One of the gazillion reasons I think my wife is the best woman ever.

Australia = ?

Reality TV = ?

Conference = ?

(Leave your response for each word in the comments.)

My wife and I are off to Florida tomorrow to look for our new abode. We’re checking out a few rentals as well as a few potential buys. I’ve been in the Q (thank our mayor for that nickname) for 20 years and for all of the nice things about this city (read big skies and nice weather) I am completely, one hundred percent, no question about it ready to blow this joint (read slow pace, big fish in small pond lame-o mentality, bad schools, lack of ocean, absence of pro sports teams, no Disney World, etc, etc). Depending on how the good Lord leads, perhaps we will be back in ABQ some time, but as of right now, it won’t be because we want to.

I think this was in a James Bond movie a few years ago, and at the time I thought it was completely fake. But the History Channel ran a special on it last night. Brrrrrrrrrr, but cool.

I haven’t been to Dubai yet but from everything I’ve heard there is some really cool stuff happening there. The logo for the Dubai International Airport makes me think what I’m hearing is true. The logo was done by Cato Purnell Partners who specialize in “identity management and design.”

Herb Peterson, inventor of the Egg McMuffin, died at the age of 89. Not that McDonald’s is healthy or anything, but I’d be stoked if we discovered that Mr. Peterson ate his invention everyday for the past 36 years. That would be cool.

I don’t get the Web 2.0 business model.

Does one even exist? Yeah, I know that it’s traffic = ad dollars, but isn’t most advertising annoying and ineffective in the first place? So everyone is trying to create sites, or communities, that get traffic so they can sell ads. And if you happen to have “morals” then I guess you don’t bombard your users with ads. But then how do you make money? Oh yeah, by selling out to a big company that can then bombard users with ads.

The whole model seems like some sort of circular reasoning, twilight zone, whirlpool of madness. Take Facebook for example. They recently launched their “social / targeted ads” feed that shows up in my news feed every time I log in. The ads appear very subtle and have the same look as the other notifications I see from my friends activities. But the visual trickery has not worked on me yet. I haven’t clicked a single one. Maybe it’s because if I wanted to go to CareerBuilder.com I would actually go there of my own free will, not because they delivered some lame ad that looked like it was actually a feed from my friends.

I hate this. And think that I always will. I mean, is there any other aspect of life that we go somewhere to be advertised to? The radio? TV? I guess that’s the nature of “free” services. Somebody’s got to pay for it. But isn’t that why XM radio and TIVO were invented? Because people hate advertising and they’re willing to pay a small premium to avoid it? I can’t wait for the day that the Internet starts to get this model.

Until then I’ll continue to loathe poorly executed bait and switch ad schemes and bemoan their existence to the poor souls who read this personal rag of mine.

That’s what a new startup called Shoeboxed is promising. Very simple idea and sounds very useful. Especially if you’re like me and accidentally send a pile of stashed receipts through the wash every couple of months.

UPDATE: My friend Austin could have used this when he was running his landscaping business The Cutting Edge. I’ll always remember one particular April 14th when I went to his house only to find him sorting through a 50 gallon hefty bag of receipts in preparation of his tax return. Hilarious. Hmmm, now that I think about it, I probably owe him 50 bucks for busting a lawn light fixture at one of his clients houses during one of my freelance lawn mowing stints.

You may recall a rambling post about “voices in my head” that equated to a bunch of business ideas. If you’ve got a few minutes to waste you can read it here. Otherwise, feel free to keep reading.I’ve been having so much fun slicing CSS that I decided to create a little website to manage the projects that I’ve been doing. There’s a cool little admin interface that allows people to post projects, upload files, track progress, leave feedback, preview their files and pay their invoice.A couple of cool benefits of using the Doc (haha, so cheesy), include getting every 10th slice free. I am also slicing for a wide variety of CMS apps like Blogger, WordPress, Drupal, Movable Type and Joomla!. So if you’ve got a custom design for one of these or another site and don’t want or have the time to do the slicing yourself feel free to give the Doc a try.Overall, I’ve had fun putting this project together and am excited about how it will streamline the current project flow and am looking forward to how the service will grow and evolve.Cheers!

Spring is in the air. The family is recovering. I needed an image that had a bit more color than the blue image I’d been running since last fall. Enjoy!