2010 - Some Stuff I Did...

Twenty-ten (or two thousand and ten) was a great year. I experienced a few firsts, met some amazing people, and, in general, had a blast. After Forbes named Stockton the second most miserable city in America, Rod and I had the opportunity to be on KXTV and KCRA (and Rod finished the trifecta with his solo appearance on KTXL.

I helped a friend get his Kickstarter project, The Amazing Fist, funded, by producing the promo video.

To help raise money and awareness of sexual violence against women, I walked a mile in high heels. Ouch!

I joined the Stockton Earth Day Festival committee and served as emcee for the annual event at Victory Park.

Along with my partner in crime, Rod, I co-emceed the SJDC Media Fest. We even found a way to show up wearing nearly identical shirts.

With the help of many great friends, I had the chance to perform Podcast Stockton Live at the Taste of San Joaquin and Way Out West BBQ Competition.

Dressed up as the Mad Hatter, and along with Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum, we particpated in the Library & Literacy Foundation’s Trivia Bee. We didn’t do any better than my past teams, but due to a rules change, we made it to the second round (the rule change was to allow all teams to compete in the second round).

Wes, Rod and I held our second and third Stockton Tweetups, bringing social media enthusiasts together in real-life.

What a year!

Goodbye 2010. Hello 2011.

It's Been A While

My “place” on the web has been pretty quiet lately. Not surprisingly, visits to the site have gone down by quite a bit (except the everyday searches for Blackie Lawless’s daughter). The lack of posts here, one of the longest gaps in all the years I’ve kept the blog alive, is due to the software I use.

Years ago, after using FrontPage to manually update my site, I moved to RapidWeaver for Mac. I loved the software and recommended it to anyone that would listen to me.

After many problems with my RapidWeaver on this site, our daughter’s and our family podcast, it just became too much work to update the site. Then, the comment system used in the application, Haloscan, went out of business. The comments were moved to Echo but that service leaves a lot to be desired. It mixed up comments between this site and Makenzy’s and made it difficult to find out on what post comments were made.

I would prefer to use WordPress, a platform I have become much more comfortable. Being able to update via my iPhone and from any computer is very appealing. With 1000s of themes available and tons of custimization options, WordPress is my favorite blogging service.

Sadly, though, moving to WordPress will take a considerable amount of time and effort. I wish there was a magic wand to move this site to WP but there are some obstacles:

- mattbeckwith.com is hosted on a Windows machine (my host’s, not mine) that won’t support WP - with my current hosting service, I have to move this domain to a Linux box (and boy, I’d love to) - I have more than 75,000 files / 300GB+ of data to pull down before moving - there is no utility to convert my blog posts to a format that I can import into WordPress

So, I’m not sure when, if ever, I’ll move this site over to WordPress, but I am going to start writing more.

Deal or No Deal

When Mike and I found out that Deal or No Deal auditions were coming to the Sacramento area we knew exactly what we had to do. So, I believe, for the first time in our adult life, we dressed alike (just like twins do) and headed up the Folsom. After nearly seven hours in live, we finally got our 15 seconds to sell ourselves. We did enough to get past the second round, which afforded us the opportunity to wait for another hour or so for a second round of interviews - again another 15 seconds to shine. Although our presentation was pretty good, our audition ended there with a "don't call us, we'll call you".

Our sister was also there and was give three interviews. She already promised us that we'd get to be her supporters if she gets on the show. Good luck Missy!

At least we got to round two!

Click here for the pictures.

I'm Driving a Homer!

I like The Simpsons. Ok, I really like The Simpsons. I've watched the show since the very beginning, I own a couple of seasons on DVD and, of course, I own The Simpsons Movie. I also drive a Ford Five Hundred. I like my car. Ok, I really like my car. It has been perfectly dependable during its first 100,000 miles. I like the name Five Hundred and even like the fact that they re-named the car to Taurus- which is all a bit confusing if you ask me.

So what do the Simpsons have to do with my car? Well, during a recent speech, Ford's head of global product development Derrick Kuzak likened the Five Hundred to Homer Simpson. Not Homer's car, but Homer himself. The Five Hundred was called a failure and an updated model was promised for the future.

A failure? Homer Simpson a failure? I don't think so! I'm proud to drive a Homer Simpson.

Don't Pay OJ

OJ's guilty and he is finally bold enough to admit it... or close enough to it. How in the world this guy can go on like he has, without butting a bullet in his head is beyond me. Perhaps his new book, "If I Did It", and interview are his way of getting on with his life. Either way... I'm not interested! visit dontpayoj.com

Kayne West, John Kerry and Faith Hill

What does Faith Hill have in common with Kayne West or John Kerry? Well, if you were watching the CMA Award show last night it was apparent that she has stolen the playbook of one of them. As we watched the announcement of the female vocalist of the year (I already knew it was Carrie Underwood because I cheated and looked online) it was very clear that Faith Hill blew up when her name wasn't called for the award.

Now, in the aftermath, her manager is saying that it was all a joke. A joke? Like Kerry's recent blunder about "getting stuck in Iraq", she should leave the jokes to the professionals (just as MarkDayComedy said in a recent YouTube spot).

So, was she really ticked about Carrie winning? If so, I would have liked to see a good ol' fashioned cat fight on TV... at least then there wouldn't be a debate about how she really felt.

If you've not seen the clip from last night's show, check out these videos and give me your verdict.

video#1 (the best view) video#2 video#3

Answer to the Gas Price Question

Wrong, wrong and wrong. I can't believe how lame I was... I left the original alt text on that file! That picture was taken in Arlington, Texas in December 2001.

100 Grand

Well, anyone that knows me knows that I take my camera with me almost everywhere.  So, today, as I approached the top of the Altamont Pass, I couldn't pass on the opportunity to click a shot when my '98 Chevy truck hit 100,000 miles.   Above are actual shots of my odometer and where I was when it hit 100k.  I know this is really strange but I couldn't resist.