Oceanside 2010

Click the photo, then click Slideshow

Portland, Estonia

Found an interesting quirk in Google local search today. I was looking for a particular company's placement (HTG) in Google local results. Google correctly spotted that I was in Portland, OR, and showed the following:





Clicking on "More results near Portland, OR" produced the following:





If you zoom out, you'll discover it's showing Estonia. Note that they get the sponsored results right, though...Portland.

Press Release for new Austin Property Management Website

Just distributed this press release for my client, Prime Properties of Austin, which was picked up by the following sites:

• 24-7 Press Release


• Real Estate Today


• World News Report


• EIN Presswire


• Consumer News Today


• Inbox Robot


• News Blaze


• Dotcom News Articles


• Dotcom PR News


• Internet News Articles


• Internet PR News


• Construction News Articles


• Construction PR News


• Industry News Articles


• Industry PR News


• Business News Articles


• Business PR News


• Real Estate PR News


• Entrepreneur News Articles


• Entrepreneur PR News


• Ecommerce News Articles


• Ecommerce PR News


• New Websites News Articles


• New Websites PR News


• Supplychain News Articles


• Real Estate News Articles


• Small Business News Articles


• Small Business PR News


• San Francisco Chronicle


• Houston Chronicle


• Chicago Daily Herald


• The Miami Herald


• NewsOK Oaklahoma News


• UPI.com News


• Columbus Dispatch


• Newsday


• SignOnSanDiego


• Social Picks

More Press for Sunspots Safaris

The press release we just sent out announcing the new Trophy Red Stag New Zealand Hunting website was picked up by a lot of sites:

• 24-7 Press Release


• Travel Industry Today


• World News Report


• EIN Presswire


• Consumer News Today


• Inbox Robot


• News Blaze


• Lifestyle News Articles


• Lifestyle PR News


• Tourism News Articles


• Internet News Articles


• Internet PR News


• New Websites News Articles


• New Websites PR News


• Industry News Articles


• Industry PR News


• Hospitality News Articles


• Hospitality PR News


• Firearms News Articles


• Firearms PR News


• Environment News Articles


• Environment PR News


• Mens News Articles


• Mens PR News


• Sports News Articles


• Sports PR News


• San Francisco Chronicle


• Houston Chronicle


• Chicago Daily Herald


• The Miami Herald


• NewsOK Oaklahoma News


• UPI.com News


• Columbus Dispatch


• Newsday


• SignOnSanDiego


• Social Picks

Thanks, 24-7 Press Release! :-)

Hub Pages

Added a Hub Page for red stag hunting in New Zealand.

About Us pages for Sunspots Safaris

Added two AboutUs pages for Sunspots:

• Big Game Hunting packages for New Zealand


• Trophy Red Stag Hunting in New Zealand

Just launched Red Stag Hunting New Zealand site

Just completed and launched the first of our game-specific micro-sites for Sunspots Safaris: www.redstaghuntingnewzealand.com.

My first cross-country flight: Troutdale - Redmond and back

Click the photo, then click Slideshow

Custom wheels

Funny aviation one-liners

'It is generally inadvisable to eject directly over the area you just bombed.'
- US.Air Force Manual -

'Yea, Though I Fly Through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, I Shall Fear No Evil. For I am at 50,000 Feet and Climbing.'
- Sign over SR71 Wing Ops-

'You've never been lost until you've been lost at Mach 3.'
- Paul F. Crickmore (SR71 test pilot)-

'The only time you have too much fuel is when you're on fire.'
-Unknown Author-

'If the wings are traveling faster than the fuselage it has to be a helicopter -- and therefore, unsafe.'
- Fixed Wing Pilot-

'When one engine fails on a twin-engine airplane, you always have enough power left to get you to the scene of the crash.'
-Multi-Engine Training Manual-

'Without ammunition, the Air Force is just an expensive flying club.'
-Unknown Author-

'If you hear me yell;"Eject, Eject, Eject!", the last two will be echos.'
If you stop to ask "Why?", you'll be talking to yourself, because by then you'll be the pilot.'
-Pre-flight Briefing from a Canadian F104 Pilot-

The three most common expressions (or famous last words) in military aviationare:'Did you feel that?' 'What's that noise?' and'Oh S...!'
-Authors Unknown-

'Airspeed, altitude and brains. Two are always needed to successfully complete the flight.'
-Basic Flight Training Manual-

'Flying the airplane is more important than radioing your plight to a person on the ground incapable of understanding or doing anything about it.'
- Emergency Checklist-

'The Piper Cub is the safest airplane in the world; it can just barely kill you.'
- Attributed to Max Stanley ( Northrop test pilot) -

Flickr profile update

Managed to update Sunspots Safari's profile on Flickr to include a backlink :-)

Sunspots Safaris in Google LBC

Now, even Google Local Business Center knows about Sunspots Safaris :-)

New Sunspots Safaris page on AboutUs.org

Just finished putting up a page for Sunspots Safaris on AboutUs.org (another Portland-based internet company, in fact):

www.aboutus.org/BigGameHuntingNewZealand.com

Kimihia Hunting Safaris photos

Just added a Flickr album for Kimihia hunting packages in New Zealand.

Webshots

Added an album of New Zealand hunting photos at Webshots.

Sunspots Safaris press release

Sent out a press release about the new big game hunting site I built for Sunspots this morning, and it's been picked up a lot of places already:

• 24-7 Press Release


• Travel Industry Today


• Marketing & Advertising Industry Today


• Inbox Robot


• EIN News


• Consumer News Today


• News Blaze


• Lifestyle News Articles


• Lifestyle PR News


• Tourism News Articles


• Leisure News Articles


• Leisure PR News


• Recreation News Articles


• Recreation PR News


• Internet News Articles


• Internet PR News


• New Websites News Articles


• New Websites PR News


• Industry News Articles


• Industry PR News


• Sports News Articles


• Sports PR News


• Outdoor Sports News Articles


• Outdoor Sports PR News


• Transportation News Articles


• Transportation PR News


• Tourism PR News


• Travel News Articles


• Travel PR News


• San Francisco Chronicle


• Houston Chronicle


• Chicago Daily Herald


• The Miami Herald


• NewsOK Oaklahoma News


• UPI.com News


• Columbus Dispatch


• Newsday


• SignOnSanDiego


• Social Picks

New Zealand Hunting albums on Flickr

Just added these photo albums for Rodney's new hunting site:

• Lilydale Wilderness Hunting


• Chris Jolly


• NZ Backcountry Guides


• Remuera


• Alpine Red


• Waiau-Toa Station


• Wilderness Quest

Tablecloth trick - BMW 1000 RR

Loving my new plane cover!

Just got my new airplane cover from www.planecover.com, and I'm REALLY impressed with the fit, the materials, fasteners, etc. It's really first-rate, fit perfectly, good quality heavy-duty zippers and snaps, and looks great. Easy to put on too. Nice embroidery of my plane's tail number on the cover and the cowl plugs. And Jim, the owner of the company, definitely has a sense of humor as you can see if you read a bit of his site.

New Zealand hunting website

Just finished launching a new website for my buddy Rodney at Sunspots International...it's for New Zealand hunting packages. He's got all sorts of cool packages put together for hunting red stag, chamois, himalayan bull tahr, etc....all those animals that the thoughtful European settlers brought with them before they realized that New Zealand doesn't have any predators big enough to control those populations :-) So hunting has become very popular, not only because there's a plethora of game available, but it's also some pretty spectacular countryside...check out some of the photo galleries from inside the packages on the site.

Barnstormers newsletter

Got my pic of Alphonse Island, Seychelles in the Barnstormers newsletter.

My new toy

Click the photo, then click Slideshow

Bringing the plane home from Auburn, WA

Click the photo, then click Slideshow

A beautiful day for flying

Click the photo, then click Slideshow

It’s time to upgrade from the Windows 7 Release Candidate

I got this from Microsoft today (I'd installed the Windows 7 release candidate last summer):

"While most people who tested Windows 7 have now moved to the final version, some are still running the Release Candidate. If you haven’t moved yet, it’s time to replace the RC. Starting on March 1, 2010 your PC will begin shutting down every two hours. Your work will not be saved during the shutdown. The Windows 7 RC will fully expire on June 1, 2010. Your PC running the Windows 7 RC will continue shutting down every two hours and your files won’t be saved during shutdown. In addition, your wallpaper will change to a solid black background with a persistent message on your desktop. You’ll also get periodic notifications that Windows isn’t genuine. That means your PC may no longer be able to obtain optional updates or downloads requiring genuine Windows validation."

What's funny about this is that as far as I can see, continuing to run the release candidate after March 1 is different from using the final version (which I've been running for a few months now) in just 2 ways:

#1 the live version shuts down about every 8 hours, instead of 2 hours

#2 it shuts down with a blue screen rather than a black one.

:-p

Valentines Day 2010

Click the photo, then click Slideshow

Barrett-Jackson 2010

Click the photo, then click Slideshow

My first flying lesson!

Google Local reviews - first try at professional reviewers has bugs

Google appears to be taking a first step at incorporating professional bloggers/reviewers in their list of reviews for a given business. Unfortunately it's got a pretty big bug, it seems. They're showing the home page of a local newspaper editor's (Matt Davis) blog 9 times as "reviews" for my client, V Shape Fitness (a personal trainer here in Portland). Matt is a client, and did write about him, but...

Full details in my post on the latest bug in Google Local Search.

Windows 7....the 7 is for Blue Screens

Now I know why they named this version of Windows "7"...it's for the number of times it barfs up a blue screen of death each day :-(

EFR 2009 - the Extended Version

Click the photo, then click Slideshow

Fossil OR, Crane Hot Springs OR, Reno NV, Ely NV, Evanston WY (via Utah), Ketchum ID, Salmon ID, Missoula MT, Walla Walla WA via Lolo Pass, Castlegar BC, then back home.

RingEnvy.com tries a new spamming trick

We got a little traffic from this site today, and for various reasons I decided to poke my nose in a little deeper...and was quite entertained by the spammy trick I discovered.

It seems RingEnvy.com is scraping (yes, stealing) content from Yahoo Answers in order to generate lots of pages of juicy content for the search engines to digest and index, in the hopes of driving more traffic.

So that's nothing new, lots of sites try tricks like this. What made it interesting was the trick they used to massage the content so that the search engines didn't see it as duplicate content--a copy of what they'd already seen on Yahoo Answers.

As far as I can tell, they've fed the Yahoo Answers pages through an electronic translator...twice, once from English to another language, then again to translate back. Because of how rough electronic translation is, you end up with a pile of decent english words, with most of the important search terms preserved, but scramble so it doesn't look much like the original text.

Look at some of the gems that result:

• "My fiance additionally as myself have been pondering about stealing scored equally together in Hawaii, yet we're confused on how it would work."


• "I am carrying a finish matrimony in Key West, FL. we am not sure if we should rewear a grave wear during a matrimony reception."


• "I am unquestionably confused additionally as hopefully somebody who has had the finish wedlock in the past can benefit me!"

Here's the original page in Yahoo Answers:

answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070409162010AAFhR2I

And here's the translated page (for those who weren't tempted to click on "spammy trick" above):

www.ringenvy.com/talk/tag/destination-wedding/

Google Mini: a Disposable Search Engine in a Box

BACKGROUND: Google Mini is essentially an appliance, a mini version of Google that they ship preconfigured on a cheap rackmount webserver, with a light version of Google installed. You can configure it a little to look like your site, and get it to catalog just your site's pages, and then integrate a search box into your website to implement site search. Cool, useful stuff for us webmasters.

We bought a Google Mini box. It lasted a little less than a year before biting the biscuit. So, Google shipped us a new box as it was under warranty. I sort of expect that a webserver would last more like 3-5 years at least, but what the hell, they replaced it. Not real happy about all the extra time I had to put in, but at this point I was OK with the support.

Well, that replacement server lasted less than 3 months before biting the dust. Some sort of software problem that their tech support said was a known issue, but rare, and gave me some steps to go through to get it to run again. No permanent fix, but they thought it would probably not happen again. Not happy, but hey, it's working again so whatever.

That server lasted only 4 more months before failing completely (hardware). Now, they won't do anything to fix it as it's outside of the ORIGINAL Mini's warranty. They want us to buy a new box for full price of $3000. Google Mini support guy John Lowry told me on the phone that these things have a limited lifespan, and so they can't just replace it for free every few months. Huh? I'd expect the cardboard box it came in to last longer than the servers have been lasting!

So of course we're pretty pissed, as their appliances (essentially a webserver with a bit o' Google software on it) are averaging about 6 months total lifespan. Obviously this is way, way under anyone's expectations of how long a computer should last, whether it's a webserver, laptop, or a desktop PC. ESPECIALLY when it's living in a nice, cold, air-conditioned, clean & smooth powered datacenter like this one.

So what can I do? Not much...it's not worth suing them for $3000. But I bet with a little help from some of you readers we can make the Google Mini site the #1 result in Google for searches for disposable search engine. Which is pretty accurate, from our experience.

Monday in Jamaica...dives #1 and #2

Click the photo, then click Slideshow

Cupcakes on the Counter

My mother-in-law, RaeAnn Proost, has just published her 3rd book, Cupcakes on the Counter - a collection of memoirs and heirloom recipes.

Melinda's bench at Otter Crest

Click the photo, then click Slideshow

Update: shifted villas...to the east about a dozen yards

We've settled on Noble House on the Beach, a villa on the north coast of Jamaica between Montego Bay and Round Hill.

New paint for my 1970 Chevy truck

Click the photo, then click Slideshow

Villas in Jamaica

Planning to head to Jamaica for a vacation in June, along with 2 sets of inlaws as well as my 2 year old son, so...started thinking about renting a villa instead of a traditional hotel. For about the same price as 3 rooms at a traditional resort, we'll get our OWN private pool, plus all the common space...grounds....our own section of beach. Plus, most villas in Jamaica come with full staff--not just maid and groundskeeper, but also a cook and a butler!

If, like us, you're traveling as more than just a couple, this is definitely an option to consider (I'm using The Villa Portfolio, a partner of TheBigDay, as my source for luxury villa rentals in Jamaica).

On my short list so far:

• Lime Acre Villa


• Tranquility on the Beach (pictured)


• Serenity on the Beach


• Sea Haven on Discovery Bay

My new bike - 2009 Suzuki GSX-R750

My new bike!

Villas in Tuscany

If you've ever thought about renting a villa in Italy, have a look at the latest newsletter from The Villa Portfolio. This month, they're talking about their favorite villas in Tuscany.

Higher Education?

I got the following error message when replying to an email from a friend of mine who works at Clackamas Community College:

GroupWise Gateway for Exchange Could Not Deliver Message because the adress does not exit in GroupWise AddessBook

THREE (3) spelling mistakes in the one and only sentence in the message. That's gotta be a record. Perhaps Clackamas Community College's IT staff should....uh....GO TO CLASS?????

On top of the obvious problem...since I replied to his email, certainly his Adress DOES exit in the AddessBook! :-)

Spectacular deals in Tahiti, Moorea, Bora Bora

The economy is really hurting tourism in Tahiti right now--see this article. As a result, hotels are offering up screaming deals, and many specials are out there at about half of what they would have cost a year ago.



Here's one of my favorite Tahiti specials from the company I work for (Happy Vacations), combining 5 nights on Moorea and 5 nights on Manihi in the Tuamotu Atolls, for $1995 per person. It includes inter-island airfare only; right now there are specials from Air Tahiti Nui for about $850 per person roundtrip from LAX.

Kiyonari apparently can ride in the wet OK

Must have learned to ride in Oregon!

Melinda's Celebration of Life Service

Melinda, I'll love you forever

Click the photo, then click Slideshow

Luxury Villa Rentals

TheBigDay has partnered up with a very cool new company, The Villa Portfolio, which offers luxury villa rentals for honeymooners, destination weddings, and general vacation travelers looking for something a bit different, a little more personal. I've been working with Robert Eastman, the founder, on this for a bit and am very impressed with what he's got in his collection of fabulous villas around the world.

See the press release.

SEZOENSRALLY (rally, onboard camera)

I miss World Rally Championship on SPEED TV!!!

Rotary Road Rally 2008

Rotary Road Rally 2008

EFR 2008

EFR 2008

Rendezvous: a leisurely tour of Paris by Ferrari

It's a 9-minute tour of Paris by film director Claude Lelouch. The soundtrack is a Ferrari 275 GTB engine (Lelouch's own car), but apparently the car used to film it was actually a Mercedes-Benz 450SEL 6.9. I guess I can accept it's better that he drilled holes in a M-B bumper to mount the camera rather than violating the Ferrari's skin.

If you listen carefully, you'll notice a little overzealous mixing of extra tire squeal in places :-( Lots of arguments about the speeds attained in the film...some experts saying no more than 85mph, while Lelouch claimed something over 200kph (about 120mph).

Apparently there was only 1 "lookout" person put in place for safety--near the Louvre.

More about this film here.

Wedding Registry Etiquette

See my article on Google's Knol regarding wedding registry etiquette.

It pays to play hockey on Air Canada

Seth Godin's blog brought this to my attention (I'm quoting him here):

"Air Canada, which my readers generally concur is the single worst major airline in North America, has a fascinating policy. No oversized duffel bags, regardless of weight, unless they contain hockey gear. No shin guards, you pay $80 a bag."

Actually, for reservations made after May 15th of this year, it's now $100 a bag.

Turns out their policy is a bit more balanced than that...it's not just hockey gear that gets the fee waived, it's also snowboards and skis :-). Full details are here.

Reminds me of a contest ran a long time ago to come up with the Canadian equivalent of the phrase "as American as apple pie". The winner was "as Canadian as possible, under the circumstances."

Facebook doesn't like my attitude. HAL?

Occasionally I try to wade through the sea of irrelevant crap that Facebook puts on my page to figure out what my friends are doing etc....and today I got really frustrated with the glacial speed at which Facebook was loading my pages (and jerking elements out from under my mouse).

So I went up to the box where it says "what are you doing right now", and typed in "wondering why Facebook is so annoyingly slow!"

Well, Facebook didn't like that very much at all.

I got an error message something like "Oops, sorry, we can't do that for you, we're working on xyz..."

Then, I clicked on the "Friends online" button in the lower right (where it said several of my friends WERE online), and that magically went to 0 and said something like "can't find any of your friends".

Does this sound like HAL or what???

Best time of year to go to Tahiti

After my trip to French Polynesia about a year ago, a lot of people have asked me what the best time of year to go to Tahiti is...especially when they find out the price difference between low and high season. There's a few factors involved, and while some tropical destinations have fairly radical weather differences in their seasons, I found that January (low season for Tahiti) was really pretty comfortable and beautiful--especially as virtually all the resorts have air conditioning, so you'll sleep well at night.

My eyes, post-Lasik

From Dr. Greg Schober at Macadam Vision Clinic come these pics of my eyeballs, post-Lasik.











I'm thrilled with both the outcome and the care of both Dr. Schober and Dr. Will at Will Vision...I highly recommend both of these guys!

Photos from my Tahiti trip on Flickr

Full sets of all of the photos of each resort I visited in Tahiti in January 2007 are now on Flickr:

BORA BORA
Bora Bora Pearl Resort
St. Regis Resort Bora Bora
Sofitel Motu Bora Bora
Sofitel Bora Bora Beach Resort
InterContinental Bora Bora Thalasso Resort and Spa
Bora Bora Nui Resort and Spa
Hotel Bora Bora
Bora Bora Lagoon Resort

MOOREA
Sheraton Moorea Resort and Spa
Moorea Pearl Resort and Spa
InterContinental Moorea Resort and Spa

TAHITI
Le Meridien TahitiSofitel TahitiInterContinental Resort Tahiti

MISCELLANEOUS
Bora Bora airport etc.

My virtual garage at DriverSide

Discovered a new website for tracking your car info called DriverSide...just starting to build a page for my 1970 Chevy pickup.

I've uploaded a photo of each of the last bunch of cars I've added, but that's about it. Not sure at this point how useful the site is...will experiment for a bit.

New cabinetry - courtesy my father

Click the photo, then click Slideshow

Rotary Club of Portland Wine Tour 2008

Click the photo, then click Slideshow

Brought to you by the Preserve Planet Earth committee of the downtown Portland Rotary Club.

My Lasik surgery

This is the video of my surgery from April 10th at Will Vision Laser Center in Vancouver, WA. I was so impressed with them--everything (including my prescription) was checked by two separate doctors (in addition to my own eye doctor), plus Dr. Will did his own check as well as reviewing the results and measurements the other two doctors took. Really professional and well-organized and NO WAITING at any of the appointments...it was a very un-doctors-office-like experience!

And I'm now 20/15 and loving it!

Evergreen Air Museum

Click the photo, then click Slideshow

Motorcycle Monkey

Riding motorcycles takes years of training...at least, it took ME years of training!

Instructional Sports Camps

I've recently become involved in helping out an organization called Instructional Sports Camps. Founded originally in Mobile, Alabama by Leno Pugh, the organization (and Leno) are now based in Portland, Oregon. The group uses the playing field as a classroom to coach and mentor underprivileged youth, with a mix of professional and amateur athletes, helping the kids develop self-confidence, leadership and teamwork skills. A number of friends and business colleagues are helping them out in various ways; I'm contributing some website and SEO consulting and helping them find other people who will help them advance their cause.

It's a free program for the kids, underwritten by sponsors and a lot of volunteer hours.

To find out more about this terrific sports camp for kids in Portland, visit www.sportscampsinc.org.

Bruce's Pernil Pork

Gotta thank Bruce from Vino for this find...sure is ugly going into the oven, but it turned out fabulous.

Before:



After:

Portland On Fire

Hey, I'm semi-famous :-)

Portland On Fire

And speaking of BBQ....

My friend Bruce, proprietor of the wine store Vino in Sellwood, posted a recipe for roasted pork shoulder on his blog (from a NY Times article originally).


Bruce has actually become quite the blogging fool...tons of good content about food and wines in Portland and from his world travels. I remember not too many years back when Bruce could barely spell blogger, and now he are one :-)

Combining two of my all-time favorite activities

Motorbikes and barbecuing!

This Australian guy takes it to a whole new level though...see the report in the Australian Daily Telegraph.

I understand that the Australian police saw the story in the paper and grilled him :-)

Apparently this guy migrated from New Zealand in August....says he picked up the barbecue left on a nature strip for a hard rubbish collection.

Play Pumps - what a brilliant idea!

Kids play on a merry-go-round...and it pumps clean water from a well. Solves the problem of trying to get drinking water from often-contaminated surface supplies like creeks/rivers, and doesn't require electricity or gas/diesel.

More details at www.playpumps.org. Thanks to Guy Kawasaki's blog, where I first heard of this...

We're not the only Comcast victims!

A friend forwarded this story to me...Bob Garfield, a columnist from Advertising Age has started a blog called ComcastMustDie.com.

Comcast: the saga continues

The problems continue: our phone service died completely for a couple of hours last week (apparently all Comcast customers in North Portland were out). And the on-screen guide occasionally goes wacky, with the text colors blacking out a bit like an old guy losing his hair.

And the DVR generally stops recording a couple of minutes before the end of each show. For most network shows, it's not a problem as all you lose is commercials...but some of the fabulous HD programming on OPB gets cut off :-(

Comcast's fabulous HD DVR

I have to say I wasn't all that pleased with the HD DVR Comcast supplies. The interface is seriously 10 years behind Tivo's. It's like DOS compared to Windows. But at least you could (a) record 2 shows at once, and (b) record in HD (Tivo's HD DVR is about $800!).

Unfortunately, our first HD DVR lasted 2 weeks before it cooked itself. Locked up completely, wouldn't even respond to the Power button on the front.

A DIFFERENT Comcast installer came out to replace the DVR, and this guy was smart and quite competent. Even left us an optical cable to connect the audio to my surround sound amp so that we'd get true Dolby 5.1 from shows that were in 5.1.

So it's not ALL bad...let's see if this DVR can last more than 2 weeks though...

Comcast incompetence? I'm not the only one who thinks so...

A co-worker (having heard my recent rants about all my installation screwups from Comcast) found this today. The article in Consumerist starts with:

"Let's face it, you are probably smarter than your last Comcast technician—at least, you probably think you are."