Yes, I know it’s only the House of Representatives and that the bill still needs to make it through Congress, but it’s an historic vote nonetheless. No other such “sweeping” health care reform has made it this far. But to devote more real estate to a woman that lost 71 pounds? Seriously, that’s just ludicrous. WTF CNN?

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According to new research by T-Mobile, men aged 18 – 24 are becoming a lot more affectionate when sending and receiving text messages. Not to feel left out men age 55+ are turning into metrotextuals at a rate of 1 in 10.

“Metrotextuality” is most widespread among 18-24 year old males with three quarters (75 per cent) regularly sealing texts with a kiss and 48 per cent admitting that the practice has become commonplace amongst their group of friends.

Nearly a quarter of this age group (23 per cent) even appreciate an “x’ in a text exchange from people that aren’t close friends.

The research also revealed there’s a certain etiquette within metrotextuality. A lower case “x’ is the preferred sign-off for most (52 per cent) compared to 17 per cent for a bolder upper case X), with one in three sharing the love in a big way with multiple lower case kisses (xxx).

Could texting be what the male species needed in order for it to finally get in touch with its softer side? Thousands of years of war and aggression set aside by a simple, “lol, ttyl…x”? Is there anything technology can’t do?

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I wouldn’t say that I grew up in a military family or anything, but I did grow up in a family with people who served in the military. My Father was drafted and served in Korea during the Korean War and I had an uncle, a few years older than my Dad, who fought in WWII and was actually a German POW during the Battle of the Bulge. I now have a nephew about to finish boot camp down in Parris Island with the United States Marine Corps.

Regardless of my political beliefs or my stance on current events, I’ve always had a healthy respect for our veterans. Politics aside, the one thing we can all agree on is that our veterans deserve to be treated with the utmost dignity and respect. They put more on the line and have endured more than many of us can even imagine.

With two wars still raging on there can be no better time to show your support for a veteran and thank them for their service to our country.

Wednesday, November 11 is Veterans Day, try and take some time to show your gratitude to our veterans.

A few tips on how you can thank a veteran this Veterans Day:

• Go to your local VFW and ask if you can make a donation, either by money or donation of your time. If you have a family member that serves in the armed forces you could make a donation in their honor.
• Help bring a little piece of home to all of our troops serving overseas. Make a donation to the USO. The USO is a private, nonprofit organization whose mission is to support the troops by providing morale, welfare and recreation-type services to our men and women in uniform.
• This one may sound simple but it’s probably underrated. If you see someone in uniform or someone wearing a hat or something that might identify them as a veteran that served in a foreign war, walk up, introduce yourself and let them know how grateful you are with a smile and a handshake.
• Take a vet out to dinner. If you’re budget’s tight you can even find places around you that are offering free meals for veterans on Veterans Day. Applebees, McCormick and Schmick’s and The Golden Corral are a few that I know of. Outback is offering a free Bloomin’ Onion and a beverage and Krispy Kreme is giving away free doughnuts!

It may be uncomfortable or out of character for you to do one or all of these things, but it’s nothing compared to what the men and women in our military put on the line for us every day. Let’s make this Veterans Day special, let’s join together and make certain our veterans know how much we appreciate everything they do for us.

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Last night I wrote a quick post about my annoyance with DeadCellZones.com being down. It wasn’t completely down at the time, but it was pretty obvious that it was getting hammered and it was only a matter of time.

Today I went back to check and see if they had worked things out and saw this image:

A couple things come to mind here. It seems a little bush league to specifically blame Lifehacker for your site being down. Whether it’s true or not, it just doesn’t seem very classy. I went to the site because I heard about it from a friend of mine, not from Lifehacker.

Secondly, you don’t need to admit to your readers that one link gave you 30 times the amount of traffic you normally get. One of my favorite old sayings that has no attribution is, “let’s at least pretend like we’ve been here before”. Sure, it may be true that Lifehacker brought down your site but if you ever expect to get linked by them, or any other high-trafficked site again, you probably shouldn’t call them out and blame them for your inability to be prepared for success.

Hosting companies will offer you the world. Unlimited storage, unlimited bandwidth, unlimited everything. They will promise you practically anything to get you to choose them. Then, once you’re committed they shove you onto a shared server, that no matter what they say, has a finite amount of resources. Every hosting company around will offer you the world while betting against the fact that you’ll actually need it.

Probably 99 times out of 100 a random person choosing hosting will be just fine with that traditional, shared server setup. It’s definitely the cheapest, low-cost solution you’ll find for hosting your site. But if you’re serious about generating buzz, creating traffic and actually being successful you should probably bypass the traditional shared server hosts.

Believe it or not there are extremely cost-effective choices out there that can give your site the equivalent of enterprise level load balancing.

For years I’ve used Media Temple as a hosting solution for all of my sites as well as many of my client’s sites. For as little as $20 a month Media Temple can virtually guarantee your site will withstand any amount of traffic that can be thrown at it.

Media Temple has never once dropped the ball on any of my sites due to traffic, and I’ve had many getting hammered from more than one link from Lifehacker. Media Temple will even go so far as to move your mySQL database to what they call a “burst container” if your regular DB seems in danger of crapping the bed. This is a totally free service and MT will leave your DB there for three days, if after that time your traffic is still crazy you will need to work out some extra fee to keep your DB there longer. But three days is usually way more than enough to allow your site to calm back down.

If you’re launching a site and have a great idea and plan on creating the next big thing, you may not have funding or angel investors, but you can be prepared. You don’t have to miss out on your site’s first best chance for a significant amount of traffic by watching your site/product go down the tubes.

If you’re just starting a personal blog and don’t plan on creating hype or drawing ridiculous amounts of traffic then, by all means, go out and pick the cheapest hosting provider you can find. If you plan on getting sticky visitors to your site then do your research and make the best, most affordable decision you can. Media Temple isn’t the only grid-server solution out there but it’s one I’m familiar with and feel completely comfortable recommending.

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When I heard about the site deadcellzones.com I naturally jumped at the chance to have another tool in the fight against myself to leave AT&T. I thought if could actually see a visual representation of the amount of dead cell zones people reported in NYC it would push me over the edge. I got there only to find out that Dead Cell Zone was using someone else’s PushPin API key. That’s a no-no.

So instead of a cool map filled with all the dead cell zones in my area I get this.

A blank map is not nearly as compelling.

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This was by far the best rendition of the National Anthem that I’ve ever seen live.

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