Traveling Thoughts

I’m way behind on my blogging due to my mini-vacation this last weekend but I saw this on Jules blog and thought it was cool enough to write about. It’s amazing what I don’t know where my birthdate is concerned. But there’s some cool events and people I recognize that I share a birthday with.

1. Go to Wikipedia and type in your birthday (month and day).
2. Blog 3 events, 2 births, 1 holiday and tag 5 friends.

May 29
Three events that happened on this day:

1. 363 - Roman Emperor Julian defeats the Sassanid army in the Battle of Ctesiphon, under the walls of the Sassanid capital, but is unable to take the city.
2. 1790 - Rhode Island becomes the last of the original United States colonies to ratify the Constitution and is admitted as the 13th U.S. state.  
3. 1913 - Igor Stravinsky’s ballet score The Rite of Spring is premiered in Paris.

Two Births that happened on this day:

1. 1736 - Patrick Henry, American patriot, statesman, and orator (d. 1799) (The give me liberty or give me death dude)
2. 1917 - John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 35th President of the United States (d. 1963)

One holiday:

1. United Kingdom: Oak Apple Day

There was a lot to choose from and I picked what seemed coolest to me.  I’m not going to tag anyone because that’s a pain in my butt so if you want to do this go for it, just leave a note in my comments so I can go read it. [Edit: And no, I didn’t break the tag because I wasn’t tagged to begin with, Kat broke it<-points finger at Kat ;P]

Daily since I downloaded it I’ve been checking the National Treasure: Book of Secrets decoder for a new puzzle. There wasn’t one this morning but the decoder sits on my desktop and I happened to click on it and another symbol was shining in blue.

This one will probably be easier for the history buffs than it was for me:

7 hours before Lincoln was assassinated, the following note was left for whom?
“Don’t wish to disturb you.
Are you at home?
J. Wilkes Booth”

I didn’t study this stuff in school and so I had no earthly idea what they were talking about so to figure it out I googled it.

After I had the answer and had unlocked the reward (which the reward page doesn’t appear to be working and access is denied) I went and looked at the hint to see if it would’ve helped me at all

Follow the first letters of the last two sentences to form his initials. You may need to do some research to solve this 13 letter code.

Of course, the hint means nothing to me either, so my research (thank you google) worked just fine :)

I really need to go and read up on the presidents or something. Anything to help me get these clues figured out.

A couple years back 2005 to be exact I saw a movie in the theatres. The other day I was trying to describe it to mom because I wanted to buy it but couldn’t remember what it was called. All I could remember was that they went back through time, brought a butterfly back with them and changed the future. She had no earthly idea of what I was talking about, of course, she never saw the movie to begin with so it would make sense that she had no clue of what I was speaking.

What made me think of it I don’t know, but I really wanted it, and I had to have it. Luckily for me, I’m a bit of a pack rat…ok, I’m a real pack rat, I keep a lot of stuff that people really don’t need to keep. Like movie ticket stubs. Yes, that’s right, movie ticket stubs, and let me tell you they come in handy.

I knew which journals of mine contained movie ticket stubs so I started with the oldest journal. I opened it up looking for the pages on which I had pasted the stubs and I couldn’t find any. Just by chance (because I knew that there had to be ticket stubs in there somewhere) I opened to the front of my journal and there was a handful of ticket stubs.

When I saw these ticket stubs I knew all of them except for “SoundThunder” so it had to be that one. So I went to google, typed in: movie + sound thunder and BAM! the first thing that came up was A Sound of Thunder. I <3 google.

But actually, this is more than just about google, because google wasn’t helpful until I had some deeper clue of what I was looking for. Sometimes being a pack rat is just wholesome goodness. Like with my movie ticket stubs, I could’ve gone on for a long time not knowing what movie I was looking for. Everybody I asked about it was more clueless than I was. The good thing for me is that I’m not just any kind of pack rat, I journal most of what I would be pack ratty about. Movie ticket stubs, magazine articles, etc.

When I learned to cut my nails as a small child, I learned to do it over a trashcan. It was unacceptable for my fingernails to be anywhere but on my fingers or in the trashcan. The floor, the table, my mouth, it was just unheard of. It doesn’t happen.

A couple months ago I found a finger nail on my desk, it wasn’t mine, it was long and yellow. Even if my nails were yellow (which they aren’t) they’re never long (I cut them several times a week because if they get long enough for me to bite on them, I will). It was disgusting, I couldn’t believe that there was someone elses fingernail on my desk (and it could’ve been anybody’s because I sat at the front desk).

Today I found out where that nail came from. It came from a co-worker (obviously) but a particular one. She was standing at another co-worker’s desk today clipping her nails. As if it weren’t annoying enough that you could hear the clip clip clip of the clippers as she clipped she was leaning against the desk and clipping her nails, and they were flying everywhere. I just had to walk away because if I hadn’t I would have told her how not cool it was to clip her nails at someone elses desk and at a minimum not over a trashcan.

It’s so disgusting. When she left we had to break out the clorox wipes to clean up the nails that were on my buddies desk. And we had to pick up the nails off the floor. I mean, come on, where are your basic thinking skills. If you gotta clip your nails at work at a minimum do it over a trashcan. Seriously.

Just the other night I was raving about how great the PPP Blog Battle Royale contest was because of the peak in traffic I got to my site. And that if for no other reason than the spike in traffic was I going to continue writing for the monthly Blog Battle Royale competition.

And now, to feed my sweet addiction, Ted is calling me. Well, Ok, he’s actually Calling All PPP Blog Battle Royale I Participants. But he might as well be calling me. I’m only in analytics every single day looking at my traffic and my key words. It truely is an addiciton, it’s the first thing I do when I turn the computer on in the morning. Look at analytics. It’s a beautiful thing analytics is.

I saw traffic from the PPP site:

I had a nice Peak in overall visitors

And of course, my entry got a fair amount of traffic thanks to the PPP site

click on images if you want to see them larger

Entering into the PPP Blog Battle Royale contest did wonderful things for my site. Even now that it’s over I’m still getting a decent flow of traffic. About 20 more visitors a day than usual.

I just love when I do stuff that’s good that drives traffic to my site. That’s truely what makes Google Analytics such a beautiful thing.

I’ve finally gotten to the point where my camera is in my backpack at all times and my backpack is with me 90% of the time. The other night as I was driving home I got stopped at the railroad tracks (which is a rarity for me). Rarely do I see trains crossing the tracks. Usually my timing is off. I’ve been on the train that I saw tonight, but I always get off at the stop a few miles from where I was when it came barreling across the tracks on this particular night.

As I was sitting there (because traffic was slow anyways it was rush home hour) I was on the phone with Markus and the train crossing rails came down and the little bells were going off. I was like “oh, I have my camera” and so I pulled it out and I took a video of the train crossing the road.

Yeah, I know, I’m easily amused.

Finally, someone lets me out of that damned cage. They clean it and feed me and give me fresh water, but they never pick me up and hold me or pet me. That was different today. She did. I’ve seen her before, but she’s not who I usually see. This one is a rare specialty. She doesn’t come often but when she does I can always bet on being let out of the cage and being able to run around or roll around (yeah, she puts me in that damned ball, I roll around and get to go places but I’m stuck).

Tonight she let me at her computer, damned thing was dirty, I had to clean my paws after using it, it was like she had been sweating as she was typing or something, it was all salty, it burned my paws. Or maybe, it was those things they eat, the crunchy ones, I don’t know what they’re called, they’re round, ah yes, chips. I get those in my meals sometimes, I hide them, she must eat them.

But the good news is, I was able to send her a message

It’s not easy using those buttons, they’re spaced so far apart, and it took me even longer to figure out how to get it into caps. It’s funny though, and I’m not sure she’ll figure out how to turn it off. But I was pressing the shift key, and after a while something popped up about sticky keys. And then all I had to do was push the shift key twice and I was in all caps. It was magic. Don’t know how I did it, wasn’t going to bother with turning it off. I just know that it was amazing.

So, I got my message out and I’m pretty sure that she’ll communicate with the other people that I’m not that bad and that it’s ok to let me out of my cage. I mean, they were only bitten because they were squeezing me, you don’t have to squeeze me you know, my eyeballs are liable to pop out of my head. Well, and they got bit when trying to get me out of my cave, because it was nice and dark in there and I was sleeping and they stuck their hands in there. Don’t you know that you don’t stick your hands into an animals domain, because that’s what happens, you get bit. I shouldn’t get punished just because of their stupidity. *rolls eyes*

Needless to say, I was successful in sending a message and hopefully things will change for me in the future. I’ll let you know the next time I have access to a computer (which, unless she comes again and lets me near hers, it may be a while).

One of the blogs I read is Whatever I Feel Like, and the tag line is Gosh!  So I’m typing in the url today (because that’s what I do, my favorite blogs I know by heart and I don’t need a favorites link, I type them in) and it goes something like this www.whateverifeellike.com/gosh I got a 404 error.  That page didn’t exist.

I found it fairly amusing and emailed Amy myself to let her know what I had done.  Needless to say, there’s now a page for when I go overboard with the url.

I got an email with this picture in it.  Earlier this summer I had a friend ask me what I wanted to do while I was in CA.  I mentioned something along these same lines

I didn’t fly when I mentioned it, it didn’t happen while I was in CA, and I’m not the only one that thinks of the crazy stuff I think of. Obviously, this kid had the same great idea I did and someone was there to take a picture.

I want to do that too. Skateboard down a hill, across the dock, and into an ocean. It’s on my to do list!

Well, thanks to all my voters, I made it into the Blog Battle Royale: iRobot Top 5.  Since it was voter based, I really couldn’t have done it without all your votes and I sure do appreciate them.

I really hope that you’ll support me in the same manner as us Top 5 Battle for the championship title of “PPP Blog Battle Royale Champion”

Now, even though the first round was really about popularity and the best advertising (or spamming) the real meaning of Blog Battle Royale is that the quality of our posts is the best.  Could I lay the smack down on other bloggers, yeah some of them, but not all of them.  Would I like to think that I could take on the best of the best, yeah, give me a topic I enjoy and I can.

So, let me be fair, here’s the entries that exist in the final round (in order of placing in the top 5)  I Need a Robot
Roomba and other such useful robots.
The Grand Pooba(h) (this is mine)
Only In My Dreams…
iRobot: Civic Doody?

Would I love your vote, yeah, I would, will I spam for you vote, yeah, I might (the precedence has already been set) would I feel a little better if you actually voted for me because you thought my post was the best, that it was the most well written, that the quality of it far surpassed those of my opponents, yeah.

So,  when it comes time to vote again, I’ll ask for your support.  In the mean time, please read them all.  And vote as your heart tells you.