And who said there was no hope for our youth?

Sheesh, what the heck has been up with this blog lately? I think the 'Masonic Thought for the Day Thing' gives the blog a bit of a funky vibe. I figured, well, if I have nothing else to post why not post that?

Regarding the link above, well I have a feeling my daughter's little high-school video project won't make the Google Video hall of fame. At least not when it is competing with little gems like the one I just posted here. Make sure you have your audio turned on to get the full effect.

In other news...

Tomorrow I am going to take a PTO day to spend with my father. I will be driving down to Jefferson City in the morning and then take him to the VA hospital.

In the evening I might attend a lodge meeting, or I might just stay home. I'm not sure yet.

On Saturday morning the Moolah Shrine is sponsoring a craft fair, so I might go by there. On Sunday my son's DeMolay chapter is going to recognize their 'Day of Devotion' by having the entire chapter visit a Baptist Church. Apparently many people in the Church are Freemasons and the chapter is going to be recoginized during the service. Afterwards we will all be going out to lunch together.

I have been pimping my fundraising site really hard to my friends. On the one hand it's a little big slimey but, on the other, I'm trying to make it worthwhile for people to donate. Every time someone donates I make a big effort to promote their site and give them an acknowledgement on the associated blog. I received a donation last night from my friend Billy Zelsnack and this morning from another friend Bill Bean.

I, myself, broke down and was the first to purchase the largest ad possible for $100 to help promote the New Masonic Temple.

I have been adding a lot more posts to my coding website. This is actually a part of my 'long term plan.' Over time, I will be releasing an enormous amount of extraordinarily useful source code in 'snippet' form. Snippets are darn useful because they can be used in isolation of other source code dependencies. In time I expect these pieces of source code to find themselves in hundreds of projects. Since they are snippets they should migrate through the Internet like little code viruses. I think the technical term is 'memes'. I actually copy/paste weblinks into each piece of source code so that any time a software engineer loads it into an editor it will compell them to click on a link and, hopefully, guilt them into donating money.

I only have 201 spots to sell and over 10% of them are already gone. If, some day, thousands of sofware engineers use some of the source code I release I need only to compel a fraction of them to throw a few bucks my way.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not a poor man. I donate money on a frequent basis to all manner of causes and have already donated over $300 to my son's youth group in the past month alone. But, fundraising takes work.

If you can't pimp your friends for funds who can you? Previously I used the analogy that I would just be selling you candy bars anyway. Today someone pointed out they would actully *like* to have a candy bar. So, I have decided that from now on any time someone makes a donation I will send them a 'Willy Wonka' candy bar in token of appreciation. I will have to revise the site to reflect that change.

Most eveyone in my company is gone at GDC this week. I have been able to take a short breather but I'm sure the crap will hit the fan when they return next week.

So, while I take this brief moment to catch my breath, I encourage you to watch the video link posted above and have a good laugh on my recommendation.

And, I predict (and I know this prediction is coming a bit late) that Google Video is going to be a very big thing.

If you enjoyed the first video clip (and it is my favorite) you might enjoy these as well. Apparently Google Video is running a Google Idol competition.