Time for a shameless plug yet again for KidKazoo.com. Many of you have already signed up and helped out quite a bit (big thanks to Rach!) with the link aggregating. If you haven’t already signed up, please take a moment to sign up at:

http://www.kidkazoo.com/register.php

We need the help to aggregate these links early on so that we can start building a community. Any help you can give will be great!! 100 links? 1 link? 1 link a day? 5 links a week? Anything! Tell a friend! Have friends with kids? Tell them about the site! Tell your co-workers! Have a blog? Will you link us? Have suggestions? Send em my way! Want to see a certain something on the site? Tell me!

We’ve just launched our Alpha phase and are trying to get more users into this phase to help build the site with their ideas, and suggestions, and most of all, quality links!

So, head over to http://www.KidKazoo.com and help us start a new kid safe
community!

Thanks in advance for all the help!! It really means a lot! :-D

So, where am I at these days? We’ll let’s see where to begin.

Monday I lost my job. It can honestly be argued that I quit or that I fired. I prefer the terminology “laid off”. How does that make me feel? Well, I liken it to getting released from a long prison term. So glad to be out, but now facing reality of getting something else going. We’ll see where this latest turn of career directions takes me.

To compound the fun, Rhys’ ear infections are back. He has to go into surgery to get tubes put in. YAY! I can’t tell you how excited we both are about this prospect. Especially the general anaesthesia part. Honestly, hasn’t this kid been through enough? That’s slated for the 27th. We’ll see if the insurance cards still work around then, but I’m not holding my breath. My ex-boss is just that way.

What else? Heidi is now sick too. It looks like an ear infection for her too! How does that happen!! It’s not like her son has two infections, and she works at a preschool. !? Of course, the recent change of events has increased the stress on my wonderful wife, but she is handling it quite well. I’m so thankful to have such a supportive wife. Truly.

I’ve sold my motorcycle… It’s gone. Done like dinner. The extra cash should help us float a bit longer if we have to. Let’s hope we don’t. I’ve applied to about 100 jobs (well, almost 100) and am not waiting for bites. Whilst waiting I’m gonna head up to Show Low to talk biz with my old biz partner, Greg. He’s talkin about starting up a web dev company. HEY! Guess what! I happen to love web development work! ;) Heading up there this Thursday.

I’ll keep all you cats posted, and if you have any ideas for me about what to do when I grow up, please don’t hesitate to email me! ;)

Ok gang. My project is ready for people to begin submitting links! The link display should go live next week, but in the meantime we are looking to get a nice collection of kid and parent appropriate links. We’re hoping to build a link aggregation community that caters to kids and parents. It’s something we searched for as new parents, and I’d be willing to bet we are not the only ones. So, if you want to help out in this “Alpha” stage, head over to the Registration page and start submitting links! Both Heidi and I would REALLY appreciate it, and as an Alpha user you’ll have full access to everything even if we start charging for premium content… Though I don’t envision charging for anything.

Thanks in advance for any help you can give us! We also appreciate any comments, or suggestions too! Send em to bothofus@slacksplace.com!

Cheers!

Aside from my “Pay-The-Bills” job, which is more like an “Almost-Pays-The-Bills” job, I have tons of web projects that I’m working on. I make a very very modest income on my current web work, and I have some projects in the queue to hopefully make some more money. If I could really monetize one of these things, that would be grand. I would LOVE to make a living on the web. I mean, who wouldn’t!? Right?

What projects? Well, for lack of anything better to do, I thought I would share with you my current Dev Queue.

Kid Kazoo - This is kind of a secret project Heidi and I are working on. We don’t want to reveal too much about it until we launch. This one is top priority right now. :)

Top Secret Blog Thing - LOL I forgot this one was Top Top Secret… Anyway, it’s next in the queue. It’s just a standard blog thing, so I have to build up the theme.

Another Top Secret Blog Thing - LOL Too many of these secret secret ones!! Much like the previous. Just a blog theme.

Boatswain’s Call - This is a site I’m being pulled into. Looks like it’s got some real potential, but is in need of a PHP overhaul and host transfer. I’m trying hard to get the other items done so I can start working on this site as I think it will be more involved than my usual theme projects. Sounds very fun!
Tech Spew - This is one of my blog/podcast ideas, and would love to get moving on this, but it’s on the back burner.

Thought Dumpster - I keep meaning to redo this site, and try and get it some traffic. :) LOL

Happy Thursday, gang! We’re almost to the weekend! Have you survived?

All things are mostly the same in my neck of the woods. Came across a pretty interesting communication this week. Currently, I work for a software company (that in itself is another story). We are tied to the education industry, and that’s all I’ll say about that. But, there was a communication I was privy to between Teacher X and Sales Person Y. I just had to share this little pearl. You can guess how I feel about the No Child Left Behind deal… :: rolls eyes ::

Teacher X: We learned so much, and I have already begun implementing some of the suggestions you made concerning my ELL students. First thing this morning, I changed their passing score to be 70% rather than 80% on all tests. Hopefully, they will begin experiencing more success now. I have also taken out all lessons beyond 20 for my first grade students. That means that several are very nearly ready to exit the program!

Sales Person Y: I meant what I said when speaking of you being a MODEL implementation! Awesome job!

Come on… Really?

In other news, the new project is moving along. I’m getting probably one feature finished every day or two. Wish I had more time to concentrate on the code, but… I don’t. Both Heidi and I are pretty excited about this new project. I think it’s going to be fun! It’s been a learning experience for sure. At the very least it will be something to add to my portfolio. :)

Well, have a happy Thursday, and see you on the flipside.

Well, the new project is off and running. And thanks to my last alpha project, or The Chicken, the login code and user maintenance code is done for the new project. Most of that code is pretty generic and moved over with little tweaking.

Now I have to get to the meat of the project. I plan to work most of the week on this and hopefully get something done and working by next Monday.

The ad engine has been replaced by the good folks out at OpenX. Why reinvent the wheel? I should be working on building a better car. ;)