What or Who the heck is that?:
I was feeling like posting a real personal post. Something that helps you all dive into my personal world and is not just about Tips, Tricks, Comments, or Nonsense. So I wanted to let you all know about a tight group of friends I have.

Saman, myself, and a few of our friends refer to ourselves as the “Goldeneye Dogs”. Its just a name we gave ourselves many years ago. The 5 of us were constantly getting together to have Nintendo 64 Goldeneye sessions that would last pretty much the majority of the entire day. Every party, get together, pretty much anything always involved the Nintendo 64 and the video game Goldeneye. Its funny that a simple thing like a video game could impact and strengthen friendships as it did. This simple game helped create a “bond” that will last our entire lives.

The friendships are much older, but I think it was sometime around 1998 when we first called ourselves the Goldeneye Dogs. Of course it didn’t just come with a group title, we each had our own nicknames. Straight out of Reservoir Dogs of course. Saman is Mr. Brown. I am Mr. Blonde. Theo is Mr. White. Kyle is Mr. Pink. And Matt is Mr. Orange. Eventually we of course outgrew the majority of all that silliness. But it has always remained special to all of us. In fact, at my wedding, all the Dogs were my groomsmen and I had all the Dogs wear hankies with their designated color. This is why from time to time you may see Saman and I refer to each other with our nicknames in comments or posts.

Saman has recently informed me that a Half Life 2 Mod was created called Goldeneye Source. It is modeled off of the old Goldeneye video game. Completely updated and beautifully designed. When I found this out, I went and purchased a copy of Half Life 2 so I could play this mod. I will be posting a review about it soon along with a couple screenshots.

Here are a few funny pics of the Goldeneye Dogs as [kids] for you all to enjoy:

Goldeneye Dogs 1998
Holy Crap that was 9 years ago! I was just a punk kid working at Blockbuster
L to R: Brown, Blonde, Pink, Orange, White

Goldeneye Dogs 2000
This was taken at Saman’s goodbye party. He was leaving Colorado for California. Normally, you would think I accidentally transposed those, but for some reason Saman actually was going back to California - who does that? He wised up and came back.
L to R: Pink, Orange, White, Brown, Blonde

Goldeneye Dogs 2004
My Wedding. Brown was unable to attend but was there in spirit
L to R: White, Pink, Blonde, Orange, My Buddy Kory

The above top left logo image was designed by Saman to represent the Goldeneye Dogs. He did such an amazing job on the graphic. You may wonder why the logo has Saman with an afro. Maybe if you razz him enough on his site about it he will post a picture of the most beautiful afro ever grown.

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Stephen Fung posted this great video on his site. If you have not checked out Stephen’s site yet, you should. Definitely a place to find some good posts. I had a good laugh on this video so I wanted to post it here as well.

Stephen’s link to post with same video: Save a Life. Drink a Beer.

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A horribly tragic event occurred yesterday at Virginia Tech. An extremely troubled young man by the name of Cho Seung-Hui was the gunman in a very deadly shooting rampage that has left at least 33 people dead.

Events when so unbelievable like this one occur, everybody of course starts asking the WWWWH’s (When, Where, What, Why, How’s?). I’m not sure if you have also been hearing it on the radio and such, but when callers call in to talk to DJs, so many have been saying “Its because of Video Games”. We so want to be able to blame something other than the perpetrator. It is so hard for us to believe that a human being is capable of such acts so we always try to find what MADE THEM DO IT.

We have to stop this blaming behavior that goes off on obscure tangents. When you go off on a major tangent, you are losing sight of what is important. The families and loved ones of the poor victims. Your cause is no longer about supporting them, but rather a cause that is just about your cause. The simple fact is there are just some crazy people out in this world. I’m not saying some are not MADE crazy by events in their life. I’m just saying that crazy people do extremely crazy things.

I can guarantee that even if my Nintendo Wii started glowing with a heavenly Aura and God’s voice came out of it and told me to do things I felt were not right, than I would check myself into a treatment center, because I’m not crazy. If somebody did act on what they were told and had seen, but they knew them to be wrong, and still did them anyway, that is a crazy & troubled person. Playing Video Games does not set you up to be a bad person now or ever in live. If it did, could you imagine the chaos our world would be?

So please, instead, focus on the victims, their families, their loved ones, all involved. Please after reading this right here, put them in your thoughts and have a moment of silence for a short period of time and let your cause be them.

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I’m so new to WordPress that I had no idea that it threw in the NOFOLLOW tag in all the comments by default. Its funny, I have read many articles about how bad this is, but never even checked my own blog site. I just never thought that would be something WordPress would have coded into by default with the Akismet plugin available by default. Its funny that they do that isn’t it? Here is a great tool to keep out SPAM - but just in case - here is the NOFOLLOW tag for that .0001% that gets through. The community on your site is far more important that that very obscure .0001%. So I have removed the NOFOLLOW tag and I would very much like to credit Saman’s post titled “Say Goodbye To The NOFOLLOW Tag At Samanathon.com!” and/or “I Follow List” for pointing this out to me.

If you are interested in getting rid of the NOFOLLOW tag, be sure to check out Saman’s post about him removing it from his site. It will give you the information and links that can make it happen for your site. Blogging is about community and sharing what you build. If you have not already removed the NOFOLLOW tag, you really should.

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Today I will be writing a review about PureBlogging.com. David Culpepper of PureBlogging.com came by my site thanks to the recent John Chow post after I informed John about a problem with Brian’s Threaded Comments. When David browsed my site, he noticed that I write site reviews and requested that I write one about his site. He also mentioned that he has an excellent Blog Contest going right now where you can Win An 8GB Apple iPod Nano. I would have reviewed his site with just him asking, but still, that iPod nano is one heck of a great incentive. What a great prize offer! If you are comfortable with writing site reviews, I advise that you definitely take him up on such a great opportunity!

Okay, so lets begin the site review of PureBlogging.com.

The Good:
Wow, what a great site to obtain blogging information! Here is a couple items that I want to spotlight.

• Valid & Worthy Content - There are definitely no “fillers” on this site. Every post I read was useful and/or well researched. The writing style is exactly what you are looking for from a site directed at providing you information.
• Maximum Use of a Basic Template - Really loving it. David has really maximized the potential of his site’s “real estate”. He uses a very basic design, but everything is placed so efficiently that it all flows really well. I really like how the AdSense on this site is placed, a lot of the time you will see that it is obtrusive on most sites. That is definitely not the case with PureBlogging.com.

The Not-So-Good:
I am very impressed with PureBlogging.com. It was not easy to fill this section.

• Site Logo - although it serves its purpose, it really is unimpressive. I think on a information site you want something a lot more grabbing. Something that sticks out and will have its own associative look. Current design has elements that are too commonly used.
• Site Tag - “Make Money Online with” is being so commonly used these days. I’m not sure if this is a good angle to approach the net with so much well established competition.

Summary & Advice:
Really, please, keep doing what you are doing. Your content is great and well formed. Your site structure and setup is one that definitely makes me happy as a blog reader. I do recommend a logo redesign. If graphic design is not something you are comfortable with, many logo designing services are available. Perhaps if AdSense or anything else brings in some good income you can reward the site with a shiny new logo. “Make Money Online” is not a bad tag, just so widely used. I would go after a similar phrase that is used often in search strings and make it your own!

* My reviews are based on my own opinion of different matters. I can be very critical of some items, but that is just because I am trying to help. If you would like me to review your blog or website, now is a very good time. For a limited time I am offering my review services for free. Only requirement is that upon receiving the review, you can either review my site on yours or add me to your blog roll.

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