I really wish I had a boat. There is not much that fills me with a sense of Americana than seeing an old wooden boat flying the Stars and Stripes. I’m not certain what it is about US Flags on boats, but it is pretty awesome. To a lesser degree, I take great pride in seeing American Flags on front porches. The good old Red White and Blue almost chokes me up…so too (to a lesser extent) do car flags, but that is a topic for later discussion. I’d love nothing more, than to be out on Fort Peck or Canyon Ferry on a boat of some nature, cruising along with a flag cracking in the breeze. I could easily afford a Jet Ski, but the whole flag effect would be diminished. Maybe jury rig a car flag onto the handle bars of an old stand-up machine…doesn’t really have the same effect or street credibility as you can exude if you are a boat owner. Our plans for this Fourth are still yet undecided. You had better believe that I will have a flag next to the Bell camper, and a cooler full of tasty OML. Maybe a few hot dogs…if there is room.

Customizing your Silverado SS is easy. You’ll need: * Spray Paint * Junk Mail, and * Masking Tape That’s it. Mask off the areas you don’t want murdered-out with the mail and tape. Rattle can the areas you want murdered. The end.

I need to start peddling goods. Who wouldn’t want to wear a swantron shirt? Maybe a swantron mousepad? Who knows? They could sell like hot cakes. Or flapjacks. I have been mulling over the shopping cart issue for a while. I don’t see much harm in throwing up an e-commerce portion to the site, as so long as it is secure. I really don’t want to throw caution to the wind, and have a sketchy shopping cart that I don’t endorse attached to my livelihood. I have been looking into various options, and seem to have found a good one in Summer Cart shopping cart software. Security is my biggest concern, but one also must look at the other aspects when making a decision of this magnitude…namely, shipping, support, payment plans, and ease of implementation. Here is a quick screen shot to drive home my point. Summer Cart has integrated reporting. I’m all about my metrics…comes with the territory that I deal with on a daily basis at work. It is tough to make improvements blindly, and running reports is the way to base a business decision. What I really enjoy about Summer Cart is the admin control panel. Anything you could think of is covered…which makes for an easy decision. Stay tuned…you all better be foaming at the mouth at the thought of some swantron tees. It could be the fashion statement of the the year.

I took a spin outside for a brief reading session on my lunch break yesterday. I’m glad I did, as I was treated to a little optical phenominon action…in the form of a 22 Degree Solar Halo. FTW. I’m posting some pics I snapped…I’ll toss in the full write-up soon. I inverted the colors of that last pic, quite obviously. That will be my template, so to speak, on which to wax nerdy in a Physics-y kind of way. Stay tuned.

At the risk of sounding like a grumpy (thirty year) old codger and really dating myself, I’m going to go ahead and wax sentimental for a second. We had an Atari way back in the day. Way back, as in I thought it was called a “Natari.” It was awesome. My two favorite games… Frogger, maybe of course, and an obscure game called Gopher. Gopher involved whacking gophers on the head with a shovel as they tried to eat your carrots, which you planted as a stork dropped seeds. No way to win…just hold off the gophers until you go insane. Aah, the good old days. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all about my Wii. Every once in a while, it is good to take a step back from the buzz and take a look at the state of things. I’m going to wager that *most of the games thrown out to the market are not even slightly as rewarding to the player as Frogger, Gopher, or Pong for that matter. It is easy to get wrapped up in new things…super easy. It is often hard to qualify, when everything is marketed to its quantified value. The same exact thing holds true for my dear computers. I always want a new one. If not a new one completely, I want more RAM, a better video card, a meaty hard drive, etc. Even though I spend most of my time hammering out paid posts such as this, for some odd reason I think I need something that can store the Library of Congress and play two first person shooters simultaneously. It is a problem. Let’s focus on computer video cards for a moment, to illustrate my point. I could, without a doubt, get by with a budget video card. Like this little guy: However, my tech ego dictates that I look at things like this monstrosity: …and, I’m drooling a little. I don’t need that…if you do, hit that link up there and check them out. I’m going to play some Wii.

Here is the first pic I have seen come in of the soon-to-be-infamous Metra Twister. Shot from the Heights by none other than Hat Shop Tony. Hopefully someone posts some image of the Metra getting nailed.

Breaking story…The Billings Metra is roofless. I imagine it went something like that. How it spun down from the Heights and still had that much power may be interesting to see. More to come.

I’m writing this post on the road. Opera Mini is what it is… It certainly is not a blogger’s smoothest means of posting content. That said, another day another dollar; there are paid posts to write. Like this guy about Kodak cameras. The posting tool isn’t optimum, but the timing is right. We made it to Helena without our trusty easyshare digital camera. I should say the ‘we’ with a disclaimer, since it is a bright pink Kodak Easy Share. Color aside, I love the thing. The picture quality is super, and the user interface is super easy to use to boot. I’d you haven’t tried Kodak cameras in the past few years, you should give one a shot before buying another brand. They really have focused on usability instead of the bells and whistles, and have the best easy-to-use product on the market. They still have the features that the average consumer wants, but leaves out the type of additional stuff that is largely unused by most. Check one out. They are fairly inexpensive now, and give you a ton of bang for your buck.

It has been too long since I have sang the merits of Ubuntu. Meerkat is great. 10.10 LTS has been flawless for me, even since the beta, on both my notebooks and my Mini 9 netbook. Anyhow, I have had Stellarium running for some time. I realized I have yet to mention it. Here is the view from my ’laboratory’ from two nights ago: Awful photojournalism. Wanna fight about it? Pictured is the Moon, Venus, the Moon, and Venus…the two former live, and the two latter via Stellarium. Pretty sweet. I have had Stellarium cranked up several times looking at stars, but my BlackBerry is far worse when it comes to photographing stars than it is when photographing planets and the Moon. Check it out…price is FREE.99 via the Ubuntu Software Center. FTW.