Here is some exciting breaking news! My former boss, and head honcho over at SAVVIS Communications, Jack Finlayson just took on the role of CEO and Chairman at Layered Technologies, a good sized Web hosting company that also happens to host WordPress – which as we all know is the software I use to run One Man’s Blog!

Folks, this is pretty amazing because Jack is a $Billion company CEO, and he chose to go to Layered Tech. I believe the reason is that one of this companies specialties lies in Grid Computing, which in essense takes a giant farm of computers, straps them together, and sells you as much or little of the power as you need. Kind of the same philosophy as a utility company. You plug in, use what you need, and only pay for that much.
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Thanks once again to my good friend Roy Kaldung for yet again saving our ass and keeping One Man’s Blog alive and kicking!

Several of you guys sent me e-mails today notifying me that OMB was down for much of the day. Unfortunately I was tied up for most of the day, but when I did get free I spent a few hours trying to determine what the problem was. Of course, I wasn’t making much progress…

Well, bright and early in Germany (like 6 am mind you!) Roy went to check on the OMB server, then IM’ed me when he noticed it was having issues. After about an hour of heavy duty trouble shooting he finally figured out that the culprit was actually the Dragon Design Sitemap Generator plugin I was using on the site.
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Hey, for all of you that have been trying to access the site today, sorry it’s been down for hours. :-( I hadn’t noticed because for the last couple of weeks I’ve been on a super-secret mission. Perhaps I’ll tell you guys what I’ve been up to in the next week or two…

Anyway, the server is obviously back up now, but I’m working on the root cause of why these things are happening. You know, all I want is a freakin server that will just stay up and running all the time! All I do is run this little blog, so why is that so hard to accomplish?!? The site is waaaayy too busy for a managed Virtual Private Server, and even though I bought a ginormous dedicated server that sucker is once again struggling to keep up with demand.

Grrr…

There is nothing like instilling a little fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) to help sell a product… or a consulting service!

Some young guys in L.A. garnered some serious attention when they told ABC News that they could hack cell phones of the rich and famous. And this short video is the result of that claim.
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Ok. This info is old, but I came across it and thought it would be fun to resurrect it once again.

There have been all sorts of claims as to the year these stats originated, but generally I believe they are from 1903. I have not vetted any of the “facts” here, but they do seem to pass the “gut-check” for reliability. Read the rest of this entry »

Folks, I just wanted to pass along a tip for a free PDF Printer Driver in case anyone was ever looking for one, or in case you don’t know what this even is!

A PDF Printer Driver is a little piece of software that installs just like a printer would, but instead of converting your printed output it saves the exact printed format as a PDF file. You might want to do this for any of the following reasons:

• To e-mail a document in a universal format which preserves the exact page layout. For example, if you create a form using MS Word, you can convert it to PDF.
• To preview exactly what a document is going to look like when printed before wasting paper and ink.
• To post a printable version of a document on a Web site that people can access using any computing platform.
• If you want to print something, but you aren’t near a printer you can print it to a PDF and then later print a hard copy. VERY useful for offline work on a laptop while traveling.

The only problem is that up until relatively recently the only way to accomplish this was to own a very expensive piece of Adobe software. But now there are a few free alternatives on the market, and I wanted to recommend Bullzip PDF Printer.
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Today’s post is unfortunately a sad one. We lost a very close family member this weekend to a long battle with a number of ailments including Cancer. It was one of those situations where our loved one was taken decades before her time, but at least it was not something that just occurred suddenly.

It’s been a very sad weekend, but at the same time one that reminds me how precious life is. I also came to the personal realization that grief is for the living, not the dead. We have to continue on through this world forever missing a part of ourselves that can never be refilled.

This weekend also reminded me of a commitment I made some time ago to help Stanford University’s Folding@Home project which researches fundamental causes of diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Mad Cow (BSE), CJD, ALS, Huntington’s, Parkinson’s disease, and many Cancers and cancer-related syndromes. Cancer and Parkinson’s have both impacted my family and I believe that with enough emphasis we can cure these crippling diseases.

And you can help Stanford’s research by simply running a tiny piece of software on your computer that only uses the spare cycles when you don’t need them.
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Although I had previously posted about the Incredible Choreographed Samsung Stadium Performance, I’m still blown away by the amazing routines the South Korean fans put on when cheering for their favorite teams.

In this case, they aren’t doing a routine on the field like in that previous article, they are actually doing the routines in the stands! Plus, you’ve got groups from both teams “competing” for attention. I just can’t imagine how many hours of practice goes into this! Its got to require at least as much work as getting together a high school band if not more.
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Ok folks, this might seem a little mundane, but it was actually totally cool. In Minneapolis, MN there is a two story Target and they have solved the problem of taking carts from floor to floor by building a special cart escalator. We’ll call it a cartalator!

So, I was really looking forward to my trip to this Target specifically so I could take some photos and video of this thing to put on the blog here, and as soon a I walked in the door the monkey in the guard outfit made me put my camera away! Told me it was Target corporate policy not to allow photography in any store.

Well, do you think that was going to stop me, dear readers? I didn’t think so.
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You know, I don’t think I could be any more disappointed in Google than I am today.

And that is a shame because I’m normally a big fan. I mean, just look… I’ve got an entire category dedicated to Google Tools with 50 posts in it! But the problem is, today Google decided to penalize a whole boatload of sites for some reason or another, and in the process they dropped OMB from a PR7 to PR5. And just in the last few weeks it had already moved from a PR8 to PR7.

I just don’t understand this at all. I know Matt Cutts, and have spoken with him and we’ve e-mailed one another several times on the topic of Google PageRank, and even I just have no idea why in the hell this happened.
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Humans have been taking part in sporting events for thousands of years, and now we’ve got ESPN to broadcast them 24 hours a day! However, you aren’t going to see these gems on TV even if you’re watching at 2am.

We’ve got a little of everything here from Camel Wrestling to Bog Snorkelling and Cheese Rolling to Ladder Racing. And if anyone knows of other insane sports to add please drop a comment below. Now, on with the madness!
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I know this post is kind of random and out of the blue, but I was listening to someone on the radio making some ignorant statements and I had some thoughts I wanted out of my head…

I understand that some countries don’t like the US. I also understand that this is almost universally true when it comes to countries that lack freedom (Iran, N. Korea, China, the former USSR, etc).

But how can it ever come as a surprise to anyone when the US decides to take action? Let’s face it, you know if you’re a friend or a foe of the US LONG before anything happens.

46 years ago President Kennedy said:

“Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and success of freedom.”

Am I supposed to believe the world thinks we changed our minds?
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