Erik’s… Hmm…

I remembered to tivo the British Open so I had 4 hours of golf that acted as background noise for my flickr work.  By the time I was done uploading photos I had created 18 new Sets and pushed-up close to 500 pics (that’s a guesstimate on the pics, but the Sets number is accurate).  All I have left to publish is the pictures we took while on vacation and I plan on getting that done in the next day or so.

Highlights from the flickr work today:

• Vacation Day in Galveston
• Rockband Party with Friends
• Muffins with Mom at Noah’s school
• Butterfly Exhibit

Nancy Pelosi is worthless.  She is one of the most powerful women in the United States and all she has done with her power is complan about President Bush.  Is it possible to impeach a House Speaker because Nancy Pelosi is probably the worst the United States has ever had.

I’m not sure why, but I went out and got me a shiny, new, cool Twitter account.  I have no friends yet.  I don’t really know what I’m doing, or how to use twitter, but I got me an account.  So if you would like to see what I have to say on Twitter you can follow me at http://twitter.com/erikweibust.

Just wondering…  should I be pushing my twitter updates to this blog?

Roughly two months ago I started paying attention to my driving habits.  Which is good on many levels.  For one, I wasn’t the kindest, most courteous driver on the road.  I didn’t like slow people getting in my way and slowing me down.  More importantly, I drive a big 4×4 truck, with a horrible, gas-guzzling V8 engine.

So what is the MPG Challenge?  Well…  it’s a fun, exciting driving game.  One which you drive slow, and deliberate.  Very much like an old grandparent, putt-putting along.  The beauty of this game is you save all kinds of cash because your fuel efficiency gets better and better.  When I started the game my truck was getting a dismal 14.9 mpg.  Now two months later I’m getting some serious high scores.  Currently my MPG readout on the dash has me getting…

drum-roll…

18 MPG

Yeah your read it right.  I’m now getting EIGHTTEEN MILES PER GALLON in my big, fat, heavy, 4×4 truck.  And I’m not really trying that hard.  Just think if I tried…  could I get 20 mpg?  I’d be rich!

Has anybody else out there changed their driving habits?  What do you drive?  What kind of MPG are you now getting?

Did that headline get your attention?  Have you heard of Boone Pickens?  If not, google him and read all you can about the man.  He has a plan to save America.  The Pickens Plan.  He wants to get America off Mid-East oil and I agree with everything he’s saying.

CNN.com has a great article about him and his plan.  One of my favorite Pickens’ quotes from the article is:

“Our dependence on imported oil is killing our economy. It is the single biggest problem facing America today”

I agree with him 100%.  The Mid-East has us in a place where they own us.  Between them and China, America is in a deep, deep hole and we need to get out.  Pickens has a plan that will work.  Please get behind him.

I’m not counting or anything, but I’ve got 4 hours until I start a little Texas vacation.  First stop is Austin to stay with some friends, then a day in San Antonio to hit Sea World, then we’re meeting the rest of the family (mom, brother, sister, step-brother) in Hunt, TX to relax on the Guadalupe River.  If this sounds familiar, you aren’t crazy…  we did the exact same thing last summer.  We’ve just got a few less family members going this year.

Here is the recap from last year.  That trip was great and I expect this year’s trip to be just as good.

I’m entering the land of Really Big TV Owners today.  I bought a Samsung 52-Inch LCD and it’s getting delivered today.  I am very, very excited.  I can’t wait to watch the Aggies play football on this thing. I think everybody is excited to get it hooked up and be watching their favorite shows/movies on the new TV, even Katie, and she isn’t much of a TV watcher.

If you’re wondering why I went with an LCD?  Mainly because we have a large family room and I wanted the outstanding viewing angle this TV and most LCDs offer.  It’s got a 178 degree viewing angle!  You can dang-near be standing right next to it, or right below it, and see it just as clear as if you were sitting in front of it on the couch.  Another reason for the LCD is it does well in bright rooms and our family room has 4 huge windows along with the kitchen windows behind it.

I’ll get pics up after everything is setup as well as go in to details about all the other bits I’ve added to make the sound and video work with the TV (I’ve bought more then just the TV).

Happy 4th of July and Happy Birthday, Monica…  That’s what I did with my weekend.  We headed down to The Woodlands, my Dad’s house, and celebrated the 4th and my stepmom’s birthday.  It was a great time.

The 4th was spent at my dad’s.  We rented a giant water slide blow-up toy thing that all the kids played and then went and watched The Woodlands fireworks display.  Saturday was Monica’s 40th birthday party at a local watering-hole.  Lots of fun.

I’m way behind in posting pics to my Flickr page, but should be caught up in a few days.  When I’m caught up I’ll go back and link to the pics here.

Here are my initial observations on the Rock Band for the Wii.  First, let me say that I bought Guitar Hero 3 about 8 weeks ago.  I really liked it.  I had a blast with it.  I had no complaints.  I beat it last week and then sold it on Craigslist with the intention of getting Rock Band when it was released.

I say all that positive stuff about GH3 because I keep comparing the guitar play of Rock Band to GH3 and have to say that the GH3 absolutely blows away the Rock Band game.  Pretty much playing Rock Band is an endless cycle of “Loading…” messages.  It’s pretty annoying.  Let me also say that the gameplay with the guitar is *very* easy.  I blew through every song, on Easy, getting a 90% or better.

Now that I’ve got some of the negative stuff out of the way…  I have to admit to really liking the idea of the multi-player capabilities of the game.  Katie and I went to a friend’s house and had a really good time playing Rock Band with a couple families.  You don’t get that with GH3.  When I unpacked my Rock Band on Sunday it was fun to have Noah playing drums, me on guitar, and Noah and Katie taking turns on vocals.  I liked that a lot.

Recapping…  The wait between songs with the “Loading” screen gets really annoying, but the multi-player capabilities should make up for the wait and leave me real happy with the game.

Now that I have my WordPress blog up-to-date, and now that I have a template that supports tags, it’s time to go back and tag all my posts.  The problem is that I’m not sure what the “best practice” is for tagging posts.  Here are some of my questions:

• How many tags per post?  I’m guess there is no magic number.
• Does every post need a tag?
• Do I still need categories if I’m using tags?
• What about capitalization with tags?
• What about tags that are two words, like “Aggie basketball” or “movie review”?

The most pressing questions I have are related to tags that have words that should be capitalizied and tags that have more then one word.  First the capitalization question…  And combining it with my two word question, how would you handle a name?  Take my name, would you add two tags, one for Erik and one for Weibust?  Would you capitalize them?

And more on the two word tags…  Would you tag Erik Weibust as the two word tag, Erik Weibust, and then add a tag for Erik, and a tag for Weibust?

Why the heck am I using tags?  Please, somebody tell me…