Category: design

Texas oilman looks to wind and natural gas

Texas oilman T.Boone Pickens is pushing wind and natural gas these days. As some have suggested, the former billionaire oilman has had a “come-to-Jesus moment” and realizes the problems with American spending $700 billion on oil each year.

He’s got a number of videos on YouTube now along with a fancy new website explaining his plan. Makes since to me, but I haven’t explored everything about it.

Here’s his TV commercial ::

And an explanation of his plan ::

He mentions that his plan will take less than 10 years to achieve but will take the right leader to get the job done. Wonder who he thinks that should/would be.

testing WPhone

Just installed the WPhone plugin for my blog. Its made to make updating/administrating my blog easier from my cell phone (Blackberry 8310). Looks and works better than the default admin on a cellphone. Still wish there was a Blackberry ap for WordPress like there is for iPhone. Oh well.

My Bucket List

Friday night Laurie and turned off the Olympic opening ceremonies (yes I know a cardinal sin) and watched the Bucket List. I loved it. She wasn’t as impressed.

The idea behind the movie is two men are dying of cancer and are only expected to have six months to live, so they make a list of all the things they want to do before they “kick the bucket.”

The movie reminded me of the “life goal list” Mark Batterson challenges folks to create in his first book, “In a Pit With a Lion On a Snowy Day.” Basically a list of 100 things that you want to do/accomplish before your life is over.

Been thinking through some of my goals (especially realizing that I only a little more than have 4 full months left to complete my goals for 2008). Looks like I’ve blown one of them already – the take a photo each day of me in 2008. I think I lost focus/motivation after folks said they were getting bored with my photo selection in mid-April. Hopefully I’ll pick it back up next year – but maybe just take a photo a day – rather than a photo of me each day.

So far I did finish rebuilding a new encounter website as well as rebuilding the CasadeBlundell.com website (with a lot of great help and insight from my life).

I think I’ll easily meet my reading goal for the year. I’ve completed 10, almost finished with #11 and just received #12 and have #13-15 currently being shipped from Amazon.com.

My last goals that I’m still worried about/shooting for are:

  • Finish losing weight. My goal weight is 205. I’ve got about 20 more lbs to go.
  • See 8 new community groups started at encounter.
  • Get 4 new people on the sound or media shout rotation at encounter.

So… all that said – what about my Bucket List? Well, I’m still thinking it though. I’ll give you one of them though… bungee jumping.

Now how about you? What’s on your Bucket List?

related ::
IMDB :: the bucket list
SSL :: goals for 2008
the “new” casadeblundell.com
the “new” encounterthis.com

Random web stats for the day

I always have fun with web stats. Google Analytics is probably my favorite stats tracker. We have AWstats on our server – but it doesn’t do near as good of a job tracking WordPress posts.

But for those of you who are interested… here’s our the top posts/pages that were viewed from July 6 – July 11 (for the entire casadeblundell.com domain).

Justin Farmer to leave WFAA (written Jan 8, 2008)
Newt Gingrich on InTouch (written July 9, 2008)
Ellis County churches (and beyond) (written March 12, 2006 – updated since)
SSL links

275 of the visits came from the United States with 148 visits coming from Texas and 42 of those coming from Irving and 6 coming from Sulphur Springs.

58% of you use Internet Explorer (booo!) and 33% of you use Firefox (yeah!).

Only 10 of the visits were from dial-up or slower connections (possibly cellphone use).

There were a couple unique keywords used to find our domain through search engines… including cynthia izzzzzaaaaaguuuuuuuiiiiiiireeeeeeeeee and enormous butt (which brought 6 visitors apparently to a picture by brandi).

So there you have it. Random stats for the day. Hope you enjoyed it.
Now I think I’ll go check out the stats for encounter.

Using kids as buzz marketers

Corporate Babysitter shares a portion of a BBC documentary, “The Search for Cool” that shows “cool kids” as young as six being targeted to market toys and gadgets to their friends – specifically the Nintendo DS.

A few telling quotes:

“The street teams consist of ‘cool kids’.. who will represent the brands in a very vocal way to their friends.”

“Obviously children are the best way to promote something.”

“Schools have let them do assemblies on the products… PowerPoints… anything we can get away with.”

“It’s a feeling of belonging… like an elite community.”

Watch the video. Does this drive anyone else batty? I know folks use bloggers and podcasters this way…. maybe its a double standard, but using six year old kids to market products to their friends leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

HT to Corporate Babysitter.