Cory Shubert Photography

Count how many times Bristol Palin says “like”. (7) Is this the new English?

Anyone who has read my past posts know I am not a fan of mom Sarah, or Republicans for that matter, but this is just embarrassing.  Is this the state of our youth in this country, sentence structures that are littered with the word like as a preposition or adverb?

I ain’t got a problem with people being real, but fo sho this can’t be right!

Ok, by now most everyone who Tweets or blogs or has any interest in Facebook beyond posting drunk pics of them from the last kegger has read lots about the TOS change.

I won’t waste cyber air re posting it, just Google. But I will share a link that outlines how FB compares to other Social Media sharing sites.

This is a good read and worth bookmarking.

Stand up world and be heard… 175 million Facebook users can start a revolution!

UPDATE:
Hey, how cool is this? Little ol me and this blog post was added to a video news report on RocketBoom.com

I wondered where that incoming traffic was from, now I know!

UPDATE UPDATE:
Well, that didn’t too long. On the forth day the LORD said:
Facebook has reversed — at least temporarily — the quick and quiet change it made to its terms-of-service agreement that broadened its licensing powers over the Web site’s user-posted material.

My client, MLT Vacations, published their first online videos today promoting the Romance product for destination weddings.

These videos are being hosted on Facebook and in my testing is really the way to go.  The compression that FB uses when converting your video files to Flash is much gentler and doesn’t crunch the hell out of them like YouTube does. Even YouTube’s HD feature makes the files larger but not that much better in my opinion.

Anyway, bomb on over and become a fan and spread the word… go get married on a nice beach and let NWA WorldVacations take care of the details.

Here is a great post about using the tools and apps in Facebook to help promote your business.  Very good stuff here.

http://mashable.com/2009/01/22/business-facebook-apps/

Ok, we have a 2001 Subaru Forester that developed a leaky head gasket.  This is about a $1800.00 repair bill but it seems back in 2004 Subaru sent out an email to owners saying they found this to be an issue with these so they would extend the warranty on them to 8 years or 100k.

Well, we bought ours used in 2007 so we never got the memo, and last week when ours got the issue, we found out we missed the deadline by 4 months or 12k miles.  GULP.

So we did what any scared owner would do, we called our dealer, then Subaru corp. to throw ourselves at their mercy.  And it worked.

Today I got a call from the dealer, Morrie’s in Minnetonka by the way, to say they are going to cover it all… 100%.  Yes Virginia, there IS A GOD!

Once again, as on sooo many other nights while trying to enjoy the Comcast On Demand feature we pay for, the evening turns into a call to customer support only to have them walk us through the reboot process and then.. nada.

I have to say, if any other business ran itself like Comcast, they would be shut down.  No bailout from the government here, just a simple shuttering of the doors and a turn of the key.

We’ve had Comcast for a year and a half and in that time we have had more calls to their customer service dept. to find out why something doesn’t work than any other service provider in our history.  I mean more than Time Warner, AT&T, Qwest, Sprint, DirectTV, DishNetwork… you name it, no other service we have had in our 15 years has been laiden with more headaches and non-work issues than Comcast.

And yet we don’t have any other option other than to dump them and go back to either Dish or DirectTV, then we would have to find a new phone service since we switched to VOIP and also new internet service… and that is just what they bank on.  They suck you in and get you feeling all warm and fuzzy, then make it difficult to switch so you feel you have to stay.

Well, on Monday I will get on the horn and see what our options are and see just what it would take to dump this headache and find a new one, cuz really, they all stink.  The goal is to find the one that stinks less often…

Here’s to companies that do what they say they will do, provide the service they say they will, and charge a fair price for what they end up delivering.  If you find one, please let me know.

For the last few weeks, our service has seemed to barely crawl, like dial up speed. Here is an example of what I am talking about.

I don’t know about you, but when I see these numbers and consider what I am pay for numbers that should be like 10 times higher, I get steamed.

Called and had a tech come out on Monday. They think the modem or connection to the house is acting up.  Sure enough, bad modem… baaaaad bad modem.  After the tech swapped out the modem and rebooted things, this is what we saw:

Now that is what I am talking about.

To all those trying to access my website today and instead found a can’t find it error, don’t be alarmed. It seems my host, BlueHost, had a server issue and mine had to be brought down for a bit.

To the uninformed, a server is a computer in the simplest terms. Most hosts have hundreds of servers sitting in a room quietly doing their work 24/7. What we all know about computers is that they generate heat. Now multiply that by the number of servers you have and, voila, instant sauna.

These rooms that house all these servers need to be cooled, and so most have some pretty hefty AC units running around the clock to keep things on the cool-down. Seems one of those pesky AC units at BlueHost got tired of doing this and crapped out.

To end this boring post, let me just say that in life we can control many things, like picking ones nose or what shoes to wear, but when it comes to our web hosts and what they do with their gear, we are just observers sitting outside the big window watching.

Things are up and back to normal, so now the free flowing of information from this site can continue.

Let’s hope they weren’t picking their nose as they fixed that AC unit…

Happy Holiday to all our family and friends… and all the websurfers that end up here that I have never met and never will!  : ]

Wishing you all a safe and happy holiday season and the promise of a better year to follow than the last one.

Ok, now that the second version of the iPod touch is out, we have a way to get audio IN!  And that means that Skype or VOIP is possible.

I picked up this mic after reading a post somewhere on the web that it would work, and boy does it.  Super sound quality for what it is.  I clipped it on my shirt and did a simple audio test with a app I downloaded from the App store called iRecorder- Pocket Voice Recorder and man is it sweet.

Then I downloaded the free app called Fring and setup my Skype account and Gmail and AIM… and now I can voice chat with whomever I want.

Yes, all the naysayers will say, “But don’t you have a cell phone, why not use that?” Well of course I do, but the point is if I so chose to, I can now use my iPod touch and not my cell…. DUH!  : ]

Anyway, if you are wanting such a solution, go grab one of these and try it out… I think you will be happy with it.