I really didn't want to say anything else here other than the Washington Post missed an obvious chance to have a sensationally immature headline for this article.

Fortunately, I was on the job and picked up the slack for those lazy professional journalist types!

Maybe they'll get it right next time . . . 

Whole Foods Free to Buy Wild Oats - washingtonpost.com

Anybody that maneuvers through the blogosphere knows that bloggers are somewhat over obsessed with debt. I’ve never done a formal count, but I suspect about one in every five blogs covers exclusively the topic of how a blogger can get out of debt or earn more money in order to get out of debt.

Furthermore, there’s probably an even larger percentage of articles written on all blogs that talk about the bloggers need to take care of their finances, improve their finances fix their debt, find Debt Relief,  lower their bills, pay their medical expenses and more.

Juxtapose this with the recent developments in the mortgage and real estate market, and you have a large number of people in the United States and all around the world talking about all sorts of different topics from refinancing to debt relief to Credit Card Consolidation strategies and much more. The web is filled with resources that can help people and bloggers find more information on all of these topics, but the blogosphere tends to whittle down the stack a and sometimes share some of those great new tips for getting something done. More often than not are not going to get the best advice from a blogger, but you might do little but of motivation and a little bit of empathy from a large group of people that are basically trying to get by just like you are.

There's a duck hawk operating in our back yard.  Its looking for baby ducks to eat for lunch.

My daughter has been feeding and playing with the baby ducks quite a bit all summer.

The ducks just hang out in a partly dried up lake bed.  My daughter above is standing where the lake used to be.

Above she's trying to prevent a Duckicide from taking place.

Then today the Duck hawk showed up while my daughter was skating on her heelies.

You can see the Duck Hawk (not its real name) sitting on the fence post, just past the bird feeder.  You can't see it but the baby ducks are huddling around the bigger ducks just down and to the left of the hawk, underneath the fishing dock.

Here the hawk is trying to hide itself in a nearby weeping willow tree where it might swoop down on the ducks next.    

Ninety Five Percent of the time I work from home and wear extra casual clothes.  The other five percent of the time, I travel for business to trade shows and various events around the country and have to transition to more formal wear.

Since I don't have to really mess around with casual business clothes, I tend to dress up a bit more when I have the opportunity or need.

I've noticed a recent trend at a number of the malls in the Atlanta area.  The men's clothing stores tend to go through cycles that don't really help shoppers.  First, they tend to sit on out dated styles a bit too long.  The recent styles get their prices inflated significantly and tend to be a bit of a rip off.  Plus, when I'm buying a suit, I have to get it tailored anyway.

So I am taking more to the idea of purchasing clothes online through sites like Shopping.com.  Going through the internet I have a better chance of finding clothes that I like.  Since I typically have them tailored anyway, the exact fix out of the box (as opposed to off the shelf) is not important at all.

I was looking at some of the Hugo Boss wool suits and thinking that I needed to refresh by wardrobe a bit for this winter.  Last year, I went with a few wool suits from a high end and trusted suit maker in the Atlanta area that I will not name.  For whatever crazy reason, all the suits ended up with holes in them by the spring.  Apparently, there is something like a worm or something that gets into wool and over time they eat through the clothing.

I wasn't too happy about that and lost a lot of money in suits, but it has reaffirmed my opinion that shopping online for suits is probably the way to go.

My friend AndrewIanDodge of DodgeBlogium is trying to win a trip to the Superbowl and be featured in Superbowl ad.  He's one of 10 finalists.

Please consider dropping by to sign up and vote at

http://www.fuelmyblog.com/index.jsp?t=mybowlad

A couple weeks back I ordered a pair of Air Jordans, actually the Air Jordan XIV to be precise.  I picked them up from 23Fans.com (ergo Michael Jordan wore the number 23 . . .) 

Growing up in Illinois and living in North Carolina today, I have been a Michael Jordan fan for a little over 2 decades now.

So I opened up the box and started removing the shoes.  Memories of a time when Michael Jordan was redefining the way basketball was played started coming back.  When I was a kid we used to think that if you wore a pair of Air Jordans, you would be able to jump higher and by extension shoot better.

 

Now that I'm grown up, I know that the shoes don't make you better, but I also have learned that they do signify the results that can be achieved by someone through sheer determination, practice, persistence and even a certain ability to continue taking risks.

Michael Jordan was extremely talented, but he was also very very persistent and he didn't give up for anything.  There are a lot of pseudo sports stars today that pull massive endorsement deals that dwarf even those of Michael Jordan, but no one has filled his shoes in terms of inspiration yet.

As I watch the implosion of Michael Vick in the NFL, I remember back to the days of Michael Jordan and what a real sports legend is made of. 

Michael Jordan earned a fortune but he gave his heart and soul for the fans and the things he loved, he didn't sell his soul to the devil, he shared his soul with all of us and in return we gave back and we were all better for it.

As I prepare to finish up the month of August, I'm preparing for a big push in the recruiting area.  I need to do a great deal of recruiting and training and I intend to get a job fairs and colleges around the country.

I have been considering the best way to approach job fairs for about a month now and pretty much have my plan wrapped up.  Extending the focus to college recruiting is going to be my next step.  Actually have a great deal more experience recruiting at colleges and I do at straight up job fairs.

With experience in one area and no experience in the other poor little experience in the other, my expectation upfront is that college recruiting will be a lot cheaper than job fair recruiting.  That could be incorrect, but that time to build my plan until I have some on the ground experience in this particular market.

So in addition to writing a lot of articles this week and I'm to be focusing on building up the plans for these recruiting efforts.  If all goes well I'll start my first job fairs in college recruiting efforts within a week or two probably closer to them next week.

In the past I've had experience recruiting people to work in accounting and financial positions as well as recruiting people to work encounter at labor positions such as home repair construction and painting.  This time around him to be looking for people with good writing skills and the ability to write on topics that are very eclectic from home lighting repair to finance to politics to religion and comedy in business and everything in between.

I began the day by eating breakfast outside. All week long I've been working on getting my big rocks taking care of and put into a jar as the analogy goes.  One of the things I learned this week that sometimes your big rocks are not necessarily your most important rocks, but they still have to be done first.

For me, this included finishing up my taxes, straightening up my books, and wrapping up the first phase of a large database implementation.

Thursday was all about recovery and yesterday was about taking care of some of those more important medium-sized rocks, like pain people the money I owe them!

Today, I had to go out and make sure that I've got some palatable and useful work in Perl the same people to do next week.  At the same time, in my spare time, I need to catch up on my writing some more so I can stay fresh and focused and centered.

Ayatollah's been a jack of all trades, recently I'm feeling more and more like one of those swiss army watches. 

Not only am I monitoring time on multiple continents and juggling projects through multiple businesses, but I'm performing work and duties at dozens of different levels and I'm definitely bouncing as they say.  That's what keeps things fun for me, I'd rather be busy than bored.

Thursday morning I woke up to see a very large cucumber growing in a blush.  I had not slept much in the previous two days and I had driven a good part of the night and so looking at a big cucumber growing in a bush was not terribly surprising.  I knew that I wasn't dreaming, I was wide awake, but I was in that accepting state of mind that sometimes accompanies me when I wake up yet still feel exhausted.

This was the first thing to my wife heard when I woke up, "that Bush is growing a big cucumber."

Now she thought that was quite funny, however I was not trying to be funny and just came out of my mouth.  In retrospect I don't even think it was all that funny but it probably caught her in some similar state of half wakefulness where things seem funnier than they really are.

To bring reality to the situation, I would explain that there is a cucumber vine that has overgrown its way into a series of boxwood bushes and the vine has grown up and over the bushes and started to grow back down the side that runs up against the house and the window that I was looking out of.

So this cucumber vine that seems to be growing on something akin to cucumber hormone growth serum was pretty damn big and that's probably not terribly surprising.  There must be something of a soil in that location because the boxwood bushes are pretty big as well and they probably are due to be trimmed down a little bit. 

This cucumber vine doesn't exactly represent the garden of life, but it definitely is growing with gusto in an area of North Carolina where rain has been very very scarce.  The drought conditions here are quite as bad as they are in Atlanta, but they are still pretty bad.

This year, I filed for an extension on my income taxes for the first time ever.  I didn't have all of the 1099's (corrected) and some other items in time to do my taxes by April 15th. 

No problem, I estimated my taxes and filed for an extension.  So my taxes are now due, ...  tomorrow!

I didn't get around to working on them all summer and have been racing to wrap things up since yesterday.

My Beagle Bleu decided last night that I wasn't being responsive enough to her needs.  She decided to demonstrate just what her needs were in a way that I would have to pay attention.

So she came into the living room where I was working.  I had files spread out all over the floor, couches and tables in organized stacks as I was working through everything.

She proceeded to come over to me, and start whimpering and then . . .

Pee all over one of my stacks of paper work(Big Mental Head slap!)

I hadn't let her outside in about 2 hours and for some reason she is going through a phase where she has to be walked on a leash or she won't take care of business unless apparently she feels inclined to take care of business on my stack of 1099's.

So up front I apologize to the IRS if they happen to audit me.  They should come in prepared to treat my tax backup with rubber gloves.

I came across an interesting website by Alex Krige called "On the Edge."  On the edge is a website that has a number of short tidbits.  They sponsored me to write a review and I was glad that I did.  As you will see below I had a lot of fun with this site, and for me that is what it is all about!

This is not a micro-blog like you might see on twitter and it's not exactly a blog either.  I would say that the site doesn't exactly have a good category as far as what it is, but it does have some interesting material and on the Internet that's really the one thing that's important.

If you've got interesting content on your website everything else will follow.

If you're looking for interesting concepts or ideas or even a little news of the day but you don't want to read an endless amount of drivel (maybe you're tired of reading my stuff) then I guarantee you'll find something interesting at this site.

 

Now personally I tend to gravitate towards things that are funny or slightly weird even.  So the weird stuff tab leapt out at me like a siren calling an ancient Greek ship into the rocks.

Of course I have a taste for the political as well and once I was in the weird stuff section I gravitated towards a quick story about Hillary Clinton's cleavage.  Please do not misunderstand, there is not too much that is normally compelling about her cleavage.

The article was about the comparison between Hillary Clinton's cleavage and Bill (Billy Boy) Clinton's cleavage.  If you read the article you'll notice that they basically have the same size boobs.

 

There is one thing that I do pretty well on the Internet and that's comment on other people's blogs or websites.  I'm often inspired in a  warped sort of way by what other people write and I tend to drop very long comments to explore my inspiration.  In this regard I have one criticism of the current incarnation of this website.

 

All comments are limited to 199 words, or maybe it was characters I forget now.  It must have been characters.

Anyway I wrote this funny little comment about the Clinton's boobs, but I wasn't able to publish it because it was too long so I had to shorten it down. 

Fortunately my readers won't have to read the short version, you can get the long version right here because I saved it for you.  First you should probably read the original article on the website titled Bill vs. Hillary - Battle of the Boobs (you can also read my short comment, which might steal the thunder of my original long comment below)

Your analysis of the size of the cleavage of the former president and the former first lady and current Senator is very important.  After paying $25 to receive an online certificate that states that I am a expert at photo analysis, I have concluded that your own analysis is indeed correct.  Both Bill and Hillary have size B-Cup Boobs.  (Note they are also world class boobs but that is a different subject.)

There is one subtle and one not-so-subtle difference however that you failed to recognize in your photo analysis.  The subtle differences that Bill's chest is much bigger than Hillary's.  My analysis indicates that Hillary is a 38B while Bill is a 43B(48B in the 90's before the bypass).

The not-so-subtle difference, that your analysis failed to identify relates to the fact that Bill has much bigger, harder and pointier nipples as compared to Hillary who barely has any.  This would be significant for several reasons:

This would indicate that Bill was likely to be responsible for breast-feeding Chelsea and not Hillary as previously was supposed and irregardless of other controversies that indicate the Chelsea was nurtured with formula.

Given Bill's proclivities, it's possible that he is still taking medicine to induce lactation.  There are some schools of thought that even believe that the white stain on the blue dress belonging to Monica Lewinsky, was actually a milk stain.

The real cover-up in the Lewinsky scandal never centered around the possibility or likelihood that Bill and Lewinsky were involved, the coverup related to Bill's attempts to hide the fact that he is a closet lactater, much like many members of congress work to cover up their proclivity for wearing diapers for sexual gratification with prostitutes(ergo the DC Madame).

On a side note, I think it's also worthy to point out that in the pictures that show Hillary exposing cleavage, she's wearing a push bra.  She was likely following Bill's example, her display of cleavage was likely an attempt to look more presidential in Bill's image.

Site Layout Review

now the fun stuff is out of the way, I'd like to point out a couple recommendations to help the site work better.

First I would move the feed subscription counter down to the bottom of a blog, and make the Square Banner with a picture of Alex Krige a little bigger.

Second, I would put just one bigfeed subscription button in the operating corner as opposed to listing several at the bottom of the website.Just use the big RSS button and maybe add ae-mail subscription optionand leave it at that.

Third,I try and find someway to get pictures to show up in theexcerpts of the articlesto help engage people to come into the actual articles a little bit more. The articles are shortand the ones with pictures are more compelling and if there were pictures and the summaries on the main page that might help walk people through the website a little deeper.

Finally,I would drop the links for privacy and contact us and maybe even the advertised button down into the footer of the website.  

Those links are taking a prime real estate on the websitethat could be either used for functionality for readers or for advertising and dropping them into the footer is normal practice and many people know to look there for the that type of information.

I have been working all week to get caught up on things.  And making a lot of progress all week long and I've gotten caught up on many of the things I wanted to do this week not counting my taxes.

 

I had two big goals to achieve

1. Get my new program online at the LLA
2. Get my taxes done

 

I've completed the first one, but I haven't even started on my taxes yet.  Well to be more clear I have a rough draft of my taxes completed which I did back in April so that I could submit an estimate and fill out an extension.  That basically means that you have to do your taxes on April 15 the extension is just there so that you can confirm that shoe have everything figured out.  In my case I have a number of expenses that I hadn't been able to add to my calculations yet and I'm expecting my taxes actually be lower than estimated once I work those additional expenses and to the mix but I had to be conservative and cover all my revenue and earnings for the previous year.

 

This week I also had to do a little side project and catch up on my writing.  Just because I had two big projects to do to me that I couldn't skip earning money for the week.

So I have literally been working day and night train to get caught up on everything.  I haven't had too much time for fun, but I have been able to get out and get a little exercise everyday.

 

Atlanta's in the middle of a heat wave and it has literally been hot as hell around here.  They got up to 103 yesterday and it was supposed to get that hot again today.  Now that's 103° without a heat index.  With the heat index it was supposed to get up to somewhere between 110 and 115° here in Atlanta.

 

I've lived in the desert and I've lived in the swamp and I lived in the Midwest corn fields and I know hot.  And I know that 115° is hot!

So I've been waiting for the temperature to drop down at night to a respectable 93° before I take a walk for a couple miles with the dog.

 

Well that's the update for the day, hoping it's more interesting stuff soon want to get out from under this pile work.  Tomorrow I'm taking a class on the comedy of business or maybe it's the business of comedy.  I've been looking forward to this class all summer and I am hoping to learn a great deal and have a little fun too.

So in the meantime I'm doing just a little bit of writing right now, I've got my tax paperwork organized a big table and I'm hoping to tackle my taxes tonight.  The sooner I get my taxes done, the sooner I can pack up and leave and catch up with my family which I haven't seen for a week.

I miss my wife and kids and I definitely need a break for a day or two.  Maybe by the time I catch up with them the heat wave will finally break, and I will build to spend some time with them playing in the lake.

By the way, last night while I was doing some very boring coding work and trying to stay awake, I watched the new James Bond movie finally and I thought it was pretty damn good.  I wrote a review about it over at HollywoodmoviesUSA.  You can see why I liked the movie if you get a chance to check out my review.

;-)

I mentioned that we've been preparing our house for a sale date that will probably be months down the road.  We have completely renovated the kitchen and dining room.  We tore down walls and completely redid the design and layout of the kitchen.  We replaced the floor and countertops sinks the oven and the refrigerator.  We put in patios and new decks we've read for the basement and built a laundry room.  I even installed a library in the house capable of holding hundreds of books.

We got a few small things left to do like painting the walls and replacing the carpet in the bedrooms in the living room.  Or even contemplating replacing the bathroom sinks.  We had porcelain sinks and they were nice sinks but they were set on countertops or little generic.  We have replaced one bathroom entirely and put in a marble sink and countertop that's kind of combined in one total unit.  We now to figure for going to upgrade the other two bathrooms in a similar fashion.

We have done some major renovations and repairers and we've actually done it on a shoestring budget.  We've putting quality items that we picked up on clearance and from outlet stores around the area.  We've done all the work ourselves into an anchor of labor charges.  It's been a long and slow process but it's definitely made the house better.  That should make the sale of the house even easier.  All that is left to do is to finish and list the house.

I just read this story about an American Idol hopeful that was a dish named for American Idol and went into labor right in the middle of the song.  The judges asked her she was okay and she said she wanted to finish the song while she clenched her belly with one hand and shook her other hand from the force of the contractions that she was suffering right in the middle of a note.

Obviously she wants to get into the competition and she's probably not going to be able to repeat that performance for Simon, Paula and Randy.  She dig it pushed through to the next round after pushing out a healthy baby boy.  The baby boy got pushed out of the hospital after she left the audition.  Of course you wouldn't leave to go to the hospital even after she auditioned until she learned whether or not she would get moved to the next round.  So I'm sure will be held to watch this audition, this season as its certain to them clued a great deal of drama and American Idol definitely does drama.

More on this story - American Idol hopeful goes into labour during audition | NEWS.com.au Entertainment

Separately, we've been working to get moved out of our house.  It's a very slow process and that is primarily because we have more important things to do than to move.  We have shelter lined up and set up already so that's us much concern.  We been more concerned with my wife's job, my business and writing, getting our taxes done (we filed for an extension and now they are Due Due (similar to doo doo) next week) etc.

sorry I lost my train of thought there for a second, a telemarketer phone wallows writing that last sentence and I had to run upstairs to pick up the last phone left in the house which is not a wireless phone and I was about 10 seconds to delay because the fax machine that still here kicked in and started deep and buzz and then squealing and all that only to find out that it was a telemarketer from a Wall Street Journal.  Rupert Murdoch must have his people working overtime to boost revenues already!

So anyway I was saying that I have not been able to focus on the House too much.  Anyone that watches the news can see that real estate is crazy right now and I'm not in a hurry to dump our house into a buyers market.

Our house is actually positioned pretty well given the market conditions.  Our houses under $300,000 in value and it's an extremely good shape because we've done a number of serious renovations on the House both internally and externally.  That means that people looking for a good house that can't find credit to purchase one of those McMansions could easily move in ours and still has the money to spare for an extra couple Hummers or something.

So I've been working all night long, and I'm just about ready to call it a night.  Its about 6 am and I'm relaxing to the sounds of Perry Farrell's new group Satellite Party. 

Track 8 Insanity Rain is definitely my favorite track

but Track 11 - Features a long lost Jim Morrison vocal that is mixed into a new song from the band.  It seems to set up the theme for the album "just try and stop us, we're going to love"

Like a lot of Perry's work, you often have to absorb his music and catch up with his perspective before it sinks in and you get hooked.

Definitely worth a listen feel.  - Good Night and Good Morning!

I am completely overwhelmed with work this week.  The work is gathered up piled up and only once.  I actually plan fairly well, but I've been fortunate enough to have several customers decide to proceed with several websites and blogs this week. 

The overwhelming part is that they all decided to do it at the same time! 

Some of these projects have been in the works for over a year now.  Plus, these are all hitting it right on the same week that I was doing the system integration/upgrade at the LLA.

So this weekend, I started setting up three different websites that were for other people after I just finished a website for myself, SackVick.net. 

I've got one halfway done, bringing the second one up, and  the third was previously established.  I was just supposed to start writing on it, but it had a number of legacy issues with the initial WordPress setup and lack of maintenance (17,000 unregulated spam issues for example!)

The managing company attempted to fix it, but it seems like they made a few mistakes that could cost them their page rank.  So I volunteered my web services to fix that and hopefully save the pagerank from being lost.  But now I'm waiting for them to actually act on my recommendations and to give me access to the system so I can begin to fix things.

On top of all that, my existing blogs have a backlog of articles that need to be written.  So I'm racing left and right to write about 50-60 articles, bring up three websites, complete system integration on the LLA, do my taxes which I extended until August 15, and my wife is on her way to our house here from  North Carolina. 

I'm at the house already been here since Saturday.  She's coming with her sister to pack up a bunch of stuff in the House.   Her father is also coming on Saturday to do some remodeling work on our house for us.  We definitely have a lot of work to do!

So it's rather natural and human will overwhelmed.  I'm writing this article right now while walking the dog in the back yard.  I'm writing this on my Treo 600, recording my voice through my phone recorder which I will thenrun through Dragon Naturally Speaking's voice transcription when I  go back inside.

I mention this because I'm literally using every spare minute of time to work, build up my business and attempt to make a better more balanced life for myself, my family and everyone that relies on me from customers to business partners and more.  Its also in part so that some day we can buy that dream luxury home by the lake.  I've got a very long way to go to climb up the ladder, but I've been up the ladder before and I know the way very well.  The hard work is just part of the requirements to make it to the top, or at least to a nice shelf where I can rest along the way.

I had received several referrals to look up the hit man named Brett (same as yours truly) that was terrorizing YouTube killing people with a pickle.

Brett, you just have to see this Brett character, he takes 47 hours to kill this guy with a pickle on YouTube.  Then he gets a contract to kill himself . ..

OK, so the cool thing is that along the way I came across a movie trailer on YouTube for a movie called Superbad. Its right on the front page of YouTube all day or something today.  The thing is the YouTube trailer is a short version of the real trailer over at Superbad the website (areyousuperbad.com).

The movie is about 3 high school senior nerds trying to make there last stand before leaving high school.  The movie was made by the people that did the 40 Year Old Virgin, so don't expect a Dead Poet's Society here.

The actual website had the full trailer which to me seemed a whole lot funnier than the YouTube version.

This is kind of one of those part dazed and a whole lot confused teen angst movies mixed with a lot of 'just wrong' funny crap along the way. I'm pretty sure I lived through that experience with the fake id, getting mugged in the liqour store and then having a few drinks with the police at a bar, when I was in high school. Someone from my home town has been embelishing stories about my sordid past and taming them down a bit.