Perfectly Petersen

Grand Unveiling of The Expressionist

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After a month of planning, writing, editing, and designing, my partners and I are proud to announce the grand opening of TheExpressionist.com!

Tampa, and many other places, has a severe lack of places for up-and-coming artists to display their work and get word out about their art. We aim to fix that by connecting artists and the public to form a symbiotic relationship where people looking for new art come and where new artists come to get in the spotlight.

For example, to the right is Lindsey Walden, a vibrant hat-maker from Miami. She makes custom hats from clients’ ideas or knick-knacks and every one of them makes a statement about her and the wearer. Her MySpace page is her main media outlet, though she does have a website in process. Through us, we hope that a label or prominent celebrity will see her work and give her the opportunity to shine for more people.

Our first print publication is coming down the pipes soon, and we will also be offering custom website design for comedians, bands, and artists who need a presence on the Internet.

If you know any artists who would be interested in getting some publicity, please send them our way to http://www.theexpressionist.com/contact-us/.

Roger Federer; If Only There Was No Net

We watched Wimbledon today. I was rooting for Nadal to finally beat him in at big tournament. It seemed like an awful lot of net shots from both of them, but I’d say that Federer would have won if it wasn’t for the net being there, and Nadal would have won faster if it had been on clay and could stop falling down.

All in all, I thought it was a great match and could not believe some of the volleys that were kept alive by incredible shots. They had a whole ESPN Top 10 plays in one match, including the President of NBC Sports picking his nose coming in at #1.

Windows XP Crap; Not My Fault

Yesterday I finally got around to backing up a client’s laptop hard drive onto DVDs for him. The laptop had motherboard issues and was 4 years old, so I simply removed the hard drive to hook up to my computer and burn some discs. Simple for a geek, right?

That’s what I thought.

Hooking it up to one cable, the computer wouldn’t boot: no operating system found. I tried another, same thing. I tried the last one, and I got a blue screen of death and an immediate reboot before it ever logged me in. I tried going into Safe Mode, and that froze for 20 minutes. Giving up, I slapped my stuff back together and turned on my computer to get my own, permanent error of no operating system found.

I’m sure it has to do with mixing old drive technology and new drive technology and will require a new hard drive to back up all my “little” drives, and then will still require another Windows installation to set everything in place. Gorgeous thought I had done something foolish with my system, and I was starting to wonder myself. Then, when I was lamenting in my chats while trying to get the darn thing back up, a friend said the same thing had happened to their brother when he tried to rescue a laptop hard drive. I didn’t feel quite as bad then.

I was able to get the computer to boot again, though only with the Windows CD in there. I’ll take it, for now. I have too much work to do to be concerned with making it perfect. I guess I’ll just be using my laptop more.

I am seriously considering trying to get OS X on this system after reading Lifehackers’ “Hackintosh” articles: Hack Attack: Build a Hackintosh Mac for Under $800 and
How To: Install OS X on Your Hackintosh PC, No Hacking Required

Hello, Emergency? Yes, I’d Like to Report the Moon

Someone in Wales is about to get in trouble with the local authorities for making an emergency 999 call to investigate a UFO. When the police arrived and were pointed in the direction of the shocking anomaly, they discovered the poor moron was referring to the moon, which had been hovering up there for over 30 minutes.

Here is the transcript of the call from the Telegraph:

Control: “South Wales Police, what’s your emergency?”

Caller: “It’s not really. I just need to inform you that across the mountain there’s a bright stationary object.”

Control: “Right.”

Caller: “If you’ve got a couple of minutes perhaps you could find out what it is? It’s been there at least half an hour and it’s still there.”

Control: “It’s been there for half an hour. Right. Is it actually on the mountain or in the sky?”

Caller: “It’s in the air.”

Control: “I will send someone up there now to check it out.”

Caller: “OK.”

After the police patrol car arrives, the script reveals the exchange between the control room and the police officer sent to the scene.

Control: “Alpha Zulu 20, this object in the sky, did anyone have a look at it?”

Officer: “Yes, it’s the moon. Over.”

Me and WordPress 2.6 Beta 1

I don’t know what it is with me and testing software nowadays, but here I go again installing an unreleased version of WordPress. I did it with 2.5 RC2 and 2.4 RC1. It looks like I’m addicted. So far, I really like the improvements and can’t wait to put up my gallery pages. That nice feature is the main reason I switched to this theme today.

I hope you all enjoy it and will come back on Monday for my big announcement of a new site project I’ve been working on with Jason Dowd and Justin Beale.

Happy Birthday, Liz!

Today is Liz Strauss’ birthday. Birthdays are fantastic days of reflection and celebration in my family, and I hope you have a fabulous day yourself.

I just found out about this special day about 7pm while I was sitting in class and my eyes perked up a bit. My mind flashed to this post and it became a creation in an instant. I didn’t have time to put together anything elaborate, but I hope this has some meaning to all of us who know Liz. Cue story.

The day was December 2006, and I had just stumbled across Liz’s blog through a link from some of the big blogs I started delving into in order to learn how to write better content and reach more readers. I saw her hypothetical questions and a post by some guy called Chris Cree. Skimming some more, I found SOBs and B.A.D. bloggers, too.

Then I did it. I left a comment.

My blogging life changed. More »

Another Day in the Waiting Room

Warning: I am in fine form today. My words are sharp and on target, though far from politically correct. If you want watered-down PC crap, go somewhere else, because I don’t subscribe to that mumbo jumbo.

Today as I walked out of the elevator on the third floor of my doctor’s office, I knew I was in for quite an entertaining wait. There was already a line in the hallway of grumpy old farts, and I do mean grumpy. I was a bit ticked at myself for not being first today, but I soon realized that would not have been possible with this crowd. (Also, I’d like to be clear that not everyone in my book gets the opportunity to be called a “fart” by me; just the crotchety, idle seniors who would be labeled “jerk,” “meanie,” and several derogatory terms in their younger days. They are afforded the niceties of being labeled a “fart” by attaining an amazing age despite their lack of social grace.)

Scanning the hallway, the first one in line was an old bow-legged man, as wide as he was tall, shifting back and forth, hands in pockets, with his wife standing statuesque next to him with her arms crossed. Next to them was a white-haired woman sitting on the floor spouting off her dislike of the situation non-stop.

Thankfully there were two more people buffering me from them, because I sincerely wanted the freedom to laugh to myself over their antics, and they didn’t disappoint my desire for premium material.

The seated woman just kept coming with volley after volley of anti-doctor, anti-society, and anti-Bush statements that took everything I had to both not laugh out loud and tell her how unfounded and idiotic her ideas and feelings were.

More »