The first website I ever designed and built, I built 7 years ago for a friend with a custom stained glass business. It had more nested tables than a furniture store, and enough spacer gifs to shore up the structure…and since it was a freebie I hadn’t updated it in years. I finally told her that if she would commit to a real domain name and get set up on something other than her “free” ISP server space that I would rebuild it.

Well, she got the domain name and I did as promised and rebuilt the site using mostly CSS. I took into consideration the things I’ve learned over the years from our SEO folks here at flyte.biz, and I was SO EXCITED when I googled it this weekend using – maine custom stained glass – and even without using her name one of the pages came up ON THE VERY FIRST GOOGLE RESULTS page!!!

So if you are not sure it’s worthwhile to have us redo that older site structure, consider the possibilities of having your site move WAY up the Google results. Oh, and if you want to see the revised site, and some absolutely GORGEOUS custom stained glass, go to http://www.tamarascustomstainedglass.com

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Sometimes the best vacation days are the unplanned ones that you take on a whim (something I do a little too often!) This week on Tuesday I decided to take Wednesday off and managed to wrangle a couple friends into going up to Windjammer days in Boothbay Harbor. It was one of those ideal days where we laughed ourselves silly all day long, had ice cream for lunch (It was about 80 degrees, sunny with a nice breeze off the water).

We overheard some people talking that there were far fewer people for the festival this year….perhaps a reaction to the high gas prices? Somewhat ironic to have high gas prices keep people away from something that celebrated the old days of moving people and cargo by the the power of wind…..

We had great fun touring the ship Friendship of Salem which was docked at the Boothbay Harbor Shipyard. Originally built in 1797, it was a merchant ship, and I think my favorite pic of the day is the one looking up from the cargo hold through the deck to the mast – the glass in the door just caught the reflection of the flag flying high above in the wind.

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His eyes were cold, vacant, menaced. He shuffled through the front office with great conviction, picking up an outdated copy of Q magazine on the way by. It was clear this part-time employee was in no mood to jabber, there were greater matters at hand.

It was Tuesday morning when I first noticed the nasty big fly putzing around the office, ungracefully bashing into walls and grazing my head once in a while. Nicki soon became the target of the fly’s aggression. By late-afternoon, and after several failed efforts at destroying or releasing the creature, I had developed a defensive twitch. Based on the fact that a typical fly lives just two weeks and the heft of this particular specimen, I simply gave up and let Mother Nature run her inevitable course. That was, until Ryan Goan (the aforementioned part-timer) manned up this afternoon.

Q Magazine in hand, he confidently walked into the kitchen and closed the door behind him. Never one to question the decencies of that highly complicated man, I simply went about my work and paid no attention to the frenzy in the kitchen. It wasn’t until I heard that terrible buzz, that I turned my head towards the kitchen. Ryan was in full offensive position, swinging all limbs like an attacking cougar!! Q Magazine in one hand, Pledge spray bottle in the other. In a flash, I saw him bat the fly to the floor, spraying a direct shot of solvent onto the insect, and follow through with a punishing crack of the magazine and another!

I managed to capture only several pictures before the assassination had been carried out and Ryan humbly returned to his desk. In a word, it was… amazing.

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Too cool for school. Via Evan Shaner.

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Is it just me or is Moveon.org getting shrill?

A few weeks ago it was laughing at the republican party because they couldn’t choose a candidate. Something that seemed odd at the time because the Dems had two strong candidates but had yet to decide on either one. Seems even stranger now as the GOP has settled on a candidate–one Rush Limbaugh seems to think is more liberal than Hillary–and the Dems still can’t decide.

Yesterday I received another MoveOn email that started:

It’s official: John McCain is the Republican nominee. That means that as of today, his No. 1 priority will be attacking our candidates.

He’s already accusing both Clinton and Obama of wanting to “surrender” to terrorists because they want to end the disastrous occupation in Iraq.1 And now his attacks will get much louder: He’s got access to enormous party resources, including the whole Republican noise machine.

Now, I’m not sure where the “surrender” quote came from, but I also heard the GOP getting on McCain because he had referred to both Obama and Hillary as “patriots.”

Seems no one likes this McCain guy; not the Dems, not MoveOn, not the GOP faithful, and certainly not Rush Limbaugh.

MoveOn makes me feel dirty for supporting either Dem candidate right  now.

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The latest offering of The Battlestar Galactica Cast re-creating the Last Supper brings my collection to two.

The First one, which I have had for a while, is posed by the characters in Star-Wars:

Right click to see ‘em BIG. Let me know if you see any more out there!

A

Ooooh and a Lego version too.

And of course the well known one:

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Some interesting figures trying to asses the true cost of the war in the middle east are starting to surface and make for interesting and disturbing reading:

Full article here

$16bn
The amount the US spends on the monthly running costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan – on top of regular defence spending
$138
The amount paid by every US household every month towards the current operating costs of the war
$19.3bn
The amount Halliburton has received in single-source contracts for work in Iraq
$25bn
The annual cost to the US of the rising price of oil, itself a consequence of the war
$3 trillion
A conservative estimate of the true cost – to America alone – of Bush’s Iraq adventure. The rest of the world, including Britain, will shoulder about the same amount again
$5bn
Cost of 10 days’ fighting in Iraq
$1 trillion
The interest America will have paid by 2017 on the money borrowed to finance the war
3%
The average drop in income of 13 African countries – a direct result of the rise in oil prices. This drop has more than offset the recent increase in foreign aid to Africa

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The other day I was reading in USA Today (of all places) that the Mexican economy is improving and that border crossings are diminishing.

 As the debate over illegal immigration percolates in the USA, there are hopes on both sides of the border that Mexico’s improving economy eventually will provide enough jobs to encourage significant numbers of Mexicans to stay and prosper in their country.

Prepare for next year’s headlines of immigration regulations relaxed, border patrol personnel having to look for new work, and anti-immigration politicians back-peddling on the very thing that got them elected as American’s realize that they don’t want to tend to their own gardens, work in hotels, and clean up their own mess.

This will be followed by signing bonuses for Mexicans willing to immigrate to the US.

You heard it here first.

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Well this is my first post, so we’ll see how it goes!

I went to Quebec this past weekend for their annual winter carnival. For those who haven’t heard of the winter carnival, it’s a 3 week production that has events including an international snow sculpture contests, snow tubing, toboggan rides, ice castles, ice bars, etc. This is my second year going and it was just as fun as the first. I went with Slava and another couple, Jimmy and Becky. Quebec is such a beautiful city and in the winter it seems to be a winter wonderland.

My favorite part of the trip was the toboggan. This toboggan run is long and steep, and well worth the hike up. We took about 10 runs in an hours time, often racing people down and winning! Each sled can fit up to 4 people, which is what we often did.

The snow sculptures always amaze me, but this year was especially interesting because the team from the United States was actually from right here in Portland! They also do the ice sculpturers for L.L. Bean and the sand castles in the summer. This years sculpture was titled “In Humans We Trust”, and it has a bunch of sea related parts including a starfish, net, crab, boat, etc.

I put my pictures on shutterfly, so please feel free to view them! If you ever have the chance to go, I’d recommend it, as it was very fun!!

Until next post…

-Lindsay

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Ok so you may have heard that the economic stimulus package is about to be signed by El Presidente. Concern is that people won’t spend the money and actually buy something(s) and the whole thing will be a waste of time. So why gosh darn it doesn’t the President just buy us all a new iPod? Everyone’s a winner! Especially Steve Jobs.

What would you like the president to buy you? Limit $600.00 each. I’d like an Ipod touch and a new fridge.

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