Until this last weekend I had been away for awhile and didn’t post anything. While I was away I had come across several sites I took note of whether I would be able to use it later or someone I knew. So here are some of the sites!

Often times I am in desperate need of inspiration, CSS help, complimentary colors and other ideas. I ran across the following websites that I found helpful or inspirational.

• blog.html.it/layoutgala/ - Free CSS layouts
• kuler.adobe.com - Color picker from Adobe
• designmeltdown.com - Great place for website inspiration
• famfamfam.com/lab/icons/ - Neat little collection of free icons
• cssremix.com - Another place to seek website inspiration
• www.maxdesign.com.au/presentation/process/ - Great for learning CSS (one method)

Before I had installed Parallels on my iMac I needed a way to test the dreaded Internet Explorer. What I was doing for awhile was using an old laptop running Windows XP. The laptop was slow to say the least and didn’t have wireless or a working battery. Then I cam across http://www.CrossBrowserTesting.com

If you need a way to test your website on multiple platforms, browsers, etc. CrossBrowserTesting is a great solution.

If you need tools, scripts, or other web solutions I found these websites to be really helpful:

• www.dynamicdrive.com - Great place for web resources
  
• builder.yaml.de - YAML CSS Builder
• 960.gs - Great solution for CSS layouts
• www.dzone.com - Kind of like Digg but for web developers
• www.forwebdesigners.com - Great place to look for solutions, help, etc.

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Anyway, hopefully something here will help you find what you’re looking for or even something new that you weren’t looking for!

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Apparently the Federal Government (aka the big stupid ass) is halting large-scale solar power projects for two years. (NYT) Why?

They want to make sure it isn’t hurting the environment or the animals. Oh, they are so thoughtful and caring. Either that or greedy bastards that want to delay alternative energy sources even longer. I wonder if they ever thought about the environment or the animals before they started using fossil fuels…yeah right!

Meanwhile the search for oil continues even if it means more harm to the environment, animals and the air we breath. Brilliant, just brilliant.

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Having worked at newspapers I have experienced countless frustrations when dealing with sales people. I came across this video that was hilarious and yet so true. You can substitute other jobs in place of the web dude as well.

Sometimes I seriously wonder about the sanity of sales people (and if they have a soul). Many people argue that sales is a hard job and that you have to be very good at it to succeed. My 2 cents is that sales people are not good at what they do, they are just the only people left who are willing to do it. Everyone else was smart enough to go get better jobs.

If you’re a sales person, try not to take offense to that. It’s just because my experiences with sales people have been worse than the scenario in this video. This is a prime example of why Stupid Sucks!

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I’ve been anxiously awaiting the movies coming this summer and finally had the chance to go watch Wanted. My expectations weren’t too high but I was expecting a good action movie. Man ‘o man was I in for a treat tonight boys and girls!

If you’re antsy watching head shots, blood splatter and a little slicing action, you might find yourself cringing quite often through this flick. I found myself saying “ooooo”, “ahhhhh” & “ouch” left and right and that’s not very typical for me.

So the action was good, the acting was good, a few of the special effects were a little corny and the story was well played. Or at least that’s what I thought. There were some pretty good twists through the movie and although I like to turn my brain into movie mode, I don’t think most people will see them coming.

Anyway, if you’re in the mood for some shoot’em up action and a story of a pushover wimp taking control of his life and discovering his “purpose” then you should go watch this one!

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***WARNING*** this is a long read

Quite awhile ago I mentioned I would share some of my personal stupid stories with all of you. I think today I will do just that and share my 4-wheeler adventure from high school.

For those of you who don’t know me personally, I am a bit of an adrenaline junkie. Unfortunately getting the high of adrenaline for me is best achieved by fast moving vehicles. Just to be specific, it doesn’t have to have some form of propulsion. I have manage to get bicycles going much faster than what is safe using just my legs and the assistance of gravity (maybe using more gravity and the assistance of my legs?).

So, of course over time the speed attainable on a bicycle was less and less thrilling. Although I had a few accidents I was young and my body snapped back much too quickly for me to actually learn my lesson. I moved on to bigger and better things. Cars!

Now, the stories I have from the stupid (very stupid) things I’ve done in my car are for another time (I could probably write a whole book from them). But this is about the next step…. a 4-wheeled vehicle that exposes your body to the elements, goes fast, goes almost everywhere and is very dangerous (if you’re like me).

When my cousin got the 4-wheeler all I could think about was when I would get to ride it. As often as I could I would ride it. But, that wasn’t enough. I didn’t want to be limited to a back yard or a dirt road. I wanted to explore the jumps, fields & hills of our little town.

Riding is fun, but riding alone gets boring really quickly. So a really good friend of mine from high school borrowed a 4-wheeler from one of our friends and I borrowed my cousin’s. We headed out early in the morning so we could go 4-wheeling all day. Oh, if we only had known what was in store for us.

At one part of the day I took the 4-wheeler as fast as I could off a jump that launched it so high I thought I was going to fly off. Then it landed so hard the side of my jaw smashed into the handle bars. Wow, that was painful but I was young and dumb, it would take more than that to stop my adventure.

When we had enough fun we wanted to bring more people in on the fun. Our girlfriends! What could be better than showing off our utter stupidity?!

My friend’s girlfriend couldn’t come so instead he brought his sister. Once my girlfriend (well, we were getting back together after we had been caught goofing around… :wink:) arrived we headed out. We showed off our ridiculous acrobatics on the jumps, hills & dirt roads. We ended up at what we called “the beet dump”.

The beet dump is basically just a giant, flat, open field that sugar beets are dumped each season. Of course there weren’t any beets there so it was just open space to play. At one point when spinning cookies in the dirt I rolled the 4-wheeler when it caught enough traction. I jumped off just in time so it didn’t roll over me (awesomely stupid acrobatics again :roll:).

The day came to a grinding halt when my friend and I were racing from one end to the other on opposite sides. The two girls were standing in the middle so we wouldn’t get too close. When you’re going fast on a 4-wheeler in a dirt field after a long day, your eyes get watery, dusty, etc. and the last thing you would expect is for someone to be running into the path of the 4-wheeler.

Exactly what I didn’t expect is what happened. My girlfriend was running across the path of the 4-wheeler, but I thought for sure she would continue running out of the way. When she stopped I knew something bad was about to happen. I cranked the handle bars hard to the left with all my might and hit the brakes (the big mistake). The wheels locked up and instead of actually turning, I slid right into her..

To make a long story short, we both ended up in the hospital with injuries (hers were much worse than mine) and everyone scratching their heads wondering how in the world the accident had happened. They were that confused and they thought she was on the 4-wheeler with me.

Think about how confused they were when I told them that she wasn’t. How do you manage to hit someone in the middle of a field? Of course at the time my memories were fresh and I knew exactly what happened. Years later though my memories of the event has faded and I will forever wonder how I manage such a tragedy. Somehow my friend and his sister didn’t see it happen and my girlfriend forgot nearly the entire day because of her concussion.

Her injuries: fractured skull in 3 places, fractured eye socket in 2 places, broken nose, shattered wrist, broken fibula (non-weight bearing bone in the lower leg), 4″ laceration between the hairline and forehead, fractured hip and severe concussion.

My injuries: sprained ankle, my chin was split open from side to side and my left vocal cord was severed from its controlling muscles (my voice box was hit really hard).

After being checked out and stitched up at the local hospital (aka: death valley) I was life flighted to Utah to have a specialist fix my vocal cord (the life flight was because my throat could have swollen up suffocating me).

She was moved to the Boise hospital after she was stabilized and stayed there for almost 2 weeks.

That was the first time I realized just how expensive stupidity was and just how dangerous “toys” can be. You can imagine how this story ended with angry parents and big bills. I was 17 at that time and 4 years later we have gotten back together! We have no hard feelings and are very very happy together.

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Holy smoking failure! The last time I blogged was May 17th! Can you believe that?!

Although we fail horribly, we get back up and give it another go! So that’s what I’ll be doing and aiming to post once per day or at least one post per two days on the busy weeks.

While I was away, lots of interesting stuff was discovered and soon I think I might give video blogging a shot. Although the thought of my face available via video to the rest of the world is a little creepy…

I think I would also like to setup a photo/video gallery of pictures I take, funny stuff I find, etc. That will give me something more to do than just writing….because I am kinda sucky at writing, lol.

Anyway, I’m back!

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