(6 out of 10)

I wasn’t too impressed with this movie, especially after heearing all the hype from almost everyone I talked to saying it’s the most hilarious thing they’ve ever seen. It was funny in parts, very un-funny in other parts, and was an overall mediocre show. It was entertaining, I’ll give it that. But it definitely wasn’t worth seeing again, I won’t give it that.

Some highlights included a hilarious chest-waxing scene, various guys going crazy because of women, and a few bicycle accidents that it seemed only Shannon and I thought were hilarious.

Lowlights included way, way too much derogatory conversation about women and gay men, and just an overall sense of trying to hard to cross the line. I think the whole “That’s funny because they went to far with it” is dead now, and thus I didn’t laugh too much throughout this movie at what I supposed to laugh at. The coughing, wheezing guy in back of us sure did though, and he drew a few looks from me just to make sure he was going to make it until the end.

One thing did disturb me more than anything else in this movie: The list of hobbies I have in common with the 40 Year-Old Virgin:

• Toys (I likes me a cool toy)
• Comic books
• Band instrument (he played baritone, I play trombone)
• Video Games
• Singing and Dancing

Luckily he wasn’t shown designing any websites or reading any computer books. Throw in some Pistons basketball, volleyball and a Jeep instead of a bicycle and you’ve got Brad right up there on the screen. Ok, not so much, but it was pretty embarassing there for a minute.

Well hey what’s shakin’. I’m here in Mackinaw City with Shannon right NOW and it’s pretty fun. We’re chillaxin’ like never before and it’s been a blast so far.

First we hung out around the town and went swimming in our hotel’s pool. So that was fun.

Then today we slept in a little bit and then proceeded on over to the island. After, of course, we ate some pizza and bought me some slick new sandals. So anyhow, we rode the Ferry over to the island and ummm, got off of it. Then we ummm, rode bikes around for about an hour, and then we ate some ice cream and laid in the grass. Then we almost paid $80 for a carriage ride. Then we sat around a little, and then rode bikes halfway around the other side of the island.

Then we had an old-time picture taken and then we came home.

And THEN, we went and played Adventure mini golf and that was fun. OH, we had KFC for dinner before that. And then we went swimming once more.

So I just got on someone’s free wireless internet so that’s how I’m able to post this. Talk to you all when we return to the bottom of the state once again.

Oh yeah, and Shannon might have permanently damaged her ear in the pool. Hmm, that wouldn’t be good. Hopefully she’ll be ok.

(8 out of 10)

An excellent and resourceful book by Simplebits’ Dan Cederholm, Bulletproof Web Design is the web design book we’ve all been waiting for. The concept of creating “bulletproof” layouts and design elements relates to creating items that will look and act the same no matter what environment they are viewed from. In today’s world of ever-changing computer types and models and software, there is no promise of your work being viewed with exactly the right programs on the right machine with the right environment. So the “bulletproof” concept comes into play here, and allows for uninterrupted interface design and usability.

Visually, the book is amazing. So many computer and even design books are boring to the eye, which doesn’t make sense at all. Bulletproof Web Design contains flashy colors and large icons, along with colorful yet simple illustrations to accompany the easy to read articles. There’s nothing too flamboyant or out of place here, just the basic information you need in a simple yet wonderful looking package.

I would recommend this book to anyone who is at the intermediate level of web design and/or graphic design for the web. The techniques and concepts discussed are vital and should be used and repeated by everyone who takes on the charge of creating, redesigning or administering a website.

http://69.93.55.164/

Well, it’s back to school time for Breathingfire.com. I’ll try to do some regular updates throughout this first week and let the world know just how exciting and wonderful Community College really can be!

First up this morning, at 9:30am, American Literature, 19th century! The bad news about this class is that I had to go buy the book this morning, which at around $40 wasn’t too bad. But, that was only the first volume (volume B). Volume’s C-E costs another $40! So hopefully I can get by with ‘B’ for a while.

Directly after that is Economics, which is being retaken because I suck. But oh well I’ll do better this time around (still have the book, though!)

And after that it’s Intramurals, homework, meetings, and other fun stuff around campus. Hope everyone else that are taking classes is having a good one so far.

Viva La Community College!

Well I participated in helping out at this year’s orientation at the local Communicty College yesterday. Got a free t-shirt out of it and everything! Unfortunately I was a little late in getting there (meaning later than everyone else, but still on time), and I was given the very last table and thus all of the new students who got to orientation late were sent to me. Shannon dubbed us the “slacker table”. But it turned out 3/4 of them weren’t all that bad and one of them was really nice and actually listened to some of my advice! Look kids, I’ve been there (off and on) for 7 years, I should be presenting at the damn orientation!

Ok, so anyways, Shannon and I had a nice weekend despite not being able to join our friends up north. Financial and banking errors, gas prices, and a late starting-out time deprived us of our visit to the Martin cottage. We made the best of it with a stop at the local Barnes & Noble and Coldstone Creamery. Mmm, that was my first taste of Coldstone, and I had a Cheescake Fantasy, and it was scrumptious.

The rest of the weekend was spent saving money and visiting family. I finally exposed Shannon to my dad’s side of the family, and hopefully she’ll recover soon. I’m sure our boys vs. girls game of Pictionary didn’t help (I’m sorry, but I have to recap: 3 boys vs. 5 girls; The girls were destroying us, getting all the way around to the very last square while we were only half around the board; Then we staged a super-comeback and ended up winning! Amazing! Sorry Shan, I promise that’s the last I’ll mention of it….for a while.)

Other than that, classes start soon so I’m getting primed for that. I’ll be taking a full-load, so hopefully I can stick to it and do well. Economics, American Literature, and Speech are currently on the schedule, to be joined soon by something I think.

There’s also the potential of an internship with the college, working with the marketing team on the website. Their new Web Designer finally has the right direction going and hopefully I’ll be able to add my two cents.

The current volleyball record: 13-5 with 12 more games to go before the tournament. We’re probably in the top 4 of 8-10 teams. Come see us on Monday nights at Hudson’s Grill.

http://vburton.ncsa.uiuc.edu/indexsize.html

My growing collection of fine CSS literature welcomed another addition today, Dan Cederholm’s Bulletproof Web Design! Which, for those that don’t know/care, explains fool-proof methods for creating websites that will stand up to multiple viewing environments including resized monitor screens, toggled accesability options, and other worse-case design scenarios.

Library items not pictured:

• Jeffrey Zeldman’s “Designing With Web Standards” (it’s at home)
• Jason Cranford Teague’s “DHTML and CSS For the World Wide Web: Visual Quickstart Guide 2nd Edition” (a little outdated)

Sorry about the techy update…just had to share something with the rest of the world. Not that anyone that reads my page would be interested, but maybe someone searching on Google or Yahoo would be.

Anyways, so Shannon and some mystery people have been bugging me about updating here more so that’s just what we’re going to do as I await my Subway lunch here at work.

Lately 90% of my free time has been happily spent with the newest player in my life, Shannon. It’s been great, we get along good, we like most of the same things, and we can’t get enough of spending time with each other. It’s fun. So we went home to see her family last weekend and that was fun. Got to meet some more people, hang out at the lake, meet the last of Shannon’s sisters, go bowling with Shan’s crazy (yet fun) friends, and just hang out. Can’t go wrong there.

Other than that, life is good elsewhere too. I’m starting school full-time this fall at the good ‘ol Community College (Here’s $5, lemmee get my learn on!), so we’ll see how that goes. It’s Shannon’s job to slap me around if I get off track. Aside from that I’ll be working still (speaking of which, make sure you check out B & I Nameplate – Engraved Name Plates, Push Button Tags, Lamacoid Tags, and Name Tags).

Also, if Shannon (there she is again!) ever takes me to any more movies, I’ll posting reviews of them on here with my handy new reviews feature. Oh, and I’ll probably be redesigning soon, too. If I can find the time between the 5 other websites I’m supposed to be working on right now.

Ciao!

Family and friends, bear with me as I talk for a minute about some not-so-interesting stuff:

Ok, so my RSS Feed addresses switched back:

RSS 2.0 – http://www.breathingfire.com/index.php/feed/
RSS .92 – http://www.breathingfire.com/index.php/feed/rss/
Atom 0.3 – http://www.breathingfire.com/index.php/feed/atom/

Reason for the changes (and changes-back): Tech-speak warning I use WordPress to update my website, right? Well, I recently switched over to a new hosting company and they have different servers than my old one. Well, WordPress has this thing so that their normal URLs are changed from this…

http://www.breathingfire.com/?postid=24234

…to something more pretty and useful like this…

http://www.breathingfire.com/index.php/2005/07/25/title-of-post/

…all of which my new hosting company doesn’t support. So I had to switch to ugly URLs. Well, I just found a fix for allowing permalink structure on a windows-based host with WordPress. It does require the unsightly use of /index.php/ in the url structure, but I’ll take it. Let me tell you, I was sure was excited. I probably cracked a small smile while sitting at the ol’ computer.

But it was sort of stressful because I wanted pretty URLs, damn it! So i was happy to find the solution and to share it with those who have yet to find it themselves.