You’ve seen the dramatic chipmunk, but here’s what you didn’t see!

By the way, I think that’s actually a prairie dog…

Update: The dramatic chipmunk (prairie dog) actually originated from a Japanese show. The fact that I even know this is just really, really sad. God I need a woman.

Tags: chipmunk, dramatic chipmunk, humor, prairie dog, YouTube
Categories: Comic Relief
 
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Some time ago my folks and I decided to celebrate my last birthday by taking a trip to the casinos. We had a coupon for an all you can eat buffet, so I was immediately sold on the idea.

I had never been to a casino before, being the kind of guy who didn’t see the logic in having my money so quickly liberated by a gang of mob-like casino runners, but this time my curiosity won out. The place we were going to was a huge complex consisting of a mall, an indoor stadium, a luxury hotel, and of course, the casino itself. When we walked in I was visually assaulted by bright lights everywhere, in all different shades of shiny colors that thrilled me.

“Wow, the colors, the colors! I gotta take a pic of this!” *Click*

Next thing I knew I was surrounded by three security guards.

“uh….”

“Excuse me sir, you’re not allowed to take pictures here.”

I managed to stutter out an apology, thinking for sure I was now going to get my head bounced off the cement, but they were pretty nice about it, checking my camera to make sure I wasn’t scoping the territory, then finally letting me go with just a warning. I quickly put my camera away and briskly walked to a different section (just in case they were having second thoughts), where I tried my hand at a few slot machines. 5 minutes in I was beginning to realize how much I really hated gambling. I had two coupons worth 20 dollars that I could use to gamble and promptly lost it all in under 45 seconds. After that I was pretty much tapped out, refusing to spend another dime on this accursed place.

It occurred to me though that when you’re not willing to spend money at a casino, there isn’t much else you can do, except maybe stare at the pretty lights some more. I finally gave up and hit the restaurant, where the food was simply excellent, much to my relief. I sampled foods with weird sounding names and polished it all off with a HUGE waffle cone of creamy chocolate ice cream. Yeah yeah, I may be getting up there in years, but I still refuse to grow up.

Despite the vast size of the casino complex, once the eating was done, there really wasn’t much else to do, so not surprisingly I quickly got bored out of my mind. I decided to call it a day and went back to the terminal to wait for my bus to arrive, where I ran into a thick wall of cigarette smoke coming from chain smokers who were also waiting for their buses. I swear, I’ve never seen so many cigars and cigarettes in my life. EVERYBODY was smoking up a storm. I guess for them it was a way of taking their minds off the thousands of dollars they just blew by saying “hit me” one time too many in Blackjack.

Honestly, these gamblers creeped me out. The zombie looks on their faces as they continued to pour coins into slot machines, their horrific reaction to seeing the wheel go just a few numbers past the one they bet on, the wringing of hands for being dealt awful cards in Texas Hold ‘Em, and so on. Maybe I’m weird, but I don’t consider this my idea of fun.

The bus finally came, and I leapt up the stairs with a nod to the driver and a short request:

“Get us the hell outta here.”

The complex soon shrank into the background, almost sinking into the earth as I glanced back one last time and thought to myself: “Never again.”

Tags: all you can eat, apology, birthday, bright lights, buffet, casino, casino complex, casinos, cement, chocolate ice cream, coupons, curiosity, gamble, gambling, logic, luxury hotel, mall, mob, restaurant, runners, second thoughts, security guards, slot machines, stutter
Categories: Lincoln's Personal Log
 
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Occasionally I break out my laptop at home to test a few things on my blog, or if I just want to surf the net while I’m cooking something in the kitchen. Lately though I noticed my wi-fi access wasn’t moving as quick as I’d like. I was using a Linksys router, and my signal was excellent, so I wasn’t sure what the problem was. But since I wasn’t using the laptop very often I didn’t think too much of it. However, one day it finally irritated me enough that I opened up my laptop’s wireless settings to check the signal’s strength. Signal was green and everything was gravy, except it was connected to a neighbor’s wi-fi.

Whoops!

Apparently I’ve been surfing on my neighbor’s wi-fi for the better part of a week, and I hadn’t even realized it until now. My own wi-fi is encrypted, so I should have known something was amiss when my laptop connected without giving me an error message, even though it was preset to connect to open wireless connections at Panera Bread.

Thank goodness I use wireless encryption! I mean I knew it would be relatively easy to connect to a neighbor’s open wireless network, but I had no idea it could be THIS easy. When I checked my settings again, I noticed that there were over 5 wireless networks in range, and only ONE of them was encrypted. Amazing.

Hmmm, wonder if I should take this opportunity to do some snooping around? No, no, that would be wrong.

Tags: blog, encryption, error message, goodness, gravy, internet access, laptop, neighbor, security, whoops, wi fi, wifi, wireless network, wireless networks
Categories: Lincoln's Personal Log
 
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After putting up Google ads on my blog, I noticed scrolling in Firefox seemed to get choppy when the text ads came into view, but when they weren’t scrolling was smooth as usual. Great, another bug I needed to hunt down. I can just forget about getting any sleep this week. Web design, @#$%!

Fortunately though, I got lucky and found out a line in my stylesheet ( background-attachment: fixed; ) turned out to be the culprit. I removed it and presto, the scrolling problem cleared up. My background stayed exactly the same afterwards, so apparently I didn’t even need it there. One of these days I’m gonna get a book on CSS so I can finally figure out what in God’s name I’m putting in my stylesheets. Even now I still can’t get a handle on floats and how they work. But I mean really, float this people. Sheesh.

But anyways, happy to see this irritating bug had quickly been squashed, I surfed back to my blog to double check… and saw an ad for cosmetics staring me right in the face.

What the…? Hellooooo, what happened to relevant ads, Google dudes???

Then it got worse. After refreshing the page a few times, an ad for John McCain’s presidential campaign showed up.

OMG get it off my blog, get it off get it off getitoff!!!! AHHHH!!!!!!!!

I furiously clicked as fast as I could to my Adsense account and read up on how I could filter out some of these ads. Let me tell ya, Google’s Competitive Ad Filter… sux… rocks. You can’t use keywords or even perform a search for ads you’d like to screen. Instead you basically have to check the link properties of a particular ad (since you can’t click on them), and then check out where it links to so you can add the originating site to the filter list. Unfortunately Google’s redirection script turns each link into a 300 mile long streak of cryptic nonsense, so you have to carefully scroll through it until you find the originating URL. This is what I have to go through to keep my blog from advertising lipstick. Good grief, I may as well start subscribing right now to Glamour and Vogue magazines.

Though now that I think about it, my fingernails could use a really good manicure… ohhhhh crap.

Tags: ads, adsense, advertising, blog, bug, competitive ad filter, cosmetics, css, culprit, firefox, God, good grief, google, john mccain, lipstick, nonsense, one of these days, presidential campaign, relevance, rocks, scrolling, sleep, stylesheet, stylesheets, web design
Categories: Blog Fog
 
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For the first time since I started blogging many moons ago, I finally put up Google’s Adsense on my site. This I do, 4 years after its release, with the Internet now completely saturated with these types of ads everywhere you surf, during the worst advertising slump since 2000. I’m brilliant.

Oh well. I’m obviously not going to hold my breath waiting for the money to roll in, but I do think the process of learning how to place these ads on my blog has been a good learning experience for me. Some experts say bloggers should wait until they start drawing significant traffic before they start placing advertisements on their blogs. But because monetizing your blog involves so much more than simply slapping an ad in the header, I think it’s important to learn as much as you can early on, so by the time your site does generate respectable traffic (if it ever does), you’ll have already learned the most important aspects of what makes for successful online advertising, and how you can make it work for you.

Personally, I’m treating this as an experiment to see where it might lead. If the stats show people clicking on the ads despite the low number of traffic I get, that bodes very well for the future. On the other hand, if 6 months goes by without a single clickthrough, it’s either a sign that this particular ship has LONG since sailed, or that I need to try another approach. Regardless of what happens though, the bottom line is I’m never gonna know for sure unless I try. Success is usually a trial and error process, and I’m finding that I can learn a lot more through my mistakes than if I had signed up for a $2,000 seminar that offers little more than the common sense knowledge your mother should have already taught you.

The good news is that I’m venturing into an area where you don’t automatically have to be first to succeed, just one of the guys who makes it all the way to the finish line. Blogging is a marathon more than anything else, and most bloggers eventually either give up or burn out within a relatively short period of time. If blogging is something you think you can do blindfolded with one hand tied behind your back for the next 20 years, then the future definitely bodes well for you. Endurance is the name of the game, and very few people truly have it, especially when it comes to blogging. Even I burned out and stopped blogging altogether for almost a year, and I’m the kind of guy who loves to write.

Even doing what you love though can be a laborious pain at times, but then again, nothing worth having in this world is going to come easy. It’s usually a long and arduous process, but I’m confident those who believe the laborer is truly worthy of his hire will eventually reap the rewards they’ve worked so hard to obtain.

I only hope I’ll be one of them.

Tags: ad streams, adsense, advertisements, advertising, blog, bloggers, blogging, blogs, bottom line, clickthrough, common sense, finish line, google, many moons, marathon, monetization, money, one of the guys, problogging, readers, sense knowledge, slump, traffic, trial and error
Categories: Blog Fog
 
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A few weeks ago I came across a blog dedicated to discussing classic romantic ideas for couples. I really liked the fact that the author (Phil Van Treuren) emphasizes traditional romance as a much needed ingredient to help sustain loving relationships.

As someone who’s lived his entire life as a hopeless romantic, I certainly appreciate those who still prescribe to the virtues of good old fashioned romance, even in today’s love ‘em and leave ‘em world. Currently Phil is promoting his site with a Romantic Ideas Link Contest, so I thought I’d show my appreciation for his blog by joining in as well. Who knows, I might even get a free book out of it… (though I would much rather prefer a woman, of course.)

Tags: blog, contest, dating, ideas, love, romance, romance tracker, traditional, virtues
Categories: Romance and Relationships
 
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