family took a very nice trip to the gardens today. Thanks Mom for an amazing brunch and to Scott for showing up.

My favorite part was our guide. She was quite high on herself and a little bit.... well a lot a bit annoying. And I'm not just saying this becuase she yelled at me either!

"Sir, sir - can you come in here please. You NEED to keep up with us, PLEASE stay with the group."

My other favorite part was the she said that she had a great niece also named Paige. Her nice was named after her mother whose name was Pearl. You do that math.

Oh well, it was still a great time, and thanks to Beth too for getting the tickets.

All pictures here.

Holiday Gift Ideas

I have been working night and day to get the official "Holiday Gift Guide" up and running! There are many categories to help you pick that perfect gift (right from your chair).

Check it out at http://www.mynextclick.com/giftideas.html!

More Pictures

The "lost Halloween" photos. Click the picture to see all!

30 Years Old

Yup, 30. I have been 30 since April, but we are headed to Matt Davey's house in a few hours for his suprise 30th birthday party.

(I hope he doesn't read the blog between now and then!)

Below is a little something that I worked on for his present.


-----------------------------------------------------------

30 Years Old Isn't A Big Deal!

...or is it?

It takes 30 years:

For a car to be defined as a "classic“
For falling snow to become spring water
For 1,560 Mondays to be finally over
For nylon to decompose
For a Green Turtle to reach sexual maturity
For society to embrace a new innovation
For all the water in the Red Sea to be refreshed
For 360 months to pass
For a saguaro cactus to flower and produce fruit
For a single molecule to reach the stratosphere from the surface of earth
For the Whitebark Pine to produce its first cone
For your mortgage to be paid off
For 10,950 days to pass
For a plastic bottle to biodegrade
For an olive tree to reach maturity
To turn $15,000 into a $1,000,000 in the stock market at 15% return
For Saturn to make one complete rotation around the sun
For 262,800 hours to pass
Before a coconut tree bears its first fruit
For a barrel cactus to grow 2 feet
For a forest to recover after a fire
For 15,768,000 seconds to tick off
For concrete to completely cure
For toilet paper to decompose at 13,000 feet
To form one inch of topsoil
For a uranium atom to lose 1/2 of it's radioactivity

And remember: You are not 30, you are $29.95 plus tax.

*all facts courtesy of google. Click here to see the query.

October/Halloween Pics

Paige at the park in the sand box.

Click the picture or the headline to see all pictures.

They said it flurried last night, but we are unable to verify.

Thanks to Scottie, the attic stairs are installed!!!

See you all soon for Thanksgiving.

Paige at Lowes

Paige at Lowes. Kurt Busch will still win!!!!!!!!!

Give me all your taxes!

A man wearing a George W. Bush mask robs a bank near York, PA. Must be a democrat! Story here

How to spot a *really* rich guy.

Click here