Click on the picture or the link below it to view all the pics.

View the full set of AZ Diamondbacks vs. LA Dodgers on Flickr

Every milestone deserves a celebration.

Ours just means a bigger party.

Join us as we commemorate not only 8 great years since our first issues rolled off the presses, but also as we honor the talents, minds and ambition that have driven the Valley to become a burgeoning metropolis with a diverse and inventive population. In celebration, 944 will be mixing award-winning musical acts, notable artists, cultural institutions and a few surprises from both here and across the country at W Scottsdale from August 28-30.

RSVP for Friday on Facebook

RSVP for Saturday (Pool Party) on Facebook

RSVP for Saturday (Evening) on Facebook

RSVP for Sunday on Facebook

I happen to have an extra ticket for each day, so I’m going to leave it up to you guys to post this up and spread the word as much as possible, and I’ll hand out my extra ticket for each day to the person that promotes this the most.  Post it up on your Facebook, Twitter, MySpace (wait, does anyone have that anymore, because I don’t), etc…and comment back here to let me know you’ve spread the word.  I’ll keep a watch on everyone, and on the day before each event, the winner of each ticket will be announced via Twitter/Facebook.

Follow me on Twitter (@beaufrusetta)

Friend me on Facebook

You really don’t want to miss out on this…it’s going to be awesome.

Wow – the Michael Vick topic has definitely gotten heated this morning.  Let me first admit that I was sluggin’ down some serious haterade about the whole ordeal in the beginning, but as time went on, and Vick started moving forward, went through jail, and got back to his life…things changed.

Michael Vick made a mistake – there’s no question there – a BIG mistake, however, he went through the justice system, paid his debt to society, and yet, he still can’t catch a break from some people.

Michael Vick has been granted a second chance at his career by Roger Goodell.  He’s been put on a conditional reinstatement, of which he will miss 2 preseason games, has already missed a lot of training camp, and will miss 6 games of the regular season.  This is on top of losing every asset he’s acquired, and having to completely start his life over.  The one thing he has going for him…he’s one hell of a football player.

I’ve gotten involved in a few of the conversations this morning, and honestly, no one has created a compelling argument on WHY he shouldn’t be allowed to play football.  Let me give you some “reasons” I’ve been told and my answers to them:

“He’s a role model” – agreed, football players are role models, but I’m fairly certain I didn’t hear Manny Ramirez ever say “I did steroids because of Jose Canseco” – or hear a plea in court by someone arrested for DUI and Manslaughter say, “I got drunk, I drove, and killed a man because of Daute Stallworth”.  Give me a break – children look up to a lot of people, including sport players, and shockingly, their parents, but children can still distinguish right from wrong.

“He shouldn’t be allowed to go back to football” – why?  What if he was a plumber?  Could he get back in to plumbing?  Michael Vick is a highly skilled and trained professional football player.  If you committed a crime outside of work, should you be let back to work in the trade of which you are skilled at?  Should you even be allowed to work at all?  Some people seem to think that he needs to just be unemployed for the rest of his life because he’s a professional football player and that profession happens to come with a “spotlight & money”.  He shouldn’t have to apologize for the skill he’s trained in – he didn’t shoot some one on 3rd & 9 in the fourth quarter for gods sake.

“the Eagles signing him is a bad PR move” – really?  Kind of like when Paris Hilton’s sex tape came out – bad move – right?  WRONG!  I’m pretty sure that all Eagles games will now have the Howard Stern affect – more people that hate Vick will watch simply because they “hate” him.  Guaranteed…

Unfortunately, someone in the spotlight like Michael Vick will be put under far greater scrutiny than “John Smith” the data entry clerk from a call center.  He did something wrong, he admitted he did something wrong, he paid his dues to society under the judicial system’s rule, and he’s having to start his whole life over, yet everyone thinks he “hasn’t paid enough”.

When will it be enough?  At what point do you stop beating him down and let him prove he’s changed?  People will lift up career criminals that are fighting with an addiction to heroin, and keep “giving them a chance”, yet a football player has to be put under further scrutiny and beat down even further because some people over at PETA are a little pissed off?

Boo hoo…bring on football season…

Of course it’s the New York Times that’s reporting this – I’m sure there are plenty of Sox haters working there, but still…news like this doesn’t look well on the famous come back of the Red Sox to pull through “the curse” and get 2 World Series Championships in 4 years after an 86 year slump.

Read the full article on NYTimes.com

This whole post goes back to a question I asked myself yesterday – how long until Facebook and Twitter go down in flames?  It’s not that I want to see that happen any time soon, but its inevitable just by looking at the trends in our “gotta have it…don’t know how I have been getting on with my life without it….NOW” generation.  Two big players in the past decade come to mind instantly – MySpace and AOL.

Investment firms & other big players that like to throw down hundreds of millions in cash to jump on “what’s hot” confuse the hell out of me.  News Corp. bought MySpace for $580 million just a few years ago, and now, where does it fit in?  In 2009 it’s more comparable to the lost city of Chernobyl than it is to downtown LA when there is a pop icon’s dead body being delivered to a sold out crowd at the Staples Center.  The same goes for AOL – in the 90’s, they were the big name, so big that they merged with one of the worlds largest media outlet – Time Warner.  However, in 2002, they reported a loss of $99 billion and eventually dropped the “AOL” portion from “AOL/Time Warner” name – now they are talking about spinning off the AOL division all together since that one division is bringing the ship down with a series of heavy losses.  Sure, AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) is still a HUGE success, but so are shoes and toilets – both filled a “need”, then mutated in to different flavors.

Business today is scary.  If your business isn’t on the internet to provide a simple information outlet – you fail, but what if your business completely relies on the internet?  If you’re lucky, you’ll come up with a cool new idea with a weird name like Twitter or Zappos, the masses will latch on, you’ll make millions in a buy out, but trends show, your luck wears out quickly.  What I don’t understand is this – how is it that these companies still continue to get the big buy-in’s, even if trends show that businesses on the internet made out of this “oh oh oh…shiny!!!” concept end up falling off the map faster than Vanilla Ice did after “Ice Ice Baby”.

I understand the concept of business growth, the need of capital for expansion, and the drive to boost a CEO’s ego by making them a rather large blip on the “holy shit, that dude runs a $500 million dollar company he built in 3 years” radar, but at what point does the trend of “big money dump” in to internet companies and then their inevitable dive off the deep end start to matter?  At what point do these investors start requiring that the internet companies have a certain percentage of their business done IRL (in real life) instead of being 100% virtualized?  I know virtualization keeps overhead down and increases revenues, but can it ensure longevity like a tangible product you can feel in your hands that you buy in a store down the street?

I’m fairly certain that I could ask 100 business owners and get relatively the same answer to the question of “do you want your business to grow?”.  They all do – hell, I want my businesses to grow, and I would love a buyout that includes 8 zeroes, but the only recent big buyout that I’ve seen remotely succeed in the past decade has been YouTube – and I’m fairly certain that’s because Google just gobbles up all the super smart and level headed people.  Maybe investors need to put in some onsite daycare or ping pong tables in their offices and start calling them a “campus”?

CodeIgniter – PHP MVC Framework

My first shot at CodeIgniter was with DateDesigner.com (by persistent recommendation from @strebel).  Wow…once you grab the concept of the MVC framework, CodeIgniter makes your life tremendously easier when throwing together a site.  I literally thumbed through documentation and built DateDesigner.com in 30 days (scratch to launch).  I have learned how to set it up better and have learned a lot after putting together a few more sites with it (Twitrratr.com, FindMyDogADate.com, BajaSurVacationRentals.com), so now when I go back through some of the DateDesigner.com code, I curse myself a little as I refactor.

Have you built any sites with CodeIgniter?  Do you have an cool plug-in’s for CodeIgniter that you can suggest?

jQuery – Javascript Framework

Now – I have sucked at javascript for going on…ummm…ever?  It was actually @chuckreynolds that intro’d me to jQuery, but at the time, I still didn’t get it – because I was just too lazy to take a good look at it.  Well, again, my first shot at jQuery was on a simple interface tweak in DateDesigner.com, but it has spurred off on to nearly every site I work on now (including all of the 944 web sites internal/external).  There are a plethora plug-in’s available for jQuery – I’ve recently worked with jCarousel and a few others.

Do you have any jQuery plug-in recommendations?  Anyone know of any where I could essentially paginate images in 2 columns like a book/magazine w/o using flash?

A few weeks later, Dominic was scheduled for surgery to separate the plates in his head and to advance his forehead out of the recessed position it was in on the right side. Dominic did surprisingly well during and after the surgery, but it was still a little nerv-wracking for his Mom and I. They had advanced his forehead on the right side about 17mm after separating the plates, and his brain, within a few hours, completely relaxed and filled out the gap left between his skull and brain after the surgery. The doctor’s told us that Dominic’s physical growth would be slightly behind kids his same age because of the time it was going to take for his body to focus on healing instead of growing, and yes, he’s still a peanut…but he’s getting taller and he’s EXTREMELY smart! It’s almost as if his brain development kicked in to high gear when his body slowed down a little.

The doctor’s also told us that there was a 25% chance that Dominic would have to go through this surgery again for aesthetic reasons around the age of 5-6. Over the past 6 months or so, we’ve had appointments with the craniofacial surgeon as well as the neurosurgeon to determine what the next step might be since kids are kids and a few have noticed that Dom’s head isn’t necessarily shaped like theirs and they some times poke fun at him about it. Dominic doesn’t know any different, so it hasn’t really affected him, but if it continues, it is sure to have longer term affects on him as far as his self esteem and self confidence.

Pre/Post Op Pictures of Dominic’s First Surgery (Slightly Graphic)

Within the past 2 weeks, we finally got a CT scan of Dom’s head, and upon recommendation of both the neurosurgeon and the craniofacial surgeon, they both are suggesting we go through a full surgery again to advance his forehead for increased symmetry. We originally had 2 options, a cosmetic surgery, or the more invasive surgery, but after seeing the CT scan, both doctor’s noticed that Dominic’s brain looked a little “cramped”. They also asked if he was having reoccurring headaches – which he has – so going with the more invasive surgery to advance the forehead should correct that.

The surgery is scheduled for 10am tomorrow morning (Saturday, July 18th) at Phoenix Children’s Hospital. Dom’s Mom and big sister have done a great job talking to him about the surgery all this week and getting him mentally ready for it – he’s ready to “kick surgery’s butt!” – his sister encouraged him to kick it’s butt! hahaha I’m still a little bit of a wreck, but the surgeons do so many of these procedures, its become a pretty “standard” procedure for them. We’ll be at the hospital until Tue/Wed, but being there isn’t like being at a hospital at all – Dom loves all the “fun stuff” they have there.

Day 1 – Pick up the car

Met the rep at the #tukeedevhouse to pick up the car…fully loaded…in white!  First impression – “its definitely not Grandpa’s Lincoln…”.  Ford has really stepped up the styling on the Lincoln brand with their newest vehicle releases – I’m totally loving the lines of the car!

Get in to the car – and its got Sirius Satellite Radio – that’s a given in most cars today.  I didn’t really have an opportunity to mess with it too much before heading back to work, but the THX sound system & the Sirius satellite radio was crystal clear cruising all the way back to Scottsdale.  Got out of work, and bolted over to the kids school for Dom’s end of the year party – still didn’t have too much time to mess with the gadgets or the car, but I planned on it as soon as the party was over.

Ended up leaving the party and I literally sat in the parking lot of 7 Eleven for 20 minutes or so going through the manual and playing with Microsoft Sync.  I had thought that since it was Microsoft software, it wasn’t going to really support my Blackberry 8900, however, I was wrong!  I paired up my phone within a minute or so and made a call to Lexi (again) to wish her happy birthday – this time, through the phone interface in the car.  Awesome!

My battery was dying on my phone, so I knew I was going to have to head home, plug my phone in to my laptop, and let it take a charge before I could play with it some more, but then that got me thinking.  I figured, ok, there’s got to be more to the Microsoft Sync – it HAS to have a USB port somewhere in the car.  Sitting out front of my parents house (I had to stop by and show them the car – both my parents were jealous), I began looking everywhere, and then I opened up the center console and found the USB port.  I figured there was no way this was going to be as cool as I had imagined…and since I just had 2 strikes against my thoughts about the car and the Sync technology…whooosh…swing and a miss!  My phone started charging, and then I noticed that I had a USB media option – it totally loaded up all the MP3’s I had on my internal SD card and I could access my full library of music.

Streaming MP3’s via USB + charging phone + Bluetooth tech + aggressive styling + smooth ride = BIG GRIN!!!

Later in the evening after stopping by Gangplank to show the boys the car and giving them a ride in it, I discovered how to stream my media from my phone over Bluetooth…holy freakin’ cool!

Tomorrow I’ll touch more on how the car drives and any more gadgets that I find!

Check out the video that Chuck filmed late last night while I paired up the 8900 again & streamed MP3’s over Bluetooth to the sound system…

To be perfectly honest, this blog post has been sitting in my drafts section for a few months.  I wanted to start this post about people bitching about the MLB.tv service, but I think I had this little voice in my head that told me to just give it some time, enjoy my already stellar experience, and see where it goes from there.

The journey to MLB.tv started late in the season last year when I wanted to be able to stream the playoff games from whatever office I may of been working out of that day, however, I forgot to read the fine print that stated all live playoff games were blacked out, but an archive copy of the game would be available AFTER the game…meh.  Small fail for me…but that seems to be some what of a daily occurence as I get older.

So fast forward a few months, and I start poking around and seeing if I could find ANYTHING on the internet about MLB.tv offering live games streaming in HD…I couldn’t find anything.  So I went to the social channels, sent out a msg on Twitter, and oddly, my friend Nicole of all people responded to me on Facebook (my Twitter feed goes through to Facebook as well).  She said that she knew all the MLB.tv guys from when she lived in New York for a few years and she immediately got on her IM, asked if they were going to be offering streaming HD content for 2009, and they said yes!

The power of social media is awesome!

So anyway, when it came time to roll out streaming HD over the internet from MLB.tv, I was on it like white on rice with my credit card in hand!  Its roughly $20/month for me to be able to watch ALL of the Red Sox games live in HD…ummm…yeah…IN!

When I signed up, the player was still in “beta” mode with some limited functionality, but it worked well for a beta…not gonna lie.  There were some issues with the “NextDef” java based plug-in initially, for many users, but as far as I can tell, those issues are gone.  The player itself is all Flash based, and has some really cool options.  You can literally use it as a DVR with an unlimited amount of space to store ALL games ALL season long…in HD!  Its like a media mecca for any diehard baseball fan.

We are a few months in to the MLB season now, and I’m still watching my HD stream every chance I can get.  The picture quality isn’t perfect all the time, but this is new technology, and since I’m REALLY in to new tech (oddly I’m writing this blog post on my PC that’s connected to my 46″ Samsung LCD TV), I can pretty much “go with the flow” when it comes to bumps in the road when new technologies roll out.

Kudos to the MLB.tv crew…you guys are doing a great job…love the service…keep pushing forward!  And, if you are a die hard baseball fan, and your team isn’t within your local market, do yourself a favor and get the service already…no…seriously…get it, and if you do get it, and don’t like it, come back and tell me why…maybe we can get some group collaboration together and get some new features packed in for the 2010 season!

The original site was created in ColdFusion and has been active for quite some time, however, the good people at BajaSurVacationRentals.com were experiencing not only downtime, but they have been overspending with Google Adwords to essentially “buy traffic” (not conversions), and have been hitting a cap when trying to expand.

My friend Erica, who is the Director of Sales & Marketing there, approached me about how they could expand because she was consistently hitting a wall with their current developer.  I took a look at the site and suggested that the site be written in PHP using the CodeIgniter framework to ensure that even if I get hit by a bus, there are more PHP developers out there than there are ColdFusion developers, and PHP is not so much of a dying technology.

Erica wanted to keep the look & feel of the site, so I basically spruced it up a little, and completely re-wrote the whole site (custom CMS included) in PHP & CodeIgniter.

We’re currently working on an SEO strategy to build traffic mainly organically instead of paying thousands of dollars buying traffic from Google.  After a little over 1 week after launch, the site is ranking quite highly on popular keywords for cabo rentals per my reports from the best keyword ranking tool out there.

I’ve heard there are some good deals to be had on both airfare and villa rentals in cabo these days…maybe you should go check the site out and plan a trip down to cabo?

Oh yeah…they also are on twitter as @caborentals – follow them for special announcements and so forth.