define: Jared Barden

The old saying goes, “Politics makes strange bedfellows.” Nowhere was that more evident this past week than at the Democratic National Convention in Denver, CO.

Of course I’m talking about the speeches of both Hillary and Bill Clinton during the convention. They both gave good speeches highlighting how ready Obama is to be President, how great he is, how he’ll change our country, etc. etc. etc. Funny thing is that just months ago they were pounding away at the fact that he was inexperienced and not ready to be President. Even his running mate for Vice President, Joe Biden, pounded away during the primaries on Obama’s inexperience, but now he believes everything is fine?

If you really believe that Hillary and Bill Clinton truly 100% support Obama for President, I think you might getting the wool pulled over your eyes. Here’s why. If Obama wins in November, Hillary can’t run for another 8 years. Unless he totally screwed up his first term, I highly doubt she would run against him as the incumbent President, so that puts her next opportunity at 2016. That puts her at 69 years old at that point, which is still 3 years younger than John McCain.

Seems to me that while the Clintons publicly profess that they want Obama to win, I can’t help but wonder if they would secretly like McCain to win, which gives them another shot in 2012, where Hillary would be the favorite due to Obama’s failed Presidential bid.

Either way, it’s going to be an interesting couple months.

Almost anyone who knows me knows that one of my favorite restaurants is the Outback. If I could, I’d eat there a few times a week, but that would be disastrous for my wallet and my waist.

During our family vacation to Ocean City, MD this year we made it a point to swing by the Outback on one of the nights where we experienced some less-than-perfect weather.

Before we dug in, we snapped this photo of quite possibly one of the most beautiful Bloomin’ Onions we’ve ever been served.

Check out the following video to see what it’s like when your second movie at the drive in catches on fire. This was shot about 15-20 minutes into Get Smart, which was our second movie of the night, after watching The Dark Night.

Get Smart caught on fire around 12:15 or so, and seeing as how we were leaving for vacation at 6:00, we decided to just go home instead of waiting it out for the staff to splice the film. You’ve got to love the cars honking at the end, as if that will help get the movie running any faster.

Enjoy!

Here’s my video I shot during the finale of the 2008 Fourth of July fireworks at Ives Run, PA, hosted by Bob and Donna Blake from Northeast Fireworks. Enjoy!

I saw the following on ESPN.com today, and it made me chuckle:

Penguins sign Fleury, agree to contract with Satan

Now, the Penguins didn’t make a deal with the Devil himself. Miroslav Satan’s last name is actually pronounced “Shatan,” but the link did make me chuckle. Hopefully it makes someone else laugh too.

Tonight Danielle and I went out on a date to celebrate our anniversary. It’s the first time the two of us have been out alone in I can’t even remember how long.

The date started with a trip to my favorite Chinese place - The Dumpling House in Wellsboro. After a scrumptious dinner of Chicken with Curry sauce, we headed over to the Arcadia to get our seats, which were unfortunately located in the Dinner and a Movie theater, which is my least of the 4 screens.

Before I get into my “review,” I must say that I had reservations when I first heard about / saw trailers for WALL•E. It looked like a bold departure for Pixar, and I thought it might be their first movie that would flop. While I don’t think it’s going to flop, I still think it’s going to be one of those movies where you really like it, or you just don’t quite get it.

The move started out pretty slowly, following WALL•E around his daily tasks of cleaning up the mess that humans left on the Earth (they just had to get their Green plug in there). Don’t worry though. We’ll have to be around a lot longer to pile up all the trash left for WALL•E to pick up. But I digress…

As I said, the beginning was slow, but we do get to see glimpses of WALL•E’s personality, and see why he is so lovable. Then EVE shows up to search for vegetation, and WALL•E falls in love. However, EVE doesn’t return the feelings at first, in fact, she tries to blow him away several times. However, she does warm to WALL•E over time.

Fast forward and WALL•E and EVE are back on the ship Axiom where thousands (millions?) of humans are located deep in space. Apparently they all got lazy and suffered from bone loss due to gravity, because EVERYONE is obese, and all they do is float around in their little hover chairs all day long, while robots wait on them hand and foot. Kind of like a 700-year long cruise, except nobody is doing any sort of physical activity.

I won’t get into all the nitty gritty of what happens next, but this was the part of the movie that really hooked me. During the whole movie, there were little kids making comments, as they are prone to do, but there was a scene close to the end of the movie where you could have heard a pin drop due to its dramatic nature.

So, WALL•E had a little bit of everything - comedy, very little dialog, personable / lovable robots, a trigger-happy love interest, drama, and amazing animation. Definitely one of my favorite movies of the year. Go see it!

In my last post I promised some pictures from our trip to Indiana. Enjoy!

This one just struck me as funny. Seems to me that “prepay” would have to happen in advance. Maybe it’s just me.

My brother-in-law, Derek, playing some hard core Super Mario World before the wedding.

The photographer in action.

Two weeks ago, we traveled to Indiana for my brother-in-law’s wedding. We had a great trip out (about 10.5 hours or so), and the wedding was a great time. I learned a couple of things about Indiana during the weekend, and I thought I’d share them here.

1. At McDonald’s in Indiana, you can rent new movies. No, really, you can. The service is called Red Box which I’ve never seen before, but it was pretty cool.
2. At said Indiana McDonald’s employees are allowed to wear iPods (with the ear buds plugged in) while they wait on you.
3. In the town we visited, they had no idea what a sheet pizza is. What a shame.
4. White Castle hamburgers are disgusting, or at least the little ones that come in the Crave Cases are.

Those were just a few of the things I learned/noticed about Indiana during our trip.

Pictures to follow.

This past weekend our church hosted its first Seize the Rock concert, which featured Manafest and Fireflight.

Here’s a breakdown of how the weekend went…

• Friday night - go out to eat with Manafest and our friend Mara at the Dumping House in Wellsboro (more on that later)
• Later Friday night - play Rock Band with Mara for far too long
• Saturday morning - go up to church to help supervise Skate Park
• Saturday at 3:00 - go to a friend’s Little League game
• Saturday at 5:00 - back to the church to get ready for the concert
• Saturday at 6:30 - doors open
• Saturday at 7:30 - concert starts
• Saturday at 11:00 - get home

As you can see, Saturday was a fairly busy/hectic day, but it was a lot of fun.

One thing that really impressed me about Manafest (real name Chris) was how down to Earth he was. Granted, he’s not a superstar (yet), but he was really cool to hang out with and treated us like friends, instead of acting like a Prima Dona. He was even gracious enough to spend almost 2 hours skating with the kids Saturday afternoon before he had to perform that evening. I wish Chris and his wife all the best in their music and speaking ministry.

If you’re a fan of hip hop / rock music, give either of these bands a listen. They both put on a great show, and I would recommend either one of them.

Ever noticed that some companies like to tell you to, “search for us on Yahoo! and learn more…” ? That seems like a risky strategy to me, and here’s my reasons why.

1.) Why not just send the person right to your web site? If you’ve ever read Don’t Make Me Think , this will make sense. Basically, you want to decrease the number of steps for someone to accomplish the action you want them to take, and you want to make it as easy and “thoughtless” as possible. Sending them to a search engine, telling them to search, and then hoping they click the link you want them to, seems to not follow the “Don’t Make Me Think” mantra.

2.) You increase the risk of competition.

Case in point, Pontiac did an ad a year or two ago, where they told you to search on Google for them. Well, the competition got smart and bought Pay Per Click ads for that term and got some great branding and exposure out of Pontiac’s ad.

Also, what happens if someone gets their page to rank higher for the phrase you’ve suggested to the TV viewer? Then you’re kind of stuck.

Or what happens if someone decides to Google Bomb the phrase you’ve targeted in your ad? Granted, Google has gotten stricter on this practice, but you could still use your PPC ad to get negative press out their about the competition.

Just seems like it would be easier to send the person right to the page you want them to go to. However, lots of companies take this, “search for this and click the link” kind of approach, which just seems like one too many steps to me, but maybe I’m just lazy when it comes to my surfing behavior.