Seth Gunderson: January 2006 Archives

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January 29, 2006

Four Things

As with the overnighters and musical baton from earlier posts, here’s the latest and greatest chain-blog idea. Thanks to Tevis for obligating me. ;)

Four jobs I’ve had:

BBQ Delivery Driver (on bike)
Assistant Manager of a grocery store
Camp Counselor
Mail Clerk

Four movies I can watch over and over:

“The Bourne Identity”
“Austin Powers” (any of them)
“Finding Nemo”
“Super Troopers”

Four places I’ve lived:

Fayetteville, Arkansas
Belmont, Mississippi
Little Rock, Arkansas
Kansas City, Missouri

Four places I’ve vacationed:

St. Lucia
Seattle, Washington
New York, New York
Pensacola, Florida

Four TV shows I love:

Arrested Development
Deadwood
The West Wing
Futurama

Four sites I visit daily:

Four bloggers whom I’m tagging:

Posted by Seth at 10:49 PM | Comments (2)

What Else Is Going On?

I was thinking the other day about those random weird facts that people spout out all the time, you know, like there’s a baby born every second... or... there’s a car accident every eight seconds. Blah blah. Whatever. I mean, on one hand it’s cool to think that someone burped right now... or now... ooooooor... now. But what about the things that no one really talks about?

If you think about it, there are so many people on this Earth and so many things that those people can do, the possibilities of what’s going on are endless. That said, here’s what’s happening right now, at this very moment, somewhere in the world:

An old lady, who can’t see over her steering wheel, ran over her beagle named “Dodger”
A single guy just received a response email from someone on a dating web site, he’ll be taking his mother out on a blind date this Tuesday
A cowboy couldn’t get his hands out of his pants to break his fall and rolled down a prairie hill (based on a true story)
A band nerd just figured out how to play “NBC’s Nightly News” theme on their trumpet... backwards
Someone farted in a space where they didn’t anticipate someone entering
Someone is smelling a fart they didn’t anticipate smelling in the space they just walked into
A super model blew her nose and snot flew out the top of the tissue because she didn’t clasp it around her schnoz tightly enough
Some drunk dude tried to stick a paddle in their mouth on a canoe trip and lost the $17,000 bet
A scientist is seriously reconsidering why he chose to study bacteria that lives in feces
Someone is regretting making out in the back of “Big Momma’s House 2” because it was really a good movie
In a major mix-up, a clown got hit in the face with an Acid Pie and everyone in the crowd laughed as his face melted under the whipped cream
A total of two people entered the “Do You Look Like Gordon from Sesame Street?” contest
Someone is pissed they missed the latest episode of “Ghost Whisperer” on CBS and laments they’re the only one on Earth that enjoys the show
A gal ran three miles (interesting, eh?)
I just wasted five of your precious minutes, sorry

Posted by Seth at 07:02 PM | Comments (0)

January 26, 2006

Vehicle Not Intended for Underwater Use

Because the commercial that showed a Jeep getting blown out of a volcano wasn’t enough to show how rugged a Jeep really is... there’s a new commercial that shows how versatile Jeeps are, because now they can drive UNDERWATER!!!

Wait, before this goes to far, this commercial, like its predecessor, is a farce! Jeeps can’t go underwater. No vehicles sold on the current car market can go under water. That’s why the commercial makes sure to say, “Warning: vehicle not intended for underwater use.”

Who in their right mind will see this commercial and say, “honey, we need to get one of them under water cars?” Better yet, what person (mind you, one that can afford to buy the Jeep Commander) will even think that a car can go under water?

This commercial does nothing to sell the vehicle and only makes Jeep look pretty damn silly... again.

Posted by Seth at 09:46 PM | Comments (1)

January 19, 2006

My Overnighters In 2005

As seen on Tevis.net and Kottke.org, here is my list of places that I stayed overnight (at least one night, if not more) during the past year. It’s quite fun to look back on and see the marvelous different places you’ve been. * denotes multiple trips to said city

Kansas City, MO*
Fayetteville, AR*
Springdale, AR
Hot Springs, AR*
Benton, AR*
Carthage, MO
Denver, CO
Frisco, CO
Backwoods, AR (camping)
Lawrence, KS

As you can see, not so very adventurous last year. This year should prove somewhat different, I hope. We’ll soon find out!!!

Posted by Seth at 06:47 PM | Comments (3)

January 18, 2006

He On the Front Porch

In his greatest attempt to make me want to return to my hometown of Fayetteville, Arkansas, Todd has gone and made himself a podcast. It’s called “Front Porch Podcast,“ and it’s absolutely wonderful. Enjoy it and stay tuned for the rumored vodcast!

Posted by Seth at 11:29 PM | Comments (0)

We’re So Technically Advanced, Or Are We?

Internet Technology Exercise #1

Click inside your browser’s address bar
Type the following “rm116.com” and press Enter
What do you see? (Hint: it should be a GoDaddy.com reserved page)

Internet Technology Exercise #2

Click inside your browser’s address bar
Type the following “www.rm116.com” and press Enter
What do you see?

Internet Technology Exercise #3

Click inside your browser’s address bar
Type the following “coke” and press Enter
What do you see?

Uhh... what? So I CAN’T get to rm116.com because I didn’t put a “www” in there... but I CAN get to coca-cola.com just putting “coke” in the address bar?

Something ain’t right.

Posted by Seth at 10:27 AM | Comments (5)

January 16, 2006

Seeking Gold Statistics? Use Measure Map!

For the past six months I’ve been using statcounter.com to track my site’s usage statistics. And why not? It’s free and it supplies me with quite a bit of juicy stats. The only quip I have with the service is that the free account only comes with 100 log entries – which means that when visitor #101 visits your site, you lose the information from #1, and the cycle continues. So if you’re looking at statistics such as browser-usage, resolution, etc., your information is only as good as your last 100 hits (not to be confused with visitors).

With the recent influx of new, and extremely worthwhile, solution startups, I’ve been chomping at the bit to get hooked into some alpha/beta/preview testing. I finally succeeded when I was invited to try out Odeo.com before they went public (Odeo.com is a nice podcasting community site) and then hit gold again when I was able to test out the new browser, Flock.

I found tons and tons of nice new solutions to test out here and there, but there seemed to be a major void in the area of web site statistic tracking.

Then, out of the blue, came Mint, a totally sweet PHP, MySQL and JavaScript engine that keeps track of all the fun stuff for you. Only problem here, I missed out on the beta and now it costs money. MONEY!?! Who has that?

Luckily I caught a post over at Jeffery Veen’s site talking about Adaptive Path’s new tracking solution called Measure Map. I hopped on the waiting list to try this out and was contacted shortly after the year began. I quickly signed up and added the necessary code to my page to start utilizing the service.

Basically, Measure Map rocks. There are four main categories that are tracked: Visitors, Links (to and from), Comments and Posts. The interface is designed very cleanly and completely with the user in mind. In addition, almost every page features a smaller flash application for you to choose your date, or date span. Also tracked are browsers, countries and times your users visited.

Unlike statcounter, Measure Map doesn’t log IP address. If they do, I don’t see it. At first I wanted this feature because in statcounter, I can tell who has looked at what (for a very small group of people), but now I’m fine with that. Measure Map tells me beyond the last 100 hits and that makes me happy. It also tells me that I have X number of visitors and Y% has been there before. Perfect.

I’m sure that the Measure Map that I see now won’t be the final product released to the entire public... I’m betting quite a bit of tweaks are made between now and whenever it’s released. I would like to see some more basic stats, if possible, like screen resolution, javascript usage and specific browser (IE 5.0 vs IE 5.5) percentages. Maybe features like that will be added, maybe not.

Oh, I almost forgot one of the coolest features... RSS feeds with your stats! Now you don’t have to worry about logging in every day to see what the stats were... you get it sent to you automatically. Mucho Bueno!!!

Nice job to the peeps over at Adaptive Path, keep up the good work! If you’d like to sign up for an invitation, you can do so from Measure Map’s home page.

Posted by Seth at 01:47 PM | Comments (2)

January 15, 2006

On the 24 Road, Again

Hey, stop reading these old posts and go directly to the good stuff at Why24Sucks!

Well... it’s begun. 24 started season number five tonight with a two-hour premiere and will continue that premiere tomorrow night with another two hours. Sheesh, that’s a lot of 24... or really, just four hours of 24, total. But, like last year, I’ll be dissecting each and every episode over at Why 24 Sucks, check it out if you’re a fan of the show... I might sway you a bit.

And in some super related news, I found another site dedicated to the same cause as I... 24 Reasons 24 Sucks. It’s pretty damn funny.

Posted by Seth at 10:12 PM | Comments (2)

January 13, 2006

To Winter Park and Back

As my boss so eloquently said on the American Copywriter blog about me not getting the new podcast up on Friday, “Sethy G. saw fit to go snowboarding this week.” Damn right I saw it fit, bossman, and by golly I did go. Todd and I loaded up last Saturday and made the dangerous trek to Denver, Colorado to visit with my cousin and her family. Then, on Sunday, we were on to our penultimate destination – Winter Park/Fraser, Colorado.

This is our third year to make the trip... but this year’s trip was quite a bit different than the previous years’. As I did with last year’s snowboard trip post, here’s the breakdown of my vacation, in numeros:

Los Basics

...awesome dudes on the trip: 2
...snowboards: 2
...snowboards owned by either awesome dude: 1
...atm visits: 1
...PowerBooks taken: 2
...iPods taken: 4
...working iPods returned with: 3

El Drive

...empty seats in the Honda Element: 3
...ice scrapers: 2 (if you count credit cards, 0, if you don’t)
...times “XM radio rocks!” was exclaimed: 13
...pages of Eragon read: 163
...episodes of The Ricky Gervais Show listened to: 5 (great, great, great stuff folks... Karl Pilkington is one of the funniest people I’ve listened to in a long time)
...unsuccessful thrift store stops: 1
...times granulated peanuts were offered to each other: 17

El Condo

...WiFi connections found: 0
...calls answered on our cell phones: 0
...seconds before realizing we had no cell phone or internet service: 12
...beds: 2
...positions I slept in to lessen my back pain: 8
...pills I popped to lessen my back pain: 24
...fires in the fireplace: 5
...hot tub visits: 1
...cable channels received: 10 (we got HBO, but not ESPN, CNN or MTV)
...replayed college basketball games watched: 3
...kick-ass documentaries kinda-watched: 1 (“Country Boys,” check it out... this is what reality tv should be)
...toy dinosaurs hidden: 13

El Fraser, Colorado

...WiFi connections found: 3
...calls answered on our cell phones: 2, maybe (do other Colorado towns have this problem too?)
...weird internet shops with pay-for-internet service: 1
...times visited: 0
...coffee shops with pay-for-internet service: 1
...times visited: 2
...successful thrift store stops: 1
...shops where the owners have dogs in them: all of them

Los Meals

...trips to Safeway: 4
...dinners cooked at the condo: 4
...times stopped at McDonald’s: 3
...lunches on the mountain: 1.5
...times we got screwed because the grill at “Snoasis” closed at 2:00: 1
...times we went back to “Snoasis”: 0
...Big Burritos eaten at the Crooked Creek Saloon: 2

Los Slopes

...days on the mountain: 4 (straight)
...times we went down Wildwood Glade and Bluebell: 15
...hours spent on Vasquez Ridge: 3, tops
...times unbuckling on “roads”: 27
...minutes spent trying to figure out alternative paths from “roads”: 45
...trips to the top of the mountain: 2
...hours spent getting down Primrose and Backside Parsenn: 2
...times we said, “holy shit it’s cold,” on Thursday: 33

El Miscellaneous

...new jackets purchased: 1
...new gloves purchased: 4 (8, total, if you count the glove inserts)
...theater movies watched: 1 (“Hostel,” and we’re still undecided if it was good or not)
...silly ass movies made: 4, maybe 5
...“about a thousand dollars” was said: 36
...cold sores Todd got: 1
...gas was passed in the condo: 379
...gas was passed in the car on the way home: 0 (seriously, there MUST be something about the air up there... does anyone else experience the same thing?)

El Conclusion

...times I said, “I’m glad we did this.”: 5

El Extra Credit (say the following things without an accent)

Tennis bowl
My tricks
The lost unicorn

Posted by Seth at 09:59 PM | Comments (2)

January 05, 2006

Sarodd Engaged!

One of my greatest friends and one of my favorite persons got engaged last night and I’m so super excited for them. I think it’s been in the works for the past few years now, the writting was on the wall, but now it’s offish! Congratulations you two!!!

So now that it’s official, so too is the fact that we can combine their names into one. Just like we have Bevron (Aaron and Bev) and Lauric (Laura and Eric), I hereby announce that Todd and Sarah can now be called “Sarodd.”

I choose Sarodd because “Todah” sounds too much like ta-da and “Todrah” is eerily similar to She-ra. So Sarodd will have to do.

Posted by Seth at 08:58 AM | Comments (2)