We are only a few hours into 2009 and already I wonder what the new year will bring for both our country and myself personally?

While we wont have a massive political campaign that comes to a historic end, we will have the first African American President who will have to perform beyond the hype and Saturday Night Live parodies.

While we will still have an economic crisis in the country, maybe we are coming out of the worst times. The cost of gas continues to drop into the low $1 range and hopefully will not go back up to the $4-5 prices we saw in 2008. Mortgage rates are at all time lows and the car companies are offering incredible deals to stimulate buying. Can the stock market return to the higher levels it once enjoyed?

Speaking of Detroit, will the Detroit Lions ever Read the rest

Now I know we have reached a breaking point. Santa is bankrupt. This can not happen! At some point we have to get a grip on all of the “bailout” discussions and proposals. Who will be the next to receive a billion dollar gift for not doing their jobs well? When will the money pit well run dry?

At least the bailouts are providing us with some good comedy and laughs. Enjoy the video. I know I did.

I did it again. I know better and this is not the first time I have done it. Why can’t I just SHUT my mouth and not stuff EVERYTHING I see into it!

Each year I end up with the worst stomach ache and living on the toilet after Christmas Day. I just can not stop eating. And this year we went to THREE different houses to celebrate the holiday and basically at THREE different HUGE holiday meals. I am an idiot and paying for it now. It is 4:30am and I am basically dying.

Just so everyone understands, the day was awesome in general. A lot of happiness, family and friends, and GREAT food. Way to much great food. In the morning we prepared a giant breakfast meal of left over ham, breads, and sides from the big Christmas Eve dinner we had hosted. While we were eating our 2 year old son went through his presents at a buzz saw pace. We went directly from there to our brother in laws house with an even bigger home made lasagna feast prepared with Read the rest

Today we mourn the passing of a beloved old  friend, Common Sense, who has been with us for many  years.  No one  knows for sure how old he was, since his birth records were long ago lost in bureaucratic red tape.

He will be remembered as having cultivated such valuable lessons as: knowing when to come in out of the rain; why the  early bird gets the worm; life isn’t always fair; and maybe it was my fault. Common Sense lived by simple, sound financial policies (don’t  spend more than you can earn) and reliable strategies (adults, not children, are in charge).

His health began to deteriorate rapidly when Read the rest

As you know from my previous posts I was VERY unhappy that our President had a shoe thrown at him and the Secret Service was no where to be found.

That being said now everyone can have a chance to throw their shoes at President Bush with this new online game found Here ( or http://www.kroma.no/2008/bushgame/ ). So far over 70 million tosses at the President have been made with almost 9 million hitting him. Check it out.

For your disgust and enjoyment we give you the 1st annual PD Best and Worst For 2008. This is my opinion and is completely based on what I like, or in many cases dislike.
PLEASE NOTE that this article will be a work in progress until midnight on December 31. I will be adding to it each day. Please check back daily for more updates!

POLITICS:

The Best:

1. Obama, Obama, Obama. The country stepped up, proved it was only partially prejudice, and elected the best person for the job based on qualifications and charisma, and NOT color. No other story dominated the political landscape like this one and deservedly so.
2. Saturday Night Live: Any Sarah Palin or Keith Olbermann parody. Ben Affleck’s Olbermann was Read the rest

No matter what you think of OUR President, it really bothers me that anything is thrown at him and he is potentially hurt. Who is to say that next time someone throws something really heavy and seriously hurts the leader of our nation?

If you have not already seen this it really is incredible. A reporter in Iraq throws both of his shoes at President Bush. I give Bush credit for dodging the shoes without flinching and just going on like nothing happened.  No one ever said he did not have balls.

Goodbye old friend. Been a fun 6 years together, but this is my last visit. No way you will see my ass here ever again. Time to let someone else clean up my mess.

With literally NOTHING left to do but watch “the store” and make sure things don’t get even worse then they already are, outgoing President Bush made a surprise visit to Iraq today. The only reason I can think that he made the secret trip was to say goodbye to his best friend in the world - Iraq. Without Iraq President Bush would not have any friends at all.

U.S. President George W. Bush made an unannounced farewell visit to Baghdad on Sunday, just weeks before he leaves office and bequeaths the unpopular Iraq war to President-elect Barack Obama.

Slipping out of the White House over the weekend, Bush flew secretly to the Iraqi capital to hold talks with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and address a rally of U.S. troops. “Bush has come to meet Iraqi leaders, thank the troops and celebrate the new security agreement,” a White House official said. Source.

Celebrate??? Celebrate what? If the war was completely over today what would we have gained? What benefit has this entire war had for the American people? Read the rest

I consider myself a full time Internet person. I am connected almost 24-7, either through my desktop computer or on one of my multiple mobile devices. In addition my companies all have full service websites that are back end driven with complex administrative controls. The websites are a BIG PART of our marketing efforts and they receive high traffic.

We do an incredible amount of research on other company’s sites and how they present themselves online so we can stay ahead of our competition. To do this we work with one of the best web full service web design firms - Atlantic BT. Atlantic BT is located in North Carolina and they are one of the best known Raleigh web design firms. The nice thing about the company is that they offer web design, hosting, programming and marking services for small to medium sized businesses. That was perfect for us, but still not the most important reason we use them.

The main reason we LOVE Atlantic BT is the people who work there. They understood what we were trying to accomplish with our websites and they were willing to listen to our ideas and not just try to cram what they thought down our throats. And when we did want input from them, they hit home runs with everything they suggested. They also built us fantastic back end controls so we could make most of the changes to our sites whenever we wanted to. This gave us the flexibility to make instant changes to the site.

One of our sites was recently profiled. You can see it here. I highly recommend Atlantic BT if you need a site built. It is a good company with talented people who will make your web site stand out from all the rest of the sites out there.