Yesterday started off sorta poorly, kids were not behaving while I was trying to get some coding done on a couple of jQuery range sliders for a big project. A quick-turnaround came about after the kids and I hit the Dutch Wagon Market for some pretzels and then surprising Abbe and Caroline at the cheese shoppe with a couple of pretzels for their day (Viv and I split a plate of cheese, fruit, and bread too). Also, as a bonus, our friends Natalie and Bella were there to join us for a midday mangia. Bubs and I had a nice long baseball catch in the backyard and we watched the Phils pummel the Cubs. Abbe came home and cross stitched while I worked on Big Love (Lindsey is THE most underrated guitarist).

Today, I’ve got a softball double-header. Bubs will be coming along to watch, and Viv will be hanging with her Memom. The rest of the day will most likely be spent coding and possibly dinner over at Mom’s depending on how everybody (i.e. me) is feeling.

Funny/Interesting Links…

• 10 Must-Follow Fake Twitter Celebs
• Dancer Among Us of the Day
• Hula-hooping from the hoop’s point of view

My Pathfinder is home, safe and sound. Again, a big thanks to Chad’s Complete Auto Repair for once again taking great care of me.

The battle of Poll Everywhere JS embed code within an AJAX autorefresh DIV (still really need a better name for this conflict) has entered a new chapter – paid API Development support. The IFRAME suggestion didn’t function or look decent, ergo I am going to be spending some time on the phone with some fellow geeks on the left coast today.

I mentioned Abbe would be working on my high school friend Adrienne’s wedding dress yesterday and Abbe just finished her sketches last night. I immediately MMS’d them to her and Ade was happy to say the least….

“… I just looked at this for a few and tears formed in my eyes. I kid u not…. Its perfect. OMG!! Its perfect!!!!”

Today is going to be a busy one, but I am going to do my best to fit some doing good (and that is meant in an altruistic sense, not in the knocking of the proverbial boots sense) in this day too – let’s do this.

Small Business/Tech Links…

• 30 Awesome Web Designs That Create an Illusion of Depth
• The Game of Life: Freelancers’ Edition [INFOGRAPHIC]
• 5 Ways Social Media Has Changed Marketing Campaigns

Funny/Interesting Links…

• Drunk Lady at the Beach – NSFW, multiple wardrobe malfunctions
• Craigslist Apartment Listing of the Day – THE ROOMBAS HAVE NAMES!
• When Obama Met Osama
• ROME – way cool
• Vegan Black Metal Chef
• R2D2 Trashcan
• Flyers to Host Rangers in Winter Classic 2012!!!! – have to figure a way to go to this!

Abbe got a visitor last night, my good friend from high school, Adrienne who picked out a pattern, fabric, and colors for her wedding gown. Ade is going to look beautiful! I love seeing Abbe like she was last night, agonizing over the little flowery thingies that are hand sewn on, making sure she’s getting enough material. Very excited to see the final product. And a big congrats to Ade and Geno!

The battle of Poll Everywhere JS embed code within an AJAX autorefresh DIV continues (really need a better name for this conflict… like Operation Refreshing Poll). Before we cough up money for the high dollar API support, I am going to try an IFRAME technique – we shall see.

Well, I got some good news from Chad yesterday – looks like the check engine light was just a failing oxygen sensor, translating to roughly $200 or so for the repairs. I should have the Pathfinder home at some point today, thanks again Chad!

Abbe and I got another short run in yesterday. I think if I give my left shin a break today, then do a tortuous pace run of 2-3 miles on the treadmill tomorrow, I should be in good shape for a bigger run on Saturday.

The kids both have big tests today and I’m really proud of how hard they both studied and how confident they are this morning. Go get ‘em!

Today, I’m going to try to do my best to focus on doing some good, who’s with me?

Small Business/Tech Links…

• 8 Things They Don’t Tell You About Being a Web Designer
• Common SEO Questions – A SPN Exclusive Article
• Sitting Down is Killing You [infographic]

Funny/Interesting Links…

• Obi-Wan Kenobi Is Dead, Vader Says
• Finally… Scope Doritos Flavor

Yesterday was a somewhat challenging little fella. I woke up to an email from the branch manager of my local bank letting me know that my checking account was overdrawn. It turns out an ACH payment dinged my account that should not have (unless I slept walked and bought some tractor supplies from Woodbury, NJ and didn’t realize it). Thankfully, charges have been refunded and my account is fine – big thanks to the folks at The Bank responding so quickly, gotta love the customer service you get from locals!

I am mired in a couple of coding battles right now. I am pitted against the Poll Everywhere JS embed code that I want to use within an AJAX autorefresh DIV. The tricky part has been getting the JavaScript within the embed code to execute (destroying the child DIV, re-adding it with the innerHTML and then adding the child DIV back to the DOM has been fruitless). I will be putting in a call (hopefully today) to a Poll Everywhere engineer to get some assistance. My other challenge has been getting a decent cross-browser PDF embed script to work. I found EmbedPDF which worked awesome for all of my computers (on Macs and PC), but the load time is slow and actually crashed my client’s browser upon testing. Now that Scribd supports HTML5 (so iOS viewers can play too) as well as Flash, AND they support non-Scribd hosted PDFs, this should be the answer, but their API is giving me fits.

Today, I am dropping off the Pathfinder again at Chad’s for a mysterious check engine light that just came on – get your candles ready for the vigil, people.

Small Business/Tech News…

• Microsoft Agrees to Purchase Skype for $8.5 billion US.
• Effective Website Help Systems: Tips and Examples
• Official Google advice: how to check if your contents pass Google’s new quality requirements
• Why Pay To Get More Traffic To Your Website?
• 6 Tips to Quality Directory Submissions
• Just How Dangerous Is Sitting All Day? [INFOGRAPHIC]

Funny/Interesting Links…

• SNL Jack Sparrow (feat. Michael Bolton)
• Marvel and DC Heroes in Sit Room
• Coffee Time
• Kitten vs. A Scary Thing
• Indian Street Graphics
• Pendulum Waves

Oh boy, oh boy… my  iPad 2 is almost here. I’ve been watching the FedEx updates on my phone and laptop for the past two weeks. She started off in Shenzen, China, made a quick stop in Lantau Island, Hong Kong, brief stop in Anchorage, Alaska, then quickly into Memphis, TN, arrived this morning in Philadelphia, PA and now she is just minutes away in Mt. Laurel, NJ. How did I happen to get an iPad 2? One of excellent customers purchased it for me, the iPad 2 will be awesome with the upcoming HTML5 projects I’ll be working on. ***NEWS FLASH – IT’S ON THE TRUCK!

Yesterday for that very same customer, I was stuck with a conundrum. We have a large media summit planned for this month. My task is to make all the web technologies work for the folks that can not attend the conference live. Ergo, I’m building the webpages and stuff – one tricky item is that since this is a faith based organization, a live chat during the presentations would have to be moderated. Now finding PHP/Flash/jQuery chats are easy, you can barely throw a rock in a schoolyard without hitting one. But moderated… now that’s a little tricky. I did find one script, plunked down the $7 for the script, but it was using SQLite and after spinning wheels with the script long enough – I cut my loses and wrote my own jQuery/PHP/MySQL moderated chat script from scratch. I’m hoping to actually use it on this fine website soon (among other places). Very excited about this project altogether too. I get to work with a dynamic group of REALLY smart folks. I’m learning lots.

Oh and that chat script? It’s going to be called vvvChat, after me and my kids’ first names… not the first time I’ve used that…

Movie Review…

The Fighter – great film, really solid performances by Bale, Adams, and Wahlberg. BUT… HOW THE HELL DO YOU MAKE A FILM ABOUT MICKEY WARD AND NOT INCLUDE THE GATTI FIGHTS?!?! Are you insane? I just can not imagine anyone thinking this was a wise choice. The film did fantastic at the box office and won Academy Awards, but two of those three fights were voted the fight of the year by Ring Magazine. The film is great, but that small part of me that is still a boxing fan was insulted.

Small Business/Tech Links…

• 10 Top SEO Facebook Strategies
• The “Bad Client” Fallacy

Funny/Interesting Links…

• President Bush Reacts to Osama Bin Laden’s Death with Will Ferrell
• There are plenty of Osama-Obama mistakes in the news reporting lately, but this one might be the best.
• Finger Nose
• Project Neon