I am very happy to report that I believe I fixed my sore heel and calf with a short run yesterday with Abbe. I did have some issues with the run (a little wheezing), but it was great to be running with my girl on a beautiful day.

As much as I love the show Oddities, it can be tough to watch. I try hard not to tell anyone how to spend their money – whether they worked hard to earn it or not, I assume they did work hard. It is theirs to spend as they see fit. Sure it would be great if those that have would lend some measure of help to those without, and I don’t know if the collectors that come into the curiosity shop spend oodles of money on charities, BUT… it is truly hard to watch someone spend $300 on a piece of art made of human hair when I am sitting in the position I am in financially.

Great, you just bought a two headed pig cadaver for $3,000, do you think the pig could spare some change? How about instead of buying that taxidermied wolf penis, maybe you would give this hard working dad that is fighting every single day to provide for his family that money for some work, getting me entirely out of debt and you could just feel good. Isn’t that better than a wolf penis?

I do really enjoy the show mostly for the history, information on these very interesting sub-cultures, and the self-defined beauty that some of these collectors find in really odd stuff. But there’s that one part of me that just can’t help to think that this money could be put to better use.

Movie Review…

The Way Back – this was pretty good, I’m surprised this film did not do better at the box office. It is long and honest, a 4,000 mile walk to freedom is grueling and the audience shares in that experience to a certain extent.

Small Business/Tech Links…

• Build Dynamic Pages with Knockout.js
• Dissection of a Twitter Account: 10 Ways I’ve Used Twitter This Month
• Colors in Web Design: An Exploration

Funny/Interesting Links…

• Rides A Bike.
• Go the F*** to Sleep! read by Samuel L. Jackson
• Guitar Baby

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 ex has another nasty migraine, so the kids and I went out to eat at PJ’s to lift their spirits and then we stopped in at the Sand Stand to get some ice cream, and also surprise Abbe and Caroline while they were at work at the Carriage Trade Cheese Shoppe.

Viv was so excited to get another letter today too. Her Aunt Amy wrote her back and included some temporary tattoos… although while Viv was reading the letter, she read “I enclosed some tacos for you, hope you like them!” Big ups to my little sister for not sending tacos via the US Mail.

On top of all this goodness, the partnership with b2 design is looking like a really great alliance. Brant is super talented (check out his portfolio) and he has the ability to tolerate me when I start talking 900 miles a minute when I get excited about Google APIs and jQuery bits of code. We already have a few small to larger sized projects we are trying to line-up.

Small Business/Tech Links…

• Four Ways SEO Consulting Helps With Online Brand Management
• Why Does My Website Suck? – A SPN Exclusive Article
• How to Get Great Recommendations on LinkedIn
• 5 Strategies for Maximizing Your Website’s Conversion Rate
• Skip Flash, Build Animations in HTML5 With Hype

Funny/Interesting Links…

• Rapture Advance Trailer
• Where’s Randy Savage – RIP Macho Man
• Ride Out the End of the World in These Bomb Shelter Homes
• George Takei vs. Tennessee’s “Don’t Say Gay” Bill – I love George Takei

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!

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