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I hosted my first Halloween Party last night. We had a great turnout - probably around a dozen adults and close to twenty kids. Most everyone was in costume and we all had a great time. We are laying low tonight, just watching a movie (Legend of Sleepy Hollow).

We have had some lousy weather the last week, so a lot of the outdoor activities Connie planned had to be moved indoor. She had designed a very creative scavenger hunt. The kids had to find all kinds of clues and gather bones from a skeleton, then assemble the skeleton, the design an outfit for it. All the kids did a great job. Connie did as well

Today we visited a pumpkin patch (yes - too late in the year this year). It was a chilly day, but it was much sunnier. We picked up about 10 pumpkins of various sizes. Carving is what we are up to tomorrow night.

Happy Halloween to everyone.

It has been too long since I have had my music studio equipment hooked up and running. The last time I really had it all hanging together was when I lived in Brooklyn Park, MN (the golf course house, for those of you in MN who remember). Since then I lived in downtown Minneapolis (never quite got it all set up there), an apartment in Ann Arbor (never even got out of boxes there), and in my current home in Brighton, MI.

I would like to say the motivation is all my idea, but what really got me started was our preparation for a Halloween party. My studio is in the basement and it has been in a dismembered state. Guitar cases all around, wires all around. But last night, as Connie was trying to put the room together for the party, I started to sort out my stuff.

Tonight I am going to start wiring everything back up. I might be able to get it completely done in one evening, but I doubt it. I never can seem to get the MIDI portion set up right the first time. Fortunately I have a lot of room to spread things out. I remember doing this in a small aparment in MN; It was challenging, but at least I got it done.

Maybe if I get it set up in time, I can play some scary Halloween music for our guests.

Š

As if last week wasn’t a great sports weekend, Michigan sports exceeded even last week’s results.

Michigan beats Penn State in Happy Valley. Even the road, the night game, and the sea of white couldn’t stop the Wolverines. I had to watch the game delayed a little bit (via DVR). The Michigan defense looked especially great in this game. I am going to the game this Saturday vs. Iowa. Iowa is coming off a defeat to Indiana (ouch!), so I know they are going to be ready to try to upset the now #2 ranked Wolverines.

The Tigers - what can I say. I thought they might let game 4 slip away from them, but they battled back. I ended up hearing the end of the game on AM radio (we were visiting some friends at a campsite). The radio was crackling, I could barely make it out. I knew the Tigers managed two singles with two out. I knew Magglio was at the plate. The airwaves helped me out just in time. As Ordonez hit the ball, the radio was clear, and it was clear to me instantly that the Tigers are on their way to the World Series. And to think, I was just happy to beat the Yankees :-).

Finally, the lowly Lions (previously winless) managed to pull out a win against Buffalo. I’ll be honest I didn’t watch the first three quarters. The Lions have been losing in the 4th quarter lately, so it took guts to stomach even that.

So this weekend the Tigers start the World Series (at home) - the NLCS is still underway (hopefully tiring out both the Cards and the Mets). The Wolverines try to maintain their unbeaten status against a previously ranked Iowa, and the Lions play the Jets (I will admit I had to look that up!).

Let’s see if we can have three great sports weekends in a row!

What a great weekend for Michigan sports (ok, if only the Lions were transformed - - or didn’t exist!).

The Tigers eliminate the Yankees and send all the MLB pundits into a tizzy; the Twins are eliminated after the Tigers handed them the AL Central crown, and Michigan beats up on Michigan State.

Connie and I attended an event at a brewery in Brighton. They had live music, some games, and several different beers. I tried Tomboy Red, which was awesome. After the event we headed to O’Callaghans Irish Pub in Milford where I grossed out Connie by ordering Ahi Tuna. We watched the Tigers win game 3 while eating dinner.

I have been using a site monitoring tool called Crazy Egg the last week or so. It is a nifty way to see where users go and what they click on while visiting your site. My site doesn’t get a huge amount of traffic, so it’s free (<5000 hits per month).

You start out by visiting www.crazyegg.com and get a user ID. You then place a snippet in the pages you would like to track. When a user visits the page and clicks on a link, it updates the stats on Crazy Egg. When you login to check your results you get them in the form of:

• Visual + (plus) signs to indicate where the click(s) occurred (the Overlay)
• A table of links and how often they were click (the List)
• A graphical representation (the Heatmap) of hot and cool spots on your sites (based on click frequency)

I think it is a pretty cool was to find out how user’s navigate your site. For example, most CrazyEggers found that very few users ever click on the links at the bottom of a page.

As much of an early adopter as I am, I never carried around a USB flash drive. A year or so ago I started carrying a 1GB USB on my keychain. I started to use it more and more.

I was reading about the U3 Smart Drives and I purchased a Verbatim 4GB model. It uses a small amount of the drive for the O/S. When plugged into a desktop or laptop, a menu very similar to the Windows Start menu is accessible from a task tray icon.

You can save desktop settings, browser favorites, etc. from a program named migo. You can install apps written specifically for the U3, but I think I will use it more to store my data as I move from machine to machine. I have three desktops and three laptops not to mention plugging into other systems at work and other places.

I still have to give this thing more of a test drive, but it seems to work nicely. If all else fails, it still is a 4GB flash drive! Oh, it also has security to protect your data in case you drop it somewhere.

Ok, after having my DOTTEXT blog hammered by poker and seedy bots, I have decided to move all my blogging to WordPress. I had good luck with WordPress this summer for my vacation blog.

I know that many of you that may run across my blog know that I have tendency to not post for months on end. I am going to try to change that. I have a lot happening in my life, both in and out of work. I think it’s time that I get back to this. Setting it up is fun. Let’s see if I can make posting as much fun and putting this all together.