Your 2012 Year In Blogging

Blog Analytics

If you have a WordPress blog and you use Jetpack check out the Annual Report they put together for you. The report is private, but you can check it out and make it public.

We all put a bit of ourselves into our blogs and it’s nice to know that others find our posts helpful, interesting or entertaining. You can discover what people are searching for and if you’re so inclined, write more about the popular topics you’ve already shared.

Web analytics is the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of internet data for purposes of understanding and optimizing web usage. In other words it helps you understand what visitors are looking for, how to increase traffic, maximize your marketing budget and resources. Continue reading →

2012 Fiscal Cliff Bill And Nascar – The Real Story & The Mis-information

Jan6

Nothing like a sunset over RIR!

How Assumptions Can Create Mis-Information

Last month Washington DC was in its usual fight over money, budgets and bills when it finally agreed on several little deals to create what’s being called on the street as the Fiscal Cliff Bill. Along with being a sports fan, an author and teacher, I’m also a political junkie. And one thing that irritates me more than the stupidity in Washington, is the B.S. and spin that the average American buys into at the hands of sloppy reporting and sensationalize journalism.

When that mis-information touches on something I care about, I tend to speak up. Such is the case of a recent story published in the Washington Post this week. An opinion piece, which I guess means the opinionated author doesn’t need to check their facts before publication. The article entitled “From NASCAR to rum, the 10 weirdest parts of the ‘fiscal cliff’ bill” was posted by Brad Plumer on January 2, 2013.

In this article Mr. Plumer makes the following statement: Continue reading →

NFL Wildcard Week

Jan5

Evil’s Playoff Picks For Wildcard Weekend

Score another one for my gut. If Quinn was hiding Denver’s superbowl rings in his cup, they’re not there anymore. No word on if they found his cup. Denver is now top of the AFC and they get a rematch with New England, this time in Denver. The computer says that NE will still stomp them into the dirt just like last year. If Tebow was holding them back, it wasn’t that much.

I think I see the method behind the madness of the Green Bay loss. By losing to Minnesota they avoid all the tough games in the playoffs. However the computer says that San Francisco will be tough enough anyway.

Bottom line here, New England will still beat Atlanta in the Superbowl.

My take for Wild Card Weekend: Continue reading →

NFL Week 17 & Wild Card Weekend!

Jan4

Spring & The Prince Get Ready For The Play Offs!

Last weekend couldn’t have gone much better for me! Well, yeah it could have. I would have liked to see the Saints win, but it appears Evils Panthers figured out how to play football. How’d that happen? Nothing was as wonderful as my Redskins taking down Dallas on Sunday night! Yeah baby! It’s the best rivalry in all of football if you ask me. I’d say second to that is Minnesota and Green Bay. But it’s a distant second.

All in all, it was still a great weekend with 12 winner picks vs 4 losses. That’s a 75% win rating for the week! I can live with that. And with 144 wins on the regular season, with the 1 tie included for 145; my win rating for the season so far is 65%. In full disclosure the Prince and I didn’t make picks for the first 2 weeks (that’s an additional 32 games we’re not counting here). Continue reading →

From Our Family To You And Yours

Dec31

Evil Through the Looking Glass

Dec30

Through The Looking Glass

Dealing With The Black Screen Of Death

My Queen’s hard drive went deep six on the day after Thanksgiving. It’s been that kind of year for us. At first I thought that it was simply that the OS got borked, because I put in a Knoppix disk and could see the hard drive. In fact, from Knoppix she backed up her important files. What ensued next is my odyssey through the looking glass to reinstall Windows 7 on her machine.

The first thing you do on a factory install of Windows 7 is to attempt to boot to the recovery console, check the disk and repair the OS from the backup copy on the drive. Unfortunately, the option did not show up for us. Booting every other possible way, safe mode, safe mode command prompt, minimum display resolution, etc… they all resulted in the same condition. A black screen with a movable mouse pointer. I know that there will be people searching this later so I wanted that phrase in the article. If they come here first they will know how to fix this and they will know just how screwed they are. Continue reading →

NFL Week 17

Dec30

Evil Makes His Final Picks Of The Regular Season

Well the pattern was right. Nothing else was. My computer assures me that had Cleveland’s offense showed up at the game, they would have given Denver what-for. I’m down to 59% on my picks, largely thanks to the sudden change in ability by Washington and Carolina. Who knew they had football players on those teams? Dallas and Atlanta clearly didn’t.

There’s another “good” bet today. And that is Kansas City will cover the 16 point spread as Denver stomps them. Actually the computer says that Kansas City will only lose by 4 points. Not sure I’d actually put money on this either, cause Denver is suddenly near the top of the AFC. Like Washington and Carolina, they have come out of nowhere. Makes me wonder if Tebow was holding them back last year.

I expect Denver will play like Quinn has personally stolen their Superbowl rings and hidden them in his jock strap. And I expect Kansas City will play like Quinn has personally stolen the Denver Superbowl rings and hidden them in his jock strap, and Denver is coming to kill them for it. I expect there will be some scoring by the Denver D.

My take: Continue reading →

2012 NFL Week 17 Picks

Dec29

Spring and The Prince Make Their Picks

How time flies! It’s already the last week of the regular season and my Redskins appear to be going to the playoffs. Wow! Woohoo and all that.

In between the cooking, family dinner, opening presents and Santa coming to visit I made my picks. It has taken the Prince a bit longer to decide who he wants to win in the final weekend. As usual he has made some interesting picks.

Our toss-up game is Houston at Indianapolis. I’m giving the edge to the Colts because they’re playing at home. So I hope they use that to their benefit and win. The Prince is going with the stats and thinks the Texans will pull off the win. Continue reading →

2012 NFL Week 16 Results

Dec25

Spring and the Prince Review The Holiday Weekend

Week 16 falls right before the Christmas Holiday. And it turns out to be a good thing for me! I won 13 out of the 16 games. That’s an 81.2% average for the week. Woohoo. The man-child did better than his average this week as well. He’s typically a good 50% on his picks. But this week he won 9 of the 16 and brings him to a 56.0%. Hey..that 6% is a big deal when you’re 9 years old.

It was also a great weekend if you’re a Redskins fan (like me)! They are the only team in their division that won on Sunday. Sadly they had to beat the Prince’s team, the Eagles, to make that happen. But they did it. And no so sadly New Orleans beat Dallas Yeah!! And Baltimore took care of the Giants. I am surprised that Houston didn’t show up in Minnesota and the Vikings seemingly decimated them. That was a bad game all around. But how did the Jets fall to the Chargers? I don’t get that one. Continue reading →

Merry Christmas To One And All!

Dec25

Merry Christmas
From our Family to Yours!
May you be surrounded by all the things that bring Christmas cheer today.

May the GreatSpirits shine brightly upon your path bringing happiness & joy during this holiday season!

We received a couple of “we’re annoyed” notes about our Christmas post. Asking why pagans are posting Merry Christmas greetings. To those we’d answer…

Just because we’re pagan doesn’t mean we can’t respect one of the most important days observed by another religion. We’re not in competition with others. It’s not “us” against “them”. Through appreciating each other, we learn tolerance and bring about peace between all spiritual people.

So honor those around you and respect their practices, you may find that they return the same act of kindness to you.