What impresses you the most about someone: what came out of their mouth, what they drove up in, or what they’re wearing on their back?

Case in point: I drive a Mercedes (previously a Porsche), and while they were both bought and paid for with cash, I’ve never used them to try to impress anybody. Truth is, they’re just awesome cars ’cause they’re both examples of great engineering, they’re fun, and they just work! At the same time, I walk around in flip flops every chance I get, so you’d never know I owned them once I was 10 ft. away from the car!

When I have something to say, it’s usually on some IT-related topic; matter of fact, I can spend hours with anybody talking about computers, etc.

I’ve been reading blogs centered around news from the West Coast for far too long now – let’s see about putting the Upstate on the East Coast’s IT map along with RTP & Atlanta!

While I envision the group being mostly about web technologies, I look forward to whatever others want to bring to the table – as long as it is IT related.

Hopefully it won’t center around job searching like 1000 other groups out there do already – I’m thinking just plain ol’ IT talk, whether it be web design, web technologies, SEO/SEM, webmaster, standards, OSS, security, programming, etc.

I went to a business social yesterday – my 1st one – usually I’m more than happy to just code at home with my PC and Pandora, but they did mention hors dourves and a bar, so I figured I’d give it a shot (although I had to pay to drink ARGH!).

Anyway, I struck up a conversation with some dude that turned out to be in sales – I still don’t know what he was doing there besides handing out his card to everybody, but at least he knew all the catch phrases I find oh so dear… He kept my attention for a solid 30 seconds until he started talking about Flash this, and Flash that – at which point I knew it was time for a refill or I was just gonna have to get out of this waste of time get-together.

Since I grabbed this “Will Code HTML For Food” image off the internet sometime ago, I can’t remember where it came from, but thanks to John’s Background Switcher, I see it every now and then on my desktop, and right now, it really hits home with a lot of folks.

Thanks to my wife Natalie, luckily I’m not in that dire a strait, but believe me, if it weren’t for her, I’d be a piece of wet toast out in the rain today.

So, to all you people that have a lock solid secure job, congratulations! For those that don’t, be as frugal as possible. Luckily, that’s something I actually am pretty good at.

“Users of Microsoft’s free webmail service are reacting negatively to the company’s user-interface changes. Not surprising, seeing as how Hotmail users are clearly not fans of change to begin with.” – WebMonkey.com

Classic!

_{I guess that means they’re all Republicans too}

I wasn’t shooting for ‘force over the horizon coordinator’ (aka FOTC for my sometimer buddies out there), but it’s showing up in the #9 spot on Google right now and #7 for search phrases coming my way.

Go figure.

But some pranksters are also landing on me for ‘billy girl’ searches too; at least I’m #12 for that one.

Funny what those Google Webmaster Tools will reveal for you .