In the midst of buying a home

So let me tell you why owning a home is the American Dream; it’s because getting there is a nightmare! The home buying process has been hectic and I think I saw just about every house I could afford within a 25-mile radius before narrowing it down to the last 3. From there, the neighborhood became an issue with the necessity of needing to walk my dogs twice a day. I don’t want to be walking them in the ghetto after a late night kung fu class. After a house is chosen the fun negotiation times begin. Sigh, then, after that is all said and done, the inspection comes. Seriously, if the seller isn’t willing to work with me on some of the necessities that I need fixed, I have no problem walking away. I can’t afford to be dropping more dough into this if an MBA is in my near future.

Obama at Arizona State University Commencement

Today is going to be a great day. I am going to get off of work early to see my cousin as well as my god-daughter’s mother graduate from Arizona State University, my Alma Matter. But here some icing on the cake, President Barack Obama is going to speaking during the ceremony. In a kind of odd turn of events, ASU even awarded President Obama with a scholarship in his name called the President Obama Scholars program. It is neat, because apparently, Obama is said to be speaking at Notre Dame as well. Now here is the story as I have heard it:

1 – Obama announces that he will be speaking at ASU and Notre Dame Commencement Ceremonies
2 – Notre Dame offers President Obama an honorary degree
3 – ASU says Obama has not yet proven himself as a worthy president and will not receive a degree
4 – Students and communities are outraged in Arizona
5 – ASU then creates the Obama Scholars program
6 – Notre Dame, known as a Catholic University, has crowds protesting over the President’s visit because of his stance on abortion

Now my facts may not be all encompassing, but like I said that is how I have heard them. Regardless of all that is happening though, I’m excited to see the President of the United States of America speak tomorrow at Arizona State University.

Chicago Bulls and Boston Celtics

Talk about an amazing series. The Bull and Celtics had a crazy triple-overtime game last night which marked the fourth game in this six game series that went into OT. Game seven games are always nuts but I’m not sure if they can top the happenings of last night with Ray Allen hitting key shots and Brad Miller of the Bulls single-handedly tying the game in the final minutes of regulation to erase a five-point deficit. Game seven is on Saturday and begs everyone to turn their attention to the tube. Although these bulls aren’t the ones of old, they definitely know how to put on a show.

NFL Draft – Bring on 2009

Wow, what a great draft this year has been. I can’t wait until these young guns are put into the limelight to see how they perform. I wonder if any rookie in the NFL will have the same kind of year that Derrick Rose of the Chicago Bulls is having. He is clutch this year in the playoffs so far. Okay but back to football, with Stafford going to the Lions, the Niners getting a future Hall of Famer Wider Receiver and Beanie Wells going to Arizona, this year seems to be very promising. In between managing the late surge in sales of our diabetic socks at the Diabetic Shoes HuB, I would constantly check ESPN for the draft status. USC has put out some strong linebackers and it looks like the NFL’s favorite position this year in the draft has been Defensive Backs. I know that most rookies won’t see the field at least in the beginning of this year, but I can’t wait to see how this class reacts in the field of dreams.

Sorry It’s Been So Long

I apologize for not posting in this blog in such a long time but I’ve been so darn busy with work, the HuB, and life in general. Life has been great but a bit too busy to fully enjoy. I’m about to fly out of town to help my family settle into a new area. Then I get back late Sunday night and it’s back onto the work-week.

Aside from work and the HuB though, I’ve been spending a lot of time on Twitter lately. It has a ton of great SEO information if you just follow the right people. I have gotten caught up in the Twitter craze. It’s just so darn addicting.

Good Ole’ Page, Arizona

I just got back from Page, Arizona on a great trip back home to visit some friends and my parents. This trip was a good one because some good family friends threw a retirement party for my parents who are giving up the restaurant on Wednesday. It was definitely good to see everyone and such a relief to know that my parents are finally going to be able to relax. Oh also, internet evangelist Vint Cerf at Google talked about vacationing in Page, AZ on the trip that sparked his interest in mobile internet. Vint talked about my small hometown during his keynote at SMX West in Santa Clara this year.

Having Security Issues?

One thing about today is that you can never be too safe. I know that we have recently had our fair share of stories involving theft and some of us have even lived those stories. In fact, my own Kung Fu school which teaches martial arts in Phoenix, Arizona was just broken into. How crazy is that? Someone was insane enough to break into a martial arts school and vandalize it. But here is the really crazy part, they got away with it. Nothing was broken other than the front door lock but they ran off with plenty of weapons. It had to be a former student or someone that has been into the school before though because some of the advanced black belts keep certain weapons like their favorite straight-sword or favorite spear in certain corners hidden away in the changing area. Those weapons were included in the ones that were stolen.

I had suggested to my instructor that he use real-time remote surveillance and not just motion sensors because while setting off an alarm may get the police there in a hurry, a visual is always a better piece to work with. I think it is being highly considered and the new alarm system should be in by tomorrow if it’s not already. Sigh, now I’ll be able to sleep soundly knowing that my favorite broadsword will be in the school the next time I show up, unless another black belt finds it before our training session.

Obama To Speak at ASU Commencement

May 13th, 2009, it is going to be a great day for the city of Phoenix, Arizona, but especially for students and families attending Commencement at Arizona State University. I just heard about this at the end of the week last week and I finally have a chance to blog about it. This is some pretty interesting news and as an ASU Alum, it makes me feel proud of my Alma Matter. The campus must have made a good impression on President Obama. I know our house won’t disappoint anytime soon.

Kung Fu, Where Have You Gone?

Ok so a more appropriate title for this post should be “Where have I gone” because I haven’t been the best of students lately. I’ve just been so dang busy at work (which in this day in age is a luxury) and besides my wanting to wind down at the end of the day, I have two dogs who need some exercise, a phenomenal girlfriend who needs some lovin, and a diabetic footwear site to run. And I’ll be blatantly honest here, I’ve been so caught up in the Twitter craze lately. That site just has so much dang useful information compiling in there.

So at the end of the day, I lay in my bed, a little more out of shape by the week and missing Kung Fu. But don’t worry, I’ll be back, oh yes, I will be back.

Phoenix Suns and the Cleveland Cavs – March 12th

Now here’s a hot ticket, so what if the Suns aren’t doing so hot right now, they still have one of the best point guards to ever play the game (my boy Steve Nash) leading the fray and the presence down low on the block always commands respect. And then, there’s LeBron, the man-child. It’s always a treat when King James comes to town. The Cavs will be here on the 12th of March and I’m looking forward to this game. I may try to talk my girlfriend into going and if she does, I’ll try getting a room at the Quality Inn downtown Phoenix hotel to get away from our places for a night. Maybe that time alone will make up for me getting a chance to act like a loud fumbling idiot at the game.

Root canal

Okay, so it wasn’t as bad as I thought, but holey moley root canals are not the funnest experience. I had one done actually, the only painful part was the initial shot(s) but as soon as the numbness sets in, it’s just a poke here and there with the crazy drilling going on. It only took 30 minutes but the guy was great. He actually made going to the dentist not so dreadful. I can see these days how no matter what you’re profession is, it takes a lot more that attending a New York City private prep school, a private Christian boarding school or even an Ivy League University. These days it takes as much personality as it does brains. It takes a little bit of personality and a lot of marketing. I walked out of the office thinking that this was definitely a person I’d love to recommend and it was because he did more than what he was supposed to. He made the office visit peaceful and enjoyable by engaging in my interests and finding common chatter to talk about. Anyway, the point of this post is to make yourself stand out from the crowd, get yourself noticed and get those word-of-mouth referrals.

Getting Rid of Duplicate Content

So if you’ve been in the field of SEO for a few years, this problem may seem familiar to you. How many of you have websites out there that show www.home.com, home.com, and home.com/index all going to your homepage with that exact URL in the address bar? If this is your site, you may want to take note as each of those URLs shows a separate version of your homepage. To search engines this can be a problem as each different one poses an issue of duplicate content to the search engines. What about session ID’s at the end of a URL, ugh. Luckily, there is a canonical tag to show the search engines what the real page should be. The code to the tag should be placed in between the and the tags of your site. Here is the code:

<head>
…
<link rel=”canonical” href=”your URL”/>
…
</head>

It is very important to remember the “/” in the code at the end. Now with this, you can perform a canonical test to make sure your pages resolve and wah-lah, your issue of duplicate content should be solved. If anyone else has ever toyed with the tag yet, let us hear about it.

Pa Kua Sun-Moon Forks

Pa Kua, a.k.a. Bagua is my favorite martial arts style. The great thing is that this weekend, my Shaolin Grandmaster is in town teaching the Pa Kua Sun-Moon Forks fighting form. Although I’ve seen the form before, that won’t make it any easier to learn. It is a very complex and advanced fighting form that involves the circular, whirling power of Pa Kua with a unique weapon. We just had testing at the school tonight where quite a few students advanced in belt rank including four new black belts. I can’t wait for the challenging form tomorrow.

Hanging out with my little brother

If you aren’t involved with your local Big Brothers Big Sisters Organization, I strongly recommend it. I hung out with my little brother yesterday and we went out and tossed around the pigskin for a bit. After a while, I had remembered that he told me he liked to kick so we had some practice kicking field goals over a soccer goal post. Never mind the annoyance of going to get the ball after every kick, it was fun because my little brother’s kicks were getting better and better as the night went on. I taught him to kick it high and hard and although I’m not the greatest field goal kicker of my time, he actually ended up having a stronger boot than me. It was pretty neat seeing him get excited.

Back in Town from a Week of Trips

So after the phenomenal conference of SMX West where I learned a ton and interacted with some of the great figures of the industry, I had a late night arrival on Thursday and turned around to take another trip out on Friday. I had planned a Valentine’s weekend trip with my girlfriend for a chance to be alone and get away from the valley together. We did some shopping and I even took her to one of her favorite shoes, Phantom. Phantom is a Vegas version of Phantom of the Opera and I think she enjoyed it.

Now, it’s back to business tough.