avalonstar:distortion

Dear AOL,

Next time you hijack my buddy list with your bots, I’m coming to Virginia and cutting you down.

Love from your friend, Bryan Veloso

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Bryan: Hi Google, how are you today? Google: Fine Bryan, nice of you to come by our campus, have you tried our meal of the day? Bryan: Nope, actually, I was interested in trying out that new stat software you guys released, since I’m a stats whore and all.

* Bryan then sports his Measure Map and Mint tattoos. Google gets jealous.

Google: Oh, you mean Analytics? Sure!

* Google picks up a sea urchin and places it in Bryan’s hands.

Google: Here you go. Just place this on the top of your website, wait 12 hours and we ...

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I have a confession to make.

I can’t write blog posts this short.

I have no idea why but I feel the need that if I’m going to post something, it has to be longer than 4 lines in my WordPress edit box. I think at first it was because if I didn’t do that, my design would break. And if you’ve been with me for some time, you know how I get when my design breaks.

Anyway, now since I have 600 readers who I don’t want annoyed at me, I wouldn’t ...

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I’m all about collaborative effort, and if there is anything I can do to not only help myself but help others, I’ll be glad to put forth the work in order to do so.

Let’s start, today’s topic is “reach.” No, we’re not talking about getting food from the top shelves of cupboards or that weird brand of toothbrush either. More than a post, this is more of an open-ended question as to how one’s site reaches the masses. Additionally, I want to take a look at what one can do to extend ...

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I love my readers, and you should love yours. Treat them with respect, courtesy and dignity. Without them, it doesn’t matter how loud you are, they’re the ones that listen. My readers are my support. They are the people who inspire me, keep me writing; the people who make me want to do this day in and day out. My readers are my best friends and the harshest of critics.

Feel lucky, because you have the job of making your readers’ time worthwhile. Think of it, they’re taking the time out of their day to see ...

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I can’t tell you how long I’ve been battling browser compatibility bugs, but it wasn’t until one of my first clients stressed that his site needed to work in IE6 and NN4 when I truly opened my eyes to this dark side of our world. I’m sitting here laughing at myself because it took me a few all-nighters to find the non-existent documentation on how this thing called the box model was messed up. Thanks for that, Steve. I wasted 2 days of my life on just fixing browser bugs.

But what doesn’t kill ...

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The more readers you have extends the volume of your voice. The louder and more trusted you are the more it extends the reach of your ideals.

Just like Full Metal Alchemist has the rule of equivalent exchange, our blogosphere has a few rules of it’s own. This I believe, is one of them. Although it seems obvious, many people don’t realize how true this is. It is one of the few things I have learned over the past few months.

Let’s take a drastic example shall we?

Dave Shea is loud. Doug Bowman is loud ...

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So Bryan goes on his merry way. With everything going on in the blogosphere as of late (Derek and his footer fetish (which for some reason is a “new” thing), Blog networks up the ass (or “we make money off your brain schemes”), etc.) I choose to defer my thoughts to others. Why? Not because I’m ignorant, because I think there are others who do a much better job wasting their time and sounding better talking about these issues than I am. Besides, I’m trying my best not to fill that reblog category. It’s the one ...

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I don’t know what it is about me and Benzinger but it seems like we get into the weirdest conversations about the “good ‘ol days.” Then again, I like to reminisce about those days and see how far I’ve come. That whole “knowing your past before creating your future,” kind of thing. So this was the first time this happened:

Brian: do you remember anything resembling… xist, xotech, xpired, xposure, xposed, etc back in the day? Me: Um… Brian: like.. a few years back, maybe 4 or 5. Brian: well, my brother said he remembers you from ...

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Face it people, don’t waste your time on Monster or any of its clones anymore (it’s full of spam anyway).

I think back to my days in one of the most boring classes ever, career planning. Not only was it a dread to go to, what could you learn there that you didn’t already know? In Johnson & Wales at least, there were three of these classes, all requiring the same assignments to be turned in: a resume, a cover letter, and job search results. Sure there were variations depending on what major you were in or ...

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As much as I’d like to say I’m a fanatic of forward-thinking, I am a lover of history. This story in particular focuses on the history of the sites I visit, and why I seemed to get the short end of the stick.

In freshman year of college, I got infected by my first virus and oddly it corrupted all my CSS and JPG files. So pretty much any site I had designed from 2000 to 2002 was gone. Sure I still had the code, but it wasn’t the same without the images. Fast forward to ...

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Today I ate a scrumptious buffet lunch at this place where my family used to go all the time, then got tired of. Well, the food wasn’t that great. But I got the best fortune cookie, an empty bag that was supposed to contain a fortune cookie. No, this is not a joke, that bag isn’t open and all the air is still inside it. I couldn’t help but burst out laughing when I got it, since everybody else grabbed for the cookies and I was left with the bag. That’s what I get for ...

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Ahhh, nothing like tea to keep you going in the morning. So let’s start with thi… hmm? (Insert “Charlie Brown” style adult voice.) Yeah, that’s my new mug. What? Yep, it has the Media Temple logo on it. When did I get it? Oh yeah! That’s what I was going to write about. Well folks, I found them, and today on Avalonstar—the reprise to the “mailbox mystery.”

Two days ago, I had made another 85-mile trip to Los Angeles to visit Jenni. After eating, getting my first model in a long time, and spending money ...

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Get your horses again it’s time to get back on the track, we got another one chasin’ us! First, I’d like to thank James Archer for the nice words and I would just like to say that it has been a dream to get on that site, and now it’s happened. Now that I got that out of my system, I’d like to focus on something that was said in his review tonight:

As is often the case, the code isn’t semantically/structurally perfect, but I’m beginning to wonder if my standards are ...

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Well kiddies, our story has taken a drastic turn. As you can see, there is no more story, the “powers that be” have contacted me to take the post off the front page. I have also taken all links to (mt) off that post, just to prevent the ease of clickage. Not wanting to get into a confrontation with a business partner, I complied. All in all, it was a very harmless conversation, and don’t worry, they didn’t threaten to do anything. No guns, no knives, no viruses. I do respect the professionalism that the team posesses ...

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Our story begins on a sunny Thursday afternoon while I was looking around Media Temple’s website, interested in their new hosting plans. Everybody and their dog either hosts with Dreamhost or (mt), so I thought,

“Why not? Maybe they’re worth the price, and I’ve used them before at one point.”

Besides, I was starting to feel bad leeching off my friend who had faithfully be paying for our little venture’s hosting. I had some time on my hands that day, so I started to dig around the site. Eventually, I came upon their contact page ...

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