That's it, I'm fed up with not doing anything with my stupid blog.  I was looking at a co-worker's blog today (www.insidetheperimeter.com) and I noticed that he writes a blog almost every day it seems... and I thought to myself, "I wish I could do that".

What?  it's not like nuclear physics or anything, you just have to commit to writing an article every day.  I know... I know... I've said this before... and gotten like 1 week into it and quit.  Whatever.  I think it's because I don't know what to write about alot of the times.  Well, maybe that just means that you aren't doing enough things that are entertaining... aka you live a boring life.  Well, THAT'S what I have to change.  Instead of trying to make up blogs about uniteresting stuff, maybe you should just DO more interesting stuff.

So, I'm going to try to come up with a kind of format that I want to follow... and hopefully this will help me write more interesting blogs.

I'll try to write my first blog tonight.

I don't even know why I have a blog.

The White Family started our own Weight Watchers' journey together a couple of weeks ago.  I'm adding this diet to the long list of diet's that I've tried in the past.

The diets that I've been the most successful on are diets that had you count calories.  This is essentially what the Weight Watchers program is.  Calories (along with fat grams and fiber) are calculated into a point value.  You are given a daily quota of points to consume.   So, I think I can be successful doing this.

Plus, I think Weight Watchers is successful in large part because of the support team surrounding you.  Since we are not going to do the actual weight watchers meetings, our family is going to do weekly viedo conferences (thanks Stickam) to encourage each other and hold each other accountable.

So far, I have lost 8.6 pounds and the family has lost around 25 pounds.  This is all in 2 weeks.  We are trying to continue our diets all the way until next year's tax day (April 15, 2010).  We will have some sort of celebration at the end... hopefully a trip of some kind :).

Okay... Plinky decided to get all poetic on us today, and they suggested to their blog followers to put pen to paper and:

Write a haiku about the last movie you saw.

Well, the last movie that I saw was at Joy and Justin's house the other Tuesday night.  We watched Seven Pounds (as evident by the photo on the left).  So, here is my Seven Pound Haiku.

So many flashbacks.
Really, a jellyfish?  There
are easier ways.

No need to tell me... I know I'm a natural!

It goes without saying that Democrats often get on my nerves. My favorite thing to see happen is to watch these idealists try to stick it to "the man" all the while having an opposite effect than intended.

I heard my favorite case thus far that falls into this category on the Neal Boortz show one morning last week. 

Link to source: AOPA Online News Story

It proves YET AGAIN that the more you regulate and criticize and hurt the private sector, the worse and worse it will be for people in real need.

The short of the story is this.  Over half of the Fortune 100 are contributors to the Corporate Angel Network in which children afflicted with cancer, who need critical care but are too weak to travel through traditional/public channels to receive this care, are allowed to hitchhike on available seats in corporate jets as company officials travel around the country on business.

Often times sick children ride in the same cabin as CEOs of our nation's largest companies.  However, with the negative connotation that has been associate with corporate jets and "rich" CEOs, many companies are flying much less frequently or stopping altogether to avert any negative PR.  This has caused a slow down in the Corporate Angels Network and fewer patients are being helped because of it.

Debbie Downer says:

Give the corporate jet debate a rest... you're killing children.

Today, Plinky suggested the following prompt:

"Newspapers are reporting their own imminent deaths, Where else will (or do) you get your news?"

Firstly, I'd like to say that newspapers have been SEVERELY stretching the term "journalism" for years (if not decades). 

Below, is the definition for journalism from dictionary.com.  Journalism is the act of reporting the news... not infusing your opinion or agenda into current events.  Stop... before you say more, I'm fully aware that this occurs on the right and on the left, but since more media is liberal leaning, I like the idea of seeing these liberal newspapers struggle to survive and then die slow and painful deaths.

jour⋅nal⋅ism [jur-nl-iz-uhm]
-noun
1. the occupation of reporting, writing, editing, photographing, or broadcasting news or of conducting any news organization as a business.

To top that off, I have personal issues with the rag from my hometown (Opelika-Auburn News)... and I can't wait to see it go under.  I'll have a little party on that glorious day (hopefully sooner rather than later)!

I digress... to FINALLY answer today's Plinky prompt, I get my news normally from word of mouth.  After hearing something "newsish" that interests me, I usually go to several internet sources (and sometimes FoxNews or CNN) to validate the story and try to wade through the fluff to get to the facts.

Also, there's always my favorite nerdy news source (self-admitted "News for Nerds")... Slashdot.org.

Today, Plinky posed an interesting question:

"If you could eat only one type of cuisine for a year, what would it be?"

Though my anwser is a little bit of a cop out, I chose Southern Cuisine.  I know... I know... it shouldn't really count, since I have in fact grown up eating Southern Cuisine my entire life.   Still, I couldn't help but go through the different cuisines worldwide and ask myself if I could eat that type of food for every day for a year... and I kept saying `No`.

Think about it... think about eating Mexican, Chinese, Polish, or Italian every day for a whole year.  I guess Italian is okay, but still... I don't think I could do it for an entire year... too many tomatoes.

For me, just give me a steady diet of fried chicken, turnip greens, fried okra, cornbread, and sweet tea.  I could eat that for the rest of my life.

Welcome to the new blogging concept that I have decided to embrace. In the past, I'm sure many of you have noticed that I can get blogger's block... sometimes for an extended period of time. Well, hopefully I've found the cure. I'm going to blog alot according to ideas suggested on Plinky.com.  Basically, this site is designed to help people find good topics to blog about.  I'm hoping that through this process, you will be able to find out more about me... and in the meantime have a good time interacting with some of these interesting topics.

I TOLD you I'd have my site back up and running in 2 weeks!  lol.  Well, this is the last time that I'm redesigning this site for a least 3 years.  I really just didn't like the old look anymore, so I made myself rework everything.

Like always, I have written the entire site from scratch.  It's a good exercise to in programming skills, it's a good resume item, and I can do things they way that I want.  What I've done so far is simply the blog and the backend administrative panel (which only I have access to).  This admin panel is where I write/edit my blogs, manage users and categories, and view reader measurement statistics.

I'm making 2 big changes with regards to my website... (1) is the overall goal of the website as more of an outlet for professionals to locate and contact me and to view my portfolio... (2) is to start vlogging some (Video Blogs)... I'll be posting all of my vlogs on youTube and then posting them here on my website.  For all Vlogs, I'll be disabling comments on the youTube side because I want all comments coming through my website.

So, I hope you guys leave lots of comments.  I like to hear what you think.

I'm always interested in how other people around the world view America.  We are a diverse group of people with many different knicks and knacks.  So, when someone comes to America, I like to hear them comment on their perspective into how we live our lives.

Steven Fry, is a British actor and comedian.  He recently worked on a 6-episode mini-series on America that is currently running on BBC.  This new documentary (of sorts) saw him travel all over the country... to all 50 states... and experience something unique or interesting in each state.  The name of this series is "Steven Fry in America".

In his travel to Alabama, Fry goes to an Iron Bowl (it appears to be the 2007 game) in Auburn and is completely overwhelmed by our passion for the game of football.  In his own words:

This fixture has the scale, intensity and hoopla of a Grand National Final, but is in reality nothing more than a local darby between amateur students... only in America.

Below is the YouTube clip of his experience at Jordan-Hare Stadium in the pregame of the Iron Bowl.

Recently at work, we had a couple of co-workers from the Ukraine come over and work in Atlanta with us for 2 weeks.  There timing couldn't have been more perfect because the weekend that they were here was the weekend of the SEC Championship game.  They wanted to go downtown to see the Coke Museum and the Georgia Aquarium... both of which are very close to the Georgia Dome.  As we were leaving the Coke Museum (about 2 hours before kickoff), they got a good taste of Bammernecks and Florida fans going to the game.

Their comments somewhat mirrored Steven Fry's questioning why we are so passionate about college (amateur) athletics.  It seems to be a common question from people outside of our country... and I guess I can only answer it the way that I see it.  I think college athletics (in all sports) is the purest form of the game... plus you have a direct tie to the university that you've grown up cheering for and that you received a degree from in your early adulthood.  I guess it's just a passion that grows over the years... and with the direct tie to where you studied for 4 (or 5) years, it just naturally falls into place.