Geek Dads @ Home is a new podcast hosted by me, Sam Harrelson and Joe Magennis, with Brad Waller joining us in the recording posted earlier today. We are stay-at-home/work-at-home fathers with a background in tech/IT/internet-related interests�??we’re geek dads!

Last week we recorded and published our first episode, in which we talked about the birth of my new son, our thoughts on posting photos of our children online, twitter, social media, the holidays and much more.

Today, Sam did the recording and posting (it’ll be my turn next week I suppose!) of #2, Growing Up PowerPoint, and we covered the use of Powerpoint and laptops in schools, video game consoles, baby circumcision, and more on Twitter. We wrap up with a bit about Joel Comm’s iFart app for the iPhone/iPod Touch. Winter makes an appearance around 53 minutes in.

Each episode is available at geekdadsathome.com and on iTunes!

1. Choose a login that makes little or no sense. Don’t bother customizing the display name.

2. Follow as many random people as possible as quickly as possible. Hit that 2,000 follow limit or die trying.

3. Feel free to fill out your Bio in English, but make sure you misspell the name of the country you’re in (Idonesia) and your primary reason for using Twitter (bussines). For extra points, ignore grammar - ‘i want make bussines’ is perfectly acceptable.

4. Protect your updates so nobody can read what you write before deciding if you’re worth following back.

5. Use the default Twitter background and color scheme. Nothing says “I’m worth following” like a lack of personality.

Follow these five simple rules, and you’ll likely get bored with Twitter and give it up in no time. Thankfully.

Merry Holidays and Happy Christmas and all that. I considered writing a really heartfelt message of peace, love and happyness (which is how Will Smith spells it, and if it’s good enough for the Fresh Prince, it’s good enough for me). I considered a message like that, but then I figured… nah. Messages like that are a dime a dozen at this time of year, and since I’m one of the least religious people you’ll ever meet, a Christmas message from me probably wouldn’t be very convincing.

My Christmas wish is that we, as a species, start treating each other daily the way we treat each other on Christmas. Peace, love and happyness are great goals, but not just on one day a year. Corny, I know… but there it is.

It’s SANDPAPER.

Way better than fast food? I speak’a da English pretty good, and what this says to me is that Wendy’s wants us to start believing that they aren’t a fast food chain. “We’re not fast food, because we’re way better than fast food“. Right? Well, I got news for you, Wendy’s: you serve up the same crap you always have. It’s tasty, delicious crap, but it’s crap nonetheless. If I pull up to the drive-thru and order by number, will I get my food in less than five minutes at the second window? I will? That’s fast food.

Walmart - and I know I’m picking on them, and it could have happened at any of the thousands of stores that had giant crowds on Friday - could have handled the situation better. They should have had crowd control measures in place. They know what the situation is like because it happens year after year. This year, someone ended up dead. Maybe next year, the multi-billion dollar multi-national corporate giant will shell out a few hundred bucks for some organizers to line up the crowd and keep things safe.

Between the savages breaking down the doors - literally - and the corporations who feed the hysteria every year, it’s amazing that we haven’t heard about more tragedies like this. Stories abound of people going home with broken bones or cuts & scrapes from being pushed around, but reports of deaths on Black Friday have been mercifully few. Of course, that doesn’t excuse the inhuman behavior of both the shoppers and the companies they shop with. Will this year’s death at Walmart be the wake-up call that starts us on the road of ending this Black Friday nonsense? I’d like to think so, but I’m not hopeful. Americans have been trained too well by the corporations, and I guarantee, whatever the PR department says, Walmart considers a single death an acceptable loss for the amount of business they generate on Black Friday.

Bastards.

You know, in Spain they’ve got the running of the bulls, and we Americans (by and large) look at that and think, “who the hell would run with the bulls like that, they’re risking their lives with those beasts”. Draw your own parallels.

I followed up last year’s Black Friday post with an update in which I wrote, “Can�??t wait to see the news reports tonight of people getting trampled in stores trying to get 20% off on a toy. Nothing says Happy Holidays like a few broken bones.” Turns out, nothing says Happy Holidays like killing a fellow human being.

Earlier this week, I was a guest on Andrew Wee’s Friday Podcast, which was posted to his website last night. Andrew is an internet marketer and blogger and one heck of an interviewer as well. I had a great time, though I think that once you start listening, you’ll get that I don’t have any experience being interviewed - I tend to ramble a bit I had a great time though, and learned as much as I taught, that’s for sure. I’m definitely looking forward to following up with Andrew at a later date!

Who knows, maybe I’ll even ask Andrew to be a guest on my podcast. What? I don’t have a podcast? Not yet I don’t…

Check out Andrew’s website here, and listen to the podcast right here!

Two GNR-related posts in one week? Let me see… yeah, there’s my picture… there’s my logo… this is definitely my website. Huh. Whaddayaknow?

My initial reaction to hearing the new Guns N’ Roses tracks was a definitive “meh”. I wasn’t impressed, and my expectations were close to zero. I heard about it, coincidentally, on the night that my cousin’s GNR cover band was performing on Letterman. I gave Chinese Democracy a spin on MySpace, where the entire album is posted for your pirating - I mean, listening - pleasure.

Axl’s voice has matured, and while Geddy Lee of Rush, for example, has aged gracefully, Axl just sounds old. It’s been over twenty years since the classic Appetite For Destruction, and this record makes that point in a fairly negative way. There will certainly be a significant number of die-hards that defend the album with fanboy intensity. Those that aren’t fanboys will likely give the album a bland reception. Over the next few days and weeks, I fully expect there to be a chorus of “it took them a decade to make this?”