What would Christmas be without a compilation of the greatest stars singing a classic Christmas favorite? Well, not much, I can tell you that!
Enjoy!
Featuring (In order of appearance):
Frank Sinatra
Elvis Presley
William Hung
The Partridge Family
Willie Nelson
Macy Gray
The Andrews Sisters
Stryper
Dean Martin
Manhattan Transfer
Barney
Neil Diamond
Barry Manilow
James Taylor
Clay Aiken
Jewel
Johnny Mathis
Brian Setzer
Eurythmics
Tony Bennet
and last but not least...Mr. Ringo Starr
I found the following in Kevin Depew's 'Five Things You Need to Know to Stay Ahead of the Pack on Wall Street' for December 19, 2007. Click here for the full article.
A German, A Pole, and Dumb Steve were all hiking in the Alps. They had reached the peak, had a nice picnic lunch, and were headed back down the narrow trail when a rockslide came thundering down the mountain. All three got safely out of the way, but were perturbed to find their only path was now blocked.
Florida State is headed to the 2007 Gaylord Hotels Music City Bowl in Nashville, TN. The Seminoles (7-5, 4-4 ACC) will face the Kentucky Wildcats (7-5, 3-5 SEC). FSU fans travel well, but the proximity of the location to Kentucky's home turf should skew the crowd to Kentucky's advantage. Both teams posess talented athletes, both teams have potent offenses that (when cooperating) are capable of putting up big numbers, and both teams have wins against chart-topping rivals...so this should turn out to be an interesting matchup. You can watch the game on Monday, December 31, at 3:00pm CST on ESPN.The Seminoles have lost some conference heart-breakers as well, including the season-opening Bowden Bowl loss to Clemson. Florida State took the lead against both Wake Forest and Miami, but couldn't hold on. The Seminoles did manage to sparkle early against Boston College, and the 'Noles hung on to beat comeback-kid and Heisman hopeful Matt Ryan, whose BC team was ranked #2 at the time.
Bobby Bowden has led FSU to 26 straight bowl appearances, including two National Championships. The 78-year-old Bowden is the winningest coach in major college football with 373 wins, two more than Penn State's Joe Paterno. Bobby has also agreed to coach Florida State for another year, signing a deal that extends his contract through the 2008-2009 season, worth just under $2.5 million.
Each year, ESPN.com hosts a fantasy game called College Pick'Em. You have to pick the winner in 10 college games each week, and assign every choice a unique confidence level from 1 - 10. That determines the number of points you have riding on each game. It's pretty fun and mildly addictive, and I've been playing since 2002.
This year, I finished with 473 points out of a possible 660. That doesn't sound too great, but when you consider the numerous upsets in the polls this year, and the fact that the winner only managed 555 points, it makes me feel a little better!
I created the "Florida State Seminoles" group page, and 139 people joined. I finished 15th in the group.
More stats:
Rank: 13,070 out of 178,413
Average point total: 412.3 (I had 473)
Well, there's always next year! Go Noles!
I recently launched another blog called Random Graffiiti. The link will be available in my sidebar for future reference, or you can always subscribe to the posts so you don't miss anything.
What an awesome upset win. I love being the underdog! And BC didn't just give it away on their home turf...we played with excitement and won the game.
It was a really great game. I enjoyed it immensely! Jimbo Fisher even used some tricky plays, including one that involved three handoffs and a toss down the field for a gain of at least 20. Our old offensive coordinator, Jeff Bowden, would always try a deep throw on first down, then a run on second down (that would get nowhere) and then an "unexpected" run on third and long (which would also go nowhere). It didn't take long for our opponents to figure out our 3-play game plan. Jimbo, on the other hand, is cutting the defense to shreds with short, quick passes and screens that move the ball and give our athletes a chance to make big plays. Good riddance, Jeff!
After syndicating my blog with FeedBurner, I've been using some of their add-ons and publicizing features. Sadly, every time you log in, the main screen displays your feeds and slaps you in the face with "Number of Subscribers: 0".It was getting depressing, so I subscribed to the feed myself. (Trust me, "1" looks a whole lot better than "0".) Imagine my surprise when yesterday I logged on and saw "3" subscribers listed. I was elated! People love me and my blog! In fact, they like it so much they're subscribing! And it follows that there must be more people reading the blog that haven't subscribed.
Suddenly, I felt responsible. Obligated, if you will, to start putting out regular posts with quality content. Don't want to let down or disappoint the subscribers!
Well, today I logged in just for fun and found that I'm back to 1 subscriber. *Sigh*. I checked the stats, and it looks like I had three subscribers on Sunday, and back to one on Monday. One day. That was all they gave me. And they didn't even hang around - they actually took the time and effort to un-subscribe.
So now I'm back to one subscriber...and we all know who that is!
Well I'll show you! I might just take a blogging hiatus, or start posting cat pictures, or bad recipes with ingredients you've never heard of! Maybe I'll start photographing random people, or talking like a complete moron. Or maybe I'll use my blog as a kind of therapy session to talk about my feelings and other gooey stuff. Yeah, you wanted a war, I'll gvie you a war! I'll have the worst blog on the internet! I'll offend you with my ridiculous posts, recycled pictures, horrible grammar and bad spelling. (Well, maybe not bad grammar and spelling...wouldn't want to offend my last subscriber. That guy's awesome!)
Have you seen this thing? It’s now the largest passenger plane on the planet. It made its first commercial flight on Oct 25, 2007 from Singapore to Sydney.
Okay, so this isn’t one of those self-indulging political blogs, but I feel obligated to tell my readers that I am now a bleeding-heart liberal. And so is my wife.
Yogi Bear has been delighting Jellystone tourists with his antics for decades. But exactly what species of bear wears a matching hat and necktie? Let's examine some facts:
Diet Chocolate Fudge soda. 
Diet CHERRY Chocolate Fudge Soda. Yuck!!
Rosh Hashanah (ראש השנה) is a celebration of the Jewish New Year, which began yesterday at sundown and lasts through Friday night. Welcome to 5768 everybody!
The traditional greeting on Rosh Hashanah is "Shana Tova" Hebrew for "A Good Year," or "Shana Tova Umetukah" for "A Good and Sweet Year." Because Jews are being judged by God for the coming year, a longer greeting translates as "May You Be Written and Sealed for a Good Year" (ketiva ve-chatima tovah).
Some Rosh Hashanah facts:
See the flat toothpaste tube in the foreground? That's MY toothpaste. I say it like that because, unbeknownst to me, my wife broke into the new tube already and has been using it in secret!
I knew I recognized that typeface! Sure, it's been updated and modernized, but one look at the letter 'R' and there's no argument.
I urgently needed a few days off work, but I knew the boss would'nt allow me to take leave. I thought that maybe if I acted crazy, then he would tell me to take a few days off. So, I hung upside-down on the ceiling and made funny noises.
On Saturday, Angela and I went to see the Titanic exhibit at the Visual Arts Center. It was pretty neat. The exhibit was put on by the company RMS Titanic, Inc. and they had artifacts on display that have been brought up from the actual wreck site.
When you first enter the exhibit, each person is given a "boarding pass" that corresponds to an actual person that was aboard the ship. The card tells about the person, who they were travelling with, and the reason for their voyage. My person was Sir Cosmo Edmund Duff-Gordon. He was travelling with his wife, Lady Lucy Christiana Duff-Gordon, the fashion designer, and Laura M. Francatelli, his wife's secretary. They were all first-class passengers. Cosmo was a proficient fencer, and represented Great Britain at the 1908 Olympics. Lady Duff-Gordon had urgent business in New York, and Cosmo chose to accompany her on this trip.
Angela's person was Mrs. Benjamin Peacock (Edith Nile). She was travelling with her daughter, Treasteall, and her son, Alfred. They were third-class passengers. Her husband was already in New Jersey, working as a mechanical engineer. Edith had been ill at the time of his voyage, so she and the family stayed behind until she felt better - booking passage aboard the Titanic.
The whole exhibit told the story of Titanic, and after you learn about the conception and building of the ship and the first few days of the voyage, you walk down a flight of stairs to the underwater portion of the exhibit. Here they discuss the recovery of the artifacts from beneath 2 miles of water.For us, though, the most interesting thing about the exhibit were the individual stories that were told. Each artifact belonged to a certain person, and they had gave a description of how and why that particular person happened to be aboard ship. They also had several plaques on the walls that described different people and their individual stories.
Towards the end of the exhibit, they give a list of every passenger, by class, and every crew member and whether or not that person made it through the voyage. Sadly, Angela's person and her two children were lost. My person, Sir Cosmo (and his party), did make it through the voyage...though there was some scandal surrounding the event. He was in Lifeboat #1, which was later referred to as "the money boat". The lifeboat was only about half full, and Sir Cosmo gave the crew members £5 notes to cover their lost gear. Some people later said it was to keep the crew from returning to the ship and attempting to rescue more passengers, who might have swamped the boat. Laura Francatelli (secretary to Lady Duff-Gordon) denies this, stating in her own account that "going back was never discussed." Either way, Sir Cosmo never escaped the shame that followed him everywhere he went.
Incidentally, Laura Francatelli's life jacket (autographed by her and other survivors) sold at an auction in London in May 2007 for £60,000 ($119,000).
The solidus character, ⁄, also known as a shilling mark, is a punctuation mark; it is not found on standard keyboards. The virgule, /, also known as slash or stroke, is also a punctuation mark and is found on standard keyboards. It may also be called an oblique, diagonal, separatrix, scratch comma, slant, or forward slash. 
Hey, you. Yeah, I'm talking to you! The one with a coffee cup on your desk. No, not you with the mug. You can go back to work. The other guy...did I just hear you call it a Styrofoam cup?"These common disposable items are typically white in color and are made of expanded polystyrene beads. They do not provide the insulating value, compressive strength or moisture resistance properties of STYROFOAM products. In order to protect the Dow trademarked name 'STYROFOAM', such other material should be referred to by the generic term 'foam.' "
An Irishman, a German and Dumb Steve were entering a 50-mile cross-country foot race. At the sign-in table, the judge told each of the entrants that the race would begin in an hour, and advised them that they could each bring along one item to use as refreshment during the race.
Last night, Bobby Cox set a new record with the most ejections over a career - 132. He was thrown out of the game against the Giants after arguing a called strike on Chipper Jones in the bottom of the fifth inning. Last night's ejection marks the 53rd time that home plate umpire Ted Barret has thrown Cox out of a game.
This morning, I pulled up to the gas pump at Wal-Mart, got out, filled up the tank and then got back in the car. I turned the key and heard that sickening sound that every driver hates to hear – absolutely nothing. I tried the key a couple of times, but it was no use. I wasn’t even hearing a click. I tried to put the car into neutral so I could push it out of the way, but it wouldn’t allow me to press the button in to move the gear shift. I tried the key in every position, and no luck. I was pushing the brake in and everything! I think that's the thing that frustrated me the most - not being able to move the car. As long as you have the key, you should always be able to put the car into neutral. I got out, raised the hood, and hoofed it over to the main store where I got some change and started making calls.
On Saturday, my wife and I met up with some fellow Geocachers at a Flash Mob event right here in Panama City Beach. It was a lot of fun, and we were able to put a lot of familiar "handles" with faces. Plus, we won a coffee can in the drawing that we can use for a future cache. Yeah! Free coffee can! (Guess you had to be there.)
So Popeye's Chicken has these things called Buffalo Nuggets™. My limited internet research has uncovered that a lot of people swear by them, but it would take a lot to get me to try something called a “buffalo nugget”. They sound like they belong in the same category as cow pies and owl pellets. Hmmm...I’ll bet if Popeye’s sold burgers they would call them “cow pies”.
Okay, so you’re familiar with the umlaut, the ellipsis, the ampersand and the tilda, but you’re still craving more knowledge about strange, rarely used typographical marks. Well my friend, you’ve come to the right place.
An American, an Englishman, and Dumb Steve all decided to go hunting in the woods. They loaded up their gear and drove into the forest. Before splitting up, they all agreed to meet back at the truck at 3:00. They also decided that if one of them got lost, he should shoot three times into the air, and the other two would come to his rescue. They all agreed, and set out.
A Frenchman, A Scot, and Dumb Steve were exploring the Amazon Jungle. As they passed through a small clearing, several bloodthirsty cannibals leaped out of the brush and surrounded them. All three were taken prisoner and transported back to the tribal village, where they were thrown into a large pit.
Julian Beever (a.k.a. "The Pavement Picasso") is an amazing chalk artist that specializes in "pavement drawings". He has worked in the U.K., Belgium, France, The Netherlands, Germany, Australia and the USA.
For our 4-year anniversary, Angela and I went out to eat at the Mori Japanese Steakhouse. Our hibachi chef was very entertaining, though the vegetables left a little to be desired. It seems that this is a common trend...the worse the show, the better the food (and vice versa). I don't know, it probably has something to do with concentration.
Yeah! Today, 08-01-07, My wife and I celebrate our 4-year anniversary. That may not sound like a long period of time, but it seems like it's really only been a couple of years.
Recently, my wife asked me to draft an essay for the "Samsung 2007 Hope For Education Contest" that answers the following question: 
