FMC 3.0

I amazed the last visitor didn’t turn out the lights when they went. I haven’t really decided what to do with this space - obviously there’s just so much going on in life to report. The pending political post (which may surprise even those that think they know me) and post Florida recap of the next NASA tour aside, I don’t see much in the way of fascinating content coming down the pike. That is, if it was fascinating to anyone but me in the first place. And apparently it isn’t, since the vast majority of my traffic for months has just been the GoogleBot. Though, I suppose I should check the stats for when I was actually posting regularly.

Speaking of GoogleBot, or at least search engines in general, I was reminded by my sister tonight what interesting bits you can find in stats in the search phrases that somehow end up on your site. For instance, she seemed mildly annoyed that the phrase “yay boobs” hit her site (it’s currently the number 5 item on google when you search that phrase). Of course, they do have a post called that, so its really no big surprise.

I decided to pull up my own stats for the last few months, to see what gems I found in it’s pages. I’ve got a couple of awards to give out in this particular vein.

First, the “WTF?” award goes to: “wheres waldo chuck noris” (and no, I didn’t misspell that, the searcher did.) I think I know what they were going for, but I’ve no clue how they got to me.

Next, the “And those things go together how?” award goes to: “acrophobia zion national park”. I know I did a post about Zion, but not sure on the spiders thing.

For the “Maybe I should think about adding this…” award, we have: “blue panties”. But there’s plenty of other places to find that.

The “I didn’t know the Amish surfed the Internet” award: “bare leg exposed”. Seems like the fastest way to find that is to just go… anywhere… on a warm day.

And Last the “Ok, I’ll admit to being weird, but this is just plain creepy” award goes to: “half life gordon and alyx nc-17″. No clue how that got me and not some fan fiction site. Oh well, at least it wasn’t Furry porn or something.

There’s a few other gems if I go further back, but that’s just the last few months. Maybe I’ll make the crazy searches a regular feature. Beyond that, look for this space to be a spot of periodic long posts about stuff, like it has been for months, with a good mix of quick hit miniposts to showcase the oddities I find around the ‘Net. I tried to keep track of those in the past to so a long post of that kind of stuff, but I think I’ll switchover to instant gratification. It will be more posts with not much more substance, but then, that’s not why you’re here in the first place, is it? It may mean a weird flux of posts, but at least it’ll be something.

Ok, in the end, it was more like 17,000 in the arena, but then more watching on line (I got an e-mail from an aunt that watched it at home.) Oddly enough, I wasn’t nervous the night of, since the arena seemed to be smaller with all those people in it. The day before, doing production meetings and such, the empty Comcast Arena seemed huge. Besides, as an added bonus, since the place was so full and loud, nobody really heard what was said anyway. It turned out to be a good world finals. And while you might think I actually get an odyssey breather now, the first thing for next year happens next weekend. That’s right, it never really stops.

After Worlds, I took a few days and headed to the beach. I actually wasn’t on the beach long, as most of the time we were ont he board walk or in a bar. Quite an impressive bar tab the 4 of us raked up. A good time was had by all. I’d call it a refresher, but not sure that’s the best description.

Of course, while I was away the company I work for got sold to a much, much larger company, so it’ll be interesting to see how that pans out. It’s too soon to really tell.

While I was away I also got the invitation to MindlessMuse’s wedding. With a +1. I intend to fill it, but may have some fun doing it, so long as Mindless doesn’t get offended.

Other than that, it’s all the normal stuff - gas prices suck, yay the democratic primary is over, and Nighthawk’s miles continue to go up (almost to 85k.) Drop me a line if you want me to expound any.

Wow. Some friends I have. Fear not, I’m pretty sure that when she typed it, she was kidding. (Oh, and I’ll keep her identity to myself, seeing as I don’t want anyone getting an strange ideas of tracking her down in Italy and roughing her up on my account…) She’s referring to the upcoming World Finals, where I got asked to do some public speaking. The only real error in that sentence is the ‘hundreds’ bit. There’s going to be nearly 20,000 people in the arena, and the entire thing will be broadcast on the Internet. Nothing like a little pressure. I got asked to do something similar last year, but the crowd wasn’t quite that large. I was actually nervous for that too, and it only got worse when I walked into the arena and saw all the people. The nervousness went away as soon as I started talking. I guess part of me knew the hard part was over, and then it was just time to entertain.

Hmm, I haven’t done any other news in a while…

Nighthawk crossed over 80000 miles Monday on my way to work. It goes in Friday for that service, which wasn’t as expensive as I expected it to be.

Also, I’ve been to two other Odyssey Tournaments since DE’s, and had a blast at both. Even managed to learn a thing or two, which is always good. Kinda weird knowing the next tournament is Worlds.

I think that’s about it for here. Too busy to have anything happen, though I still found time to do the Mueller tournament, so I don’t know what the hold up is for the rest of you.

Ok, a little later than that time of year. The tournament is updated for this year:

http://muellertourney.com/

I must admit that this year was very difficult, mostly because most of my normal final four was in region 4 together. Hope I don’t shock anyone too badly:

Your Champion

Keira Knightley

Your Final Four
Catherine Bell
Eva Mendes
Keira Knightley
Milla Jovavich

Mind you, this was on gut instinct - I may go back and actually go by the pictures and other source material, who knows what may change.

Wow. It’s really been a while. Crazy how long you can lapse when life gets busy. Don’t get me wrong, life hasn’t slowed down any, I just found a spot for a breather. I can’t believe it’s February already, it seems like just yesterday I was getting out of the car at BWI, or just sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner.

Anyway, I’m gonna do a quick recap, with more in depth info on the interesting bits later. Lets see… last post was… 10/14? Phew. Ok, the highlights since then:

Halloween: Did the office costume contest as Peter Griffin. Didn’t come anywhere close to winning, mostly because there were others a heck of a lot more creative than me. The costume turned out pretty well, though I decided to shave hoping the shock value would help me win. I haven’t been clean-shaven in years, and haven’t since. Don’t think I’ll be doing that again any time soon.

Thanksgiving was a nice relaxed thing, the way it should be. Christmas was a little nuttier than usual with a truckload of stuff under the tree (most of it for Sydney). The presents part was the nutty part though, it was…

The Road Trip. It did indeed happen, though that route I posted months ago is not how it went. We trimmed out a few stops, normalize the route to almost a straight line, and blitzed from LA to Baltimore in 4 days. Christina (the other driver) didn’t like my using the word Blitz, but in all honesty, that’s what it was. And since she’s finally far enough away (Italy) that I won’t hear too much gruff about it, yeah, it was a blitz. But it had some really, really cool moments - and one or two dastardly ones. But that’s an entire post in and of itself, so keep an eye out for that.

After the road trip, I spent New Years with Matt in VA. I’d tell you what I did, but I was a little too buzzed to remember anything.

Since then it’s been the ramp up of Odyssey. You may be looking at my little list up there and say to yourself “Ok, that’s three or four things in a few months, he can’t write because…?” - and you’d be partially right. Yeah, I’ve slacked off, and quite honestly, didn’t feel like it. But I guess the bug bit again, so I can fill in the gaps. And the underlying thing all those months is Odyssey.

Imagine Odyssey as snowboarding an avalanche. In August/September, it’s just a few flakes near the top of a mountain. Then it slowly gives way, but as it heads down the mountain further and further it gets much bigger, much louder, and involves a lot more snow. Then, once the tournament is over it hits the bottom. With the tournament being March 1st, you can imagine how February 1st falls onto that scale. I’m sure there will be a full report on that later as well, since it’s been an interesting year for that so far as well.