Sorry for the interruption but I was out of town for most of the holiday (we left the 26th for Chicago, but thats a whole post on its own!). I did however, want to brag about some of the Christmas Gifts that blessed our house this season though.

Amy’s big gift this year is to have the Master Bath and Bedroom repainted. When we bought the house from her parents, we inherited the DEEP red color of the bath and bed room. Its a dark red (think maroon) that is hard to match colors with. Now we’re going for a lighter, beachier look and are painting them Beachnut (its a lowes color). The master bath is done (Amy found some Votive candle holders at a store in Nashville), next on to the bedroom!

Grace had a very Hannah Montanna Christmas. She got a Hannah Montanna Guitar Game (like Guitar Hero) that plugs in to the tv, a Hannah Costume, and doll. Its pretty cool and she likes pretending to be a rockstar. Maybe someday. I like playing her game (since I haven’t bought Guitar HEro World Tour yet) and she’s getting better at it.

Mose got a Trampoline. One of her favorite things to do is jump. We’d wake on Saturday mornings to the heavy thud of emma jumping up and down in our door way. Now she can do it all she wants and it doesn’t make the house shake. Its pretty cool and Grace and Emma take turns on it. Amy wanted to try it out, but its for people under 80 pounds (and neither of us meet that requirement!

The girls also got some tinkertoys, and some other little odds and ends that they like to play with, but the coolest by far is my Ultimate Wall-E Robot.

We saw the movie in the theaters and we’re big fans (mose loves him). We had seen the Ultimate Wall-e at the Disney Store but we weren’t going to get him because of the price tag. Needless to say, Santa found him on Sale and he was wrapped and under the tree for me on Christmas morning. He has fun dancing, chasing the dogs around and just exploring on his own. If you haven’t seen one yet, I’ll work on some video and see if I can get anything posted. Its pretty cool though and the way he can respond to voice commands or find his own way around the room is fairly smooth.

Was there one gift that you prized more than the others??

Since the advent of paid posting (hell, for that matter since the advent of advertising) Selling Out has been a big issue. There’s a current post at Skelliewag about Hot not to sell out. Granted, my view of selling out isn’t the same as your view and your view isn’t the same as ShoeMoney’s. I’ve done all kinds of paid blogging and I’ve run all kinds of crazy ads on the site.

There was a point where I was blogging several times a day (about three or four) on whatever “topic” I was assigned, whether or not I had any experience with it or not and whether or not I thought it was a good product or not. Since then, I’ve matured a little, the ads are beginning to produce more revenue than the posting and I’ve begun to be more selective in my “paid” posts. Occasionally I will do a blatantly obvious paid post for a product or service I believe in and use.

Personally, it isn’t “selling out” if you write about things you use and know. I use and know Wordpress, it isn’t selling out when I tell people that its the best blogging platform available. Likewise, its hardly selling out for placing a “paid link” in a post I was going to make anyways, as long as the link fits.

The Skelliewag post does point to the need to continue posting for yourself and not your readers and the point that you should post for creative purposes and not to follow the traffic spikes. It would be pointless for a blog about cooking to post about the recent iPhone 3g release or about the traffic on the turn-pike. However, on a blog that runs the gamut, it might fit a little better. Post about what you know. Post about what you like. Don’t worry about your readers, eventually they’ll find it and who knows, they might like what you have to say.

One of my favorite things to do is to try out new plugins and I have to say, the new plugin interface in WP 2.7 is AWESOME. Absolutely Awesome. I can search and install without leaving my admin area. Something that other suites have been able to do for a while and its something that helps bring Wordpress to the forefront of Blogging platforms. That being said, if you’ve ever checked out my Plugins Used page, you’ll know, I like me some plugins (I have about 55 active plugins at the moment).

Here’s a list of my favorites…

• All in One SEO Pack - Anyone who isn’t using this plugin is shooting themselves in the foot. This plugin helps make it easy to add keywords, titles and other much needed objects to your pages and posts. Plus, its kinda cool… now you can say, “Yea, I’m doing the SEO thing. Are you?”
• Comment Email Responder - I think I’ve talked about this one before. Its a godsend! Now, you can notify your commenter via email when you reply to their comment. This does two things, one, it lets them know you’ve commented and two, it pulls them back to the site. Often times to comment again. Its been a big help in retaining readers here.
• CommentLuv - It started as a simple plugin to pull your commenter’s last post and has evolved in to a movement. Even cooler is the fact that they run contests that your commenters are automagically entered in. Its a good way to add links to your site as well and to help out your friends by Deep linking to their posts.
• Comment Timeout - Yes, I run akismet, but with the Comment Timeout plugin, I have to clear a lot less spam. You can specify a time period for your comments to close (after the last comment was made). On here, its set for a month. A month after the last comment or the post, the comments close on that post. Helps keep a lot of spam out. A lot.
• Google Sitemaps - The last one I want to talk about today is the google sitemap plugin. It simply generates a sitemap of all your pages (or just the ones you specify) and puts it in a location. You can then alert google, yahoo, ask, etc. that you have a sitemap and it will help the bots crawl. Its good for increasing your ranking and it does something that WP should do anyways.

Thats just a short list of some of the plugins I like and use, I’ll cover more next week, don’t you worry. Is there a plugin you use that you think I’d benefit from??

So last year I posted a thursday thirteen of the 13 coolest Christmas Gift Ideas I could find. I thought that was a good idea, so I’m going to do it again this year, however, its only going to be a top ten. Don’t you fret, and don’t you frown though, it won’t have diet pills or a flowbee on the list.

• The first one is for the kids. I know some parents are going to have a fit, but my little ones love wearing their Crocs during the spring and summer (emma would sleep in them if we’d let her) and with the multitude of colors and styles they go with almost everything. They are comfy and as long as you watch your little ones feet on the escalators, they’re safe too!
• Anything from ThinkGeek.com. Personally I like the Dr. Who Sonic Screwdriver (however they never seem to have any in stock!), but their array of Digital frames and other oddities are pretty hard to beat. Who knew you needed a giant plush microbe?
• The entire first two seasons of the new Dr. Who. Anyone who’s seen the new Dr. Who knows this is a must have. Anyone who hasn’t needs this so they know what they’ve been missing. I highly suggest picking it up!
• TiVo 80-hour Dual Tuner DVR - Seriously. Who needs VCR’s any more when you can have a DUAL DVR? Record two stations at once AND watch your favorite show at the same time. What could be better? This is something I’ve been meaning to get for the longest time, it would sure make life so much easier!
• Jelly Belly Jelly beans. I could eat these all day long. Jelly Bellies are by far the best and now you can order to your hearts content. I’d take a pound or two myself for christmas. A couple of Christmases ago, I received the dispenser and it is awesome. I can set it to require change or not (that helps off set the cost of refilling!). Plus, they make great stocking stuffers!!
• Satellite prints of your favorite places! Nothing is cooler than having a satellite image of your favorite city, beach, mountain top. Terra Prints does it for you. They can even frame if it you want. The quality is good too. For those of us who are bent on keeping an eye on the weather, they even have a series of Hurrican maps. Pretty cool for the dork in your life
• For the person who is always getting lost… GPS Devices are a hot thing for Christmas this year (and the past couple of years). I’ve looked at getting Amy a GPS unit for her car, but both of our phones are equipped with GPS receivers and can use Google Maps or the Blackberry Maps so it makes it a little useless. But a handheld, no data plan needed receiver could be helpful on the trail
• A Personalized Book This one’s pretty cool and I’ve received a couple of them already from Amy. Its a little late this year to start a project for Christmas, but a personalized photo journal (think scrapbook but much cooler) is a pretty cool gift. Heritage Makers offers a ton of templates, an easy to use interface and it was listed as one of Oprah’s favorite things this Christmas season. How cool is that?
• What do you get a t-shirt junkie for Christmas? How about another shirt? Busted Tees has some of the hands down funniest shirts available that you would still wear in public. Personally I like the “That’s what she said” shirt, though the Binford Tools is a cool shirt as well for any Tool Man fans out there. If you’re shopping for someone thats hard to shop for, you can’t go wrong with a funny T!
• For a person who enjoys to try the local brews when ever they travel (and to be honest, who doesn’t like to drink a fat tire in Colorado, an Abita in New Orleans or a SweetWater 420 in Atlanta) how about bringing the brewing a little closer to home with a Home Brew Kit from Mr. Beer? I’ve thought it would be fun to get in to the business myself. After all, what a better way to find out what makes a good beer then trying it first hand?

These are just some ideas, if you have others, leave a comment, I’d love to know what you want for Christmas!

Holy Flying Cows Batman, what a whirlwind weekend! Friday night we piled in the car and headed to Eric and Tracy’s for a party for Eric. He’s 28 or something tomorrow. We were there until 11ish I think. It was a late night for everyone!

We woke up Saturday morning and headed to Portrait Innovations for some family photos (I’ll post one in a bit) probably the last one we’ll take as a family of four…. that was ok. The girls were very well behaved and it was a little easier than it could have been. A word to the wise, if you are going to do family photos (at least around this time of year) try and get an early appointment. Mostly, everyone is happy and if you’re at the studio early enough, they aren’t too backed up yet!

Then it was home to clean and cook for the annual Dinner party. We’ve thrown it for four years now and its become something of a tradition with our friends that we have a dinner party for christmas. There were 15 of us there (stretching the limits of our seating ability) and we enjoyed a find feast of Roast, Sweet Potatoes, Potatoes, rice and salad and some other little odds and ends. We managed to keep going until about 2:30a, when Amy and Jeff finally left and we pushed Ms. Kingry to a bed for the night. All in all it was good food and good fun with friends.

To round out the weekend we went to a Playhouse Disney Live show and to Ikea where we managed to spend $50 on stuff we didn’t know we really needed! The PHD show was ok (amy liked it better than Doodlebops), the girls liked it anyways. It was cool to see some of the characters come to life even if they were a little exaggerated (Mickey, Minnie, Donald and Goofy were of course the highlight). If you haven’t taken your child to a show like that that yet, I would highly recommend it. The music is all stuff they hear on Disney, the colors and lights are good for even the youngest ones. Its fun for the family!

Anywho, that was our weekend, now its on to finalizing Christmas plans and getting ready to make the trek to Chicago for New Years….

So apparently Wordpress 2.7 is out today (or sometime last night) and of course, they are recommending that you upgrade immediately. Your sites won’t die if you don’t, but don’t expect it to go smoothly.

Among some of the changes to wordpress are a new layout for the admin areas. I had just gotten used to the way 2.6 was doing things, and they’ve totally changed it in 2.7. Its a little smoother looking, but it seems to run about the same. Navigation is a trick, but once you pick up on it, its pretty good. There are options to install plugins directly from the dashboard and other admin sections which is a nice change. The layout is all web 2.0ish and rounded corner looking. In all it seems to be a decent upgrade, though they probably could have gone with a complete new version.

I did run in to a problem upgrading one of my sites to 2.7. There’s a reason they warn you to disable all plugins before upgrading. Several of the plugins I had on the site were not friendly with 2.7. I was able to move ALL of the plugins from the plugins directory to a different directory and then do the upgrade. Once that was done, I copied them all back to the plugins directory and added them one by one. It didn’t take too long, but I could have avoided it all together if I had just disabled the plugins to begin with. Let me know what you think of 2.7!

So maybe I’m a little behind on this (after all a google search shows stories from October) but I just caught this on the news last night. Apparently, there’s a doll out there that proclaims “Islam is the Light” as your child cycles through its series of sounds. It looks to be a bug that Fisherprice knows about as they have addressed it, but after several months its still on the shelves and people are still buying the doll. You can hear the sound better on Mattel’s site.

Issues like this aren’t anything new and the manufacturer is working on correcting the issue and should be back out soon. Personally, this one isn’t as bad as it could have been (we have a talking Teletubby at home that says “Faggot, Faggot”) and it even kind of makes me want to own one a little.

The thing that gets me is that the only reason they found out about this is because the mom and dad took it out of the box to play with and test before they wrapped it for christmas. Whats with that? Should I play with all of my kids toys? What would you do if you found out your doll was promoting something you didn’t agree with?

So we’re getting a little bit of a late start this year. Usually, by the first weekend in December, we’ve got the tree up, the house is decorated in side and out and we’re counting the days until santa pokes his head out of our dirty chimney flue. Not this year. This year, despite the weather being a lot colder, we’re running behind. Partly because last weekend over the holiday, I spent most of it painting and partly because I just don’t feel like putting all the stuff up this year.

One of the reasons is that we’re leaving for Chicago the day after Christmas to visit the girls grandparents (amy’s parents) for New Years. That means the house needs to be clean before we leave, we have to have an artificial tree and I have to venture north during the winter.

We did put up the fake tree this week. We decorated it tonight and it was a challenge explaining to the girls how they need to spread the ornaments around. Emm’s didn’t get it right away, but with my help (she needed help getting up high) we got the tree decorated and TinkerBell is sitting high atop the tree looking down on it.

We did put the train out again, and as expected, Lumiere went bonkers. I’ll take some video this year and post it again. Have you started decorating?

With three dogs, two kids (soon to be three) and a wife that tosses and turns most of the night its almost impossible for me to get a solid nights sleep at home (unless I crash on the couch in the basement). The mattress we used to have, I could feel every toss, bump, move and bounce that amy made on her side of the bed while we were sleeping. If she didn’t sleep, I didn’t sleep. Not any more.

Two years ago, we broke down and invested in a sleep number bed (I’m around a 60 - 65) and it was one of the best investments we’ve made. If I need a little firmer mattress one night and a soft pillowly mattress the next, its easy peasy. I just hit the buttons on the remote for my side of the bed and I’m in sleep heaven. Plus, I cannot feel amy as she tosses and turns all night. Which is nice, the only way I know she isn’t sleeping is when I hear the tv click on and see the glow of the LCD through my eyelids.

Yea, I still have the dogs and kids to contend with when it comes to getting a good nights sleep, but at least I’m comfy when I’m trying to catch 40 winks.

Need I say More??

I was six or seven when I won my first racing trophy. It wasn’t as cool as those trophies you’d get for actually racing a go-kart or soapbox derby car, but it was something. My dad and I had worked hard getting the shape of my pinewood derby car right. The right angles. Sanding the wheels and axles till they shined and could spin faster then my tired little hands could make them. Its a right of passage most father and son’s make together, the Pinewood Derby.

Its a time for fathers to teach their sons how to work safely with tools like a jig saw, sanding belt and drills of all sizes. We spent many trips to Kroger to the meat department having them weigh the car until it was perfectly balanced. The paint, the weights, everything had to be perfect. The car was smooth. Fast. Sleek. Painted silver, nothing else adorning its wooden body. A thing of beauty that now resides forgotten in some box in my parents attic (or maybe mine). But on two days, that little car was a thing to behold.

The first was the Pack’s pinewood derby. We raced in heats first, by rank. First the Tiger Cubs, then wolves, finally my group. When our heat was over, I was left standing on to the pack finals to determine who would represent the pack in the District Races. I came in second that day, but it was good enough to go on to the District Race as only one of two cars from the pack.

The day of the district race, we checked everything once again. Put more graphite powder on the axles, checked the weight one final time, then left the car with the judges until our race. That day we raced several times, each time the car seemed to know its purpose. Speeding down the short track with one thing in mind and every time achieving its goal. By the end of the day, I had come out victorious. I say I, but really it was my dad and I who won those Pinewood derby trophies, of course, those too, lie in a box somewhere….

I just received an email in my inbox from a contact at JellyBelly. Apparently, they’re starting their black Friday sales early and now is the perfect time to feed your sweet tooth with the worlds best beans.

Here’s why:

• 72 Hour Holiday Sale - Save 15% on EVERYTHING including gift baskets, bean machines, apparel and all of the candy. Use coupon code “72HOUR“.
• Buy one Cold Stone Ice Cream Parlor Mix Gift Set and receive a free 2lb bag of our world famous Belly Flops ($9.00 value). While supplies last.
• Better yet, Buy one 6-count case of Ice Cream Parlor Mix Sets and receive EIGHT 2lb bags of Belly Flops free of charge ($72 value). While supplies last.
• Keep in mind the 15% off code applies to these as well.

You cannot beat those deals in any candy store! Plus, the beans are shipped direct. Meaning they’re fresher than fresh! Visit JellyBelly, use Coupon Code 72HOUR and get started on your Christmas Shopping today. Jellybeans make the sweetest Stocking Stuffers!!

So I’ve talked a deal lately about ways to bring in some extra money during this time of year. Of course, most of that has been relating to blogging and running a web site, but one must not forget a staple source of income for the holidays, retail jobs. True, with the current state of the economy, not as many retailers will be hiring seasonal employees this year, but I bet that some of the bigger ones will be.

For instance, Lowes and Home Depot are always looking for extra cashiers, paint mixers, lot people during this time of year. The schedules aren’t as tight as during the rest of the year and they offer a good way to bring in some extra cash. This year is the first in a while that neither Amy nor I are working a steady part time job (though believe me, I’ve considered going back to HomeDepot just to help things along). Its not bad work, some times its fun (of course that depends on the people you work with) and its a good way to meet people. One of the down sides is less time with the family.

Is there anything you’re doing to bring in extra money this season??

I’m slowly working on making some updates and additions to the site. The newest and perhaps most important of all is the Link Directory. Its a cool piece of code that will help build a nice link directory. The kicker is that you must have a link back to Delusions of Grandeur on your site in order to add your link to the directory.

Also, I’ve added PerformancingAds to the Affiliate program page. Check them out, they’re a pretty good way to sell ad spots on your blog.

Another neat addition is the Deals block on the sidebar. If I come across any good promotions, coupons or whatever, I’ll add them there.

There was something else, but I don’t remember what it was at this point….

Ok, so maybe its a little misleading to say I’m branching out. Its not like I’m venturing in to uncharted territories of WindFarming or talking about the quality of Seiko watches. No, I’m staying close to home with the new site BlackBerry Hack

My goal here is to help you make the most of your Blackberry and get it to work for you not against. I’ll be drawing on many resources from around the net, my contacts at AT&T Wireless, plus my experience administering both Blackberries and the iPhone. I won’t bore you with a lot of the same “look whats coming” type posts of some of the other mainstream Blackberry sites, but more with this is what I’m doing with my blackberry and here’s how you can do it too.

If this sounds like something you might be interested in, check it out!