Arrrrr
Having a bad day. Very bad. Oh, by the way September 19th is International Talk Like a Pirate Day. The FSM will be pleased.
Tag: general
Some Good News
I may have some good news. It's not 100% confirmed, and won't be til the 20th, but it's looking pretty darn good. Let's just say I'm one step closer to my dream.
More details coming soon.
The Crawl
So, the Crawl for Cancer was a great success. I drank a lot of beer, got a t-shirt, had fun, and helped support a great cause. I hope to participate in the next one. Here's a brief recap of what happened.
At the first bar we went to, the royal blue team was done with their four pitchers before we even got ours, so needless to say, we had some catching up to do. We continued to drink quickly at each bar. On our fourth bar we ran into the green team, which we had not seen at any of the other bars, and they said they were finished. That our fourth bar was their fifth. I don't know if that was true, but the green team were good people. I enjoyed drinking with them. Buncha drunks. The fifth bar was probably the best just because it was cool, I finally got to sit a bit, and the after-party downstairs was rockin'. I danced a bit, yes, I danced. I must have been drunk.
Anyway, it was a great time, and if you want to see pictures (lots more just added) check them out on Flickr
Drink Beer and Cure Cancer
Tomorrow I'm participating in the Crawl for Cancer. For those of you who don't know what this is, you pay an amount of money ($45) to drink in different bars (5). All the proceeds are donated to find a cure for cancer. This is something I can really get behind. You won't see me running 5k. That's something I can't do, but drinking beer is. So if you talk to me tomorrow evening, chances are I'll be drunk. The crawl starts at 1 and will last probably 4 or 5 hours.
Update: Here are some pics from my phone from the event. A full post and more pictures coming soon.
Squishee Blue
I went to 7-11 today. I felt like a Slurpee. The Slurpee was replaced by a Squishee machine, an obvious tie-in to The Simpsons movie that is coming out. As I sit there pouring my Blue Vanilla Slurpee Squishee, I begin to think. Why aren't there more blue colored foods? Now, I know the color blue is rare in nature, hell, even blueberries are purple. I remember Pepsi Blue, that god awful concoction. Do they not know what blue should taste like? Pink usually tastes like bubble gum, brown like cola or caramel, yellow or white tastes like lemon or lemon-lime. I think we should designate a flavor to blue and stick with that so we can have more blue foods. And in case you were wondering, this Blue Vanilla Squishee doesn't taste blue or vanilla. It tastes like a pina colada.
Quite Strange
I was driving to the grocery store to pick up some cereal when I noticed the bike lanes on the right side of the road. I've noticed these for a long time, they weren't new to me, but what I did notice was that there were arrows pointing on them. Normally, I would think who needs arrows in the lanes to tell them they are in the right lane? This is America, drive on the right. Oh, but I was wrong. In the bike lanes you ride on the left. How odd. Why do we ride on the left but drive on the right? It makes more sense to ride on the right, that way you're further away from the traffic when you're going with traffic, and closer to it when going against traffic (so you can see if a car is coming at you where as if you are closer to traffic and riding with it, you can't). It makes no sense to me.
Didn't Get It
I didn't blog about it before, but a few weeks ago I had an interview with the principal of a new high school that was built and will be opening in the fall. They had one position for Social Studies. I didn't get the job. So, I'm still searching far and wide.
24 Years Ago...
24 years ago today, I was born. So was Mike Goodspeed, my old high school friend. So make sure you wish him a happy birthday as well. Tonight we're going to the Big Bang piano bar in downtown St. Louis.
My Birthday
So, my birthday is coming up on April 6th. My sister Lisa keeps bugging me asking me what I want. I have no idea. There is nothing at the top of my head that I want. I have no ideas for her. I could go with the generic gift card to Best Buy or somewhere, but I don't really buy anything from anywhere anymore. I really am at a loss for what I want. One good thing is my b-day falls on the first day of Fort Zumwalt's spring break, so I won't be working on my birthday. I'll sleep late and chillax a little. I might have to call some friends and go out that night. Maybe hit up Ameristar or chill at the bar near my house, Kokomo's. Last year, I hung out with Heather and my friend Mike, who shares the same birthday as me, at Kokomo's. Mike is now living it up in Chi-town now so I bet he's got some nice plans. Most of my friends live in other cities now so it makes it difficult to see them and make any kind of big plans. I shall give it some more thought.
This is Why I'm Hot
No, not because I'm a rapper named Mims, but because I'd changed my site to this sexy new theme. The front page is still basic format as the changes I made a few days ago, just using a new theme. (and yes, it took me like 2 or 3 hours to mod that front page when it would have taken Kristin only like 15 minutes. Oh well, we learn as we go along I guess). And I must say, it would have been so much harder to do this if not for having my own web server and wp install on a usb stick. No uploading, just saving and refreshing. Very nice.
The Changes
So, you might have noticed some changes in the way the site is laid out. Or maybe you didn't, who knows? Anyway, to tell you a bit about what's going on, I have moved my blog from the sub-directory of /blog/ to root. I wanted all my blog post permalinks to stay the same though, so I added /blog/ to the custom permalink structure. This makes more sense to me for the next thing I did.
I wanted a static homepage and for blog posts to appear on the page /blog/. I assumed when I tested this that the permalinks would then be /blog/whatever/structure/i-want/. This wasn't the case. It was using mikeschepker.com/permalinks. I figured since blog posts would appear on a page that the permalinks would have that page in it's structure. That is why I had to add /blog/ to it. I think it makes more sense to do it that way as well. Why have a page for blog posts but not have that page in the permalinks?
The static homepage was not created by me. My good super-awesome friend Kristin built and styled it for me. I just gave her the general idea of what i wanted. Big shout outs to her for be the most awesome chica I know.
The projects page is no longer around, instead you can go to my home page and look at the categories to find the websites, scholarly works, and WordPress works. The feed problem of not redirecting /blog/feed to mikeschepker.com/feed/ seems to have fixed itself because both are redirecting properly. How? I have no clue. I'll keep an eye on it to see if it breaks. Let me know if anything is broken and I will try and fix it.
Thanks again Kristin!
Some Changes and No Doubt Breakage
I'm making some changes on the site so there might possibly be some things that are broke. I need to resolve some redirect issues from the old setup as well as continue to add content. If you subscribe via a feed, make sure you update it. Links can be found in the sidebar. I will try to setup this redirect soon.
Sleepless Nights
I don't know what it is lately. I don't know if it's the changing weather (cold, warm, back to cold) or what, but lately I've been really tired. The thing is, even though I'm so unbelievably tired, I can't sleep. Sunday night I couldn't sleep and didn't wind up dozing off til 3 AM Monday morning. I don't know what it is exactly that is keeping me up. I've had a lot of things on my mind, but no more than usual I don't think. Last night I couldn't sleep either. I know why it was last night. I have a job interview on Tuesday that I really want to nail. The interview was just set up yesterday, so last night I was worrying about it. I really hope I do well and get the job. If I do, I will be doing what I've wanted to do since I was a Sophomore in high school. So wish me luck! This weekend is a three-day weekend so I'm hoping that I can catch up on a bit of sleep. I still don't know if I'm doing anything for St. Patty's. In all honesty, I'd love to be living in Springfield so I could go to the pub crawl. Oh well. I'm sure I'll occupy myself somehow.
Implementing Google Adsense
I have decided to start putting a small amount of ads on here just to help pay for hosting and whatnot. I know what some of you may think and remind me of my thoughts on ads on personal blogs, but this site generates a fair amount of traffic, more than my others that my ads do okay on, and by okay I mean at least I make a little something every day. And I don't think they look too terrible here. The theme is nice enough that the ads blend in fairly nice. If I don't really make anything from them then they shall disappear. We shall see.
A Fresh Look
If you are reading this via the feed, you might want to hop on over to the site and check out the new theme. I thought it was time for something that was a bit more simple, yet eye-catching. I think this theme works well. It's very simple, minimal image usage, yet at the same time it's very elegant and professional looking. I have been modifying it a little, adding the recent comments plugin to the sidebar, as well as a link to the feeds. I've also changed the way the theme handled the title of the site and page/post. The other way seemed a bit backwards to me putting the page name/post name before the site name, e.g. About Me-piece of shep instead of piece of shep- About Me. Also, the sidebar is not widgetized yet. I was thinking of widgetizing it but I think that would just spell trouble because I'll just continue to add more and more stuff to the sidebar and the goal here is for simplicity. I think I may keep this theme for a while.
Contact Form Problem
If you've used the contact form to try and get in touch with me over the past couple weeks, I've probably not gotten the email. There is something weird going on with the php mail () command and emails generated by the contact form (or WP) aren't getting sent out. So if you tried to contact me or need to contact me you can always email me at mike at mikeschepker.com Hopefully this will be solved soon.
EDIT: Everything seems to be working fine now. If you contact me and I don't respond, let me know, but all emails from the comment form and contact form should be working now.
Digg This, I Got Dugg
With only being on my new host for a week, I got Dugg. What's funny is the post that was submitted to Digg is from November of 2005. But hey, I don't mind, it's bringing some nice traffic to my site and will help test how my new host handles it. Thanks to those who dugg my post.
The Christmas Prank
Every year my sister Lisa and I play pranks on each other with our gifts. It started with her giving me a used bible and rosary beads as a joke. Last year I thought mine was the best when I made her go on a huge scavenger hunt for her gift in front of the whole family only to lead her back to underneath the very seat she was sitting in to begin with. This year was the best. She got me good. Hopefully I'll get some pictures of me opening the gifts, but here is what was given to me before my real presents from her. I was laughing so hard while opening these I was crying. Well played, madame. Well played indeed.
Tuna Helper (i hate tuna)
I'm a winner ribbon
Jesus loves me Precious moments cross
Santa flashlight thing
Addition flash cards
My Little Pony stickers
Cell Phone Purse
Dog jewelry box
Of course, I did get real presents from her. She gave me three books that I wanted :) Good job Lisa. You got me good. On Christmas Eve the cousins played Trivial Pursuit Pop Culture DVD and it was boys vs girls. Guys won with the winning question being "Which Wiggle always falls asleep?" My 2 year old nephew came through for the win and told us Jeff. A 2 year old won the game for us! Amazing!
Merry Christmas everyone. I hope yours was as good as mine. I know somewhere out there I have a friend who will think this prank was hilarious and I hope her Christmas was great. The frog hotpads were a hit at my house. :P
I hear you loud and clear
For my regular readers, all 2 of you, ignore this post as it's not really directed towards you. :)
I do understand, and I wish things could still be different. I would love to continue to hear about things that are happening out of the blue like that. It was nice to have a response. I will continue to talk, I just hope you continue to listen and talk back. Someday, I hope it will be okay to talk like we used to, but I'm not getting my hopes up. I know it will never happen, but part of me has to hope. By the way, it's 4022 and not 1022.
Would You Still Talk?
If you weren't sure someone was listening, would you still talk? If you weren't sure they'd ever hear your words again, would that matter? How long would you go on talking to them without knowing they were hearing what you were saying? If this person means a lot to you, I think you'd keep talking until you could talk no more. That's exactly what I'm going to do. I'm not sure if you're out there or if you'll ever read this, but there is a sliver of hope in the back of my mind that says you will, someday, hear these words and perhaps talk back.
"Somewhere there's someone who dreams of your smile, and finds in your presence that life is worth while, so when you are lonely, remember this is true: Somebody, somewhere is thinking of you."