I hope this is real, that’s all I can say. Although the fake part is pretty darned funny. Found via 50 different web sites today. Funny.

I would definitely have to say 24 is optimal.

I hope you all had a wonderful and very Merry Christmas!!!

Just in case you haven’t had enough of The Rock:

I love this software so far - easy to use and figure out - at least the basics. Soooo much more to learn! Here is our Billion Dollar Baby:

So, yeah, its been awhile. No rest for the weary. I have had tons going on, between lots of work, tennis and soccer season, I am on the move these days! And well there was that lost week in Vegas. I came home from Blog World Expo super-renewed though (thank God not super hung over and exhausted…LOL), and until a massive workload brings me back down to reality again, I am working hard on some special projects. The first one is video production.

I have been dabbling with this, but only to the extent of overcoming my fear of putting myself out there - and I guess I am officially past that now, so its time to move on to the next step. I spent some time in Chicago this summer at BlogHer talking to my dear friend Robyn about videoblogging - she is a pro, but unfortunately, she is a Mac fangirl (as opposed to a MAC addict, like me). So, while she was an absolute wealth of information on important things like lighting, she wasn’t able to help me much on software, which is the first thing I need to tackle. So I chatted her up again in Vegas last week, and tried to pry PC video software ideas from a Mac girl. Again. Not a great idea. LOL So, I have been doing some serious homework, and have tried out Sony Vegas (oy-confusing!), Cyberlink Power Director (worst. program. evah. to try to get off your computer, but easier to understand than Vegas, BUT it didn’t seem to like my Vista computer much), and Pinnacle Studio (I think I am going to like this one best).

My next issue is getting my DV video camera to talk to my computer. I can hook it up with good ol USB cables, but boy does that give me some crappy results. Ok for webcamming, not so good for actual video capture/transfer. It is time to upgrade. So, I headed out to the dreaded Best Buy for a FireWire/iLink/1384 cable tonight after work. Oy. $50 bites the dust, and after I cussed and fussed about not being able to fit the dern plugs into the holes, I finally got them in. Apparently this is a common problem for the first time you plug them in. So all is well there - I think.

So why do you care about this? You probably don’t, but I am really trying to encourage and help my fellow Beauty & Style bloggers to branch out into video blogging, so I thought that chronicling my adventures might be helpful. And if a PC video producer happens by, maybe they can point me in their version of the right direction.

So, tomorrow morning, I am going to try to shoot an actual little video and see what I can do with it. I look too rough today to shoot myself, but Marshall has long wanted me to get The Rock on the web, so tomorrow, he is going to be the star. The next step after that is to figure out where I want to post these videos - I feel the need to branch out from YouTube, I think. Stay tuned, and if you have any video advice for me, please feel free to give it.

Just posted on a guestbook at one of my sites:

hello , my name is Richard and I know you get a lot of spammy comments ,
I can help you with this problem . I know a lot of spammers and I will ask them not to post on your site. It will reduce the volume of spam by 30-50% .In return Id like to ask you to put a link to my site on the index page of your site. The link will be small and your visitors will hardly notice it , its just done for higher rankings in search engines. Contact me icq 454528835 or write me tedirectory(at)yahoo.com , i will give you my site url and you will give me yours if you are interested. thank you

Thanks, dude.

When writing an email this morning I went to click Send, and got this message from Gmail:

I haven’t run in to that before, but was copying something over to one of our fabulous editors, and part of it said “(attached)” - you can see that above - and apparently Gmail saw that and thought I might want something attached. This might solve my problem of always (ALWAYS) forgetting the attachment. Wow. Big Brother is watching. Google is just like the democrats - trying to save me from myself. I can’t wait to see what happens when I really forget an attachment. Want to place a wager on whether it will catch it? I bet no - that is my luck.

Hahahahahahahaha! Great one, bLaugh!

If youre into geek jokes and don’t mind some severely bad language (don’t read this, William), check this out - its a hoot:

A Friendly Reminder from your IT Department

I love geek jokes.

I have been meaning to write about One Note for a VERY long time, but who has the time? Not I, said the fox. But, I want to at least make a mention of it while it’s on my mind this morning.

I got One Note on my computer when my step son needed it for something he was doing at school and downloaded it on my computer. Well, back to school he went (LSU), and here sat One Note. Man, is this a great program. It is a note taking software - you can add just about anything to it - plain text, web clippings, mp3 files, images, documents, spreadsheets - anything you can imagine. You organize these things in notebooks and folders, just like you would if you were in school and living in a non-geeky world. I upgraded to One Note 2007 as soon as it became available, and it was a massive improvement mostly in the organizational options. Whereas in the older version you could only easily have one notebook (with folders within), you can now have multiple notebooks (aligned vertically along the left hand side below), which really suits me since I wear so many hats these days.

This has been truly a lifesaver for me. One Note can be set up on two computers and with just a little bit of configuration will sync itself - so it is on my desktop, that I use most often, and on my laptop, where all the information can stay current, and I can hit the road without fear of not having everything I need. I use OneNote mostly for my b5media work, where I have it organized into a notebook with all of my various non-content related projects, one notebook for the content team, another for channel editors, another for the Beauty & Style channel, one for Blogging, and one for all my personal stuff. Pages and sections are easy to move and copy from notebook to notebook - this is the perfect organizational program to me. And One Note 2007 is a much improved version, so definitely spring for that one. If you have Office 2007 and have just ignored the One Note packaged in with it, open it up - you might find it to be a great tool like I have, whether you have 92,000 projects to keep up with or just one.