Even though the pleasant temperatures have given way to gloomy drizzle here in Lexington, I'm still not very self-motivated and won't be creating lots of photo-and-video albums to share with you right now. So I'll just give you a quick update to say that all is well. I'm actually making money on this blog, even when I don't bother to update it. Visitors to my lyrics pages are clicking ads I've posted there, so that means I'm more motivated to work on the lyrics section and less motivated to work on this personal-journal section. (I'm not going to be putting a Google ad-bar on the journal areas.)


 

In the past week, I've visited a variety of people, and I've taken a ton of pictures, and I've had a lot of laughs. I'm sure you'd love to see the pictures and hear the anecdotes, but the weather is so pleasant now that I have little desire to update my website. Instead, I want to go play tennis or ride my bike around the neighborhood.

Later in the week, when the temperatures drop again, I'll probably post a handful of recent photo albums and stories, including activities with my Tennessee cousin Danny, my New York friend Rochelle, and my Indiana friend Tanya. Until then, I hope you'll send me links to your uploaded stories and albums instead. Why should I do all the work? Come on, create your own blog. It's very easy.


 

Starting today and in the next few days, I will either be on the road to Memphis, or in Memphis, or driving home from Memphis.

If you're desperate for some Brett time, you could always try my cell phone or my cousin's house.

Happy Thanksgiving, y'all!
 

Yesterday I got to thinking about that excellent Christmas gift that Mom bought for Rachel, so I called Aunt Gloria to find out if she knew where Mom bought it. Apparently, Aunt Gloria was not part of that shopping expedition. Time to sharpen my Googling skills and find this thing.

There's still so much I wish I knew about the events of late October. For starters, where did Mom buy that gift? Also, why did the Knoxville authorities take a full day to contact us about Mom's crash? When will they send us an accident report? Regarding the perpetrator of the fatal accident, was that person distracted by a cell phone at the time?

Is there a wrongful-death lawsuit in our future?
 

I wonder how I'll ever get past this one big social hurdle I continue to encounter. Looks like there's no end in sight, when I survey the wondrous dating race full of identical hurdles. Hurdle! Say it with me; it's a fun word. Hurdle.

The obstacle: I am attracted to godly women, and they are attracted to me. Doesn't matter where I go — whether it be a ginormous megachurch or a little karaoke bar — I don't seem to be having any trouble forming new friendships with virtuous, upright hotties. Unfortunately, I'm a rebel, a bad influence, so they don't stick around.

Don't tell me to start pursuing the opposite kind of woman. That's not what I want. And don't tell me to try eHarmony. From what I've read, that service discourages matching godly women to rebellious types like me.

Just tell me that there's hope, that I'll eventually have a wife and kids and maybe fame and fortune.
 

Let me tell you the GREAT thing about leaving Prodigy for DreamHost. DreamHost is 14000 times more generous than Prodigy with web space, which means I can return to posting more photos and videos. And that makes some people very happy; two of my friends have specifically praised me for having clip art again, like it makes a world of difference.

Now let me tell you the WORST thing about leaving Prodigy for DreamHost. Google is punishing me for having a new domain name, just like it would punish anyone with a new domain name (until they can prove they're not a casino or Viagra spammer). I mean, if you search Google for the name Brett Mason, you will notice that my Prodigy page is still flyin' high, still ranked quite well in the Google index. You'll also notice that my LexJB page is ranked really really far down in those same results.

Just a warning to any of y'all who have enjoyed your Google traffic. You will lose a huge chunk of it by moving to a new domain. (But, to end this post on a positive note, you apparently don't get punished by the Windows Live Search engine.)
 

In addition to the webcomic XKCD that I'd linked to a few months ago, I want to expose y'all to another funny webcomic:
Basic Instructions
 

Yet another karaoke story for ya: sometimes on Wednesday nights, I like to go to Grapevine and do karaoke, and my friend Dawn knows this. So she invited me out to Grapevine last night, just to hear me sing. How great is that?

As usual, I sang a wide variety of songs, including "Everything You Want" and "In Da Club." Then, at the end of the night, I was doing my usual "Kiss" presentation with some crazy dancing, and I accidentally kicked out a nearby power cord from its socket and stopped the show cold. It was AWESOME, DUDE! I gotta tell you, there's no better way to get the crowd's attention than to bring silence to the middle of a song.

I'm definitely going to try that again sometime.
 

I now know the full story of the laptop, so I will share it with you here.

On Thursday night, an administrator from the Blue Grass Council of the Boy Scouts of America had loaned his laptop to a coworker in order for that guy to give a presentation to a group in the "Cardinal Valley" area. At the end of the presentation, in the darkness of night, the guy had placed this black laptop on top of his black car, then he somehow forgot about doing that. He soon drove off, and soon after that, the black laptop slid off his car onto Versailles Road.

That same Thursday night, Jenna had invited me over to have dinner with her and do some computer maintenance/upgrades for her. She lives on the opposite side of town from me, so I decided to take Highway 60 (Versailles Road) through town.

As you already know, I found the laptop laying in the street, this mystery obstacle that cars were swerving around. I took it home.

The laptop was slightly damaged, so it took me a while to figure out what configuration of peripheral devices would get it to boot up. Then it took me a while to get into the files, since the Windows Welcome Screen was password protected. But I am a power user, an experienced computer professional, so it was inevitable that I would succeed. I peeked into some files and figured out who the original owner was.

Fast forward to a few days later (i.e. today), and I'm carrying the laptop into the office of the Blue Grass Council of the Boy Scouts of America in downtown Lexington. All the administrator wanted was the hard drive, which had 4 years of data on it, 4 years he'd never made any backups of. And he didn't mind giving me the lost laptop, as long as he could retain the old hard drive, because the coworker who lost the laptop was buying this fella a new laptop.

As a bonus, he traded me the original power adapter for the hard drive I gave him.

So now I have my very own Dell Inspiron 1000, free and clear. It needs a new hard drive now, but I just discovered that it will boot into a CD of the Linux operating system with no problem. Something for nothing! Fantastic!
 

Last night, Danielle and I went to the Fazoli's in Palomar Center, and we were both unimpressed by their recent renovations. When I was staring at the big new menu boards, I said, "so many changes this month."

And I have been thinking about that all day: so much has changed in one month. It was about one month ago that I met up with Mom at a Denny's in South Carolina for lunch while she was on a big road trip to New Jersey, and I was on a big road trip to Florida.
 

I've decided that I am going to write all my Mom thoughts in a separate article/webpage which will be posted at mom.lexjb.com. Then I'll continue blogging about my regular ongoing life here at lexjb.com.

For starters, I've been wanting to talk about Gerard, the lead singer of My Chemical Romance. When I saw him perform on Saturday Night Live not too long ago, I said to myself, "good lord, that guy looks just like me!" And now I want to buy a white wig and pretend I'm that guy.


Oh, I also want to talk about long web names. Sometimes people ask me for advice about purchasing a web address (e.g. "ky-webman.com"). My advice is always the same: get a short phrase that's simple and easily spelled, and get a dot-com, not a dot-net or a dot-org. Then I add, you definitely don't want to do something insane like choosing the long address LexingtonArthurMurray.com. At that point my friend will go and purchase something reasonable like LexJB.com. WELL, on my trip to Florida, I found an example which can support my case better than LexingtonArthurMurray.com. It was in the Memphis airport food court that I learned about JimNeelysInterstateBarbecue.com. Holy moley!


I could also talk about a Dell Inspiron 1000 laptop that I found laying in the street (Versailles Rd), but I think I'd rather keep that info to myself. Instead, I'll talk about how hesitant I am to return to Club Avio, which is the only karaoke bar in town that has a cover charge. Do I really want to pay 6 dollars to get up and sing for people? No, no, I don't. I want Club Avio to pay me 6 dollars or more to perform for their customers.


One final thing. I'm switching back to a cartoon-clip-art format because my new web host (DreamHost) gives me loooooooooads of server space, unlike my former web host (Prodigy). On this new host I could actually start doing a photoblog again or even a video blog.