You may not remember that song from Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure "Break Away" by Big Pig on the Bonk album.  That is ok as it has nothing to do with this article.  ;0

This eleven year old kid shot a wild hog that weighed in at over 1,000 pounds and measured more than 9 feet.

That's a Big Pig!

Check out this picture from the AP

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Its an age old axiom. 

Sooner or later we all have to learn not to play with crap.

I'm not talking about stuff, or junk or things.  I'm talking about crap, feces, poop and shiite.

Sometimes we even need reminders of this from time to time.

My son apparently need a reminder of this today.  He just recently turned 9 years old.  He and his younger sister were arguing over (If you are a Hindu, you may not want to read any further) who could play with the fly swatter.

My son had the upper hand and had control over the fly swatter.  My five year old daughter was very jealous of his possession and wanted the flyswatter her self.

At first, I didn't pay attention to their latest argument.  Then I looked up and noticed that my son was carrying around the fly swatter and using it to scratch his bare back. Essentially rubbing what my great grandmother would refer to as that 'dirty fly swatter' all over himself.  Playing with the end of it, the swatting end with his bare hands even.

My great grandmother probably did a double somersault in her grave.

I had to explain to him the same lesson that she taught me years ago.  Flies are killed by fly swatters.  Flies like to crawl and eat crap.  When you kill a fly with a fly swatter, you get fly guts and fly parts all over the swatter and if you rub the swatter on your back and hands then the crap and guts can transfer.

My great grandmother never referred to it as transference; CSI wasn't on back then.  But she definitely understood the principle and now, at least temporarily, my son and daughter unerstand it too!

For decades people have been imagining what it would be like to video conference.  The internet and later faster broadband made it possible and useful respectively speeking.

There are multiple cheap to free ways to use video conferencing today from skype to Yahoo messenger, but if you are a business user and you want to get exceptional quality then you have to pony up some money.  Now there are options like Webex that run several hundred dollars a month.

Then there is Megameeting that offers up video conferencing for about $75 a month.

Another couple years and video conferencing might just become the norm, then again people have been saying that since shortly after they started dreaming about it in the first place several decades ago.

Since February, my son's latest soccer season has been going full steam ahead. Unfortunately, the soccer season left us parents woefully unprepared for the end of seasons parents vs kids game.

After treking out to game after game and practice after practice carrying food, drink, and folding chairs, we got a lot of practice at sitting there and watching.

We didn't get any practice at running full out up and down the field. lol

We played 90 minutes last thursday and my wife and I were both pretty worn out at the end of the game.

Fortunately, we got to rest the next day.

My kids are extremely lucky.  They didn't get my circulation or my lack of circulation.

It takes quite a bit for my kids to get cold.  None of them like to sleep with much more than a sheet and pajamas. 

When we had our first child we spent quite a bit of money on kids bedding, but for us it all went to waste.  They never use it.  If you cover them up, they kick off the covers in their sleep.

My wife and I get cold for no reason at all.  Its part of the reason why we moved to South Florida a few years back.  My kids apparently are tougher than the both of us put together.  I guess that is some strange type of synergy.

I was reading on Google News last week that scientists have discovered that mice are capable of regenerating hair, white hair, when they slice a chunk of skin and fur away from the mouse.

The wound heals and instead of leaving just a scar it eventually regenerates hair over the scar.  The hair has no pigment and therefore is white.

I'm sure there is going to be a day when I will need some of my hair replaced.

I don't think that I really want to have legions of mice suffer lesions in their skin so that I can defy aging and balding.

I might opt for a transplant of my own hair from some hair  transplant doctor such as Dr. Larry Shapiro or hopefully something even better might be discovered without having to torture living creatures.

I travelled on many business trips, vacations and short road trips that took me away from home and left my dog at home alone without me.

This afternoon I experienced turn-about when my dog left me to go on a road trip.

She was heading out of town for a couple days with the kids.  She also planned on taking 2 of our 3 dogs.  She had the dogs loaded up in the car and my dog, Bleu a beagle, snuck out of the house and jumped into my wife's van.

She wouldn't come to me and wouldn't come out of the van, so my wife took her too.

Now my dog does like me.  She gets pretty much whatever she wants, good non-poisoned dog food, the latest in dog supplies. She even gets to clean up the table scraps at liberty after my baby is done eating.

Truth be told even though she gets sick 1 out of 4 times on a road trip, she likes to ride in the car possibly better than she likes hanging out at home.  :)

I've been a member of classmates.com for several years.  (I rotate on and off every few years as a paid member.)

They advertise pretty heavily and I always see their ads with this girl wearing glasses.

She looks just like a girl that I went to grade school with that became the grade school valedictorian (did I spell that right?). :)

I've never seen the guy before in that picture, and I'm pretty sure she is not the same person.  The resemblance is spooky.

Regardless, I've found several dozen people over the years through classmates.com.  Its definitely been a good service for me.  When I left high school and my hometown, I joined the military and lost track of quite a few people from the area.

I have been able to connect with some of theme through classmates. 

Similarly, when I was in the military I made a number of great friends, but being young and getting shipped off regularly I rapidly lost track of many of my military friends (just before the dawn of email).  I've caught up with several of them through classmates as well.  I've even found some old coworkers long after the work email addresses stopped working.

This is just one of those Web 1.0 servies that provides a good enough purpose to be good and useful. 

I was born in the United States and that means that I have something built into my DNA that makes the experience of owning a car and driving anywhere and everywhere whenever I like something like an inalliable right.  Something the founders of the US might have considered adding to the Bill of Rights if they had had the foresight to predict the invention of the automobile.

The weird thing is that for the last year (about 10 months so far) I have been car free for the first time in my life since I was 14.  I bought a car before I was old enough to drive.  Actually, my father bought a car for me.  It was an old broken down Mustang II and the general idea was that I would work on the car for a year or two before I was old enough to drive.

I'd fix it up and it would be ready to be my first car.

That didn't work out so well, and its not a story for me to dive into tonight, but my point is that I have had a car for about the last 20 years or so.  Going without a car has been more difficult than going without cigarettes when I stopped smoking 10-15 years ago.

These days, I don't trek around just to go somewhere.  I make a number of connections online which keeps me connected. 

I do find the need to consider various alternatives when I need something.  Most notably when I'm working on the house or yard and need to move something big. 

But even that doesn't lend itself to a car, its more of a job for a reliable truck or something.

I do not know how long I might go without a car or vehicle in general.  I suspect that I might buy a cheap truck for some of those deliveries that I need every now and then.  It almost doesn't make sense to buy a truck so that I can make a couple trips to Home Depot or Lowes a couple times a month.

Instead of carpooling maybe I need a truck sharing plan.  Some type of local neighborhood sharing of a truck.  Maybe include a trailer too and a full host of truck accessories so that we would always have what we need with the neighborhood truckster.

I have always been highly tuned into efficiency in both work and life.  I got rid of my car last year because it was just sitting there.  It was a complete waste of resources and very inefficient so I sold it off at a marginal profit.  I did save money in insurance and further depreciation.  I gained a bay in my garage and all in all I've kicked the habit.

But I now recognize that people cannot all kick their car habits cold turkey at the same time.  We need to find some way to allocate our needs a bit and share the resources at hand as it relates to cars. 

I think we need to do this whether or not gas hits $5 a gallon this year.  I think we need to do it regardless of whether or not there are vast new oil reserves that have not been previously tapped in the world.  I think we need to do it even if the carbon realeased from petroleum is turning the planet into a greenhouse.

I think we need to do it simply for greater efficiency.

As I moved into my mid thirties, I must have turned into an adult somehow.

I have always been responsible, even when I was a teenager and doing some pretty irresponsible things.  I served in the military for several years, worked my way through college while starting a family, a business and maintaining a full time job.

I later started a new career in finance and went to law school for my Master's degree.

Somewhere along the way I stopped going to clubs and raves and started spending less of my time and money on music and more on landscaping and remodelling.  I do not know where nor how it happened, it just kind of happened.

I'm still a pretty good dancer, but I have additional outlets for my creativity maybe.  I definitely enjoy landscaping quite a bit.  I wouldn't call myself a gardener, but there are definitely areas where landscaping and gardening meet.  I'm more of a landscaper and less of a gardener (of the variety that grows food).  Personally, I prefer growing trees, bushes, shrubs and I definitely like rocks.

Ok, so you can't grow a rock, but I'm from Illinois and the state is basically a remnant of the Ancient Mississippi river, which means it has river rocks everywhere.  I grew up playing in the hills and creeks and there's just something balancing about trees and rocks for me. 

Well anyway, among other things I signed up for a special deal from Home Depot this month.  They are offering a free membership into their garden club through the end of May (runs out 5/31 I believe).  You can join for free and get access to gardening tips, and more via email or through snail mail.  I don't pay attention to a lot of snail mail advertising, but I do read the Home Depot flyers almost religiously.  Maybe that is where the similarities between dancing and landscaping start to meet for me.  Something about exerting yourself artistically until you start to sweat your rear off, while creating something beautiful . . .  :)

I am doing everything I can to stay absolutely focused this month.  I have many different things to do from starting up a business to maintaining my websites and my publications completing renovations on my existing home and moving to a new home in North Carolina.

On top of that I'm going to take a quick trip to Illinois to visit my new nephew born late last month and see my family.  I recently found some very interesting information about family history and so going to do a little bit of genealogy research as well.  I received a phone call out of the blue three or four nights ago that provided me with some information that is helping me rapidly track a great deal of information about my ancestors.

I've been collecting information on my genealogy for many years now and I have several other relatives of the vast amount of research on different branches of the family tree.  This week I've managed to identify several new branches that no one has yet found and I'm filling in a number of gaps essentially putting the jigsaw pieces together and I'm starting to get very large big picture view of my genealogy.  So as I contemplate nc waterfront property possibilities, I am also going to be reflecting that many of my ancestors moved away from the exact area that I am moving towards in just a few weeks.

In fact I have ancestors that lived all up and down the East Coast of the United States.  By 13th great-grandfather came across the ocean on the Mayflower along with my 13th great grand uncle.  I also have a very distant cousin named Button Gwinnett.  He was a representative from the state of Georgia signed the Declaration of Independence and I today live in the county named after him, Gwinnett County.

Last night I was experimenting with blogging in between coats of paint.

1. I dismantled my bathroolm.
2. Wrote a couple articles.
3. Taped off the room.
4. Responded to some forums.
5. Painted the middle sections of the room 1^st coat.
6. Wrote an article
7. Edged the room
8. Wrote another article
9. Did the second coats for the middle and edges
10. Ate too many gudge covered graham cracker cookies
11. Painted a third coat
12. Answered some email
13. Painted a fourth coat
14. Wrote an article, answered an email and updated a genealogy project I started this week. (I’m apparently related to Geoffrey Chaucer and Alexander Dumas much to my delight.)
15. Cleaned up the paint brushes and the rollers, walked the dog and went to bed.

A couple nights before, I was removing the linoleum and stripping the floor while coding a database.  I haven't quite figured out how to blog while I do yard work like mowing the grass and pruning the trees and shrubs but that will happen one of these days.

Later this weekend I will paint the room with the actual paint (the above part was the primer, covering up some nasty black and white faux pattern the previous home owners teenager had created).  Once the paint is done, I'll put the new trim up, put the toilet back together, put in a new sink, and a new medicine cabinet along with some under cabinet lighting.

Once all that is done, its time to finish the ceramic tiling.  This bathroom is in the basement and I laid ceramic tile a year ago covering about 500 square feet.  I never got the bathroom finished so I just have about 20 square feet of bathroom to tile and it will be finished.

Last week and my wife and I watched a series of home improvement in real estate shows on one of those cable channels dedicated to that type of thing. We typically watch the shows to help us get motivated to improve our own house.

I was surprised to see that one of the shows focused on a couple trying to purchase real estate and Tuscany, Italy. The couple and their children live in Italy today and they were looking to find something out of the city with a little bit more space for their kids.

That sounds pretty typical however and the area that they were hoping to buy new construction is not allowed. Old buildings and farm structures dating back several hundred years a revitalized on the inside to keep the area's rustic charm. Prices for real estate in the area are much different than what you'd find in the United States where there is still a significant amount of real estate that is bent on claims. In Europe the real estate or the landscape even has been claimed her own for hundreds of years and is not often subdivided up into new construction.

The show is very entertaining but it was even more entertaining from the perspective of understanding how their search was working under circumstances that would seem extraordinary in the US. That said you can definitely understand what they were looking for as the rustic charm of an area surrounded by hills and small mountains bordering the Alps plus all large selection of Vineyards and winery's definitely make the area very appealing for people looking for Tuscany Villas.

I may not be purchasing a Tuscany Villa myself anytime the next five years, however I wouldn't mind visiting the area sometime very soon and I could definitely envision myself staying there for an extended period.  Tuscany definitely has a significant amount charm.

We regularly take short trips to a relative's house Two to Three hours away. We rarely take luggage when we take these trips.

Why not?

We have a minivan. Our minivan typically serves as our luggage. We load the kids clothes into a couple laundry baskets, typically the closer folded straight out of the dryer they sit in the laundry basket naked pack straight in the van. And we thrown another laundry basket of folded clothes for ourselves.

The handy thing about using this methodology, is as a clothes get dirty, we watch them at a relative's house, drive them, resold them and put them back in the laundry basket ready to go home and get put away in a drawer.

Sure we could do this with some Samsonite luggage or something like that, but for short trips where you're only away from home for a couple of days this is pretty handy.

Plus we're just going to a relative's house and you don't have to worry about getting embarrassed carting a luggage carrier through a hotel lobby with all your clothes and laundry baskets!

So after years of collecting lots of furniture some of it from junk shops and antique stores and what have you, we are preparing to move and so we have to go reverse junking.

Reverse junking is the act of getting rid of the junk by selling them back to junk stores and antique stores and what have you.  Many people make a good living these days selling their stuff to what have you no one really knows where what have you learned all of their money, but what have you is rapidly becoming one of the largest components of financial liquidity in the global market place.

It's estimated that what have you accounts for $2.3 trillion of the US national debt today.  That's a lot of debt and what have you and that debt was used to purchase a lot of different things from tanks and planes and pork barrel spending. 

The result is or might have gone by some new home furniture from the couch to the tables to dust and what have you.

This week America is mourning yet another tragedy.  Across the country there have been tornadoes and floods and wildfires raging out of control.  Many people have died or been injured, but America had salt rubbed in the wound when they watched American Idol this week.

Many people feel that disco died in the early 80s, but it wasn't until 2007 when American Idol came along and murdered the Bee Gees.  Barry Gibb didn't put up much of a fight.  He even attempted to help his tormentors but in the end they murdered his songs and music that he and his brothers created over several decades.

Sanjaya may have been the worst of the bunch, but the bunch is overall pretty terrible itself.  In many ways it's extremely unfortunate that the vote for the worst project didn't succeed in taking Sanjaya to the final round.  If that had happened it's possible that American Idol itself could've been put out of its misery and suffering across America would end this year.

As it is American Idol has become a sick and twisted version of groundhog's Day repetitively torturing great musicians and songwriters and the ears of Americans several nights a week.  Many people feel that Simon Cowell provides accurate advice even though it might be a little harsh.  The truth is his advice is nowhere near accurate.  If he had good advice to provide he would shut the show down and either never started again or least attempt a do over with a fresh batch of contestants that hopefully have a little bit of talent and possibly even a little bit of depth.

If there is one positive thing that American Idol is doing, it's possibly helping people to see that watching TV and especially talent competitions is a complete waste of time.  There's nothing entertaining about it when there is no actual talent on the competition.  This is allowing people to consider many other options of entertainment from getting outside in doing so exercise, to going to the movies, writing to the beach, or picking up some baseball tickets and spending the afternoon at the ballpark.  (Provided some former American title contest in doesn't show up to sing 'Take me out to the ballgame' or the Star-Spangled Banner!  For my money I'd rather listen to Roseanne sing and have to experience additional Idol moments.)

Last winter I heard about a concept that was some what new to me called the CO2 foot print.  Its kind of a buzz word, but basically represents the amount of CO2 that a person or family or business generates.  CO2 or carbon dioxide (the di means 2 parts oxygen) is a green house gas, named because plants need this to produce oxygen.  When there are not enough plants like trees to consume this CO2 that we create then the planet starts to fill up with un-breathable CO2 and the planet heats up and before you know it we are all living on a Venus like planet.

So I heard about this buzz word last winter when Al Gore was revealed to have a pretty large CO2 foot print in his big mansion of a house.  He has been working to retro fit his home with energy saving devices and other green friendly concepts.

This week as the Queen of England hopped across the pond for the 400th aniversary of the Jamestown settlement (she was here 50 years ago also for the 350th aniversary), the queen indicated that she would be working to offset the CO2 foot print of her trip.  Meaning she would have some trees planted to make up for all the fuel burned and other things.

I was reading through Skeet's blog, a fairly regular read for me, and came across her article mentioning her close line and how this is one way that she uses to save energy.  She also mentioned an article she came across detailing a couple dozen or so ways for the average person to either save energy or reduce their CO2 foot print by offsetting their energy expenditures.

Now, as I read that I thought of some ways that were not covered that can also help.

1. Do not mow your grass.  Cutting grass pollutes the air, releasing gas from the cut blades into the air (think of that cut grass smell, that's actually pollution!)
2. Cut your grass less. The more you cut your grass the faster it grows and the more it appears to need a another cut.
3. Compost yard and food waste.  This doesn't save the CO2 foot print soo much but it does reduce the amount of stuff filling up the land fill.  It does save CO2 in that you do not have to buy fertilizer, which is a trip to the store which burns gas creating CO2.
4. Burn dead wood.  When trees fall down in your yard or property, burn it in a wood burning stove to heat your home in the winter, offsetting the electricity or gas that you would normally consume. (I'm not saying to cut down live trees, but use the dead ones.)  Plus this helps keep things picked up reducing the potential for wild fires to grow out of control.
5. Turn off your computer at night
6. Unplug appliances when you are not using them.
7. Put in solar powered lights outside or put lights with auto switches for movement and light sensors.
8. Get a motorcycle.  There's only one of you and driving a car, even a small one capable of holding 4-8 people just to commute your lonesome is very wasteful.  I'm not saying you should get a Harley Fatboy, get something small and nimble and safe.  My motorcycle gets 60-70 mpg and doesn't waste energy or create more congestion.
9. Work from home!  Stop making excuses and stop accepting them from your employer.  Work from home.

I have three stacks for my mail.  One stack goes to bills, one pile goes in the fire place and the other pile goes in a stack of interesting ideas, products, services or companies that I either might want to do business with or possibly write about.  Our sponsor Martin Worldwide has the business intelligence to help an advertiser avoid the second pile and make it into the third, which eventually might enable them to make it to the first.

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A couple slipped under the radar for me towards the end of last month and I was reviewing some work that I've done a site called top-5-Hosting.com.  I ran a contest there and from my name One and I owed her a few different articles about her site My Single Mom Life.

She wrote a couple very good reviews about her hosting service experience and we publish them in top-5-Hosting.com.  One of those very unique and she was talking about her hosting service in Hong Kong.

Regardless I needed to get this article out and I wanted to wish Kat the best issue appears to go to a Tool concert this month, which makes me rather envious . . .

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As the real estate market and mortgage market start to show signs of extremely serious weakness, now is a good time to take advantage of deals where you can stay in a condo and so staying at a hotel. The condo market is in serious trouble as well and there is a large supply of condos that are vacant.

That is inspiring a number of people to turn towards marketplaces that allow them to lease out their condos and many people are taking advantage of this option that can save them a great deal of money compared to getting Vacation Rentals from a hotel chain.

I've been working on a new Project conceptually for several months now.  Later this summer are hoping to launch a new entertainment company based at viralgrapevine.com. 

I hatched the concept for this company last fall after returning from the Podcast and Portable Media Expo in Ontario California.  This winter and this spring I launched additional companies that will eventually support this company.  I've basically been putting together the puzzle pieces for several months now and I'm getting excited to be able to start in on the main portion of this jigsaw.

I dropped off a slightly peculiar story over at the site this evening in case you'd like to get a small flavor of the direction of the future site.  This is kind of like smelling a soup that's been on slow simmer all day long tempting your taste buds just a bit, but definitely not the real thing nor the entire thing by a long shot.

Read Snake Oil Sales lady Got us Again - Catching a Lubed up Snake

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Plus they are also featuring more information about the details that you receive with your trip packages. Of course they specialize in providing all inclusive trip quotes with all of the travel cost information totaled up into one price so that once you land in country you do not need to spend additional money unless you choose to pick up trinkets or gifts or something. They are featuring aruba all inclusive vacation this month and given the controversy last year, Aruba is probably offering some great deals.

Today I was doing a little bit of multitasking. I was outside burning some brush that I turned off the trees couple weeks ago. It's been sitting on the ground for a couple weeks drying out waiting to be burned. And at the same time I was involved in a Web conference reviewing a new and upcoming software program that I can't talk about just yet.

There's something about the whole scenario that kind of struck me as funny since I'm burning brush in one hand and work in a laptop on another. I did take a couple breaks after the webcast was over. The still burning some brush but I stopped to write up a couple blog articles along the way.

No point in not being productive!

A friend of mine, David Wornica, has been blogging on th NoMoreIncumbents.org site for a couple months now. he's responsible for the No More Incumbents site for New Hampshire. He is a great writer and has been doing a terrific job on this site. He has also been doing some writing on different sites and starting up along with several other comedians. I wish I is more permission about that site in a future posting but wanted to give a warm shout out to David here.