You’ve looked around my site plenty. Drop me a note and say hi! I’d love to hear from you!

• This dude writes a review 18 years later about the 1989 Patrick Swayze movie “Roadhouse”. I thought he would be making fun of the movie, but he pays a rather glamorous homage to 80’s movies instead. A must read.
• Have you ever done the “message in a bottle thing”? Not sing the song by The Police. Have you ever ACTUALLY wrote a message, stuffed it in a bottle and corked it, and then threw it in the ocean? A class in Seattle did 21 years ago and the bottle washed ashore in the Bering Sea in Alaska last month.
• Zen Habits has a really cool article called “20 Things I Wish I Had Known When Starting Out In Life“. I still probably wouldn’t have listened.
• The final Harry Potter book – Deathly Hallows – is going to be split into TWO movies. This is great! The Battle For Hogwarts can be given a lot more time in the final movie. My heart was racing as I read that chapter. Very excited.

Do I know you????? If I do then say hello.

Here are three things that are true:

1. Digital technology, especially computers and cell phones, can dramatically increase productivity.

2. More and more users of digital technology are small firms or individuals.

3. The vast majority of users of digital technology are totally lame in getting the most out of the investment of their time and money.

“Oh, I didn’t know I could do that.”

“You mean I don’t have to manually type my address book in by hand?”

“There are graphs in Excel?”

“Gmail is free?”

Here’s what I haven’t found: people who charge $100 a hour to hear what you do and how you do it and then show you how to do it better. People who organize data and put it in the right place. People who overhaul the way small groups use technology so they can use it dramatically better.

People who use copilot to take over a PC and actually rearrange it so that it works better.

I bet you’re out there. I bet there are people looking for you. Show yourselves!

(via Seth Godin)

Here are some of my favs:

Awesome.

Bad Apple.

Cookie loves Milk.

From WIRED Magazine’s blog:

In the wee hours of Tuesday morning, the full moon will grow dark and red as it passes through the center of the Earth’s shadow for the first time in seven years.

People west of the Mississippi, who missed out on a less-dramatic eclipse in March, will have the best view of this one: by the time the moon is totally eclipsed, it will already have started to set on the East Coast.

The moon will start getting dimmer around 4am EDT, with peak shadow about an hour and a half later.

I saw the eclipse in March, and it was amazing; the moon’s an easy thing to take for granted, even forget about, until suddenly it’s dark and blood-hued. I can easily imagine how, for most of human history, lunar eclipses were connected to the supernatural and divine. So even if you’re in the East, set that alarm early and stumble outside for a few bleary-eyed minutes. It’s worth it.

Ride the lightning

I use Makoviney.com to test items that I use with my clients when working with WordPress (the blogging software I use to run this site). I have recently added some features during my testing that I thought my friends (and detractors – who also monitor this site.) might like to know about.

Wanna hear it? Here it goes:

Now Reading
I have a Now Reading section which lists the books I have read over the past year or so, as well as what I am currently reading, and what books I have queued up to read in the near future. It also automagically (ooh aah!) links to Amazon.com to get more book details. It also displays a nifty little bit in the sidebar of this page if you scroll down a bit.

The secret reason I like it – if it must be known – is that it makes me feel all smart and stuff when I look back on the books I have read. (I need all the help I can get!)

About Page
Updated with a brief bio, pic, and list of plug-ins used on the site, as well as links to a couple other projects of mine.

Contact Form
The previous contact form was buggy and weird. I installed a new contact form that works great. Try it out and shoot me a line!

Recent Comments
On the right hand side of this page you’ll see a Recent Comments section. That way even if it is an old entry on the site you can see if fresh comments have been added to the site.

Newsyness
On the sidebar you will also see some bookmarked news items. Those are pulled from my newsreader and displayed sexily over there. Okay, maybe not sexy, but it’s not ugly. You can read more about the news items and how it works here.

Aaron Dallas, of Carbondale, Colo., looks at botfly larvae removed from beneath his scalp Monday. A doctor found five active bot fly larvae living on Dallas’ head, near the top of his skull, a few weeks after a mosquito apparently placed them there. Dallas said he likely received the larval infestation while on a trip to Belize this summer.

CARBONDALE, Colo. — (July 18, 2007) Doctors thought the strange, bleeding bumps on Aaron Dallas’ head might be from gnat bites or shingles. Then the bumps started moving.

A doctor found five active bot fly larvae living beneath the skin atop Dallas’ head.

“I’d put my hand back there and feel them moving. I thought it was blood coursing through my head,” Dallas told the (Glenwood Springs) Post Independent.

“I could hear them. I actually thought I was going crazy.”

Dallas said he likely received the larval infestation while on a trip to Belize this summer. Bot fly infections are not uncommon in parts of Central and South America.

Adult bot flies are hairy and look like bees, without bristles. The larvae, which are about one-third the size of a penny, were living in a pit 2- to 3- millimeters wide. They were removed Thursday.

“It was weird and traumatic,” said Dallas, of Carbondale. “I would get this pain that would drop me to my knees.”

After a specialist told him he might have shingles, Dallas tried different creams and salves. But the pain only got worse.

“When I saw him again, it was pretty obvious something else was going on,” said Dr. Kimball Spence, who could see the spots moving on Dallas’ head. “There’s an open pit. You see a little activity, not necessarily the larvae, but a fluctuation of the fluid in the pit.”

Dallas’ wife, Midge Dallas, teased him about it.

“I told him, ‘I will love you through your maggots,”‘ she told the newspaper.

But Dallas saw little to laugh about.

“It’s much funnier to everyone else,” he said. “It makes my stomach turn over. It was cruel.”

(Article link)

I laughed out loud when I saw this shirt from Threadless.

Don’t worry. It’s a normal day just like every other – well – except for those of you with paraskevidekatriaphobia.