Sunday, 29 January 2006

My brother. Soldier. Hero.

My brother is off to Afghanistan.

He is more than a soldier, but it is not appropiate to discuss much more than he is going to Afghanistan and his work is humanitarian.

I know much more, like when he’s leaving, where he’ll be, and for how long. My family has a rich military background dating back past WWII (you may from time to time see my grandfather on the deck of his command, the USS Lapon, in the header). I respect that wartime saying, “loose lips sink ships.”

My brother will appreciate this respect.

Stay safe brother. Give ’em the best of what you do. Show the Afghan people what Americans and the USA are really about.

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Posted by tstone at 7:37 PM in 'srkE

Monday, 23 January 2006

Bye bye Google Ads…

Yeah, interesting experiment, but not suited for petmystone.com.

Light traffic and the broad range of topics created an ad mix that didn't drive clicks or impressions.

Your editor is taking the idea and stowing it in the "toolbox."

Posted by tstone at 9:44 PM in 'srkE

Notes…

The new petmystone.com is so different from the past, it seems a punch list of the most important features are needed lest readers get lost:

  • Entry titles are links to dedicated pages.
  • A photo thumbnail is a link to a photo album of larger pictures
  • Categories are collections of entries on a specific topic
  • The photo at the top is intentionally placed like that, do not try to scroll up to see more.
Posted by tstone at 9:38 PM in 'srkE

Sunday, 22 January 2006

Salon Party A Success!

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Bella and friends recently celebrated Maddie Warnick’s 3rd birthday.

The party was held at a local salon and the girls relished the pampering. Hair curlers, nail gloss, princess gowns, favors, cake, ballons and more were enjoyed by all.

The parents enjoyed a follow up party hosted by the Warnick’s.

We’ve also included another photo taken around Christmas. Bella wants you to know: “It’s my princess wand!”

Posted by tstone at 4:05 PM in bella alane

Thursday, 19 January 2006

We’re big in Japan

The petmystone’s are big in Japan. The Hatena Antenna, some sort of “social bookmarking”/blog/google-esque tool loves us. 3X the number of hits for top-level domains (that’s geek-speak for .com, etc.), almost 6X the number of hits for hosts (that’s geek-speak for companies like Mindspring, etc.).

Okay, it’s a spider/bot (that’s geek-speak for an automated program that compiles information about webpages), but come on, this thing is more active than Google. Seems that most people out there look at this thing as good. The Hatena Antenna is very user-focused.

David Hasselhoff might be big in Germany, the petmystone’s are big in Japan.

You will be quizzed on all geek terminology later.

Posted by tstone at 8:45 PM in 'srkE

Tuesday, 17 January 2006

Welcome Reece Culliney!

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Our friends Sean and Kristen Culliney just had a baby boy!

Reece Culliney was born 1/16/2006.

Congratulations! Sean and Kristen.



Posted by tstone at 6:20 PM in 'srkE

Monday, 16 January 2006

Blogging 101

"Blogging" is most certainly nothing new in 2006, or for 2005 (hitting it’s mainstream stride certainly last year and during the 2004 election).

But I fear that petmystone’s tightly focused audience of mostly family “may not get it.” What is blogging? Here’s a rather frank look at what a blog and blogging should be (#5 flew out the window a long time ago; don’t be shocked by the language, we’re all adults, I think).

So your editor/writer/code pimp will help. This will be a short series of posts about blogging, and maybe along the way, readers will learn a thing or two about the tools that aid in reading "blogs," be it their current web browser or a specialized blog tool

Lesson 1: Permalinks

If you have been illegally downloading music or surfing the web for any amount of time, you are familiar with the concept of a link (or more formally a hyperlink or anchor). Permalinks are nothing more than the same, a link. The purpose of a permalink to provide a “permanent” link—hence the name— back to a specific blog entry.

Each post’s title is a permalink on petmystone.com. Do you like a particular post or photo album? Click on the title. The link will take you to a specific page for that post. It’s a simple way of adding the page to your bookmarks too. Want more options? Right-click on the title for options like emailing the link to a friend.

Do-it-yourself (or homework)

  1. Find the permalink for this entry. Click on it. Add the link to your bookmarks/favorites.
  2. Right click on the title. What options are available? How could you send the link to a friend by email?

I’ll cover “comments and trackbacks” in Lesson 2.

Posted by tstone at 7:28 PM in ephemera

Saturday, 14 January 2006

Cheap Beer Redux

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My friends at Punch Apparel love their cheap beer (any yellow fizz water in a can), but do they love it this much?

I’ll protect the innocent, or guilty in this case, but the photo you see was taken in Mexico Beach, FL, c. ’91. The original polaroid shows 315 (316 with the one in hand) empty cans of the “Beast Azul”. That’s more than 13 cases (if your high school math is failing you).

I recall we quite literally cleared the shelves of “Beast Azul” in Mexico Beach.

I also recall being at the local beach bar where some local with a guitar and mike was playing beach favorites. A crowd of rowdy friends at the bar was yelling “Freebird” and “Jimmy” … as I recall the request was for Jimmy Hendricks, yet for some reason he kept playing Jimmy Buffet. Why? I may never know.

Posted by tstone at 4:13 PM in ephemera

Friday, 13 January 2006

Logging and Google AdSense

Your editor just finished setting up a secure logging facility for petmystone.com and began the AdSense experiment, not to much fanfare.

The AdSense experiment receive "Huh?" from Shannon...yet, the experiment has resulted in a funny aside. Petmystone "mugshots" delivers ads for criminal record searches.

Posted by tstone at 10:41 PM in 'srkE

Wednesday, 11 January 2006

Just a cuppa java

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Pretty sure this is another mug turned to its "blank side."

"Why?" you ask. The picture was used as an AIM icon for sometime. Don't know when I stopped using it.

Maybe we'll see the "other side of the mug" next week.

Posted by tstone at 10:40 PM in mugshots

Google Ads...

As an experiment, I'm thinking about putting up Google Ads on petmystone.com.

Let's see how this focused audience with equally focused content likes it, and if I can get a share of that Google hoard, all the better!

Anything to elict particpation.

Posted by tstone at 8:24 PM in 'srkE

New Macs, New Software, No Breaks

I could not be more excited about the new Macs...but I restrain myself, for “Rev. A” is always for the early adopter; not that this writer has ever shy'd away from bleeding edge tech.

I think too what is exciting about the new Macs is that iLife ’06 and iWork ’06 have been updated.

Steve's not getting me to buy the hardware, but I'm hot for the software updates. Yeah, I'm a geek.

Posted by tstone at 8:15 PM in 'srkE

Monday, 9 January 2006

katzen

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Perusing the web logs, not to be confused with weblogs, for interesting digital scree, I found that google was making requests for old images of our cats; the googlebot was methodically checking old links from images.google.com.

I quickly set the server to tell google the images were "410 Gone" possibly helping the googlebot clean up it's database, but then I saw what may have triggered the googebot to hunt for the pictures...legitimate requests for pictures of our cats in the snow.

So, here's a "best of" set...there are more somewhere, but I can't seem to locate the really old ones.

Enjoy!

Posted by tstone at 9:39 PM in cats

Wednesday, 4 January 2006

Photo Album enhancements online

It is I, your petmystone.com code pimp, again with an update.

I put in place some enhancements to the photo album last night. The first being larger photos at cheaper bandwidth, which means less squinting and faster downloads for you.

The Christmas photos were the first to get the new treatment and I will update all of the older Bella photos in the evening.

The downer is that the enhancements are broken, in part, in Microsoft's Internet Exploder. Seems that IE doesn't want to collapse the photo album...I'm working on the fix and have a good idea why it's not working. Patience friends! Everything works in IE otherwise, so enjoy and quit your whining.

UPDATE:

I “pimped” the code for IE. It's appears to be working as expected in IE6.

Posted by tstone at 9:46 AM in kaffehaus

Monday, 2 January 2006

Christmas 2005

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Shannon hosted a wonderful Christmas dinner with Grammy Dawn and GG. Bella couldn't wait to start.

Christmas morning started at 6:30 a.m. with an excited Bella Alane asking if "Santa came to town."

The innate unwrapping behavior of 3 year olds shined. Bella had a hard time deciding whether to tackle another present or get lost in a new toy.

A Merry Christmas indeed!

Posted by tstone at 8:54 PM in 'srkE

Sunday, 1 January 2006

Happy New Year

I think the topic says it best.

Posted by tstone at 12:39 AM in 'srkE