Bush Mackel

I thought that I’d get up at 5am this morning so that I could finally get a new post on here. I’ve been really busy lately with a lot of different things and unfortunately that has meant that my blog has suffered. Unlike in the past however, I’m kinda ok with it ’cause I feel that I’m doing what I “should be doing” in order to escape the rat race.

Web Design - As many of you know, I’ve really been trying to push my web design efforts. And though the website doesn’t show it at the moment, I’ve actually been getting work in and turning out some decent stuff. I think at the moment I’m working with about 4 clients and hopefully when I close them out I’ll be able to stop for a second and redesign that website for future business.

Final Fantasy XII - If I get a free second these days, it looks like I’m using it to play Final Fantasy XII. Last check I think I was about 60 or 70 hours in and even on this second go around, it’s just so fun! And trust me, even though it’s on a previous gen console - It holds up.

My New DSLR - I don’t know that I made a big fuss about it, but I recently bought my first DSLR and I’ve been going to town with it. Mostly taking pictures of the kids but also of other stuff too. With any luck I’ll get on here at some point and tell you a little bit about it and post some pictures too.

AdSense/SEO/Affiliate Sites - One of the other things that I’ve gotten into lately is making MFA sites. To be honest, “Made For AdSense” sites leave a bad taste in my mouth because I feel there’s a connotation on them that the sites are void of quality. I’m trying to change that and in the meantime brush up on my SEO skills.

Blu-Ray - I’ve also been enjoying some Blu-Ray movies as of late. Don’t expect any reviews on here, but you may see a comment from time to time.

And that’s it for now. I’m desperately hoping I find the time later to do a proper post but I’m not holding my breath!

It looks like I’m only hitting my 12 of 12’s every other month but that’s still not too bad I figure. (#):) If you don’t know what 12 of 12 is, it was started by Chad Darnell where you take 12 pictures of your day on the 12th of every month and post them up for the world to see! If you want to see these in Gallery2 form, click here.

Just about every morning of mine starts with letting Fiyero out. You can also see my kid’s new pool for his 2nd Birthday courtesy of my friend Bubba!

This is a common look for my desk in the morning. Street Fighter wallpaper, orange juice and some code.

The company’s favourite intern Mo has come back for his 4th year or something. He’s a BIG fan of cameras too.

I went to Best Buy during my “lunch break” to try and use a coupon on my new camera that I just bought. Unfortunately, cameras only have a 14 day return policy so it was a no go. Thanks to Best Buy for letting me know that when I bought it. Geez I hate that store sometimes.

I was going to get some food so I parked my car out in Alexandria!

Since Wendy’s went out of commission, this is my favourite place to grab a bite in Old Town Alexandria. So much so that as soon as I go in, they start making my order. THAT my friends is a good feeling.

After leaving the deli, I took this picture of an intersection in Old Town.

I had to take a phone call today so I found myself outside right on the water where I took some pictures.

And THIS is where I was sitting during the phone call. (#):)

If you didn’t know, Friday is pizza night in our household. And how I could I NOT take a picture of THIS Swinging D!

Doesn’t he understand that the food goes IN his mouth?

Unfortunately, all the shots of my oldest came out blurry (2 fast, 2 furious) so you’ll have to make due with another picture of my youngest. I’m tellin’ you, it’s not too hard to get a good picture of this one!

If you’ve been following my Twitter feed for a while, you’ve probably seen some tweets from me that at times looked odd. For example, tweets that said that I was making cupcakes on Monday when you probably would’ve thought that I’d be at work. Well truth be told, I’ve been on a furlough from my job for the past two months.

If You Didn’t Know…
Don’t be sad because I didn’t tell many people. Unfortunately, I had to tell my wife because there was just no way I could explain away the fact that I wasn’t receiving a check twice a month. ha ha. And not to throw my 9 to 5’s business out there, but my furlough was a result of being on the wrong end of a lawsuit, and big clients not paying because of the worsening US economy.

So when I got the news that I was to be furloughed (with a few other co-workers), I was dolling out the high fives! I was def burned out at work, was tired of the commute and just wanted some time to work on a lot of my side projects. Thankfully during the time off, I did just that. The biggest thing I did was prepare some proposals for potential web design clients and even work out my first paying contract. So that by itself is deserving of applause. Additionally, I also did a lot of work for my new super secret affiliate marketing project which I couldn’t be any more excited about.

Working With Kids
It had certainly been a while since I had worked on stuff from home with kids and it was not easy for a long time. It probably took a good month into my vacation to finally figure out how to be productive with them but when I did it was a really a great thing. Being able to get work done on your schedule WHILE being able to spend copious amounts of time with your kids is definitely a really cool thing and one that everyone should be lucky enough to do. Of course for most of us that’s just a pipe dream since the 9-5 inevitably gets in the way.

Back to the Grind
Yesterday was my first day back to work. I was summoned back a couple weeks ago with an e-mail out of the blue that really just said, “Bush, great news - We’re ready to have you back!” When I read that, I started grinding my teeth. Nightmares of commutes, timesheets, and bosses all started flooding back. BUT, what could I do? My kids need to eat and my mortgage needs to be paid. So as I said, I went back yesterday and tried to make the switch from home life to work life again.

It was difficult to say the least but it was made easier by my awesome co-workers who seemed very happy to have me back. Let it be said that even though my 9-5 itself is not the bees knees, my co-workers are a bunch of very cool and talented people. So after I was welcomed back, one of the guys at work said offhandedly, “Hey, did you know you’d be working for free?” And I joked back that “Yeah, I’m the new intern.” Well, we go out to lunch and they start telling me how they’ve had to hold off on cashing their checks because apparently the company didn’t have the money to pay them.

Are you kidding me!?
I then inquire as to why our System Admin wasn’t back from furlough yet and I was told that “[he's on the fence about coming back because he's not sure why he should if the company can't pay him]“. At this point, I’m feeling a bit hosed. Oh, and did I mention that I had to take a $3000 pay cut too? I kept wondering if I would’ve come back when I did if I had knew that the company was still having these big money problems as a result of the lawsuit in December. I just don’t know. But I’ll say this - With my boss not telling me about these problems in his “welcome back” e-mail… If my paycheck doesn’t go through in two weeks I may just have to take another sabbatical.

Jobs. Ugh.

Unbelievably, only days after submitting a reinclusion request to Google, I rechecked my PageRank and am showing a healthy PR of 3! Honestly, I don’t know if this is going to mean much for my site and blog monetization going forward, but it was on my list of things to take care of “now that I’m back”, and I’m very happy it’s all done.

If you’re in the same place I was in, feel free to check out this post from Matt Cutts: and it wouldn’t hurt to also look at this one from the always supportive Andy Beard! Oh, and in the event that you DON’T want to read those posts, here’s the summary on how to remedy this problem:

• Remove yourself from paid links on your site.
• Take down your paid links or nofollow them.
• Think about removing those paid link pages entirely.
• Think about removing the code on your site linking to paid link companies.
• Go to the Dashboard in Google Sitemaps and click the link on the right that reads, “Request Reinclusion”.
• Tell Google you’re sorry, what you did, what you did to fix it, and why it will never happen again.
• Give me a high five.

Not too long ago, the video game blogosphere was abuzz on account of tu4ar.com, a website that popped up on the Capcom Unity blog. The site featured a countdown to something and soon everyone was speculating that it was a countdown to the release of Marvel vs Capcom 2 for the next gen systems. Well it turns out that the rumors were true and Capcom has officially announced the release of Marvel vs Capcom 2 for PSN and XBL with a demo to be released on the PS3 sometime around April 30th.

Obviously the release of this game continues Capcom’s continuing plan of adding as little as possible to old games and then releasing them anew as if they reinvented the wheel. Excuse my sarcasm but we all knew that this was going to happen right? And now that it has… *shrugs* Look - Widescreen mode, online play, all characters unlocked from jump… Who cares?

I mean, I’m as big a fan as you’ll find for the game but what about something new Capcom? New moves? New functionality? New CHARACTERS? A tease for Marvel vs Capcom 3? How about anything? I guess that’d be too much to ask. Well don’t think that I’m saying I won’t get it, but I certainly won’t be in a rush… Especially when I think about how much of a dream Street Fighter IV was with the 360 controller. *rolling eyes*

This past Saturday, I ran in my first race since running my favourite, the Rockville Twilighter last August! It’s been so long because even when I ran the Twilighter I was having a lot of feet/knee problems. But in the last month or two, I’ve had an opportunity to get into some physical rehab and I’ve done a lot of work.

Even still, my physical therapist was none too thrilled that I was doing a 5K but he thought it probably wouldn’t be a damning event so he didn’t forbid it. Besides, this was a team event and if I had bailed I don’t think that the 3 other people on my team (including my wife) would’ve been too happy with me.

Dirty Fun
The Runamuck isn’t your normal race in that there are obstacles like walls in the middle of the race, and numerous times during the race you have to either wade through a waist deep lake or have to run through ankle deep mud pits or both. Cool huh? One of my friends told me about the race, and I thought it would be a fun little one to do with the wife so we signed up. Consequently, the friend who told me about the race tried to sign up for it the night before and couldn’t get in. *rolling eyes* (#):)

For me, I thought the race was a ton of fun! Admittedly there were probably too many people doing it because since the trail was kinda narrow in places and every time there was an obstacle, there was a huge backup and everyone had to walk. For me though, this was great because my therapist wanted me to walk 2 minutes for every mile anyway. Everyone on my team had a good time too and most of them either completely fell into the mud pits or dove into the lake and tried to swim across (meaning they got really muddy). And during the race there were a ton of girls who would just start wrestling in the mud so it was def a fun atmosphere.

The Aftermath
With the weather being beautiful, (sunny and 85), I could’ve stayed out there on the field all day! I think we finished the race at 11ish, and another heat was leaving at that time PLUS you had the costumed heat leaving later that day PLUS you had 5 live bands which I would’ve loved to stay for. Unfortunately, half of my team doesn’t really like music (yeah you heard that right), so my ride pretty much got out of there 10 minutes after the race was over. Thankfully though I DID get a chance to see some awesome costumed racers including the Smurfs and the cast of Mario Kart! Oh, and in case you’re wondering - My knees feel money which bodes GREAT things for the rest of my 2009 race season!

Not too long ago I thought to check out YouTube for the trailer to WCW vs NWO Revnege for the Nintendo 64. I used to have so much fun playing this game back in the day. Why isn’t there something like this on XBL!? These games used to be so fun and I don’t think anyone would say that newer wrestling games could touch it. I think in the strides towards realism, we’ve lost a lot of that speed and freedom in control that we used to have. Not that I’ve played a wrestling game for more than 5 minutes in the last 8 years ha ha. If you wanna check out the awesome/badness of the trailer, la voila.

While the first mobile review of anything on this site might be something to celebrate, (especially after writing some 337 posts), the prospect of a mobile game enticing me to write a review is really where the praise is deserved. Now let me preface this review by saying I have an LG Chocolate on the Verizon network and you can get the game there. For the other carriers and phones, I just don’t know but you might wanna check over on Namco’s page.

If You’ve Never Played a Katamari Game…
It’s really simple. You’re this little guy and you push this little ball that EVERYTHING sticks to. The point of the game is to make the ball grow as big as you can make it. So I know that sounds really stupid and childlike but in execution it’s very cool. See, your ball starts out really small and as such it can only pick up small things like paper clips and pen tops. But as your ball grows, you’ll be able to roll and pick up bigger things like baseballs and then to trash cans to dogs, to cars… I mean, it’s a really really cool and relatively simple 3D game.

So How Does it Translate to the Handheld
SurPRISINGLY well! You’re not going to get the 3D view (at least in my version), but other than that it’s almost the exact same game and equally as fun! It handles pretty well, the graphics are great, and the effect used when the game zooms out as your ball gets bigger is spot on. Now I’ve been playing this for a WHILE now… Sometimes in waiting rooms, sometimes before bed, sometimes just in place of other games, and I’m STILL NOT DONE WITH IT! Which for me, is VERY important when buying a mobile game. If I can’t play it over and over again, it’s just not worth it the money to purchase it. If I had one negative thing to say about the game, I might cite the music… I know they tried to match the console’s “poppyness” but the same kind of stuff through my cell’s speakers just sounds abrasive.

Conclusion
If you liked the console version of this game, you’re gonna love the mobile. It’s almost as simple as that. And if you’ve never played the console version, it’s certainly not a requisite for the mobile game and certainly wouldn’t take anything away from the experience. Hooray! Royal Rainbow! (You’ll see…)

It may come as a surprise to many, but for the past month I’ve been in possession of a PS3. That’s right, Sony’s Playstation 3. Trust me, I’m STILL shocked I ponied up the money to buy one. Well here’s how it happened - As you know, most of my gaming is done on a big ol’ home theater projector these days so watching movies in standard def is like putting a knife in my back.

Sorry guys, it just is.

Here’s the Story Morning Glory
So when I wanted to throw my wife a bone about a month ago and rent Twilight for her (horrible movie) I decided I would rent it on Blu-Ray and play it on a PS3. (Besides, I really wanted to beat my co-worker’s score in Super Stardust HD anyhow)… Everything that night went fine and the PS3 was a very capable device in my humble opinion. Fast forward about a month to present time and I had a WAY overpriced gaming system that didn’t have any games I really wanted. (I never did buy a single game for it). BUT, I was probably going to just keep it anyway since it played Blu-Ray movies half way decently and I can be lazier than the day is long sometimes.

It was at that point that I received word about this baby:

Now I knew that Blu-Ray player prices were far below the horrific price of PS3’s, but I didn’t know you could find a capable Samsung with just about all the bells and whistles for sub $200! Now to be fair, this is a refurb from Tiger Direct, but cNET gave it a good rating for what it wass and Pete gave me the approving nod on Twitter, so I pulled the trigger!

You Did This to Yourselves Sony!
Chances are that this doesn’t excite you like it does me but that’s ok. If on the other hand you have been BEGGING for an excuse to get a player at a bargain - Why not give this a go? And on a final note, I can’t be the only one who feels this way. I’ve said it before that I have BEGGED Sony to give me a reason to buy a PS3… They haven’t done it with their game library, they haven’t done it with their price, and now with Blu-Ray player prices falling, they may have missed me entirely for this console generation.

One of the things I’ve been meaning to do for a while was clean up my sidebars. They were WAY long and that was mostly because my categories and archive sections were being completely listed out. I mean, you blog for any amount of time and these things are bound to happen. So I had two things I could do. I could either:

• Stop displaying this stuff entirely or
• Find a new way to display them.

For a second, I thought about putting this stuff into the footer somehow but after I spent all the time making my kicka$$ new one, I said I would just make dropdowns out of this content. For the category dropdown, that was easy enough to do after I found this page on Wordpress. The archive dropdown was a bit harder because I couldn’t find code on Wordpress that worked exactly like the category dropdown did. That is, the code I found on Wordpress would go to the archive section immediately after selecting it from the dropdown instead of after hitting a submit button. So just in case any of you out there need this, here’s the code I came up with:

<form onSubmit = "myString = this.archive_drop.options
[this.archive_drop.selectedIndex].value;
if (myString == '') { myString='#';} document.location.href = myString; return false;">
<select name= "archive_drop" style = "width : 192px;">
  <option value=""><?php echo attribute_escape(__('Select Month')); ?></option>
  <?php wp_get_archives('type=monthly&format=option&show_post_count=1'); ?> </select>
</select>
 <input type = "submit" name = "submit" value = "Go" />
</form>

Sorry it looks so ugly but at the moment I don’t have time to play with this tool to make things look perfect and bring the font down. In any case, you should be able to just copy the code, clean it up and put it in wherever you need it. Hope this helps!