I've been listening to Metallica's One lately.  It's a great song that I'm trying to beat on hard mode of Guitar Hero 3.  It brought to mind a time in say, 1988 or 1989 when my niece got a copy of "...And Justice For All". 

My sister heard some of the lyrics and thought the song was about suicide, i.e. the line "hold my breath as I wish for death".  So she played it for my Dad to make sure that's what it was about. They decided then and there it was not music suitable for a 10-11 year old. 

Which, they may have been right, but for the wrong reasons.  It's not about simple suicide, it's about a guy with no limbs, no sight or hearing.  Living thru a tube, and having no sensory input. 

Anyway, rather than listening to the whole thing, they decided on the basis of that one line in the song.  If I had been smarter back then, I'd have read the lyrics to them and shown them what it was really about.  Perhaps asked them, "Hey, wouldn't you want to die in this situation?". 

Instead, the tape was tossed in the trash.  (Remember those things?  Cassette tapes!?)

Funny how no less than 10 years later, Metallica was about as mainstream as it gets and today the song is featured prominently on a videogame. 

Just goes to show that bananas have no bones. 

Ok last one, ah swears.

[Original Source]

This sort of thing can give guys reason to live.

Wow, it's monday morning and I feel like garbage. I can't think, can't walk, can't talk, but I -can- write. So ima do what I can do and maybe this here blog posting will help get me rolling. Here goes...

I had me a pretty fantasteriffic weekend. Mostly it involved lots of video gaming with my partner and best friend Slackin. It's perhaps our favorite thing to do together.

I rolled a new toon in WoW last week, a Dranei Paladin named Rawk, and have been playing him quite a bit. I found that I like the pally and have been leveling him quicker than any previous character. For once I'm taking the time to enjoy it all, even leveling up fishing. After all, it's about enjoying the experience not just leveling up as quick as you can.

So slackin dusted off her level 20 Shaman and brought her over to Azuremist where we quested together. I learned the joys of QuestHelper thanks to Kurt Schilling mentioning it several times on The Instance. (It really is a life-changer. Get it now.)

I've also been wanting to go back and play Warcraft III - I never played it before and wanted to learn the storyline. I was thinking about buying it, but I dug thru some old discs and there it was - a diamond in the rough. I must have burned it and never got around to playing it.

So I installed it and what a treat it is: playing as Arthas before he becomes the Lich King, the beginning of the scourge and Undead, Jaina Proudmoore. Now, having played WoW gives me a different perspective on everything, but it's really fun. Oh, and the cutscenes? Still breathtaking, even for a game made in 2002. There are even hero units that gain levels and talent points you can spend. It's just so much fun to see WoW's genesis.

I almost think that Blizzard had WoW in mind when making Warcraft III. Any WoW fans out there, trust me - try out Warcraft 3. It's also a good standby to have in case you lost Internet for a while :)

------

I also ran my first heroic dungeon: Underbog. Did it with Slackin and 3 other really fun people. Everyone did their job well and we joked around quite a bit. Makes me want to run more instances! Got 4 Badges of Justice, but really no hunter gear. Got boatloads of Cenarion Expedition rep as well.

------

So, aside from gaming, we also went to HTML Samurai's birthday party. It was a lot of geeks geekin out and was quite a blast. We played some hackey sack and goofed around. We need to get together like that more often!

------

That's it. I'm finding it fun blogging about WoW and as I get more into it I have more to say. I definitely need some material like that to blog about, as I find blogging about web stuff or political stuff fairly boring. (And really, who wants to hear it?)

So with any luck, this may just morph into more of a WoW-focused blog. We shall see.

Homina homina homina. Had a decent day but allergies were kicking my freakin arse. I had to take an old man nap at like 7:00, but then I felt much better.

I managed to catch a live recording of The Instance, which is one of my very favorite things. Best WoW-based podcast evah. Kurt Schilling (yes that Kurt Schilling) is a regular on that show and he mentioned that engineering was a great profession to pick for hunters and mages in PvP. I was thinking about ditching skinning and picking up engineering anyway and that pushed me over the edge.

Thanks to Big Red Kitty I used the dual-gathering skills mining and skinning to keep me in the money up thru 70. But now I think I can safely ditch skinning and go with something a tad more useful.

Also, I managed to get Lazsha exalted with Shattered Sun and am finally feeling like I can show her off.

Purty, yes? Here's the armory link. Definitely focusing on getting Lazsha better gear and on my lowbie warrior, Grackhammer.

-------

I was obsessed with this song all day:

 So I had to learn how to play it. Now I just need to take some yodeling lessons. ;-)

No news is good news, ain't that right Charlie?  Well not always, but in my case it is.  I've been way busy with work stuff and haven't felt the need to write much lately.  I've also gotten back into Warcraft pretty hard as well as playing music and writing lyrics.  So the blog takes a back seat.

I think I'll post some snippets of music and perhaps lyrics at some point, whether readers want it or not! ;-) 

To reiterate, my new SG-knockoff has been awesome.  Plays really well and I've been tearing into all the old classics (War Pigs, Hells Bells, Back in Black, etc.).  Actually considering  picking up Guitar Hero to enrich my guitar interests.

I've also been trying to run a mile at least once a day.  That hasn't been decreasing my fat gut, but at least I can go further faster.  And I can eat whatever I want, within reason, and am not gaining any weight! ;-)

This past weekend entailed much WoW-play.  Mostly a lot of battlegrounds to get my last piece of BG gear (the pants!).  BGs have become so fun for me - all the various intricacies of playing your class, the strategy of what your team is doing versus the other. 

Perhaps that's why the BG play even spilled over into a dream I had (BG action in real life, with some sci-fi thrown in - I won't go into more detail because it's a freakin dream and no matter what you think, your dreams just aren't that interesting to someone else.)

Arenas have been fun as well, and perhaps the best barometer of how good a player you are.  Blizzard has done a really good job with arenas. I mean in one way it sucks that the best geared people are going to smash your face in (and it does take a while to get geared up), but the rating system works pretty well in matching skill levels. It's not ever going to be perfect: people are always looking to game the system, and Blizzard at least attempts to stay one step ahead.

I also leveled up my Warrior (to level 33) and my Mage (34).  I've rediscovered both classed and love them both, but feel that I need to settle on one or the other to maximize play time.  Do I want to tank or do DPS? Dwarf or Dranei?  Also, the Mage makes potions (which rock) and Grackhammer (the warrior) only has mining/blacksmithing which doesn't contribute much to other toons or the guild.  Or maybe I just give up on both and focus on getting my main geared up and thru the BC instances. 

Gah, I don't know.  I suppose just have fun and do what feels right any given day.  It's sort of that eternal argument: do you try to control every element of your life, set goals and forge ahead?  Or do you throw away the rudder and just GO, letting life sort of guide you. 

I think the answer has got to be a little of both.  You set your overall goals, you work towards them, but you don't stress about every little thing or if you're not reaching certain ones when you think you should be.

Many of our sites perform very well in the SEO arena and we think this is at least partially due to stuffing keywords in the title tags.  These are on older sites though, and we have since tried modifying the title tags to get different rankings.

When we do that we get SLAMMED - that is, punished by Google and are wiped off the face of the earth in search rankings. 

I'm thinking that Google will punish you for doing keyword stuffing in the title tag, but old sites got Grandfathered in.  That is, Google couldn't retroactively go after all the old sites that had stuffed title tags, but they could punish any new ones. 

I haven't seen anyone else mention this.  My fear is updating a site, yet keeping the old keyword-stuffed titles and getting whacked for it.  This is for a big site that currently has a prominent position in google. 

Anybody?  I realize I don't get much traffic from people researching SEO, but perhaps that could change.

Fucking CSS. Fucking Drupal. Why can't shit just work? I guess it's job security. Sometimes I have 0 patience for code. RAGE! Pure unadulterated RAGE! Can you feel it?

Good.

Warcraft is good as a stress reliever. I feel the need to kill some Hordies in a Battleground. And/or beat the shit out of a punching bag.

My state of mental affairs brings to mind a great Cheri O'Teri skit:

Customer #2: I just bought my son a Kid's meal and there was no toy in it.
Nadine: So, you want an additional 'Road to El Dorado' figyareen?
Customer #2: No, I don't want an additional 'figyareen'; I want the one that was supposed to be in it to begin with!
Nadine: Ok, just simma down now, simma down!
Customer #2: Why don't I start 'simmain' down' by speaking to the manager?
Nadine: [grabs microphone] Curtis! Need you up heah, now!
Curtis, Burger Castle Manager: Yes, ma'am. Can I hep ya?
Customer #2: [Points at Nadine] You can start by firing her.
Curtis, Burger Castle Manager: First, let me ask you; who is the 'Queen of Disco'?
Customer #2: Uh, Donna Summer?
Nadine: How she is listed in the phone book?
Customer #2: Uh, Summer, Donna?
Curtis, Burger Castle Manager: Now, slow it down.
Customer #2: Summer, Donna, Summer, Donna.
Curtis, Burger Castle Manager: That's right, now stretch it out.
Customer #2: Summmer, Donnnna, Summmmer, Donnnna.
Nadine, Curtis, Burger Castle Manager: Simma down, now! Simma Down, now!

What in the world is Cheri O'Teri doing these days anyways? I miss her.

Ahhh comedy. It's perhaps the best relief for rage, anger, frustration, pretty much anything.

[Here's a repost of an old post that didn't make it from the old Wordpress database into the new version of this site

If you need to import large amounts of data into a Drupal taxonomy, this may help you. I had a large (5000+ terms) vocabulary that was hierarchical. The solution wasn’t obvious, nothing existed to import them, and I didn’t want to do it by hand (it would’ve taken a whole day probably).

The solution was to format the terms by copying and pasting them from an Excel file, with some nifty markup. My database needed 3 levels of hierarchy and here’s a sample:

*Banjos

%Dean
Backwoods 3
Backwoods 5
Backwoods 6

Banjos is the first level, Dean is second and the rest are third level. You need the * and % to denote 1st and 2nd level respectively. (It only took about a half hour to mark up my list - not too bad)

The script will iterate through the terms, creating the taxonomy.

Perhaps this could be made into a modeule someday, but I don’t have the skillset to do so at this point (feel free to modify the code).