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I hate snakes. I hate them with a passion. I hate them even more than I hate liberal hippie tree huggers (and I really hate liberal hippie tree huggers).

Saturday when I was in the yard (”from the yard” - 10 points if you get the movie reference) I happened to glance into the woods next to the house. About 5 feet inside the woods was this snake - a bad snake. I know he was a bad snake because he was alive. He was crawling (slithering) his way through the woods.

Following along the edge of the woods, I watched him for several minutes. I doubt he was poisonous, but I suppose he could have been. He was all black, except for yellow triangles on his side. (The base of the triangles was closest to the ground and the top of the triangles went about halfway up his side.) He was about 3 feet long. I’ve looked online to find out what kind he is, but I haven’t found any pictures of him. Can any of you name him based on this description?

Hopefully this issue of seeing snakes in the yard won’t be an issue for long. We’re going to get some cat food to leave outside. Cat food attracts cats. Cats kill snakes. Dead snakes make Ron happy.

Now if only I could find a cat to attack liberal hippie tree huggers, I’d be all set.

I spent the afternoon huddled over the brakes of our 2000 Mountaineer. I spent a good 5 hours getting the rear passenger side done. The rear driver’s side took all of 20 minutes. The problem I had with the passenger side was that the caliper piston wouldn’t open back up. I was beating down on it for a long time when a friend gave me the idea of tapping “up” on the piston. That did the trick, and within 15 minutes, I had that caliper piston all the way open. So if you’re looking for a fix in the middle of changing your own brakes, try this. Or call Jacob.

(You might also make sure you get the right parts from the guys at Auto Zone. It’s amazing the difference the right parts can make.)

I saw my neighbor out mowing his lawn the other day.  He’s lived there for more than a year now and it’s the first time I’ve seen him mowing.  Usually he lets the grass get long enough to hide the house, and then he pays some old white guy to come out and knock the weeds down.  But the old why guy never picks up trash before mowing, never actually does the whole yard, and never makes it look very good at all.

This year I’ve decided to raise the bar on the yard in the neighborhood.  I had already pulled out the weeds (and trees) from the side flower bed.  Yesterday I spent time mowing the lawn until my body just refused to do any more.  Today I’ll finish mowing, edging, and trimming.  Then, hopefully I’ll have time to put down the Weed & Feed with the spreader Wulfgar unloaded on me.

And if all goes to plan, my grass will be emerald green in a week, and that guy next door will be so embarrassed over his yard, he’ll put the house up for sale, move, and never come back.

Do you have a bad neighbor, too?

Today I went down into Atlanta for the Microsoft “Security Matters” series. It’s a day-long event where Microsoft talks about what they’re doing in their products that address security. I’ve got to admit that I went mostly out of curiosity because I’ve always found it funny when people use the words “Microsoft” and “security” in the same sentence.

A few things I came away with:

• A free tshirt (always a plus)
• A copy of “Protect Your Windows Network” by Johansson and Riley (also free)
• I’m looking forward to Vista. It looks like they’ve really stepped up the security on their OS platform. Sure, it couldn’t get any worse, but it’s nice to see them at least trying.
• NAP (”Network Access Protection”) looks really good. I’ve hit issues in a corporate network where I could really use the features NAP will offer.
• Vista’s firewall will be on by default (like XP SP2) but will also control outbound connections.

There was a lot more to the day, but it’s late. Some of it came across as Microsoft trying to control the world, but I sort of expected some of that. Overall, I had a good time. And if any of you see Bill Gates tomorrow, tell him I said thanks for the free lunch.

Google never ceases to amaze me.

They’ve got the best search engine on the planet (though few really know how it works). If that weren’t good enough, Google Adwords gives me more for my dollar than Overture could ever hope to. Google Maps, Google Earth, Google Talk…all awesome.

Now Google is moving into the world of helping webmasters. I recently discovered Google Analytics and absolutely love it. It’s under the Adwords application, so it might technically be a part of that package. I had to submit a request to be allowed in, but I got an email the other day that said they were ready for me.

You set up a little script tag at the bottom of any html you want to track, and it’ll let you view detailed stats of all of those pages. You get things like duration of visits, entrance/exit pages, and even some ROI stuff for your Adwords campaigns.

I’ve got it running on sites that have nothing to do with ROI (like this one), and some others that do. I still use awstats for http server logs, but Google is really raising the bar for the search marketing.

I don’t know if Overture will respond to these new tools, but I do know that Google is making me care less and less about all of the other search engines.

Apparently this blog is read more than I thought it was. I’ve had too many people say something like “man, that was way too cruel what you said about Shane.” I guess sarcasm doesn’t go into type well. So, for the record, with sarcasm pulled out of the way:

1. Shane is a good guy.
2. Shane will succeed in business in ways I can only dream of.
3. Shane hosts this web site for free.
4. Shane has a better chance of success in the video game industry than anybody else I know.
5. Shane hosts other web sites I manage for free.
6. Shane hosts a server for me for free.
7. Shane hosts my DNS for free.
8. Shane and his company are changing the internet filtering market (in a good way).
9. Shane will probably have much interesting content on his new blog site, and I’m looking forward to what happens with his quest into the video game industry.
10. Shane would get my vote if he ever ran for President.

Well, it’s finally happened. Deep down, we all knew it would, but the time is finally here. If you’ll look at the Blogging Friends links on the site, you’ll see two very recent additions.

First, Chris, a total MS lover boy, has started blogging with an MSN Spaces account. He’s a pretty nice guy (most of the time). He’s addicted to his Xbox 360, and his better-than-mine TV set, and some other stuff that I can’t mention here because of legal issues. He’s also a total comment whore, so go say something over there on his site. Topic suggestions: why Macs are better than Windows, why a large TV is a stupid waste of money, and why Xbox 360 is the worst gaming platform ever.

Then there’s Shane. I always figured that the day Shane started blogging, the world would end. It’s been a few days now, and we’re still here, so I guess I was wrong. Shane has always wanted to write video games, so his blog is about his probable failing attempt at the video game development world. And don’t think Shane will be happy working for somebody else. He’ll have to do it his way. When you first get to know Shane, you think “Man, that guy is a jerk.” And he is. But it gets better as you get to know him more. Then the day will come when you think “Man, I’m such a jerk. Shane must have caused this.” Just wait. You’ll see.

We went out to lunch yesterday to this new pizza place around the corner.  The cartoon drawing on the paper place mats looked a lot like Saddam Hussein.  Maybe he’s turned over a new leaf?

Well, my plans for the evening are shot. I had planned to meet up with Geof in Birmingham, where we would sit in awe of Andrew Osenga and his amazing guitarability. But no. I got an email this morning advising me to save the gas money because the show got cancelled.

I put Osenga’s “Photographs” on the ipod earlier today to kill the urge I had to see Andy totally rocking a venue. It didn’t work like I had hoped it would. Now I’m sitting here wishing May would come soon so that Osenga’s CD “The Morning” will be available.

At least between the bootlegs, AO solo stuff, and The Normals recordings, I can listen to him playing in my house tonight. And I can turn it up loud because the wife and kids are at my parents’ place.

I want to throw out a big congrats to the guys over at SafeBrowse.com. Their internet parental control software, Safe Eyes, was recently reviewed by the folks at PC Magazine. Safe Eyes 2006 was named Editor’s choice for parental control software.

Full story here.