AREALLYGOODNAME

One of the comedians that I have really enjoyed is Brian Regan. The first time I watched his “I walked on the Moon” DVD I laughed so hard I almost cried. I bought a couple copies of the DVD and gave it to friends and family. My family especially loved him. His humor hits home because his jokes about real life things, which me and pretty much everyone raised in America can relate to. He has a clean humor and manages a whole set with out cussing or discussing the usual comedian dirt.

One fact of life, is that I go to the hospital pretty often. I don’t want to, it just happens. Brian Regan re-tells one of his experiences going to the ER which has forever changed the way I view my experiences in the hospital. I could be in the worst pain imaginable, but when the Nurse asks me to rate my pain, I at least crack a smile and usually bust up laughing.

I not only recommend his DVD and Audio CD’s, but I think everyone should become well acquainted with his stuff. You can get it as well as fan gear through a website devoted to Brian Regan called allregan.com which also happens to have many videos of his comedic skits so you can preview his stuff.

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Think of the most impact-ful, global-effecting events which have taken place to this point in 2007. If you immediately start thinking of the release of the iPhone, LED TV’s, Vista, Ghost Rider, Quantum Comps, Snakes on a Plane DVD, Taste Of Chaos Tour or if you even think of such vast impacting things as Senator Clinton’s Presidential ambitions or even the re-design of Fruit Roll-ups you have it all wrong, dead wrong.

Elgor, son of Arthos, son of Bametrix, Son of Maximus Decimis Surealist has summoned us all for the reckoning, or rather just to tell us that the one of America’s lowest life forms has now gone absolutely nuts. We knew she was crazy back when she married someone who was absolutely white trash, “Life comes at you fast K-Fed” and then actually had two kids with him. We most definitely thought she belonged in a turd farm when she repeatedly admits going to rehab centers (even while pregnant), or when she threw up all over herself in a club. For everyone who hates the pop world and everything it represents, she has been someone we make fun of, maybe not as much as Jessica Simpson (I had a can of “chicken of the sea” for dinner the other night BTW) but Britney Spears has really made me question where America really prioritizes the news we hear about. What has she done to remind me yet again that America cares more about our blond pop-stars than it does about a War we need to end, the millions of people still displaced from disasters, or the Department of Defense’s multiple attempts to convince us we need another 1300 nuclear warheads?

Enter: Bald Britney Spears. The News has been almost impossible to watch this past weekend because every story was about how America’s dream child went to rehab yet again, quit after a day and then decided to shave her head and get some more tats. Sure, she can do what she wants with out me really caring, it’s always enjoyable to have a celebrity be absolutely bonkers. I do kind of hate it though when this is all people care about and talk about on the news. It is not news. It is something I will really enjoy watching being made fun of on Conan, Kimmel, Stewart and Colbert. Inside I secretly wish celebrities lose all their marbles and doing the dumbest things we can imagine, because it feeds the comedians. They love it, and I enjoy their shameless side-splitting jokes about it.

I guess the funniest thing about the whole event, was actually Britney WANTED the press and fans to be there. Everyone has been suckered by another celebrity catching the news stations off guard and praying for another spread in the Enquirer, Star, Globe, Examiner. Prepare to see that bald head every time you go to the gas station or grocery store check out lines. Which gives me a break from Tom, Angelina, Rosie, Donald, Oprah, Brad, etc etc. She needed another stint to be in more tabloids and be the center of our news. She did an amazing job of it to. Sure the Paparazzi follow her all the time, but why did she choose to shave her head PUBLIC? Decided against doing it at home? Be serious. She’s staring at the camera man in the picture above and is happy everyone is going to be obsessed with her yet-again. She’s doing the same thing every pop-star before her has done: Make money; get famous; do absolutely ridiculous stuff. In retrospect, I have to say she has done something right though, since here I am writing about how stupid she is, guess I have been duped.

You hear Anna Nicole died?

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It comes around once a year to taunt and remind me. “Jon, you are single!.” Fact is, I always do the exact same thing on this day, as I would on any other normal day, which may or may not be unfortunate for me. On occasion I may get all the ’single’ guys together to do something ‘fun’ which, never actually ends up being fun but at least it is something to do I suppose.

The greatest reminder as this day comes around, is the fact that I have actually managed to stay single EVERY Valentines Day since I turned 16, and as it comes around again, I think of all the fun I never had on Valentines Day’s. Achieving the single status 8 years in a row on this particular day has been no easy feat. I have had to dump girls, ignore phone calls, run away to different states, pretend to be sick, get arrested, and even invent pretend girlfriends.

None of that is true.

I have never done anything to intentionally be single on Valentines day as it turns out. I might be single right now, but it isn’t intentionally to escape Valentines festivities.

I find it funny how it is one of the few days where all the single guys I know call me up and want to make solid plans to do something because they too are reminded how single they are. Hanging out with a bunch of dudes on valentines day is probably just another reminder of the day’s purpose. Anyone ever try to go tract as a missionary? It was not only pointless, but we pissed off a fair number of people. The mission president didn’t think we should treat it like any other day, and I had an anal-retentive companion at the time, so door to door we went. I was just lucky I spent the the first Valentines on my mission in the MTC…. not. That wasn’t healthy either. The good things about Valentines Day from my perspective? The candy. Peanut Butter filled heart shape chocolates and chewy conversation hearts are fantastic. What candy is even better? Red Kit-Kats with strawberry flavored filling. Yea buddy. Everyone in the world, send me red kit kats and peanut butter filled chocolate hearts right now.

This is my experience. 8 years of watching a movie on the 14th of Feb. What have all you single people done?

< venting >sandy< /venting >

UPDATE:

I went to the store to buy strawberry kit-kats on clearance, and one of the co-workers mislead me and I spent all night last night eating regular kit-kats that LOOK like they could be strawberry but are in fact NOT.

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This- is a depiction of what Boston P.D. thought was the real scenario behind the recent bomb scares.

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The most updated and current information we have on the bomb threat in Boston with the Aqua Teen Hunger Force ads.

Jack Bauer has been called in to do what he does best; stop terrorists while ignoring due process and human rights laws.

We have had a film crew following his meticulous terrorist stopping routines. The video of this is below.

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How I came up with the name. A Brief history.

The name I have used for 8 years now for my e-mail addresses, chat rooms, this blog if your are less than intelligent, branding of every kind, professional ghost writing, cooking recipes, college applications, cartoons, and more . . . has a brief story behind it that needs to be told. Well, it actually doesn’t need to be told for any other reason except to further ensure the term ownage on search engines. Let’s face it, there are 345,831 searches on the internet for AREALLYGOODNAME every single day, I mean every minute.

8 years ago, I was at a bowling alley with some friends, I mean I was in a wicked knife fight. Everyone was coming up with names to represent themselves on the screen up above, I mean inscribe on their blades. I seriously wanted to choose the best name since everyone was picking cool ones like ‘Iron Man’ and ‘Princess’. Princess was of course not a good bowling name for a dude, ugh…. knife fighter. Not to be out-done, I sat in a stupor of thought. I diverted every ounce of energy I had into thinking up a really good name.

The rest should be self explanatory. AREALLYGOODNAME isn’t entirely branded as mine and my own on the internet yet. There is a Digg user and some xanga whatever users that have it up here and there. Mostly, the only real person searching for it is myself.

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I am sure we have all had the “best internet browser” conversation with friends and/or co-workers. Safari and Netscape are still at the kids table in this scenario, and I pretty much hate the entire way IE7 is set up. I am required to use it at work to launch a .net program and otherwise pretty much avoid it at all costs. This leaves basically Firefox. We already know this comes with all the amazing plug-ins and customization’s to set it above the rest. There is no debate that Firefox wins any King of the hill contest. It actually also wins at tag, rover-red-rover, murder in the dark, sardines, dodge-ball, and 500.

The Other White Meat

Another browser I use on occasion, is called the Sunrise Browser. I am using it more frequently now that Firefox doesn’t like me ( especially since it randomly quit on me half way through writing this ). Available only for Mac OS X users, the Sunrise Browser is an alternative which has been designed as an open-source browser for web developers. No, I know it isn’t as cool or customizable as Firefox yet, but the first few themes, tool-bar icon sets, add-ons, and tools have started to be developed. Anyhoo, as it is currently, these first few releases of the browser do still have quite a few eye-brow raising features on top of being ‘FTAOBIHUSTTISMFMCM’ (faster than any other browser I have used since the time I saw my first Michael Caine movie).

Code Hunting

You want to view the code for an entire web page in a text editor for easy modification and saving? Don’t even act like you can’t.
This window that displays the code uses the Transparent Window Slider which you will read about in just a minute if you don’t get too bored. You can also search this HTML for specific code’s using a built-in tool.

PDF’s From the Web Page

So you really like the entire design and set up of a page and have some circumstance where you want to save every inch of that page from top to bottom in a viewable format as it is before they change it, or so you can still copy the design in a place where you don’t have internet access, or what ever. The Sunrise Browser allows you to save the entire web page as it is being viewed in a PDF. No, I don’t mean a screen shot. If the page required 10 minutes of double-fingered track-pad scrolling to see it all, you can save it all.

Graphical Bookmarks

You don’t have to actually visit a web-page again to add it to your bookmarks, you can directly save bookmarks from your browsing history. In addition, you can have a graphical book mark folder. This allows you to browse your saved book-marks by viewing a screen-shot or prominent images from that website. Maybe you frequently visit a variety of photography blogs and want to remember them by some of the pictures on the site. This, and what ever other reason you can think of why you might want to represent your bookmark with an image is probably why they did it. I can see myspacers, bloggers, nerds, and ATHF Carl types using this for a variety of different purposes. These bookmarks can be sorted by URL, date and title which comes in a pop-up menu, and can be edited, renamed and moved.

Window Re-sizing

On the web browser main tool bar, you have the ability to resize the window for the viewing simulation of different screens. This feature is more of a web developer tool. I don’t remember ever thinking what my website would look like on a 640×480 SVGA display, but someone would. Auto re-sizing options are: 640×480 (VGA), 800×600 (SVGA), 1024×768 (XGA), full-screen, full-height resolutions. This of course doesn’t mean you can’t custom resize your window with a corner click and drag, you still can.

Transparent Browser Windows

Next, you have the ability to make your browser transparent. A sliding bar changes this level of transparency. I don’t have the leisure of owning a second monitor for my MacBook, but I can still have the work flow that I am used to at my job with having two full windows open that I can work between without the need to constantly click between two different windows, or without sacrificing window size by cutting one down to fit on the left half of my 13″ display, and the other window to the right half. I have quite often made my stickies or notepad a floating transparent window, as well as IM boxes. This was a feature incorporated for web developers to readily view code as they are working.

Honorable Mentions

#1. If you have a huge URL extension that includes 2 miles of crap and all you want is the http://areallygoodname.com part of it, ’shift-command-c’ will only copy the homepage URL and automatically disregard the junk. #2. If you want to show just the URL of a page in a really large floating window for your near-sighted or URL-happy pleasure- there is also a shortcut. #3. The URL field can act as your search engine. Just type in what you are searching, like the phrase “Jello Prank” and if you have set the preference for your default search engine, let’s say YAHOO in this example, the URL field will act the same way FireFox’s does when you set it up for a ‘gg: (your search term here)’ function. ( yeah. . . dare you to search yahoo for jello prank and see who is fourth) #4. You can grab the web page URL icon with a quick shortcut. #5 Automatically, the link URL of external CSS files in web page’s source code is extracted, and it is displayed as a list. #6 Your mom goes to college.

The Final Word

Progress usually stems from competition driving people to be innovative to better their opponents. Technology and advancement can’t be stifled by a market being entirely dominated by a single person/company or group (ahem… Bill?). My only real point is, with all these different options and innovations available with things we use, it’s healthy to see someone new step up even if they end up failing, to at-least keep the big dogs on their toes and to continue to make our web browsers, Operating Systems, and our “whatevers” improving.

UPDATE: Download Sunrise Here

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Just over a year ago, I started working in the Home Theater industry. I was privileged to have someone who was looking for labor and willing to teach me everything I needed to know about the business. This included installing, pricing, pre-wiring homes, programming systems, as well as updating old home theaters. Pre-wiring a home was never fun for me really. I even hired some friends to come help me out. I did have to design the over-all system before I ever actually did anything, then comes endless hole drilling, and running cable lines for 3 miles of (Read the article)

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We are just chilling at Dave’s house - right now. Sam is going crazy on the guitar playing an awesome tool song. Tonight was supposed to be Jammin’ Home Evening. The standard monday home evenings for single college kids who are tired of single ward routines. We started it three years ago, and it just stopped after a while. Jammin’ Home Evening was a melting pot of guitar playing and music sharing from some extremely talented musicians. None of which were me.

This, was actually was just the same as every night now that I think about it. The Crew got together at The Hospice (Dave’s old house just south of BYU campus) and every single night it seemed, we had 10 + people going over and just passing the guitar around. It was a “No Dave Matthews” zone but pretty much everything else went. Every single stinkin night - and it was awesome. I just started picking up the guitar to play a little more seriously around that time. It was a most excellent time to be around this particular group of people. The term “Jammin’ Home Evening” was a night the same as every other, but that is what we still labeled every monday night. When we moved into The Alamo together things slowly changed.

Though tonight ended up being a slight failure (though there was still some music played randomly) - I think many of us actually hope to bring “Jammin’ Home Evening” back in full force since we don’t ever get together anymore to just hang out and play music outside of guitar night, and maybe cookie night once in a while. Though I only had 15 unique visitors to my blog yesterday, I hope that at least a few of you play the guitar or were part of that original group that just hung out being awesome every night and feel a desire to join… to make next time a little bit more of a success.

My apologies though, it probably would have been slightly better had I not spent time writing a blog post or voting to watch “Pride and Prejudice” (which we won’t do).

The Original Elephant Fairy

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Thanks to Sewell Direct, my employer for flying a group of us down to CES ( Consumer Electronic Show) in Las Vegas. Our trip is half over already and I still get the feeling that I want to do so much more while I am here. Sam and I have been paired for the show while our entire group splits up to cover the entire showroom floors. Our purpose is to find new manufacturers and suppliers to buy products to sell on our website.

The interesting thing is the habits and culture developed by the booth monkeys interested buyers. You actually have to have a BUYER badge to even get anyone to talk to you- and it seems at that point the most important thing is get the “buyers” CES card and swipe it (which gives them a printout of all our contact info and company interests. Another thing they seem high on retrieving is a business card. Doesn’t matter if I talk to them for 2 min or 30 in their minds, they swipe my CES card and get a business card, then they probably feel like they have the right to spam me for the next year.

All in all, I love being here and hope the rest of the trip continues to fare well. No gambling yet. Shopping at Urban Outfitters. Excellent food (including CheeseCake Factory for lunch today). Final note though- when I filled out my registration information to get my CES card for this show, it asked what technology and area’s Sewell is interested in. Since we have so many different categories and interests, I basically checked all of them. An interesting thing is when the booths here ask to swipe my card. Apparently it gives them a print out of all the area’s and categories I checked when I logged in. So when they ask to swipe it every time, I chuckle a little bit and let them. They are unaware of the 5 minute printout that is about to take place.

For more information on our trip to CES and what we have all been up to, Sam, Dan, and most of the other people in my Links! category on the right are here with me.

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