OK. Here’s the unveiling of one of my projects:
Your Online Dog Information and Resources Directory
This is one of the smaller sites. I’m excited to see how it does as a dog resource.
Have a good day!
OK, now this is not ready for any kind of consumption… mass or otherwise. Today and over the past weekend, I have been setting up several sites. They all have the same layout. But they will have distinctly different content.
I changed my mind of posting the addresses to these sites right now. I was concerned that if they get indexed quickly with no content, the engines and people will not be interested in coming back. Sorry, you’ll have to wait to see them. Here’s one blog site, you can see as an example:
Baby Blog
From here you will be able to see the kind of directory I’m working on.
I am populating the a very large directory right now. I think it will take the longest. I currently have 2400 listings indexed and I’m only on California. I think once I get past the this part I think things should go faster.
Now before you go over there, please don’t expect much yet - because there is nothing there in the way of content. I think I can get the current directory done this week then start working on the others.
The goal here is to create directory-based content in a diverse range of topics. Then I’m interested to see which ones generate the most traffic and then which of those convert best in Google AdSense ads. I likely will try Yahoo’s program at some point too. But right now I’m just going with AdSense.
I’m also interested to see how these do as sub-directories of SageRock.com. I’ve been experimenting with this a bit already. But now I’m trying it on a much larger scale. I’ve found that I’m able to appear in the search engines for a wide range of topics.
The search engines have always said they prefer all of your sites under one main domain. So that’s what I’m giving them here. I’m curious to see if I can rank high in very competitive, diverse areas as sub-folders.
I thought you might like to know what I’m up to.
I thought I’d pass this link along. I needed a refresher on password protecting a directory on a Linux-type server.
This site gave me an online form that generated both the .htaccess and .htpasswd files. It then tells you exactly how to create them and then where to upload them.
The only tricky thing to know is the path where to point to your .htpasswd file. If you don’t know, poke around your hosting provider. They should be able to tell you.
I can’t believe I am doing this to myself. It’s 10:00 at night. I’m sitting upstairs in the dark all by myself watching Saw. I’m so freaked out. Everybody told me this was a totally freaky movie.
It’s put out by Twisted Pictures.
These camera shots and lighting are really good.
Adam and Lawrence Gordon, a doctor(a surgeon, actually) just woke up in this place. They have no idea how they got to this place. Lawrence was on his way home from work. And Adam was in his “shit hole” apartment. They are both chained to the wall. There is a dead guy in the center of the room holding a gun with blood coming out of his head.
Adam woke up in a tub of water.
It is 10:20 on the clock.
Adam has a tape in an envelope in his pocket. It says play me. Lawrence has a key and a bullet in his envelope, along with a tape.
The dead guy is holding a recorder that would play the tape. It’s out of reach. He uses the tub plug attached to his shirt to grab the tape player.
The tape gives Adam an ultimatum… will his watch himself die in this room or will he do something about it. Lawrence’s tape says he has to kill Adam by 6:00. Alice and Diana will die if he doesn’t kill him.
The cast includes: Leigh Whannell, Cary Elwes, Danny Glover, Ken Leung, Dina Meyer, Mike Butters, Paul Gutrecht, Michael Emerson, Benito Martinez, Shawnee Smith
In the toilet there are two hack saws. They both try to cut the thick chains. It doesn’t work. Lawrence realizes the guy wants them to cut through their feet.
Lawrence thinks he knows who it is… indirectly.
Paul, another person, was given two hours to climb through barbed wire.
This is all being done by: “The Jig saw Killer” - he finds ways for his victims to kill themselves.
I don’t know if it is because I’m writing this but I’m actually not totally freaked out right now. I watched “The Grudge” last week and I was a mess. I’m totally interested in this movie. But I’m not completely a wreck.
Lawrence was a suspect in the murder of Paul. They want to know where he was between 11:00-1:00 the night before. His pen knife was at the murder scene. Lawrence was seeing someone.
This was all five months previous to the current situation.
We meet Amanda who escaped from the Jig Saw killer. She remembers only beign able to taste blood and metal. Ok, this mask she’s got on is freaky. She sees a totally freaky masked person on a tv screen… it’s the killer. She has a reverse bear trap on her face. It will rip her face apart before dawn if she doesn’t get the key out of the stomach of her dead cell mate.
She took a knife and tore open this guy’s stomach. He was drugged with an opiat. She got the reverse bear trap off her face.
Amanda is a drug addict, that’s why he picked her. The killer tells her that she will now be greatful to be alive. She feels that he helped her.
Adam addresses now what we maybe all suspect… that possibly Lawrence is the killer. That’s clever of the movie. It’s taking Lawrence out of it right now.
Someone can see them from a camera.
Lawrence says, “To overcome something you have to understand what a perfect engine it is.” That’s a cool thought.
Lawrence thinks about the last thing he said to his daughter, Diana. She calmly goes to her mom and says, “there’s a man in her room.” Lawrence goes to check it out. He says there’s no such thing as the bad man. His daughter asks if he will ever leave it
I think the movies that really freak me out of the ones where things jump out of no where. It’s kind of a cheap thrill. But that’s the kind of movie that makes me a wreck. This movie is a little smarter than that, it seems. It’s more like “Seven”.
There’s a picture that Adam sees in Lawrence’s wallet of his wife and daugter tied up and gagged, on the back of the picture it reads: “X marks the spot. Sometimes you see more with your eyes shut.”
There was a man in her closet!! After Lawrence leaves, he jumps out and ties up his wife and kid. It’s wierd, there’s a black man surveyling Lawrence’s house. But someone else is in his house. I think the black man was the detective who thought Lawrence was the killer.
Tap, the detective, hear’s on the video tape, given to Amanda, a fire alarm and sees a graffiti tag on the video. He’s able to find the warehouse where the Jig saw killer produced his video. He and his partner are in there with no back up. They come acrossa 3-D model of the room where Lawrence and Adam are now. They also see the mask the killer used in the video.
Underneath a red cloth is a man who has a drill pointed to his head. The killer starts the drills. They will drill into the head of the person if they don’t pick the right key. The Asian detective shoots the drills stopping them. The killer slashes Tap’s throat. The Asian detective shoots a person in the rope the killer was in. (I somehow don’t believe it’s the killer.) The detective sets off a boobie trap and gets shot. Tap, stumbles down the stairs to see his partner dead. The killer escapes injured.
We now go back to Tap in a dingy apartment with tons of pictures. He is obsessed with the case.
Back in the room, Adam has Lawrence turn off the lights. They find an X made out of glow in the dark paint. Behind it, in the wall, there’s a box. It’s locked. The key from Lawrence’s envelope opens it. There’s a cell phone, cigarette, and a note. The note basically says that the cigarette will kill Adam. Adam really wants the cigarette.
The night before, there was someone in Lawrence’s car with a red robe and a horse mask. That’s who got him.
Lawrence finally sees the photo of his kidnapped family.
The cigarette will poison Adam.
Lawrence and Adam plan something in the dark.
They try to trick the killer by making him think Adam smoked the deadly cigarette. He pretends to die. But the killer has thought of this and has electric current running through Adams chain. The killer shocks Adam and he is forced to show he isn’t dead.
We learn that Adam was kidnapped by a person in the same costume as Lawrence’s kidnapper. He was hiding in Adam’s closet.
Lawrence’s wife tells him on the cell phone to not beleive Adam’s lies. His wife says Adam knows all about Lawrence.
Apparently Adam does know Lawrence. Adam takes pictures of guys who cheat on their wives. Lawrence was going to cheat on his wife. But he thinks better of it. While he’s in the room with the potential mistress he gets a call there. The person says, “I know what you’re doing, Docter.”
A guy named Bob paid Adam $200 per night to track Lawrence. This “Bob” is Detective Tap. Tap was discharged. He broke down after his partner was killed.
Lawrence’s wife was able to get off her gag. While the killer was out of the bedroom, she tries to get loose of her ropes.
Zep, an orderly at the hospital, was in one of the pictures. Lawrence knows it was Zap.
Lawrence’s wife breaks free. She gets his gun. She gets the cell phone Larry is on. She talks to Larry and asks where he is. The killer gets a chance to attack Mrs Gordon. They fight. Tap comes in. There’s a gun fight. Tap is out of bullets. He rushes Zep. Lawrence is crying on his floor. Tap is injured. Zep has a leg injury. Tap runs after him.
Lawrence is shocked badly by his leg chain. He is passed out. Adam tries to wake him up. It works.
Zep races to the warehouse where they are to kill Lawrence. Tap is right behind him.
There is another gun fight. A cell phone is ringing in the room with Lawrence. But it is out of reach. Lawrence is breaking down pulling on his chain. Lawarence pulls off his shirt, makes a turnikit around his leg. Lawrence starts cutting off his foot.
Tap and Zep in in a hand fight. Tap struggles with Zep. Tap gets shot in the struggle.
Zep is on his way. Lawrence cuts off his foot, loads the gun in the middle of the room and shoots Adam.
Lawrence’s wife and child are safe, but Lawrence doesn’t know.
Zep comes into the room, he is abot to kill Lawrence. Zep is about to kill Lawrence.
Adam’s not dead, he attacks Zep. Lawrence crawls off to get help. He is going to bleed to death if he doesn’t. His face is white.
He crawls off out of the room.
Adam finds a wallet in Zeps pants. He’s looking for a key. Here is a recorder in his pocket. Zep is actually a pawn in this too. Zep has poison in him that only the killer has the antidote. Zep had to kill Lawrence’s family.
All along, the person laying in the middle of the room was alive. He is the killer.
John has an inoperable frontal lobe tumor. John has been controlling this whole thing from that place all along. A certain disease that was eating him from the inside.
The key for his leg chain was in the tub from where he was originally. The key went down the drain.
Most people are so ungreatful to be alive, but not you, not anymore. Game over.
John turns off the light and slams the door.
***********************
Now that was an exciting movie. I never guessed that the person in the middle was the killer. Pretty clever.
It also wasn’t just pandering to jumpy scared moments.
The movie was shot in 18 days.
Leigh Whannell was the screen writer and also played Adam in the film. They had a “certain” budget and had to get things done within that.
I think this movie was a success. It was captivating, provacative and interesting.
I really enjoyed it. And actually, I’m kind of glad I wasn’t being scared for scared sake. It reminds me of when sometimes I eat something that is so hot I can even appreciate the flavor. Spice is nice as long as it isn’t too much. I felt like this movie was scarey but not so scarey with jerky quick scenes that I was only being scared by that. This was, I think, closer to a triller. Which is actually a better genre than pure horror.
Nice work guys!
I finally have gotten around to seeing The ‘Burbs by director Joe Dante. It was put out in 1989.
I can really relate to Ray Peterson (Tom Hanks). For his vacation he just wants to sit around, watch the ball game, drink a couple hundred beers and maybe smoke some cigars.
I actually just took a vacation where I hung out in my back yard. While I didn’t watch the ball game, drink a couple hundred beers and smoke some cigars, it was a fantastic vacation.
The Burbs 102 minutes and Rated PG.
The total cast includes: Tom Hanks, Bruce Dern, Carrie Fisher, Corey Feldman, Rick Ducommun.
It’s good to see Corey Feldman young again. He’s pretty funny in this role.
Bruce Dern pictured here is top notch in this film. He’s captivating in each scene.
Here’s a nice comprehensive link to a site that gives a good analysis of the movie: the ‘burbs | about
The 1980’s fashion in this movie are pretty fun. Boxer shorts with tights. Black leather jacket with studs on the lapels and sholders. It’s always fun to remember where we came from.
Carrie Fisher(Carol) is cute in the ‘Burbs.
Rocky (my wife) just pointed out, that no matter what the neighbors are doing, you know that the punch line will be that they are doing nothing out of the ordinary. I suppose that comes from seeing 16 years of movies since this movie. A movie like The ‘Burbs comes up with a good idea and then it’s redone in tons of different ways.
Here’s how the plot lays out: Walter, a missing neighbor, is thought to be killed by these mysterious neighbors. The theory is that the Clopeks offered up Walter as a human sacrifice in a Satanic Ritual. As Ray ponders this more and more, he is inundated with scarey satanic movies on TV. In a dream sequence, A Stihl chain saw rips through his wall(they even had product placement back then). Ray is strapped to a large grill by Satan-like creatures and is sacrificed. He gradually falls prey to the belief that these neighbors are satanic killers.
Ray and his friends have a plan. His wife Carol doesn’t let him come out and play. So his friends create a plan… slipping a note, “I know what you’ve done,” under their door, ringing the doorbell and running. Ray thinks the neighbors will suspect him because he placed a note under Walter’s door.
Vince (the dog) comes across a femur bone from underneath the fence of the satanic neighbors. The trio believe the bone is that of Walter’s.
The neighbors throw the note over Ray’s fence - scaring Ray even more. Carol enacts a plan to go over to the neighbors and invite them over for dinner. She is the person of reason in this film.
The campy-ness of the movie starts to really take off at this point. Falling through old porch floor boards, echoey booming door knocker.
Hanz, Ruben(Hanz’s uncle), and the Doctor, Ruben’s brother all have the other neighbors over for tea. Ray finds Walter’s toupee, which he stuffed through Walter’s mail slot.
Ray is determined to find Walter’s dead body in the neighbors’ house. Ray sends his family away and he and his friends conspire a major strategy to infiltrate the house. Art tries to cut the electric to their house, shocking him off of the electric pole sending him crashing int a shed. Art does manage to cut the right electric cable.
They make it over the fence. They try finding bodies by digging some holes in the backyard. They find nothing. They break into the house by breaking out a window pane. Ray and Art make their way to the basement. They find a massive furnace, the thermostat goes to 5000 degrees. The whole house is wired with batteries. “This is no ordinary furnace,” Ray says. Ray and art suspect they have created a crematorium.
The sinister neighbors come upon their house and see that their house has been infiltrated.
As Ray continues to dig in the neighbor’s basement, Walter comes back. Walter was at the hospitol, for having heart palpitations. Ray digs too deep and hits the gas line. He blows up the neighbor’s house. Ray was still in the house when it blows up. He, however, makes it out. However, he is quite injured.
Ray Peterson is in a world of trouble. Destruction of property, vandalism, trespassing, etc. And Walter believes Ray gave a ransom note for his dog.
This movie represents a lot of the condition of modern day society. People’s lives are so unfulfilled that they begin making up extreme scenarios that aren’t really there.
Ray has a good speech where the moral of the movie comes out. The people in The ‘Burbs are the lunatics, not the people who act differently. It’s the people that obsess about their lawns.
The Doctor tells a scarey story that there was a skull in his furnace of the previous neighbor. They wouldn’t sell the house to them, so the doctor killed the Knapps.
It turns out that the the trunk of the scarey neighbors was filled with human bones.
Rocky admitted that she was wrong about the end of the movie. The neighbors really were evil.
Ray comes to the realization that his wife is what is most important to him.
And that’s it. Happily ever after.
Rocky points out that the movie didn’t really bring much to the movie world. There wasn’t a lot of unique perspective. The moral was weak. The story wasn’t particular special. She kind of felt that those were 102 minutes that she will never be able to get back.
To me, it does seem like more of a movie I might catch on a Sunday afternoon. It wasn’t partularly great, as far as I was concerned. I’m not unhappy I saw it. But I wasn’t overly taken by it. It was ok. I guess I could have gone my whole life without seeing it.
Today’s Google Quote of the Day is particularly good:
Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable.
- Sidney J. Harris
It reminds me of one of my favorite poems:
Ogden Nash - Portrait Of The Artist As A Prematurely Old Man
There really isn’t anything more true to life than this poem. It’s what you don’t do that is usually the most tragic in your life.
Poetry is not something we do much of today. But this is a really accessible poem and it’s short. If you have a minute, check it out:
It is common knowledge to every schoolboy and even every Bachelor of Arts,
That all sin is divided into two parts.
One kind of sin is called a sin of commission, and that is very important,
And it is what you are doing when you are doing something you ortant,
And the other kind of sin is just the opposite and is called a sin of omission
and is equally bad in the eyes of all right-thinking people, from
Billy Sunday to Buddha,
And it consists of not having done something you shuddha.
I might as well give you my opinion of these two kinds of sin as long as,
in a way, against each other we are pitting them,
And that is, don’t bother your head about the sins of commission because
however sinful, they must at least be fun or else you wouldn’t be
committing them.
It is the sin of omission, the second kind of sin,
That lays eggs under your skin.
The way you really get painfully bitten
Is by the insurance you haven’t taken out and the checks you haven’t added up
the stubs of and the appointments you haven’t kept and the bills you
haven’t paid and the letters you haven’t written.
Also, about sins of omission there is one particularly painful lack of beauty,
Namely, it isn’t as though it had been a riotous red-letter day or night every
time you neglected to do your duty;
You didn’t get a wicked forbidden thrill
Every time you let a policy lapse or forget to pay a bill;
You didn’t slap the lads in the tavern on the back and loudly cry Whee,
Let’s all fail to write just one more letter before we go home, and this round
of unwritten letters is on me.
No, you never get any fun
Out of things you haven’t done,
But they are the things that I do not like to be amid,
Because the suitable things you didn’t do give you a lot more trouble than the
unsuitable things you did.
The moral is that it is probably better not to sin at all, but if some kind of
sin you must be pursuing,
Well, remember to do it by doing rather than by not doing.
What I learned in Yoga today: Changing the collective whole by changine your consciousness.
It all made complete sense. If you are relaxed and at ease, your world will be relaxed and at ease. If you are anxious and frustrated your world will be anxious and frustrated.
Pretty obvious, huh?
Running a Service Business is without a doubt the hardest job in the world.
The reason is because there are endless variables. No matter how many systems you have in place you can’t plan for everything.
Imagine this scenario… you and some people on your sales team are pitching a giant project to a major corporation. It goes amazingly well. You do your presentation to the absolute best of your ability. They love it. You offer far superior service and a better price than your competition. You are a shoe in.
Your soon-to-be clients invite you out for dinner that night. One of your sales associates has too much to drink and obnoxiously hits on the female CFO.
You just lost the contract. How do you build a system for those kinds of variables?
*********************
Look at how much preparation NASA spent to have a guy remove two short pieces of filler material that were sticking out of the space shuttle’s belly. They had guys testing the operation on earth in large water tanks.
Teams of aerodynamic and thermal experts spent four days developing and refining the plan, and experienced spacewalkers such as astronaut David Wolf practiced the techniques underwater at Johnson Space Center in Houston.
The Globe and Mail: NASA’s shuttle quick fix: a blade, Velcro and duct tape
And look at Osama Bin Laden. We had a plan to capture him. We knew he was spending the nights in a particular place… the Tarnak Farms. How hard do you think it would be to capture a rogue dude like OBL on some farms? Logistically too hard. Here are the juiciest parts of that “service” business determining this was too much of a job for us.
The CIA Develops a Capture Plan Initially, the DCI’s Counterterrorist Center and its Bin Ladin unit considered a plan to ambush Bin Ladin when he traveled between Kandahar, the Taliban capital where he sometimes stayed the night, and his primary residence at the time,Tarnak Farms.
By early 1998, planners at the Counterterrorist Center were ready to come back to the White House to seek formal approval. Tenet apparently walked National Security Advisor Sandy Berger through the basic plan on February 13. One group of tribals would subdue the guards, enter Tarnak Farms stealthily, grab Bin Ladin, take him to a desert site outside Kandahar, and turn him over to a second group.This second group of tribals would take him to a desert landing zone already tested in the 1997 Kansi capture. From there, a CIA plane would take him to New York, an Arab capital, or wherever he was to be arraigned. Briefing papers prepared by the Counterterrorist Center acknowledged that hitches might develop. People might be killed, and Bin Ladin’s sup-porters might retaliate,perhaps taking U.S.citizens in Kandahar hostage.But the briefing papers also noted that there was risk in not acting.’Sooner or later,’ they said,’Bin Ladin will attack U.S.interests,perhaps using WMD [weapons of mass destruction].’19
The CIA planners conducted their third complete rehearsal in March, and they again briefed the CSG. Clarke wrote Berger on March 7 that he saw the operation as ’somewhat embryonic’ and the CIA as ‘months away from doing anything.’21
Counterterrorist Center officers briefed Attorney General Janet Reno and FBI Director Louis Freeh, telling them that the operation had about a 30 per-cent chance of success.
From May 20 to 24, the CIA ran a final, graded rehearsal of the operation, spread over three time zones, even bringing in personnel from the region.The FBI also participated. The rehearsal went well. The Counterterrorist Center planned to brief cabinet-level principals and their deputies the following week, giving June 23 as the date for the raid, with Bin Ladin to be brought out of Afghanistan no later than July 23.
The CIA’s senior management clearly did not think the plan would work. Tenet’s deputy director of operations wrote to Berger a few weeks later that the CIA assessed the tribals’ ability to capture Bin Ladin and deliver him to U.S. officials as low.
That comes from this section of the 9-11 Commission Final Report - RESPONSES TO AL QAEDA’S INITIAL ASSAULTS
We never went through with the attempt because it was logistically too hard.
NASA knows what can go wrong yanking on “filler material” in space. And the military knows what can go wrong in an ambush.
Take the movie Black Hawk Down, it’s all about a complete service systems failure because a guy fell out of a helicopter. 2 helicopters down, 19 American service men killed and over 1000 Somali’s dead because one guy fell out of a helicopter. That’s the service business for you.
And now, back to the business world. Who goes into service businesses? Small time operations - mom and pop shops. People who know the least about business are the people venturing into the hardest businesses in the world. And why do they do it? Because the don’t have any money to have actual products. It’s always harder being poor. It’s just the way of capitalism.
You will hear scary statistics like:
”According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, over 50% of
small businesses fail in the first year and 95% fail within the first
five years.” That’s found here:
Google Answers: Percentage of new businesses that fail.
It’s no doubt because many of those businesses are service-oriented businesses. The poor blokes getting into them have no idea what they are up against.
If NASA and the U.S. Military are so scared of doing service, don’t feel bad if things go wrong in your service business. They are bound to. Just try not to panic and then try to learn from your mistakes. If you make it out alive you will have learned one of the all time hardest skills given to mankind - running a service business.
If you are in a service business, you can definitely succeed. You just need to work harder than you have ever worked before… do things you never knew you could do. Oh, and while you are doing all of that, get reading. Here are some books you should have under your belt:
E-Myth Mastery
Author: Michael E. Gerber
This is real popular right now. And that’s because it’s great advice.
The Leadership Challenge, 3rd Edition
Author: James M. Kouzes
You are going to have to be one of the best leaders in the American business world if you want to succeed in your small service business. Read this:
Selling the Invisible
Author: Harry Beckwith
Our entire office read this book. You need to understand how people buy and continue to buy services. This is a new perspective on what you think people are buying from you.
Best wishes! And don’t forget the words of Vince Lombardi:
But I firmly believe that any man’s finest hour, his greatest fulfillment of all he holds dear, is the moment when he has worked his heart out in a good cause and lies exhausted on the field of battle - victorious.
Mike Coppola is a friend of mine. I’ve known him for a number of years. I was actually his bartender at the Medina Country Club when I got out of college.
Mike is a Benefits Insurance Agent. He can help your company find the best benefits plan for you. If you are in the Akron, Medina or Cleveland Ohio area, you might consider giving him a call to see how your benefits plan compares to what he has to offer.
I’m speaking completely as an outsider to the benefits insurance business, but it’s been my experience that the thing that seperates one benefits insurance person from another - is service. You want to find someone who you can trust and rely on to be available to you. That is Mike Coppola to a tea. He is patient, understanding and thoughtful. He will help you sort out all of the possible options for benefits.
The other main aspect of his practice is long term care insurance. This is a confusing area. If you are considering long term care insurance you definitely want to work with someone you trust. Getting the long term care insurance that is right for your needs takes a lot of understanding and honesty from your agent. Mike is definitely that person.
So, if you are in the market for benefits insurance or long term care insurance, consider giving Mike Coppola a call.
If you think of it, tell him Sage sent you.
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