The Usual Susspects

Maegan had her birthday at Ray’s Splash Planet, a small indoor waterpark. Maegan and a bunch of her friends had a blast on the water slide, the lazy river, and especially “The Vortex”. After swimming we had pizza and cake in a party room.

I found this blog post which explains the inverse correlation between the number of people involved in a design and the quality of the end result. This post is specifically about web design but it can easily be applied to any creative work. Click here to read the entire post.  

Pugs have literally been bred to be pampered. According to Wikipedia: “Pugs were kept by [Chinese] royalty and were pampered and spoiled, and the expectation of such treatment is a characteristic that seems to remain with them to this day.” Our Pug puppy, Hobo seems to be no exception to these characteristics. He often flips on to his back and stretches out as if demanding his right to a belly rub. Well it appears that the Boomer has learned to take a page from young Hobo’s book of how to make humans pamper you. Boomer (a hunting breed) has never just flipped over and asked for a belly rub before but he’s done that several times this past week. I guess he recognizes a good thing when he sees it and learned to follow the puppy’s lead.

Patty and I each bought inexpensive (downright cheap) mountain bikes this weekend. I doubt either bike will ever see an actual mountain trail but now we can finally go riding around the neighborhood with Maegan.

I’ve been waiting for this day all year. No, not the premiere of the movie I’m in – the opening of the new Super Target at River Gate. Hooray! River Gate is a new   60,0000-square-foot  shopping center being built just a few miles from my house. There’s not much in the way of retail shopping in the immediate area and funny as it sounds, Patty and I really have been counting the days until it opened. The Home Depot (yea) is the other anchor store, with Best Buy (yea), PetSmart (yea), and a bunch of new restaurants (yea) to open soon.  

This is one of several billboards put up as part of a promotional campaign by WCNC-TV, the NBC affiliate in Charlotte, NC. They are promoting the accuracy of their newscast’s weather with the following text: “It’s not that they are  wronger … We’re  just righter .” P.S. Incase you’re wondering… No, they don’t have any weather talent named Righter.

Last week a  former colleague returned to the station  for a visit. This week the trend continued with another blast from the past. Mr. Eric Gross (on the left in this photo) was in for some corporate training from our sister-stations in Oakland. Eric was our station’s graphic artist when I first began in ’98 and we’ve done a lot of good work together. We reminisced about everything from former co-workers, to old Christmas parties, to a missing boomerang, to his powder-blue porsche that won’t die. It was good seeing him again and hearing how things are going well for him in California. I also realized just how long I’ve been working here as current co-workers I’ve known for the past six-plus years kept walking by and saying hello to me but Eric didn’t know any of them.  

Ever since I was a kid I’ve considered the Major League Baseball All Star Game to be a sacred national holiday. It’s should your patriotic duty as an American to watch the game, and for a Mets   fan such as myself, to root for the National League. Of course the past decade has been pretty sad for National League fans , with the senior circuit not winning the mid-summer classic since 1996. What a heartbreaker this year! Just one out away from ending the American League’s nine-year dominance of the game, the American League strung together a single, double, and triple off of the Padres’ Trevor Hoffman to take a 3-2 9th-inning lead. Sure it was an exciting game but it’s still a heartbreaker when you’re on the losing end. Making matters worse than the pride of the National League is the fact that the New York Mets are the league’s best team and hence this loss may come back to haunt my team if they make it to the World Series but without home field advantage. P.S. Regarding the title o...

I had lunch today at The Penguin with a good friend I used to work with. I worked with   Kraig Koelsch   from 1998 to 2004, when he worked for the original   GoCarolinas.com   (which used to be a few offices down the hall from me) and then for   wsoctv.com   (just downstairs). After a few years with AOL in Columbus, Ohio he’s on his way to Orlando where he’s got a sweet new gig providing internet content to college sports teams. Of course we took this opportunity to take jabs at his beloved   Pittsburgh Pirates   and Ben Roethlisberger’s motorcycle incident. Kraig, it was good to see you again, and congrats and good luck with your new job.

Happy Independence Day to everybody. Please note I’m wishing you a happy “Independence Day” and not a happy “4th of July”. Despite what you’ve become accustomed to, the holiday is  not  officially called “The 4th of July”. Sure it happens to falls on the 4th day of July but on New Years’ Day do you wish everybody “Happy January 1st”, or “Happy December 25th” on Christmas? Of course not. Unlike Memorial Day and Labor Day which have been dumbed down to the point where most American’s don’t even know why they have off from work, I do believe that most people understand that “The 4th of July” is to celebrate our independence from England and establishing a new country. It’s just always bugged me how the most important holiday to our nation is better known by it’s coincidental calendar marking than for the reason we celebrate it. Trivia: Technically the 4th of July isn’t even America’s birthday anyway. The Declaration of Independence was written on July 3rd, approved on July 4th, b...