Jericholicious

I was just sending an email to a couple of friends using my favorite emailin' tool; Gmail. I included the word "Jericholicious" in my message and then performed a spell check. Of course the ever vigilant Gmail spell checker felt this word was in error - as I knew it would. However, for giggles (of which I got a few!) I went ahead and checked the list of word replacements that were suggested. The first word at the top of the list was:


"Crotchless".


Insert your own punchline here. :)

Max: Death Match - To The Death

Voldermort vs Yoda.

Who wins?

Max: Oh My

Pretty album covers.

Jericho: Irater's Photo Stolen!

Now and then I come out here to complain that someone seems out to get me or that someone has stolen my idea - well, now I have PROOF!

By the time you read this, it will probably have been removed, but someone stole a piece of my photography from this very site!

Have a look at this Amazon offering - if you hurry, you may still catch the photo there!

Now, then, hop over to the older Irate Weirdos feature The Indoor Bonsai Notebook. Toward the top of the page is a few pictures of a Toysmith "Mini Bonsai Garden" - this picture here in fact:



I went out to Amazon to look for a different Bonsai Kit when I saw a picture that looked very familiar! Sure enough, they had taken the picture from this site - my picture! Without permission!

Toysmith had not done this, but a seller using Amazon as a store front had, a certain Toys 2 Wish 4. I called their toll free number. A nice lady answered the phone. I asked her if I could speak to whomever put up the ads on Amazon because they were using one of my pictures without permission. She said that was her. Interesting!

So, we started to talk about the ad, then she had to put me on hold. I was sitting there, laughing and fuming at the same time. I mean, they stole from me, but at the same time, they were not really harming me and they liked my picture enough to use it for their post. Funny, no?

She came back and we figured out which out of their 7000 products on Amazon we were talking about. She said that, even though she had placed the ad, she wasn't familiar with that picture but she would have it removed imediately.

Now, as you all know, I'm a mercenary - I can be bought fairly cheaply. They like the picture - so maybe we could strike a bargain. I suggested this. The told me that they didn't have even an advertising budget. I asked if I could get store credit. The best she could do was to give me a 15% off coupon. I told her she should remove my photo.

But, she insisted on making the coupon. I can use it repeatedly to the end of the year. She at least tried to make it good - so I bear no ill will. I'm still kinda laughing about it.

If y'all find something you like on their site, let me know - I'll place the order for 15% off! :)

Jericho: Greenbox

Who knew fishing could be good for the environment?

Three fishing buddies in Wales may have hit the environmental jackpot and we're all going to benefit. Check out the article here.

This is the kinda thing that excites the hell out of me. Even if you just gave this to trucks and buses and trains, it would have to take a bite out of our carbon footprint!

Jericho: Back under 500.

Normally, when I diet I avoid the scale for everything I'm worth - like I did last week.

However, this week, Steph has kept encouraging me to step on the scale. Monday I was 507, Tuesday I was 505. Today I was 498. I re-weighed with the same results. It's a big drop, but not unexpected. I have so much weight to lose and it takes so much for this body to do anything resembling movement, thousands of calories going out the door in a short time frame isn't unimaginable.

Most likely a lot of that was just water. I have indeed been peeing like mad recently. I've also been fairly active, so maybe some of the fluid the docs said was around my heart is circulating out and some of the fluid around my ankles and legs is gone, too. Either way, I don't care - I'm just glad it's going.

I'm still eating, no sweat there. I'm doing about 2000 to 2500 calories a day. Sunday we spent several hours in the pool, nothing too stressful, but, I wasn't sitting on the couch eating chips, either. Monday morning I got on the treadmill for 30 minutes. I was hoping to repeat that several times this week and haven't managed to - it's a process. I'll get there.

This time, I plan to stay under 500 permenantly. Wish me luck.

Max: Bugs on the Windshield - Blood on the Highway

It's no secret that I'm a fan of road trips. Unfortunately, I either have the time but not the money or I don't have the time or the money. This past week however, I was given an offer I could not refuse. My cousin Shannon was planning the enter into the bliss that is marital ensnarement.

Shannon has long been one of my closest cousins. Shannon, his brother - and oddly enough also my cousin - Brandon, our mutual cousin Steve and I are the most committed of music aficionados in our family. Many years ago, we would spend a large portion of our annual family reunion monopolizing the CD player as we played for each other the cool, new - preferably obscure - music we had each discovered in the preceding year.

Those times were the closest thing I have to "halcyon days of youth." Age, ever increasing responsibilities and ever decreasing free time have made days a hard thing to come by. Back then, there were cousins I saw and partied with at least once a year. Now I find I had not seen many of them in a decade or more. That made Shannons's wedding was a family event not to be missed.

The festivities were set to take place in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. I had to work Friday evening, so we didn't hit the road until a little after 9 PM. The route was straightforward enough. MO-40 which became MO-61 which became MO-27 which became IA-27. While it lacked the charm and adventure of back roads and blue highways, our route was not quite as sterile as it would have been on Interstates. We passed through towns, negotiated twists and turns as we listened to The Marijuana-loges and They Might Be Giants.

The one incident worthy of note occurred about a mile or two south of the MO/IA border. We were cruising along when traffic slowed to a complete halt. The lights and sounds of an arriving helicopter where our first clue that someone up ahead was having a bad day. It struck me as somewhat odd, however, that the helicopter was not taking back off. After about a half hour, I was getting stiff and got out of the car to stretch. A few cars back, a semi driver was listening to the police reports on his CB. He was the one to tell me that an ambulance, an ambulance, had hit a horse and buggy - we assume from the nearby Mennonite community. The horse had already departed to that great stable in the sky. The buggy driver, however, was too unstable to be moved. It took about another half hour for the EMT's to get him stable enough to copter out.

Traffic finally got moving again. Someone was kind enough to have moved what remained of the horse out of site. However, there was blood all over the highway and a distinct odor of horse shit. On the whole, a lovely diversion to break up our travels.

We eventually got to our hotel around 2am and crashed.

The next day we got up and attempted to follow my mother to the church. We parted company when she decided to go the wrong way down a one way street. Laura and I restored to reading the directions and looking at street signs in order to get there. The ceremony was a typical Catholic affair - calisthenics, cookies and wine. The reception was the true event. I got to catch up with family I had not seen since the dark ages. I did a - incomplete - striptease. On the whole, it was a Saturday well spent.

The next day was about the breakfast buffet and the trip home. There were no noticeable signs of death this time. But as it was daylight we were able to enjoy the scenery. Beyond a futile quest for an Iowa state magnet, it was an uneventful trip home.

How was your weekend?

Jericho: Better than flying Delta!

I don't know if this guy is a genius or a loon - he's certainly an Honorary Irate Weirdo and just about got nominated for a Darwin Award!

Jericho: Sci-Fi Channel Rant

I rant for 10 minutes on my hatred of Sci-Fi channel and on the way David Lynch and, in turn, the fans, were screwed by the studios over the Dune movie nearly 20 years ago!

Jericho: Just me yakkin' ...

Max: Cuarto de Julio

Happy Independence Day.

Make sure to blow some shit up in celebration of the freedoms we apparently don't want any more.

Jericho: Too Easy

It's like shooting fish sticks in a barrel! Make your own punch-lines ...

Jericho: We're back. Where did we go?

So ... it finally happened!

I have been waiting for this to happen for a while. We've gotten close before, but we smashed it against the wall this time!

What happened? Well, this site is hosted by the lovely folks at DotEasy - you can find their link down on the lower right sidebar there. Frankly, working with DotEasy for the last five years has been a blast - no trouble at all. I frankly recommend them - and if you use that link down there to set up an account, we get a few bucks. Sorry for the shameless plug.

Our deal with DotEasy is pretty sweet, in all honesty. For $25 a year, we get our domain name and hosting. That hosting is 100 MB of space plus, and this is the important part, a gigabyte of through put a month. That means 1 GB of data can get loaded or downloaded every month.

Our site deals mostly in text. Most of the graphics you see around here are hosted on YouTube or Project Wonderful or some other site beside ours - we just link to it. Text is tiny through put, and since we don't have a ton of visitors, we rarely if ever get close to our limit.

However, the last few months, I had noticed we were getting closer and closer and I couldn't figure out how that was happening. Even with our advertising on Project Wonderful, we still didn't have that many hits.

One day I noticed it was taking forever to load a post from Blogger. So, I hit the details button and watched what it was doing. It was loading up megabytes of data for my singular, tiny post. That was crazy!

See down there at the bottom of the post, the "Labels" - this post says "Batshit Crazy" and "Facts" - as far as I can tell, Blogger makes an individual web page for each of those Labels. Apparently a rather large page, by my standards. And, they do it for every Label, even if you didn't connect that Label to your post. This turns into a lot of MB per post - especially since we had more than 100 Labels.

We had some pretty dumb Labels, too. They were funny and fun to use. But they aren't much fun if they bring the site down. Some of our Labels pointed to a single post. Others duplicated themselves - if it didn't have a consequence, it wouldn't matter, but if it's going to hurt us, we really don't need a Label for "Bush" and another Label for "Shrub".

So, Max and I both took a swipe at parring down the Labels. We have it down to 38 rather broad Labels. There are a few that are very specific, and we have kept a few that are just plain humorous - several have changed or expanded their names. But I think this will also make the Labels more useful instead of just being another editorial comment.

I haven't loaded up a post since the new Labels came together, so we'll see if there is a difference in size of what gets loaded up. We'll probably have to repeat this exercise as we add Labels and delete them. And, I'm sure we'll find ways to use all of our through put allotment again and bring the site down. However, I'm glad you all came back and hopefully this won't happen too often.

Welcome back and enjoy the Labels!