For aspiring world conquerors everywhere

The History: Alleluia, Let’s Get Walking

Around 1212, a large amount of poor country folk joined up to form a mass movement of followers intending to carry out the will of God.

Depending on your source, God’s will was that they A) Bring Christianity to the Heathens Across the Water, B) Follow a Miracle Worker or C) Escort a guy named Steve on his trip to bring the French King a letter from Jesus.

Why This is Awesome

Imagine 30,000 delusional minions marching off to do your bidding. Although The Omen and Village of the Damned reduce their credibility somewhat, no one really suspects children when it comes to acts of pure evil.

True, modern accounts say that the “children” were actually just poor people of all ages (the confusion arose from a mistranslation), but either way, they were pretty gullible. The first group thought the Mediterranean sea would magically part for them and the second followed a 12 year old across France.

How You Can Use This on Your Quest for World Domination

First, you need a miracle worker. I would suggest hiring David Blaine. He is impervious to ice and drowning (crossing the Alps and or the Mediterranean is not a problem) and unafraid of heights.

Then, you just need to have him gather followers. Not hard at all – his Twitter account lists 26,813.

Finally, gather them all together and set them on a holy mission. As you can see from the missions above, provided you have enough miracles to keep them interested, it is not hard to get people to do just about anything.

Have fun, but don’t forget to plan ahead so your mission ends slightly more successfully than the Children’s Crusade – in all accounts, the Crusaders end up dead, enslaved, or broken up and sent home once they reach the northern suburbs of Paris. I wish you luck.

More Information: Wikipedia Children’s Crusade article.

Image credit: Crusade & David Blaine.

I’ve been blogging via the Guide to World Domination for about a year and a quarter now. Thanks to Google Analytics, I’ve realized that while I enjoy writing about the Life and Times of Leanne Heller, all of my popular posts contain useful, non-personal information.

When I learn about something that I think would be useful to others, like How to Add Images to Your Gmail Signature Using Firefox Add-Ons or AIM Coho, Salmon & Trout Bots, I’ll post about it. Google picks these up, and posts like this (thankfully) get higher traffic. But for the most part, I write personal posts that don’t make the Google Radar.

I like having a mostly personal blog. There are several personal blogs that I really enjoy reading, but mainly because I have some connection to the author. I think you have to be famous, or at least notorious, to have a really popular personal blog.

I’m okay with this. I first started getting more interested in blogging after hearing Chris Brogan speak at a North Shore Tech Council event. I don’t want to misquote him, so I’ll just say I’ve noticed his blog always contains content that is useful to his readers. That is why an alexa comparison of our sites looks like this:

Yeah, I’m the red line. The one parallel to (and on top of) the line that forms the bottom of the chart. Again, it’s okay. I figure if I work hard enough at it, I’ll be popular some day.

If you ever want to make yourself feel really good, by the way, use siteanalytics.compete.com. I plugged the old GTWD in there, and apparently, I’m a lot more popular than Google thinks. It’s sort of like viewing your site through one of those flattering skinny mirrors at the carnival.

Perhaps I will become famous for creating an alternative site comparison widget that congratulates you on your traffic regardless of your unique visitors. “Keep trying, people love you. I mean, they really love you. The internet would collapse without your support.” Although, perhaps I should have someone slightly less sarcastic write out the congratulatory comments.

The fun part:

I like to pretend I can garden. I have a lot of green leafy things in pots, and I occasionally water and feed them. I don’t grow complicated things like flowers, because they require too much maintenance and also because I can’t eat them.

Yesterday, I finally had time to do my spring gardening (having a baby puts you behind a season or two) and I had a great time pruning and potting and basically playing with a bunch of dirt. It’s like mud pies for grown-ups.

And, the not-so-fun part:

Unfortunately, I have this evil bag of peat moss that frequently causes my skin to flare up with disgusting itchy red marks. I have yet to actually throw the bag out, because I live on the third floor and the dumpster is far, far away. Also, my plants seem to like peat moss included in their soil mix.

It’s been awhile since I last gardened, so I forgot to wear gloves and long-sleeves. I even wore shorts, which was a stellar idea. As a result, today I have the most disgusting rash on my arms and legs, with all these teeny little white specks and huge poofy venom-filled patches skin. When you touch it (if you dare), it feels like a bee sting, or like you have wet baking soda packed under your skin. Mmm.

My Theories

1. The bag is infested with very small, stinging bugs. Since the rashes have gotten progressively worse, it stands to reason that they are lying in wait in the bag, breeding more and more monsters.
2. This batch of peat moss is very dusty. My skin, which already hates dust mites, had an allergic reaction and is waging war on itself.
3. My garden, spurred on by the fact that I regularly deny it food and water and sometimes even sunshine, has decided to kill me.

It’s a tough call. At least I know it’s happened before, and will go away. The first time I had just talked to a friend about their case of scabies, so I was certain that’s what I had. I woke up in the middle of the night itching like mad. Imagining tiny organisms crawling around inside your body is not a great way to relax.

Disgusting photos for the morbidly curious

Blech.

Why I Went There

I feel kind of arbitrary about birthday gifts. Some years I get people things, other years they’re lucky if they get a voice mail of me (and whoever I can coerce into joining me) singing happy birthday.

This year, I breezed over my sister’s birthday (sorry Kristy) in May but covered Father’s Day and 2 birthdays in June. I did get Kristy’s daughter Aoife a cool gift with the help of Cass, who used to work in a toy store and consequently knows what’s good.

Anyway, the gift I want to talk about was my brother’s. He is crazy about his puppy dogs and is rather fond of beer, so I thought a customized beer stein would be a good bet. After comparing a few sites, I found zazzle.com. (Top Google result for “customized beer stein.”

How it Works

After following the Google search link, I clicked on the image which took me to a “Customize Your Product” wizard. I clicked on “Add Image” and played around with “Adding Text” as well. After spending some time in Photoshop, I uploaded an image of the puppies and completed the online order process, which is pretty standard. (Think amazon.com.)

Important Step!

If you’re creating your product and the image shows the words “Add image or text” or similar, make sure you delete that text before submitting your order. If you don’t, those words will appear as part of the design. Classy, yes? They may have removed this, since I don’t see it on the site now, but watch out for it.

Customer Service

If you don’t delete the dummy text, you may receive an email from the Zazzle.com Quality Assurance team. I found my contact to be helpful and able to communicate well. Additionally, they spotted the issue and initiated contact via email, rather than waiting for me to get the product and feel like an idiot. I was given the option to cancel the order, and reorder it correctly, with a full refund on the botched order.

Savings

Retailmenot has coupon info (go to retailmenot.com and search for “zazzle.com”) and a hack involving making your product public so you qualify as a contributor and save an additional percent.

Finished Product

Here are two images of the finished product:

The photo quality was really amazing. The original image was pretty large, but even so, I was impressed how well it was translated to the stein.

Overall Review

Overall, this is a great site and a great service. The cost is reasonable (about $25 for this order including shipping), the final product is excellent, it’s easy to use and the customer service is above and beyond the usual online store service. Finally, the gift itself is both functional and personal, which is always appreciated. I recommend zazzle.com and I would use it again.

Jon and I have been looking for houses lately, since our rent is going up 25% in August and we figure we might as well take advantage of the $8K tax credit courtesy of the President.

It’s exciting to be thinking about moving into a house, especially now that we officially need that second bedroom for Maddox. But I have to confess: for me, one of the major perks of getting a house is having the opportunity to sort through all of my stuff and get rid of everything that I don’t use.

Jon (and most everybody else) finds this attitude crazy. I don’t blame him, but I still can’t stop myself from twitching with glee when I picture rooting through all my belongings and lightening my load.

I can trace this behavior back to my childhood. My father used to encourage us to get rid of our excess “stuff” and would cheer every full trash bag that went out. (Full of possessions, not just trash. He was not that excited about plain trash, although it would have been great if he had been.)

So now, I derive intense satisfaction from hauling out trash bags (and they have to be hefty black ones) full of things I’m ready to part with. My siblings probably have this same complex, but it’s okay, because someone has to support the garbage bag industry.

The bags can be headed for the Salvation Army or to those big yellow clothes collecting bins, or just out to our dumpster. It doesn’t matter. It’s psychologically liberating. Except of course when I realize I’ve tossed out something important in my zeal, and have to go buy a replacement.

Don’t get me wrong – I dig my stuff. I have no sentimentality about belongings, but I have a lot of items that I appreciate, and other items that would be extremely unpleasant to live without.

And, before anyone gets excited about what will be on the curb outside Leanne’s house the day of the move, let me clarify and tell you that the ginormous tv, our laptops and my ceramic rooster cookie jar are coming with me.

But all that other stuff? (Insert delighted teehee here). Hand me that trash bag, we’re just getting started.

Image credit: trash bag, house and rooster.

I was holding Maddox in our living room when Jon started playing a series of song clips on his laptop. Man, I thought, those are some great songs! I listened to them for a moment more, and realized that there was something…familiar about them.

It turns out, our friend Paul had sent Jon a link to this video:

As explained in the video, each of these 36 songs use the same four chords. It’s amazing how many of these songs were popular, and how many of them are still recognizable. This mix even includes two of my favorite songs, With or Without You and Glycerine (a personal nostalgia-fest). I feel so deceived.

And yet – I kind of want to get the entire playlist. I mean, there’s only four of them, but those are some great chords.

Take a look at the video – how many of these songs do you recognize as songs that you like, or at least liked until they were hideously overplayed? Have you also been suckered?

Since I’m all about the baby lately, but don’t want to turn this into a baby blog, check out baby updates at maddoxheller.com.

I’ll be updating this blog periodically with similar content to before the pregnancy, but for all baby-related news, pictures & video, head over to the new site.