As I mentioned in the Traffic Blog that I posted this morning, I covered the benefit concert in Peoria last night for a Phoenix-area newspaper.

I’m not going to link to the story here because I don’t want my personal blog address to show up in the referral log of the paper…but if you’re clever and you use google you can probably find it.  Just use the technology that is so great in these NEW TIMES, and look for a Superbowl blog.

I have so much spam you’d think that I was running a restaurant in Hawaii or something. Take a look at this:

And I’m not even joking, I received the bulk of that in the last two days. Tuesday when I went to bed there was about 100 spam messages, and when I woke up on Wednesday there were 4,000!

An evil spammer has been somehow sending emails to people using an email domain where I had set up a catch-all forwarded email address. So ANYTHING@thisdomain.com would get forwarded to my Gmail account.

Once I figured out what was going on I promptly went into my hosting account and changed the catch-all options, and the spam has subsided. Thank god. I don’t even run the website where I had the catch-all email address, so it made sense to just delete myself, but this reminds me of a clever email trick that my pal Mikeh taught me…and the reason I set up the catch-all to begin with.

If you would like to track who is selling your email address and who is responsible for clogging your inbox with spam, just follow these simple steps:

* Setup a catch-all email account. Like I said before, that means that every time someone emails ANYTHING@yourdomain.com it will go to one address. This can be a separate email inbox, or you can just have it forwarded to your main email account.

* Now when you subscribe to services that require an email address, change the prefix of the email address to describe the service. For example, if I was ordering a pizza online from Pizzahut.com I am required to submit an email address. I would enter Pizzahut@whatsomewouldcalllies.com.

* Then when I receive spam messages I can see which address it was sent to. If I get a piece of spam sent to Pizzahut@whatsomewouldcalllies.com then I know that Pizza Hut has sold my email address.

Clever, right?

This is my first video blog. I’m still experimenting with video quality and I’ll have to work out some of those kinks before my 2nd video…don’t be too critical.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLt-QGUxA7Y[/youtube]

This video blog covers: living in Queen Creek, driving to Peoria, American Idol, Sanjaya Malakar, Jordin Sparks, Chris Richardson, Melinda Doolittle and The Jordin Sparks Celebrity Gala.

It’s Wednesday y’all!

FlipText.net – ˙looɔ sı sıɥʇ ʎɥʍ ʍouʞ ʇ,uop ı.  FlipText allows you to write text upside down.  I can’t actually figure out why this is useful yet, but I think one day it may come in handy.

Double Killer – This program will search your computer files for duplicates.  It compares name, size, modification, date, and content.  Free up some of your hard disk space, and tidy up your music or picture collections.

Avocadolite Farm – I don’t know if I should thank him or kill him.  Brian shared this little game with me, and it is ridiculously addicting.

Google Image Labeler – This is a “game” that has you label images from all over the net.  The pair you up with another labeler and you have to match labels.  And while you are playing the “game” you are improving the Google Image Search database.

WordPress Garage – If you’re blogging on a WordPress blog I’d suggest you check out this kick-ass blog that is dedicated to all things WordPress.   When I found it I had to dedicate about 2 hours to browsing through the entire archive.  A great collection of themes, plugins, and solutions to common WordPress problems.

At the NFL Experience on Sunday we stopped at the Home Depot booth and took a photo that was retrievable later on the net.  There were a few booths that offered this service (some Companies like Pepsi even printed you a copy of the picture), and I think that it’s a really good giveaway.  Think about how little this souvenir cost The Home Depot.

The web is headed toward more and more video content, so I’ve been experimenting with moving pictures. Here’s my first video blog; it is a how-to video that teaches you how to make sugar-free, super-sweet, cotton candy punch. Really easy. Really tasty.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5squK0B-pI[/youtube]

There are two quick pieces of info I should tell you right away: 1.) I’m an athiest. 2.) My mom is a very dedicated Christian.

I’m pretty honest with my parents about just about everything, but for some reason I’ve never been able to tell my mom that I don’t believe in her god. My brain always goes into risk management mode. What’s the cost/benefit analysis? What would improve if I told her? What would get worse?

I can’t think of how me telling her that I thought her religion is the opiate of the people would benefit either of us. So I just keep my mouth shut. When she tells me about what her bible says, or when she talks about homosexuals (she knows that I am one, but still talks about “gay and lesbian people”) I just bite my tongue and let it pass. On the few occasions when I’ve actually spoken up, it usually turns into a big fight where her feelings get hurt (she’s not a great debater, really).

So I was listening to the song Let Me Borrow That Top by the Comedian/Singer Kelly and there is a pretty funny line in that song that could totally solve all of the religious arguments here in the Lawson Castle:

I’ve already been to heaven
I’ve already been to heaven
I’ve already been to heaven
And after five minutes I was like, “Let’s Go!”

How would Mom respond to that one?

Here’s the audio for the entire song. It’s an odd one, but it will totally get stuck in your head.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

If you haven’t heard of Kelly, she is a bitchy character created by the Canadian comedian Liam Sullivan. The sassy “betch” is also responsible for SHOES.

I was reading on PerezHilton.com about the newest Paula Abdul song, and I decided to do a little illegal downloading and to check it out for myself. I’d agree with Perez’s take:

It’s actually really good.

Shocking, right?

Sure, the vocals are manipulated beyond belief, but so are Britney‘s!

The song sounds like something that should have been on Spears’ last album or Janet‘s new one.

It’s called Dance Like There’s No Tomorrow. It premiered on Seacrets‘s radio show, and it is bound to go to #1 for Abdul and Jackson on the club play charts.

They may even play this on the radio! It should be played. It’s better than a lot of the crap on radio right now.

When I was downloading some of Abdul’s stuff, I realized that there were quite a few really good Paula songs from the ’80s that I didn’t have in my collection. In fact, there were quite a few songs sung by 1980s Divas that weren’t in my collection.

Today I did some downloading and compiled what I would like to call “The Ultimate ’80s Diva Compilation.”

1. Forever Your Girl – Paula Abdul
2. Straight Up – Paula Abdul
3. Opposites Attract – Paula Abdul
4. Cold-hearted Snake - Paula Abdul
5. Borderline – Madonna
6. Like a Virgin – Madonna
7. Material Girl – Madonna
8. Dress You Up – Madonna
9. Like a Prayer - Madonna
10. Saving All My Love For You – Whitney Houston
11. Greatest Love of All – Whitney Houston
12. I Wanna Dance With Somebody – Whitney Houston
13. What Have You Done For Me Lately? - Janet Jackson
14. Escapade – Janet Jackson
15. Miss You Much – Janet Jackson
16. What’s Love Got To Do With It? - Tina Turner
17. Rhythm is Gonna Get You – Gloria Estefan
18. 1-2-3 – Gloria Estefan
19. Girls Just Wanna Have Fun – Cyndi Lauper
20. Time After Time – Cyndi Lauper
21. True Colors – Cyndi Lauper

I was tempted to add a little Debbie Gibson to this list; I consider her stuff to be a solid 80s sound, but I’m not too sure she fits the diva roll.

What did I miss?

I spent the morning with my Dad and Nephew at the NFL Experience adjacent to the University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale where Super Bowl XLII will take place next Sunday. Here are my photos:

I’m really high right now.

The normal blood-glucose level should be between 70 and 150 mg/dl. Since moving to Arizona (and relinquishing my health insurance) I’ve had trouble getting below 200 mg/dl. 2 weeks ago I tested over 300 three days in a row, so I decided to fork out the aspartame-sweetened dough and go visit a doctor.

Have you paid cash for a visit to the doctors? Shit. Have you paid cash for prescription drugs? Fuck.

I love this country, but our health care system leaves much to be desired.

Anyway the doctor doubled my metformin prescription, and added 20mg of glipizide to my daily regimen. I’m praying (even though I’m an atheist) that oral medications will do the trick. I’m not really looking forward to insulin injections.

Has anyone had any luck with Metformin or Glipizide?