Is your home page growing stale too?

My home page is starting to look a little bit outdated. I haven't changed anything since September. I want to make time to fiddle with it and make some changes, but first I'd like to get straightened out with where I am going to be hosting it shortly. For reasons I won't go into, my earthlink hosted home page will soon be unusable for my purposes. I have two possible options on where I will be going/moving, but my hope is that at that point, my domain name for the home page will actually stick rather than redirecting.

My MonsterCommerce v4.0 test site is gone, but I have moved the subdomain to my second v4.1 test site [update: down]. Not sure how much longer that will stay up as tech support was supposed to be using five staging IPs that for my reference I set up 5 sub-domains. Update: ...and then much later removed.

• tech1
• tech2
• tech3
• tech4

At the moment, I can easily update my blog (duh), and I am working on a project using XML to create a quiz for my work. Updating the home page will have to wait.

Update...

Update on a few things:

First off, I saw a little bit of a web-documentary with Penn & Teller as hosts, where they suggest that the 'damn'-Bible is wrong, inconclusive and contradictory of itself at best. I used to like Penn & Teller, as I like magic tricks and their brand of humor. Unfortunately, I don't agree with them on this one, especially when they were presenting it as a documentary, but then having segments where they felt the need to punctuate their points while quoting the Bible out-of-context by DROP KICKING one across the room. I prefer if they are going to present an argument that they do it in a reverant way more similar to Mysteries of the Bible or something else you might see on the History Channel. This was done in a way that seemed half-serious, half-way to wannabe-like-Jon-Stewart's-Daily-Show-satire. I won't post a link to it here, but it probably aired somewhere.

That brings me to my second paragraph, which is really a question. If I post a link to something, it seems like I'm promoting it. Search Engines, especially Google, judge a site's importance partly on it's content and partly on how many other sites/people link to it. Even if I link to a site and say "OMGosh! This is the worst site ever! Their content and design are crud!", the very fact that my site links to theirs means that I have given them some intangible listing. Furthermore, there is something to be said against ..."OMIGawd! This tastes terrible,... here TRY IT!"... and yet it is just human nature.

Lastly, I'm none too happy with $ears right now. We bought a dishwasher from them and I took the day off because the delivery date said 22nd, but as it turns out, they were waiting for me to call and schedule it. I wasted a day off (my last for the year) and still have no dishwasher.

♫ It's beginning to look a lot less Holy-day ♫

Ah, the holidays. Every year at about this time the cold weather starts to set in (although not today) and the Christmas holiday approaches.

The Christmas Carol that is tightly connected for me is "The Little Drummer Boy" by the Vienna Boys Choir. I love that song. The part that always strikes me funny about it is the fact that here is this little drummer boy going to meet the baby Messiah -- THE ONE -- true Son of God sent to save the world from itself and he feels disturbed that he doesn't have anything to bring. For us now, this seems silly and selfish maybe, as none of us ever got to see Jesus during that tim. Go to the baby, we want to say, See the good news of His birth and touch the hem of His garment and move on! I mean seriously, He has stuff to do and that right soon.

What is silly about it is that here the Little Drummer Boy is there with himself and his drums and his ruminations that he has nothing much to give the new born King. He strikes upon the brilliant idea of going and playing for the Savior, since that is all he has... or at least, that is what he thinks. He forgets that he does indeed have a DRUM. This is the King of the World, the SON OF GOD! Why didn't this brainchild of a drummer think to GIVE HIM THE DRUM? Hmph.

Of course, perhaps this was wiser to keep the drum for himself in retrospect. I mean, granted, Jesus brought into his flock, Lepers, Romans, the sick, the dying, the unclean, criminals... so it would logically assume that He would naturally extend his hand to the next lowest element of society: drummers.

What if young Jesus had taken a liking to the drums? What if he had eventually taught himself to play? This would have been very bad indeed. I mean, I'm sure even in biblical times, drummers couldn't shake their bad-boy image. But what bothers me more when considering this is what normally happens to drummers, ... still living in their parent's basement at 35 and never amounting to nothing.

Can you picture it? Mary & Joseph, with irritated concern, call down their steps to their grown-up Son as He plays on his drum. "Hey Jesus, you ever gonna go out and get a job or something, I don't know, save the world?" his mother would shout. "No mom! Just leave me alone and let me play my drums!" rat tat tat tat... Then where would we be without a savior?

The Meadow Picnic Scene

Considering today is election day, I was of course paralyzed by indecision. I first consulted my faith, but the lesson should be that Our Lord has much more important matters in store for us. Who wins the World Series, the Super Bowl, even the Presidential Election matters little in the big picture, like it or not. I have a long spiritual path to tread & I will never be perfect. But voting my conscience is really the only thing I need to start with for today, but this was just a starting point. Time to look towards my favorite movie (oh now I AM going to hell).

There is not much political discussion in Star Wars. Of course, there is a lot of talk about evil empires, rebel alliances & royalty (queens & princesses) that were apparently elected? But there is not much deep politics. Of course, there is this one brief conversation between Anakin & Padme during the Meadow Picnic Scene of Episode II: Attack of the Clones.
Discussions of Politics in Star Wars

::Padme::You really don't like politicians do you?
::Anakin::I like two or three, but I'm not really sure about one of them.
::Both laugh:: ::Anakin:: I don't think the system works.
::Padme::How would you have it work?
::Anakin::We need a system where the politicians sit down & discuss the problem, agree what's in the best interest of all the people, & then do it.
::Padme::That's exactly what we do,the trouble is that people don't always agree.
::Anakin::Well then they should be made too.
::Padme::By whom,who's going to make them?
::Anakin::I don't know...someone.
::Padme::You?
::Anakin::Of course not me.
::Padme::But someone?
::Anakin::Someone wise.
::Padme::Sounds often alot like a dictatorship to me.
::Anakin::.......Well if it works.

*SHIVER*

Harumph. The cynical youth these days! He does seem to make a certain amount of sense... Aren't you sick of red tape? Aren't you sick of government that seems too busy getting reelected & lining their pockets to care about you? This election day, amid the false hoopla & circus act, wouldn't you consider something easier?

I mean, wouldn't you... 'if it works?'

By the way,... I voted for Kerry. Not like that is an endorsement. Remember, I am far from perfect.

God bless!

48 Months

Sinister Dane ©1994
Music by D. Williams, Lyrics by J. Sears

Wave at the people
Smile at the people
Lie to the people--Looking through me...

Sit down to a breakfast
Sprinkled with bitterness
Choke then puke up the rotting fruit
The seeds they poorly distribute
Are harvested by the few

Chorus:
48 months is a long time
Punch out the squares
And leave the line
Now it's too late
To change your mind
48 months

We must be invisible
Searching for pennies
While their counting all their gold
We lose our souls
With the bony fingers round their throats
They'll realize pain is powerful

Chorus

We must be wise
With our choices
'Cause life's hard enough to live
While they're lounging having fun
Nothing gets done
When the time comes 'round
To choose again
Will the better party win?

How Google Can Make or Break A Small Business

For those of you too young to remember the days before Google, there were other search engines, such as Altavista (the first big one) and Yahoo. The reason Google became the most popular is that they do a very good job of ranking the interesting items first, which is important when there are 39000 hits for your query. The Search Engine Promotion business, when it's not just a scam sold by spammers, is mainly about doing artificial things to make Google's robots think your page would be interesting to humans; it's much better to actually make your page interesting to actual humans, and hope Google's robots pick up on that.

How Google Can Make or Break A Small Business Couldn't have said it better myself. Of course, every web site promotion company will tell you that is exactly what they do.