New robots.txt for the Whitehouse website

This is a bit technical (and nerdy) but I thought it was very interesting.

Follow this link to see the robots.txt file for whitehouse.gov from yesterday and then a resived version for today. Dramatic difference, I suppose change may really be on the way.

FYI, the robots.txt file is a special file included in website (or on the web servers) that tells search engines (such as Google) what to include and not include (“ignore”) when they crawl the site and see what people can find in their searches (include in their indexes).

Welcome

I would like to welcome Barack Obama as our 44th President.

Hail to the Chief.

Balance update

So far the whole adding balance to my life thing is working out pretty good. I have been able to squeeze in most of the things I enjoy each night. I suppose one problem is that I’m having to actually work towards balance. I suppose somewhere deep down I think that should be a natural flow but I guess not.

ideas

Thinking about bringing back my book and movie reviews…

Going to see The Day the Earth Stood Still tonight, could possibly see a review tomorrow.

Biggest problem with me and book reviews right now is that I just finished an eleven book series and am 3/12 in another series now.  Might figure something out though.

Amazon ruled the holiday shopping market

So Amazon is reporting their best Christmas season ever in regards to sells despite the current “recession”.  In all honestly I had a feeling that might be the case and actually had a few conversations with family/friends about it. I do think we will see a drop in overall sales numbers for the holidays but it only makes sense that the online marketplaces would do better in a year with high gas prices and thus more expensive travel. Can’t go see Grandma because plane ticket prices are too high and you don’t want to fight the post office? Buy online and have it shipped directly, et someone else pay the gas prices. It is really the perfect scenario for them.

http://www.tgdaily.com/html_tmp/content-view-40726-118.html

Belated

Hope everyone had a merry Christmas. Mine was great after a rough day on Tuesday.

The first round is over. To be honest I usually find myself enjoying New Year’s more than Christmas. Probably because I do much less (read: no) traveling and I just get to relax. However watching my daughter open gifs this year was one of the best experiences of my life. It was awesome.

YES! New W&G!

Gotta love these guys, I just wish there would be a new full-length soon.

http://www.cinematical.com/2008/12/19/oh-yeah-a-new-wallace-and-gromit-film/

Games

I haven’t bought a fighting game in years. I go so tired of the “Turbo” and “X” versions of EVERY ONE. However I will buy Street Fighter IV for the xbox 360. You can see the playable characters here: http://unrealitymag.com/index.php/2008/12/22/a-gallery-of-the-complete-street-fighter-4-cast/.

Also thought of giving this Mortal Combat Vs. DC Universe a try.

shopping…?

So I went shopping at a local mall last night with my wife and daughter. This was my second trip to the mall this holiday season and for the second time I was amazed at how few people were there. I remember having to fight and push my way through the hallways just to get to the bathroom just a few years back. It’s a week before the big day! I have three opinions on what might be causing this:

1. More people are shopping online.

2. The mall has been replaced by the new “shopping outlet” just a couple miles down the road.

3. The economy is just really that bad this year.

I’m anxious to see the post-holiday spending numbers that come from the major retailers.