Picked up my copy of Atlas Shrugged Part 1 that was being held at my favorite library and neato, it’s one of the pre-recall versions…

Titan has started being allowed to lay with Bubs while he reads before bedtime, and both seem to be enjoying the new privileges.

BOY IZ READING… LAZORS ON!!! PEW PEW PEW!!!

Small Business/Tech Links…

• Email Delivery & IP Reputation
• Official Google information: 10 recent algorithm changes
• Google’s iOS search app gets a major overhaul, brings instant goodies to iPad users
• The Rise of the Connected Non-Profit
• Spotify Hints at ‘New Direction’
• Facebook, “Sharing,” and the Freedom to Opt Out
• How 5 Top Brands Crafted Their Social Media Voices
• Big Question (Answered): “Has Facebook Gone Too Far with Its “Frictionless Sharing”?”
• Can Vertical Acuity Stop Your Site Losing Visitors?
• Small Business Saturday: A Guide for Shoppers and Stores
• A Friendly Reminder From Google: 2-Step Verification Protects You From Hackers
• Facebook Introduces Sponsored Stories to Ticker
• Occupy Flash
• “Worst passwords” of 2011
• a space-themed lorem ipsum generator

Funny/Interesting Links…

• Money
• Warriors of Goja
• Signature catchphrases from your favorite rappers!
• Odd classroom posters from the 1970s
• Casually Pepper Spray Everything Cop Meme
• 25,000 Angry Christmas Lights

So, if a Dad gushing over how proud he is of his son bugs you – you should probably find another blog post to read today…

See this? This is a kid enjoying the products of his hard work…

That is Bubs in his report card prize, some new Bauer Vapors – which are decent, but not lavish skates by any stretch. But to a kid that was wearing skates two sizes too small, they are the best thing ever.

His grades will be finalized next Wednesday and he has straight A’s except one class, Social Studies – which he is one point away from an A. He has a chance to get that A with a homework assignment or a quiz. Even if he doesn’t hit the perfect report card – his work has been extraordinary this marking period. Not only has his grades been awesome, but he is also playing soccer and ice hockey. He is learning how to organize himself and doing it without much complaining.

On top of that, I also received a letter from the BOE yesterday informing us that Bubs is going to get an award for his perfect score in Science on the NJASK last year (a test given to all NJ students in 4th and 8th grade). And I’m not done yet…

Last night at practice, one of the parents of his teammates came out of the boys’ locker room asking the parent next to me, “Do you know who number 7 is?”
“Yeah, that’s Van.”
And before I could claim #7 as my little dude…
“What a sweet kid, he came into the locker room and gave the coach the nicest apology for getting upset at the last game.”

I was beaming with pride. I was upset with Bubs for his complaining from the last game. Some familiar words came to mind… life grades on a curve. But hey, this is all part of why sports are so great for kids – those mistakes and improvements make these young men better hockey players and human beings.

Oh and on top of all of that greatness, karma smiled on me that day – while Abbe was cleaning our bookshelves, a $100 bill was found stashed in an old Christmas present from my parents… oddly enough almost the exact price for those skates.

Continuing on the good stuff motif… Team All for Layna received our largest ever donation and now, the team is at nearly 40% (up from 24% last week) and I am now at 50%! I can not wait to go out in this cold, rainy weather and run today. And with Black Friday approaching, I want you to consider skipping your coffee at Starbucks that morning and having a cup at home instead. Why $5? What good would that do for a cancer patient?

$5 can get you a latte at Starbucks or a beer at the local bar, but to see how $5 makes an impact for cancer patients, check out how every dollar really does count:

• If 2 people gimme 5…$10 provides two hours of microscope use to determine if a new medicine will stop a life-threatening lung infection in a bone marrow transplant patient.
• 4 people…$20 pays for a bottle of nutrients that will nourish 10 million leukemia cells grown in the laboratory for a week, enabling scientists to test whether a new anti-cancer drug halts their growth.
• 8 people…$40 purchases enough razor-sharp blades to prepare bone-marrow biopsy samples from 200 patients, enabling doctors to make accurate cancer diagnoses.
• 20 people….$100 pays for the cost of an antibody used to determine the precise characteristics of lymphoma cells, allowing doctors to determine the best treatment for a patient.
• 50 people…$250 buys an instrument to measure tiny volumes of liquid, which allows scientists to accurately measure the solutions needed to prepare a patient sample for a diagnostic test.
• 100 people…$500 purchases 10 hours of time on a flow cytometer, a machine that reveals a multitude of characteristics of blood cancer cells that could be developed into effective diagnostic tests.

Movie Review…

X-Men: First Class – this was probably the best super hero film I’ve seen. That’s not high praise by any stretch, but this film was decent.

Small Business/Tech Links…

• Why Small Businesses Must Build Their Website on WordPress
• How Google Panda Has Impacted SEO for Newer Businesses
• iOS 5′s panorama enabled with backup hackery, jailbreak not required
• Adobe abandoning Flash Player for TVs as well, Ex-Flash Manager: Adobe Ignored Smartphones Until It Was Too Late
• How to Manage a Rebrand
• 10 Tips and Tricks for Better Google+ Brand Pages
• 20 Free Online Tools for Website Speed Testing

Funny/Interesting Links…

• MOUSTAIR
• Governor Perry explains which 3 Federal departments he would cut - I wanna party with this guy, he seems fun
• Surfer Rides 90 Foot Wave in Portugal, a world record
• Jaw-dropping northern lights

Today is the mud run. My prediction, messy fun. Pictures to come sometime this afternoon.

After a long day of work, Bubs and I had our nightly baseball catch in the backyard and after the kids were picked up by their mom, I headed to the cheese shoppe for dinner and to pick up Abbe. I got to try one of their new sandwiches from their new Fall Menu – the Swirled Peace, and wow, it’s awesome. Oh and I would be remiss without mentioning a hearty congrats to the Carriage Trade Cheese Shoppe for their win in the 28th Annual New Jersey Monthly’s Reader’s Choice Awards!

Small Business/Tech Links…

• Adobe’s Flash Media Server 4.5 will stream video to iOS devices
• Blog Management – Go Blog Wild
• New Demo Promises Blazing Fast Boot Times in Windows 8
• Why Businesses Must Adopt a Multi-Channel Messaging Strategy

Funny/Interesting Links…

• T-shirts: film director names as iconic band logos
• Ten insulting words you should know

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

Must remember to keep smiling while the world continues to explode around me.

Books the kids and I have been reading…

GUYKU: A Year of Haiku for Boys – this was great, both kids really liked this book. Their eyes glazed over when I explained the syllable scheme(s) of Haiku, but they really enjoyed this book. And my son actually showed this book to our neighbor’s child and explained the 5, 7, 5 pattern.
How to Clean a Hippopotamus: A Look at Unusual Animal Partnerships – this book was cool. Illustrations are neatly laid out in a comic strip block format and chocked full of weird information. Ever have anyone ask you to describe another symbiotic relationship besides that of the clown fish and anemone? Well this book will give you plenty of responses.
Jimi: Sounds Like a Rainbow: A Story of the Young Jimi Hendrix – LOVED this book. The artwork is super cool and although a rock star that killed himself with drugs and alcohol (but, this is about his childhood and learning guitar) may seem like an odd choice for the subject of a children’s book – the music he made is the real story.
Subway – great idea for a book. Now my kids want to go ride all the subways in NYC.
Yucky Worms – Viv really like this story of a grandmother sharing all the secrets about the wonderful things worms do for us. And finally this book dispels the myth that if you cut a worm in half, you get two worms.
Dark Emperor and Other Poems of the Night – I loved this book. One half of the page is a poem about the nocturnal animal or plant, the other side explains the science behind the poem you just read. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the kids thought this was as cool as I did.

Small Business/Tech Links…

• WordPress Gets iPad Friendly Look
• The Truth About Search Engines and Flash
• Social Networking Strategies for Finding More Work
• Why Making Web Apps with Rails Is Awesome
• 11 Pro Tips for Better Business Blogging

Funny/Interesting Links…

• Top 10 Craziest Victoria Jackson Quotes About Glenn Beck
• My Bad Parent
• The Aurora
• Near Perfect Reflection
• THE MANIFESTO MANIFESTO
• Sokoblovsky Farms