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Monday, December 31, 2007

Mike Huckabee is among Leno's first guests

How wonderful for those of us who sleep through Leno and Letterman. You mean they've been in reruns? ;)

NBC's "Tonight" show said Monday that Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee will appear on Jay Leno's first show back Wednesday.

Robin Williams to open Letterman's show - NewsFlash - mlive.com

Sunday, December 30, 2007

NFL scores

Packers aren't being carried in Fort Smith. In fact, Fox just NOW found the switch to pick up the Bears and Saints game. Cowboys/Redskins will be a hoot this afternoon...

The Swamp: Before Huckabee, a word from the sponsor . . .

I actually watched Mike Huckabee on Tim Russert's Meet the Press this morning. He did a pretty decent job, I must say.

Then I ran across this piece from the Baltimore Sun. It's pretty funny, actually. Huckstering the Huck, perhaps? ;)

by Christi Parsons and John Chase WEST DES MOINES

They came to hear Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee speak, but first the crowd of hundreds had to sit through a soft-sell pitch on the wonders of multi-level marketing. For half an hour, two businessmen paced the stage where Huckabee would soon stump. They never said the name of the company during their talks, but afterward some members of the crowd shared with others the good news of a company called Quixtar Inc. Quixtar is a sibling company of multi-level marketing giant Amway – and, according to Huckabee's public schedule, the host of the event.

The Swamp: Before Huckabee, a word from the sponsor . . .

 

Times Square ball -- almost as old as Dick Clark

Most of the New Years Eve revelers in Times Square (and those watching by television at home) may take the time ball for granted. But the sphere is not merely a countdown device. It is 100 years old this year, and part of a complex history.


Times Square Time Ball Is 100 Years Old This New Year's Eve | The News is NowPublic.com

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Saturday, December 29, 2007

Ridiculous? No: Patriots finish 16-0 | New England Patriots | projo.com | The Providence Journal

Ohhhhh well...

So much for Don Shula and his Dolphins' perfect season.

As strange as it seems, I'll be happy to see the Packers in the Superbowl (LOVE Brett Favre), and I've ended my boycott of the Cowboys. Tony Romo is a pretty cool cat and TO has behaved so far this year. I hope the Colts can end the Patriots streak. I'm tired of hearing about it, even though watching Brady pick apart blitzing defenses is pretty darned phenomenal.

It's been a great NFL season so far. The playoffs should be a blast.

Ridiculous? No: Patriots finish 16-0 | New England Patriots | projo.com | The Providence Journal

Geeked out beyond all repair

I confess that I’m obsessing about the tracyplaces dot com fiasco. Remember, we’re moving to www.tracyplaces.NET. I’m pointing the .net domain to http://tracyplaces.wordpress.com right now. Hopefully, the wordpress administration page will allow me to make the link more permanent soon.

For now, though, I’m still bound and determined to bury the dot com domain that a splogging scumbag is currently using.

So this morning, I decided to revive my blogspot account. Previously, the site was just a dummy blog that pointed to the dot com account. Wordpress has always been very versatile and easy to use. Blogspot was kinda clunky.

It’s still a bit clunky, especially when it comes to geeky stuff like tagging and pinging and such. It took me forEVER to post a photo this afternoon.

Even so, blogspot’s relationship with Google gives that place a distinct advantage. For instance, it readily interfaces with AdSense. That ain’t ever gonna happen here at wordpress.

What I’m looking for in blog technology is something that allows me to think more about writing something that is easily readable. Next, I want a powerful outreach (for lack of a better term) interface — technology that reaches out to all those fancy internet spiders so that when people type in “Fort Smith” or “Tracy Places” or “marshals museum” my blog pops right up to the top. Third, it’s fun to actually measure how many people are drawn to my blog, how they got here, and which posts they read. Wordpress seems to be the easiest in all three criteria.

That said, blogspot is getting better with all three criteria. Plus, the whole AdWords and AdSense thing is intriguing. It may not ever be worth much, but the idea of making a little bit of money just by writing what I write and allowing the spiders to decide what advertisements might be relevant to what I’m talking about is pretty cool. It’ll be fun to learn how it all works, even if I never make a dime.

Also, RSS technology allows me to cross populate my blogs. Ultimately, running two tracyplaces blogs may be too difficult to maintain. Certainly, the few loyal readers I’ve captured during the past year with the wordpress account may be too confused to keep track of both.

For the time being, though, I’m going to keep two blogs running. TracyPlaces@wordpress, and TracyPlaces@blogspot. One advantage is that I begin to dominate tracyplaces, and I play defense against scummy spammers like the one abusing my dot com domain (yes, it’s ultimately my responsibility that I let go of the URL). I’ve learned something about online branding. Own the name. Gobble up anything and everything that might be associated with it. ESPECIALLY if the domain is short, readable, and memorable.

So, if you’re game, plug both blogs into your feed reader. If you don’t have one, ask me how RSS works. Or read a simple explanation here. Basically, RSS is a must these days. It allows you to scan multiple sites at once to determine which content may be interesting or relevant to you or your work.

Most definitely, I am geeked out beyond all repair. I think my geek speak friends may even be horrified as they read this…

Making home where you are


I came across this photo this morning. It's a few years old. Here's the real scoop, and here's a Snopes report correcting some of the misinformation that circulated online about the image.

The photo seems timely and relevant in my life because I've spent the day piddling, putting away Christmas goodies, reorganizing after a home construction project, and trying to decrease clutter so 2008 will begin with my life kinda sorta organized.

Well, we all know and love men and women who -- as a matter of routine -- are conducting missions just like the one depicted in this photo. They may have celebrated Christmas by calling home or getting a hot meal, and maybe they weren't shot at for just one day.

We have many, many Arkansas National Guardsmen and women preparing for deployment in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other hotspots.

While I crave comfort, organization, and some semblance of order, many families are adjusting to having loved ones in harm's way. Many men and women are performing at high levels of professionalism, despite missing the comforts of home.

Thank you to every guard unit, every member of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and Coast Guard. And thank you to friends and families here at home.

Blogspot is improving

Years ago, I tried messing with blogspot. As I searched for free weblog hosting, and experimented with different products, I finally settled on wordpress.com as the most flexible and easiest to use. Manipulating the templates was easy, and I had lots to choose from.

The blogspot page has been merely a placeholder for www.tracyplaces.net. Today, I discovered I could even place an RSS feed into my blogspot account, thus keeping this URL current with the wordpress account.

Kinda makes my head spin...

I'll hafta play with this some, and see if it's easier to post video here than at wordpress. Something tells me the relationship between google and youtube may, indeed, make the video posting process a little more intuitive...