Typically Tuesdays are when I rejoice and realized that I’m not as bad at fantasy football as I once thought. Today is not a typical Tuesday though. I sucked this week, although I guess I only lost by a few points each time. I lost two of the three games but I probably could have won both of those if I had played the right people. Maybe I shouldn’t listen to those ‘expert’ sites that tell you who to play and who not to play. This week I’m going to make all of my own picks, or at least try to. My overall record is now 16-8, meaning I am down to only winning 2/3 of the games played.

Last night I worked on a new e-commerce type site for a guy at Hot Records. My buddy Mike has been working at their office for a few days now, and this guy Victor asked him if he knew anyone who did websites. Thankfully my name was mentioned, and we are now trying to figure how to get it all running. I’ve never done anything that required credit card submissions before, so this is a big learning experience. We are still hoping to set it up without using a site like paypal, but in the end we might have to. Anyway, last night I put together an idea I thought of earlier in the day. It seems to be working good so far, but it still needs some work. Feel free to check it out and provide any feedback.

I’m not sure if I mentioned this before or not, but a couple of months ago I created a website header and layout for Doni’s parents trophy company. They had an idea of what they wanted it to look like, so it wasn’t really that hard, but I think it turned out nice. I guess I should put a screenshot and link to it in the websites section.

Anyway, I went over Doni and Phil’s last night to help out in putting the finishing touches on kingwoodtrophies.com. Before we started working we had dinner from Chipotle along with some salsas from New Mexico. By the end my mouth was really burning, so we required a few Boulevard Wheat’s to put the flame out. Then the work began. All we really needed to do was put an order form on the site, which didn’t take too long at all.

For now we are using form-mail.com to process the forms for us since we have not figured out how to run sendmail on a Windows PC. I’m not sure how nerdy my audience is, but if anyone has any suggestions on sendmail please let me know.

It’s been a real slow day in blogger land today, very few of the blogs I read have been updated today. Everyone must be getting an early start on the holiday weekend. I, on the other hand, have nothing planned really and am stuck at work until around five. I’m sort of glad that I’m not traveling though with gas prices the way they are. I filled up the Jetta after work yesterday and it almost cost me $40! If I would have waited until today it definitely would have cost me over $40. The price jumped from $3.05 after work to $3.19 on my way into work. I never really paid attention to prices that much before, but that has changed.

I’ve been looking at all of those new websites out there designed to save you money at the pump. The first was GasBuddy.com which will redirect you to another site with information specific to your area, for me it’s MissouriGasPrices.com. I’ve already registered and have started entering prices for stations on my route to work and also starting using their fuel logbook, which is used to track your fill-ups.

The next site I visited was GasPriceWatch.com. I attempted to register to be a “spotter” but haven’t got the confirmation email yet. Although this site doesn’t seem to be very user friendly, there is tons of data. With a little work this could easily be the best site out there for this use. The ‘My Route’ section would be reason enough, but of course it is not yet functional.

The last site I found was mywikimap.com, which is targeted at more than just gas prices, although this is their focus right now. It’s a combination of google maps and user submissions for gas prices. It is easy to see where the cheapest gas would be on your route home, now they just need to get more data on there. For me all the reports were in Overland Park and were days old.

I’m not sure if any of these sites will really ever catch on, but with the way prices are rising right now, I wouldn’t be surprised.

Lately I’ve been addicted to Wikipedia, which is the free encyclopedia of the web. I’m not sure how many of you have already used it so I’ll provide this explanation from their welcome page. “Wikipedia is an encyclopedia written collaboratively by its readers. The site is a Wiki, meaning that anyone, including you, can edit almost any article right now.” The amount of factual information on this site is amazing, you can spend days reading and learning. I wish I had to write a term paper now, you could easily do so using simply this one site. Here are various places and events in my life:

Huntsville
Marshall Space Flight Center
STS-1: First Shuttle Launch
Huntsville Tornado
Cincinnati
Loveland
Kings Island
University Of Cincinnati
O.A.R.
Kansas City
Perhaps I’ll add the Ed Paff entry to their site…

In just a few hours we’ll be making the drive back to Cincinnati. Kim’s friend Julie is getting married this weekend and Kim is in the wedding. It should be a real good time, but likely very busy. Well at least Kim will be busy, I might have some free time so give me a shout if you are in town.

A New Jersey man has been accused of driving while intoxicated while resurfacing the ice of a local rink. “Authorities say John Peragallo was drunk when he drove the four-ton ice-cleaning machine at Mennen Sports Arena in Morristown on Sunday.” Now seriously, how fast can those things really go and was anyone (other than this guy) in any danger of being injured? This story seems even more ridiculous than the last.

Full story. Thanks to my brother for digging this up and sending it to me.

As mentioned yesterday, we now have a couple of items up on eBay. The first is my free iPod shuffle. At first I thought about keeping this, but after it sat unopened for a couple of months we realized that we didn’t need it. It will likely sell for around $130. We are also selling a Southwest Airlines reward voucher. Actually we have to sell the accompanying drink coupons and throw in the reward voucher for free. We realized that we aren’t looking to book any flights on Southwest anytime soon, and even if we were they wouldn’t cost anywhere near the $350+ these are getting on eBay right now. Both auctions are ending on Sunday night, so if all goes as planned we will have around $500!

Tonight we are heading to Johnny’s for another Planet gathering. Kim qualified for a trip to Austin City Limits that they will be giving away tonight. Wish us luck!

We’ve been so boring since we got back from San Diego. I guess this is part of our quarantine process.

Tuesday night we watched TV, mostly American Idol episodes from the past couple of weeks. I didn’t see the results show last night because of hockey, so don’t ruin it for me yet.

Phil setup a webcam on his site in hopes of one day being able to see their new dog “Gabe” and whether or not he is still in his crate or not. I guess he has already broken out at least once, haha. This has got me thinking about trying to get my webcam up and running, so you all can see my turtles in action. We’ll see if I have any luck with that.

Amy (Kim’s college roommate) is coming to town this weekend, hopefully she brings some excitement with her, this blog could really use it. :)

I tried uploading my San Diego pictures from work today, but somehow I have now broken that part of the site. So if you click the “PICTURES” link above you will get nowhere. I’ll fix it all up after work today.

I’ve noticed that I’ve not only grown into the habit of using the word “quite” a whole bunch, but I also have started using … to end many of my sentences. I’m not sure what … is supposed to mean, but I doubt I’m using it in the correct way so I’m going to attempt to stop using it. I never knew I had such a grammatically correct audience. :)

Remember the free iPod that I got a few months ago and sold for more than it’s worth? Well I am in the final stages of getting a free iPod shuffle and it should ship to me soon! I’m not sure if I will keep this or sell it on eBay, I guess time will tell. If you have never seen one of these devices before, check out apple.com.

Want a free PSP?
How about a free laptop?
Or a variety of different mp3 players?

I just got off the phone with Kim and her grandmother passed away earlier this morning. Continue to keep her entire family in your thoughts and prayers…

I have a new baby cousin on my mom’s side of the family! Emma Grace Busch was born at 11:44AM yesterday, the second child for my Uncle Andy and Stefanie. Elizabeth aka Big “E” was born in August of ’03 and now we have a Little “E” as well!

I’m not sure what is wrong with my site right now, but you’ll notice that the blog is missing the entire layout. Hopefully I can fix that sometime today. edpaffjr.com should be working again for most of you, I hope. This is back on my home computer, I haven’t had time to play with the new host that I bought.

Edit: I looked at the blog issue and cannot figure it out. Does the layout display normally for anyone out there using edpaffjr.com and not edpaffjr.oarsa.org? Respond back with comments…

I apologize for the down time once again. It is all being caused by my router, which somehow thinks my computer is virus infected and then it limits some of my programs access to the web. I’ve contacted three or four different Netgear support people, most of which can hardly type in English, with absolutely no help at all. Ideas anyone?

Luckily I’ve signed up for a killer deal on webspace at DreamHost, $9.24 for an entire year of hosting! What you have to do is signup for 1 year at $9.95 a month. Eventually you will get to a checkout screen, and there you can enter the promo code “777” which will take the total to $9.24 for an entire year of service. Not $9.24 a month, which would only be a savings of 71 cents, this is for the entire year, a savings of near $100! There are no catches that I’ve seen so far, and I have friends who have been customers for years. If you need help in the registration process just let me know. Will I ever use this space? Who knows. I actually would have started using it today if I could have downloaded all my files from my computer, but unfortunately even I could not get on…

Enough about site stuff, there is more serious news. Kim just flew back to Cincinnati this afternoon because her grandma was rushed to the hospital. Please keep her and all of Kim’s family in your prayers…