I’m an 1111 freak.

“What’s 1111?” I hear you say? (if you didn’t just say that, you’re either really cool because you already heard about 1111, or you’re not very interested in what I blog about, and that in itself can be kind of cool, but it gets old very quick)

1111 is the phenomenon where you notice 11:11 on clocks, emails, tickets, or just about anywhere.  Some people feel a pull to actually look at the clock for some reason and when they do, it shows 11:11.  Or they just glance at the clock randomly, but more often than not, it happens to be 11:11.  After the second or third time, you start thinking it’s more than just a coincidence.

A couple of years ago, I confided in my wife what was happening to me.  I didn’t want her to think I was crazy, but I also didn’t want to keep it a secret any longer.  I hadn’t heard of any “phenomenon” or “craze” whatsoever.  I just thought it was a weird coincidence.

A few weeks later, she was at a local bookstore that caters to the metaphysical, astrological and general ethereal universalityness and asked the clerk if she had heard of anything like it.  Another customer in the store overheard her query and pointed her to a book about 11:11.  She picked it up for me and I proceeded to read up on how I wasn’t the only one who was seeing this in a digital form in one way or another

Always one to share, I decided to make a website about it last year but I’ve let it sit, always being pulled in other directions or forgetting about it.  I figured if this really is a phenomenon that’s sweeping the world, I might as well get on the front end of it.  Plus, since it isn’t a very active site, I can practice my Wordpress Upgrade skillz (I just upgraded it to WP 2.6.1).

I just wrote my first real story there and so I suppose today is a “guest post” day for me.  I owe guest posts to about five people from my whalliversary earlier this summer, so I want you to know I haven’t forgotten!

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to go view that post, give me your thoughts, and also give me feedback about the look and feel of the site.  Suggestions welcome!

Today I became the slave to my domains.

By the way, in case you didn’t know, this is what it looks like when I’m frustrated:

(side note: this is also what it looks like if my laptop were filled with flour and it exploded while I was sighing.)

I did a boo-boo on 40+ of my 100+ domains and didn’t know it until today. Metalmom asked me a question about an email she received about her domain last night. The email itself puzzled me a little, and just for grins, I checked her website from my blackberry while riding the bus this morning and I couldn’t reach it.

Then I tried another one of the websites I host, http://jennefer.net, and it had the same problem. And another site? Same problem. Even simple redirects to Blogger/Blogspot sites like I do for Sourpuss was hosed.

As I checked them, I discovered that all had “parking pages” on them, not the blogs or redirects I had so lovingly set up. Then it hit me – a couple of days ago. I was in my 1 & 1 account cleaning up my domains. I had specified for the domains to not be auto-renewed, but what I didn’t know at the time was that by doing so,

1. 1&1 would change the DNS settings to their own parking pages
   Result: breaking whatever sites I had on them at the time
2. Domain registration would be set to Public vs Private
   Result: my personal information such as home address, phone, email, etc would be revealed in WHOIS
3. I would lose the ability to manage the domain from my control panel
   Result: I would panic because I couldn’t fix it myself, and instead I have to wait on 1&1 Billing personnel. Metalmom remains whimpering in a fetal position while her blog is “down” for some.

This is very frustrating.

To be fair, the “cancel auto-renew” process did alert me at the time that I would lose private registration, but I thought that would be for when the domain period expired, NOT immediately. And they absolutely did not indicate whatsoever that they would be changing all my DNS settings for these domains to a parking page, which is the Big Bad Part.

However, even after four phone calls to support and billing, the requirement is upon ME to fax them with my customer ID, contract ID, package name, PASSWORD (what tha?) and the list of domains I want put back on auto-renew. I still have no idea how long it will take for them to fix the problem, but I at least was able to fix Metalmom’s site, and hopefully it won’t take too long for DNS to propagate through teh internetz.

I’ve sent the fax and am now waiting for them to fix the problem.

Waiting.

Waiting.

I left the following comment on Metalmom’s blog post, and she said I should post it. Since I did spend a little effort on it (it was one of the things I did on my 2nd day of RIDING THE BUS TO WORK), I figured I could lean on it a bit.

Metalmom’s post was about how someone needed to call 9-1-1 because she did all this cleaning in her house and she actually LIKED IT.   Therefore, something must be wrong with her.

I vacuumed today, but it sucked.

I tried picking up hair with Pledge and a rag, but all I got were dust bunnies.

I used kleenex to clean my TV while watching the Hawaiian Surf Trials, but it wiped me out.

I tried laundering money for the local mob, but the IRS cleaned me out.

A woman came into the kitchen with a broom, and the damn witch swept me off my feet.

Your job? Come up with some more and leave it in a comment!

Happy

There are many things that cause happiness to swell inside me.  Here is one of those things:

Dave from Blogography is going to have an Austin Event!  Now I gotta get prepared.  My list so far includes, in no particular order:

• a ton of butter
• pulled pork
• good supply of Pez Candy
• Golden Oreos
• A trip to our local Apple store (yes, Austin has one!)
• Coke w/Lime
• Lego Star Wars I & II
• Finding the nearest Johnny Rockets
• Suggesting potential meeting spots: The Oasis, Iguana Grill, Eddie V’s, Freda’s seafood grill, Baby A’s, Hula Hut, Trudy’s
• A special “proselyte to Wayne about Macintosh” session
• Making sure my camera is fixed by then so I can do a special DITL (”Dave In The Life”)
• Obtain a Psychlo uniform so I can dress up as Terl (as played by John Travolta) in Battlefield Earth.

Not Happy

Then there are the things that DO NOT cause me to swell up with happiness.

One of those things are insane required sexual harassment courses that assume everyone reads at a 3rd grade level

The thing is blinking in red at me and YELLING (do you see the exclamation mark, or is that just my imagination?) to slow down because I took 56 minutes doing what would be optimal to do in 60 minutes.

So us speed readers end up writing blog entries on the side in between slides. This causes me to appear more “normal” to the training-bot.

Whew. 

Question: why doesn’t it berate me for being SLOWER than Optimal?  Why are the overachievers the only one who get the negative feedback?

Someday it’s going to use the embedded camera in the computer and notice me rolling my eyes, yawning and calling my coworkers my beyotch (especially the HOT chick down the hall) and then flash a picture of some nice boobs at me, and the camera will notice my eyes looking at the picture, and then automatically file a complaint electronically.  Isn’t technology grand?

Janna has been in my “Round 2″ of feed reading since I added her to my feed reader long ago.  Time for a promotion.  I really need to bump her up to “Round 1,” because I’m never disappointed in her posts.  They’re a little wacky, very cerebral, and I connect with them on various levels. 

Maybe its because Janna “does Band” for a living and I completely and totally miss band.  I miss high school band, I miss Army band, I miss dreaming about being in a band.   I’m currently living vicariously through my awesome daughter, who is in the best middle school band around, is about to be in the best high school band around and is pretty darn good herself (she was 1st chair flute, 1st band last year at UT’s Middle School Band Camp as a 7th grader).

One of the more recent Janna posts I connected with was her “janku” post, where she invented her own style of poetry, namely, a “janku” which she defined as a 3-line poem following a 4-6-8 rule of vowel usage instead of a 5-7-5 rule of syllables.  It was a great follow-up to her Haiku of Melancholy.  I’m especially proud of my work on her Thirteen Things the Letters TCB Could Stand For (check the comments for a story made entirely of 3 word TCB lines).

I submitted my own collection of janku’s in her post’s comments.  I find it only fitting that I completely copy her idea and make up my own form of poetry, and I need to name it “whallku”. 

There are several reasons I want to name it this:

1. It’s a fantastic greeting response.  When someone tells you “hi, whall!” you can say “whall, ku” and it won’t sound so awkward, like if you hadn’t said it at all.
2. You can use it after someone sneezes, because “whallku” is actually swahili for “gesundheit,” which is actually German for “hi, did you read the blog of whall today? haha of course you did, I only ask because it is custom!”
3. If there were a martial art made entirely of the expert use of a guitar hero controller and a euphonium, delivered with an unfaltering stream of perfect LOLcat references, it would be called “whallku“.  What am I saying, “if”?  Pshaw.
4. whallku.com isn’t taken.  Yet.

So, now for the rules of what a whallku is.

1. It shall have 3 lines, like a haiku and janku
2. The numeric phrase to remember is “3-5-7″.
3. First line has three (3) words
4. Second line has five (5) syllables
5. Third line has seven (7) vowels
   (”y” does not count as a vowel)

Here are my submissions.  Give me some whallku lovin’, won’t you?  Submit yours in the comments!

What The Hell?
Does he really think
this a good idea?

Obama, Obama, Obama…
All we ever hear.
Well, better him than Hillary!

Guitar Hero IV
A.K.A. “World Tour”.
Guaranteed addict.

blog of whall:
Insommnia cure
if ever I saw one.

Cabbage Patch Dolls.
Innocent toy trend,
or evil spawn of Satan?

CPS wrong re: 
Polygamist sect.
Yoda: “Much power they have.”

For double extra credit, see if you can create a haiwhallku, which means you satisfy BOTH requirements: 5-7-5 for syllables and 3-5-7 for words/syllables/vowels.  You might be asking yourself, “how in the world can a line have both 5 syllables AND 7 syllables for line 2? Have you gone crazy, Wayne?”

Yes, I’ve gone crazy.  But that’s beside the point.  There is an answer, and the answer is - use words that can be pronounced in multi-syllabic ways.  Like Hyundai can be pronounced “Hi-un-die” or “Hun-Day”.  The word “actually” can actually be pronounced “act-you-al-lee” or “actch-yule-lee”.  Some leniency is granted, but it’s mob rule.

I don’ recommen’
Hyundai, actually.
dey be too darn cheap.

US building first
Nuclear athlete man.
Noose at eleven.

Recently, my life was described online as such:

[…] your perspective is skewed because your life has been a literal fairy tale compared to other lives. And you even admit that. So when I talk to you about my troubles, a lot of times, from your perspective, I get really frustrated at your advice because it’s naive.

I thought I’d take the time to respond to this characterization.  My life is not a fairy tale. I have not been granted servants, magic fairy godmothers, easily summarizable plot and lesson outlines, and I don’t eek out an existance in a fable.  While I may somewhat physically resemble certain fairy tale characters (think Shrek), I’m not super lucky, despite my great well-aspected Mars and Jupiter placement in the 5th house.

Good.  Now that we’ve gotten THAT out of the way, I wanted to blog about this new Microsoft 8GB Zune 2 I won recently.  It’s so awesome! I use it all the..

what?

What do you mean, “see what I mean?!?!?” ?  Doesn’t EVERYone win stuff like this when they go out and live life?  I went to a local Microsoft event on “Get Healthy Stay Healthy” and my name was drawn to win the Zune.  Oh, and I also got a fully licensed copy of Office Ultimate 2007 (the whole box and everything!)  So it’s not like I won a CAR or something.  I did that LAST year, sheesh.

So I’m loving this Zune.  My daughter has a video iPod nano and it’s really cool… I was thinking about getting a big Zune last year but decided against it.  Then I saw the video iPod nano and just about fell in love with it.  Then I won this one and love it EVEN more than I thought I would.

Pretty much, after playing with both of them, the only difference I can tell is that the Zune has wireless and FM Radio.  Everything else is basically the same.  There are more indepth comparisons online but I really only care about what *I* see is different.  I use the FM but so far I don’t use the wireless, but it does allow for wireless sync, and I may start playing with it.

Probably the biggest “new” thing due to this acquisition is that I am now VERY much into podcasts, and that’s the biggest thing I’m using it for.  I’m listening to StarPower (Guitar Hero podcast), Bill Maher, Skeptics Guide, a few Microsoft podcasts, Mind of Root, Astronomy podcast and a few others… and it’s inspired me to want to participate in a couple podcasts, probably with technology and astrology.

One thing that caught my eye was the “Hello from Seattle” little signature on the back.  Now that is so cute…

HAHA!

You thought I was going to be political for the third straight day, DIDN’T YOU!?!?! 

No Sir!  Today I bring you a fantastic Guest Post by none other than the great and powerful Golf Widow

I can see we’re going to get along just fine.  We both like to use “none other than” and I think that’s just peachy.  Also, who knew we were both not only great and powerful, but “the” great and powerful?

So there I was, minding my own business and all of a sudden I bought a guest post from her for $2.  And lo and behold (I wonder if she likes that phrase also?), I got the guest post from her via email! 

So here it is - enjoy.

by Golf Widow

I started several times to write this guest post for whall, but I got distracted by weird things like, why is the logo for Swanky Franks a smiling hot dog eating a hot dog, and holy crap, Patrick Swayze has cancer? 

These things just aren’t right.

My brain goes in a million directions at once.  I wanted to write something political for whall but I can’t focus on political stuff for more than a few seconds before it says, “Why isn’t Barack Obama doing any kind of campaigning involving the word ‘Obamarama?’  Because that would totally swing my vote his way, is all I’m saying.”

Whall asked me if he could buy more than one guest post from me, and the answer is, sure, you can buy as many as you want.  But they’re probably not even going to be as high quality as this one, and as you can see, this one is high quality the way Ralph Nader is a credible candidate. 

Oh, look, something shiny; gotta go.

Today I’m guest-posting over at The Absurdist. 

As mentioned yesterday, her blog is NSFW (Not Safe For Wayne).  So if your pretty little eyes and ears are easily offended, or if you’re not prepared to see me in a slightly different light, I wouldn’t click the link.  Just check back here tomorrow for your regularly scheduled Wayne Goodness.

In other news, I’m hella excited about seeing Celtic Woman tonight here in Austin at the Frank Erwin Center.  It’s going to be a great show!

… give a little biiiiiiiit… of your time… to me….

Supertramp is so totally awesome.

Bossy is not a super tramp.

Although I’m sure if she were to put her mind to it, she COULD be a tramp, and if so, she’d probably be super at it.

But I digress. 

I want Bossy to come see me on her Excellent Road Trip.  And it looks like the way YOU can help make that happen is to visit her site and donate $3.  Give her some gas money or a kidney she can sell or something.  It’s easy to use Paypal to send a few bucks and for just one day, don’t give to Fred the one-legged homeless guy on Broad Street.  Or maybe you can decide to NOT sponsor Fyrourllldidkacalimaki in Africa for a single day.  They say “pennies a day” but come on, would they miss one day?  I bet they go without whatever algae or dirt they eat all the time.  Heck, they might even be tired of the crap you’re sending them.  Do us all a favor - donate to Bossy’s Excellent Road Trip.

Some people are visually-oriented.  Perhaps the following graphic will help you understand what to do.

If you respond better to audio, then check out a sound file of when I went over to Europe and picked a random person on the street to see what they thought of this whole deal. 

I’m in Texas.  Bossy is not.  But we could see Bossy in Texas (possibly, if she ignores Tornadophobia) if I pimp her out on my blog and help create a large influx of paypalitude in her paypalbox.  You could help me paypalify her paypaleface so that she paypaltruistically pays a pal a visit to paypAl Gore on her way to paypaluicious with her paypalbatross and paypalbacore tuna sandwiches and paypalcohol for the paypalpicnic we’d have on paypAlderaan (ask paypalprincess paypalLeia).  Please stay clear of paypAlQaeda, and paypalgae.  It would take a paypalchemist paypalmost paypall day to make paypaluminum out of paypalan alda. (I sincerely apaypalogize for this paypalpha display of paypalmetto leaves)

I know I’m not the bossy of you.  But can’t we pretend I am - for the five minutes it would take you to donate $3?

Note: I have no problem with any of you deciding to brag about donating to bossy in the comments.