Thought you all might appreciate a look inside the inner workings of how we do things here at Gambit Central.

(I don’t necessarily think that, but it’ll be obvious why I’m doing this, shortly.)

Most of the work is done by email carrier pigeon. So for example, Alex sends out the topic, or in this case, this:

I’ve got a two-day hangover, a day off, and a doctor’s appointment at
Noon. So I’m not really in a thinking mood. Any suggestions for
topics for tomorrow?

Wade A helpfully replies:

I’m not sure how much of a listener you are, Alex, so this may not work,
but: Favorite KFAN hosts / show?

Alex signals his agreeability with the topic, and wadE does as well, with this missive:

I’m good with that… although I did entertain talking about Sarah Palin and Paul Revere…

Wade A responds:

The Americans are coming! The Americans are coming!

Alex replies:

Paul Revere shot those British in the face and then rang the Liberty
Bell about it! Rang it so hard that he cracked it!

…and then we all choose not to follow up on the topic at all for 48 hours. We’ll probably write about it on Thursday, but who knows, so stay tuned.

My first post for this little website measured in at a cool 807 words. I was always more of a bullet-point guy than a screeder, but, even so, my posts from that era routinely topped 1,000 words. In 2003, at roughly the same time, we introduced both the Gambit and the Forum. The former was a avenue for us to do a daily, while shorter, update; the latter was your standard web bulletin board (except with way smarter comments and cooler avatars). By definition, my writings got shorter. The Forum dried up a couple years later, and, soon after, so did the institutionalized Gambit. (A Gambit still got posted occasionally, but not according to any specific schedule). After a brief flurry of publishing after implementing our snazzy new WordPress publishing tool, I pretty much stopped posting entirely. My last single-authored post was 14 months ago; even that one was pretty brief. These days, my sole avenue for written creativity comes courtesy of Facebook’s status update feature. That’s a max of 140 characters, in case you’re scoring at home. (Or if you’re by yourself.)

What happened? Why did I stop doing something I really enjoy? Well, three kids happened, although it’s fair to say that that argument’s crap, in that I always did most of my composition at work. In the spirit of fairness, I’m doing a lot more at work than I was doing five years ago. So much that I don’t have time to write a post, though? Not really. I’m in year three of a Dubya-inspired news fast, but that doesn’t mean I’m without inspiration. I’ve become way more picky about how I write, but maybe I don’t need to be so persnickety when writing for fun. (It also doesn’t hurt that Dain has just lifted their long-time block on my access to the WordPress site.)

Oh, right, my point: my goal is to write something each day; I’m willing to wager most of that ends up here. So I’ll be hanging around here a bit more; hope that works out with you.

As you were.

It seems like every other web site you see these days has some kind of t-shirt shop attached to it. You’ve probably noticed that. We noticed it, and decided we wanted a piece of the action. Well, mostly we just wanted some SP T-Shirts, but we figured why not try our hand at a few other things as well. Right? Right. As such, we are proud to announce the grand opening of the SP T-Shirt Shop, which will be available at any time by clicking the link over there on the right. We will hopefully be producing new designs with some frequency, and will announce them as they ‘arrive’. If you have any requests (more women’s products, existing designs in different colors, etc.), please post a comment here, and Alex will get right on it.¹ Thank you for your continued readership and/or support of SP.

Greetings. I’m sure it’s obvious by now that we’re abandoning the site re-design from earlier this year¹, and are going to stick with this old favorite version. There will be some tweaks added, certainly, but for now our focus will be on bringing you fresh content in our own inimitable style. Thank you for your support.

Howdy folks. We’ve got the space monkeys (aka Alex) working on the latest and greatest site re-design here at SP. Things will be in flux for the near future, so just bear with us if you don’t mind. Things to look forward to under the new regime: longer articles, the triumphant return of The Gambit, flashy video, shiny things, and various other doodads and thingamabobs that we’re sure you’ll like.

So thanks in advance for your patience, and please, watch out for the doozers. They’re here to help.

It’s Friday, it’s almost summer vacation time, and I’m unemployed. So what better to do, than go on a field trip! And do I ever have a special field trip destination for you, dear readers. That’s right, I went to:

Wades Supermarket!

No, really. I did. Southwest Virginia’s finest locally owned and operated chain of food stores. If you’re not too afeared to learn more, jump with me.

Ideally what I was hoping to come away with today, was a non-perishable item which could be safely shipped or returned to MN at some point as a gift to my pleasantly named colleagues at this site. Sadly, there were no Wade brand colas, baked beans, faux luncheon meef, or anything else that would have fit the bill. The best of what I did find is hands down Mrs. Wade’s Kitchen to Go Brand Beans and Franks (or, if you’re a cheapskate, or on a budget, you can pay a bit less for the Kraut and Franks). Sara, Michelle, feel free to fight for the . . . ahem . . . honor of that brand if you’d like. I’ll understand if you don’t.

A close second place, however, would have to go to Wades Ham Salad. That right there is three words in the English language that go together like a horse and carriage. (Flush.)

Moving ever deeper into the store, I came upon the greatest sign in the history of signs. Really. I think it would be appropriate to hold a contest in the comments section of this post to see who can make the best joke out of that sign. Fire away. As for me, I was not tempted by anything the sign had to offer.

It was at this point that I figured I’d taken enough pictures that Karma dictated that I must at least make some purchases in the store, or face a fair amount of wrath. As a pleasant surprise, Wade’s did carry a couple of items that I’ve had a tough time finding in the other local foodways. So that was nice. One thing I did notice while checking out was that each register had a truly vintage old Apple monitor for your viewing pleasure. Who says the Mac isn’t out there in the corporate world?

I did procure what purport to be Virginia’s Finest Ripple Chips. Seems like a modest claim – not even the state’s best potato chip, Gary has limited himself to the Ripple Chip sub-genre. I’ll let you know what kind of stake his claim has when I get around to opening the bag. Not pictured, but I did also buy a cinnamon roll from the Wade’s Bakery. It was tasty. I mean, I’m sure it’s no Big Texas Cinnamon Roll, but then what is?

I hope you’ve enjoyed taking this fun Friday Field Trip with me. I realize here at the end that I do have a non-perishable item that I could save for future considerations. The bag. Who wants it?

For long-time visitors of the site, you may recall that each December I used to do a “Happy Birthday Simpleprop.com” article. Last year was a very busy time of year and I swore that the next year I would get back on that proverbial horse. Well, it didn’t happen this year either, so a belated Happy 6th Birthday to Simpleprop.com!!!

So what’s happened in the last couple of years on the site that we should look back and be proud of? Well, a lot actually.

The first major change to highlight is our new fangled format which kicked off on July 1st, 2006. I know some of you preferred our old setup better (wow, some of those pics aren’t correct, but you get the gist of what it used to look like), but going from a very manual typing-everything-in-html-files-and-ftping-them-up-to-a-server to this fancy-schmancy blog software has been a godsend. So a very belated Thank You to Alex for being out technical behind the scenes guru.

So what is the State of the SP Union? Well, pretty darn good actually. After leveling off across 2004, 2005, and 2006, in 2007 we skyrocketed to 455,000 pages served up.

year:   #reqs:  #pages:
----:  ------:  ------:
2001   1335     202
2002   62359    8406
2003   321443   50335
2004   994109   255774
2005   1011084  246657
2006   1000354  288225
2007   1186667  455192

Pretty impressive for a website run by three yahoos who barely can find time to write once a week. But we didn’t let these numbers go to our head… ok, well we pondered putting advertising on SP for a day or two until we figured we’d probably only make about 20 bucks a month. Once we start hitting a million pages a year, then we might revisit that decision.

But enough about facts and figures, let’s take a trip down memory lane and highlight be best SP articles of the past two years… in the classic Academy Award style!

Best Article From the Pre-New Look: Wade A for Great Gifts
Not surprising late 2006 was dominated by sports related articles, but the non sports articles were the strongest contenders with My Heritage.com and Sid Hartman – Time to put him out to pasture… well I suppose that is somewhat sports related.

Best News Article: wadE for Second Amendment
President Shrub takes the shooting at Virginia Tech as an opportunity to put in a plug for the Second Amendment… Klassy!

Best Skunch Article: Wade A for christmas is coming
There is something for everyone in this article. Whether you’re into religion (#25), the environment (#23), sex toys (#15), or poop (#11 or #7).

Best Sports Article: wadE for Stick A Second Fork In Them For Next Year
This is the type of article I should be writing on a regular basis. Timely, insightful, and more than 4 sentences. Honorable mention in this category for any article ripping on Shecky Souhan.

Best Politics Article: Alex for Who Wants to be a President?
Not only did it spark a good discussion, it was also the last political article written. Methinks the last 4 months have soured all of us on the presidential race. On an interesting side note, Alex has dominated Politics category on SP since the redesign… somewhat surprising.

Best Site News Article: wadE for Simpleprop is 6 … and single
Not much competition in this category. Although I think this article would qualify as the worst in the category.

Best Baseball Article: Wade A for tried…. can’t….
Wade deftly deconstructs an article by professor, nay, “doctor” Todd Boyd written for ESPN’s Page 2 about Barry Bonds.

Best Internet Article: Wade A & Alex for PCP: Random YouTubery
Whatever happened to Wade and Alex’s “Point Counterpoint” Articles anyway? Alex’s posting of the Mac Tonight video was enough, but George Costanza hawking McDLTs sealed the deal.

Best Music Article: wadE for Love 105? Hate it!
When local FM radio station Drive 105 became Love 105, well… many people were pissed. This article is still the number four article on google if you look up Love 105, and it brought a lot of traffic to SP. But what made this article the winner was comments like this: your insightful and entertaining comments regarding the gunk that passes for FM programming in this market were absolutely choice. Choice? I didn’t think anyone had said “choice” since 1988.

Best Football Article: Wade A & Alex for Playoff Fever
Ok, so their early round picks have always been terrible, but most years they pick the Super Bowl winner. Including this past year. Gotta give them some credit for that.

Best Religion Article: Herbert W. Chilstrom for Op/Ed Piece in the Strib
Accepting the award on Mr. Chilstrom’s behalf is Wade A.

Best Daily Gambit Article: Wade A for the continued demisement of the english language: first installment
I can’t wait for the second installment!

Best Food Article: Wade A & Alex for PCP: Cocktails
I think this just shows that Wade and Alex should write more joint articles.

Best Travel Article: wadE for Live From New York…
Tough competition in this category…(this was the only article… although Wade’s article on Hartford should be reclassified)

Best Comment: Mom Anderson for Comment on dryer balls
Simply a great comment…kudos!

And last, but certainly not least… the Award for Funniest Article: a tie between wadE, Wade A, and Alex AND wadE, Wade A, and Alex for the 6th Annual Austin Bar Crawl and the 7th Annual Austin Bar Crawl
It is that customary winner each year, and rightfully so. While the actual crawl nearly kills one of us each year (and is probably killing all of us slowly), and some of us have sworn off doing another one (again), the fun of going to Austin as a group is still worth doing once a year. Seven years is about four more than I ever though we’d do, but I hope we make ten!

Thanks again to all of you who stop by simpleprop.com daily, weekly, monthly, or even if this is your first time. Although our lives keep getting busier and busier (more to come on that soon) we are thrilled that we attract such a large number of people from all over the world to this website (Sweden, Canada, Japan, and Denmark in the last few weeks); each of us promises to continue to give you a fun and thoughtful diversion from checking your fantasy league, the recent tomfoolery of Britney Spears, the fall of the stock market, or actual work. But keep in mind… you get what you pay for!

the gang at simpleprop hope you all have an excellent christmas / hannukah / kwanzaa / diwali / festival of lights / whathaveyou.

and, i think the world is has been screaming for this for some time now.

As a friendly “heads up” to all of you SP fans (all 5 of you) I as the “Editor-in-Chief” and “money man” of simpleprop.com I made the executive decision last year that when the registration of our website expired on November 15th I would transfer the hosting from register.com to our good friends who host the content of this site: dreamhost.com.

This decision was purely economic in nature. For the same amount of cash you can get 9 years of registration from dreamhost or a paltry 5 years at register.com. In addition, register.com offers a service they call “Private Domain Registration”. This is described as follows:
Protect your contact information by replacing your name, address, phone number and email address listed in the WHOIS domain lookup database with a private, generic contact listing for just $9.00 a year. (emphasis theirs)

That’s 9 bucks per year for just putting generic information in the WHOIS database. Theoretically you are bound by some law to provide accurate information for the WHOIS database, but when you register a website this is information you could type in yourself… and register.com is charging you 9 bucks a year (emphasis mine) to do this for you. And you know that this process is entirely automated. They don’t have a person sitting at a computer all day whose job it is to type “register.com” in the name field, “123 Any Street” for the address, and so on.

Anyway, I had this reminder on my calendar for almost a month now, and kept putting it off. I finally got around to doing it one evening last week only to realize that to transfer a domain, you need to obtain an authorization code from your current registrar…via telephone… during business hours. Well, it kept slipping my mind until this morning when I realized that this Thursday was the 15th, and if I wanted to avoid giving 35 bucks to register.com (one year’s worth of registration) I best be transferring ASAP.

So I called they up at their 877 number… seriously. Not to get all Jeff Foxworthy on you, but you know your a half-assed company when you don’t even have a 1-800 number. Anyway, I call up the number and I get a most cheerful woman who answers “Thank you for calling register.com would like to hear about our hosting plans?” Ummm, no. Actu… “Well how can I help you today”… ually I would like to obtain my authorization code. “I can transfer you to that department… the wait time is approximately 4 minutes, thank you.”

Mercifully the wait proved to be less than 4 minutes (does that ever happen???) and soon enough I was speaking to a young man named Jody (I’m not kidding). Jody asked me why I called register.com and I told him I was looking to obtain my authorization code. There is really only one reason to get an auth code, and that is to transfer, so immediately Jody (I cannot get over him being named Jody… seriously, what kind of parents name their son Jody? who are these people??? … ok, I went and looked up the statistics… 61% of the 94,000 people in American with the first name of Jody are female. only 61%!!! are you kidding me!!! 87% of people named Robin are female, but only 61% of Jodys are female??? … but I digress) asked me if I didn’t mind telling him who I was transferring my website to. I told him dreamhost.com. He then asked why. I told him b/c their price is much cheaper. He then asked me if dreamhost does their own registering. How the **** am I supposed to know!!! So I told him that I believe they subcontract that service out… seriously… why the **** am I doing market research for Jody at register.com!!!

Have you ever called up to cancel your cable TV, or change your telephone company? If so, you are familiar with the hard sell. “What would it take to keep you with register.com?” was Jody’s next question. I was fairly confident that a company that was charging nearly 100% more than what I could get at dreamhost was not going to bargain with me, so I told Jody that there wasn’t anything he could do to change my mind. “Not even a lower price?” Nope.

The rest of the transaction went quickly as Jody retrived my auth code, unlocked my website and told me to expect and email with 5 minutes. Good day to you Jody.

Now we come to the point of this post… once I had my auth code in hand I turned to dreamhost to complete the transaction. The transaction was completely automated with the final step being I had to click a link that was to be sent to the webmaster account for this website… wait… did that say “webmaster”? The same webmaster email that we deactived a few years ago b/c there isn’t a bigger spam target than sending an email to webmaster@xxxxxxx.com??? Dammit!!!

To make a long story short (too late), I was able to turn that address back on, and get dreamhost to erase the first transaction and I sent the transfer request through a second time. Now, the kicker is that it takes up to 5 days for a transfer to complete… which if you do the math takes us to Saturday… which is two days past the date that the registration expires on register.com. So theoretically it’s possible that at 12:01 AM on Friday, simpleprop.com will cease being listed on domain servers. Now it takes a bit of time for all the DNS servers in the world to update with new information, but it’s possible we may disappear for a day or two sometime after Friday.

But never fear, if you get a 404 Not Found error, just try again the next day and we should be back.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go figure out how to spend the money I’ll be saving with this transfer.

(And we haven’t even finished the month yet.)

No, this is not a post about VH1. That’s Wade’s gig. Or perhaps wadE’s. What I’m talking about is the increased site traffic we’ve seen here of late. I don’t think I mentioned it, but in fact last month was the largest traffic month we’ve ever had. Until this month. I sense a trend, which will hopefully continue.

So just a short Gambit today (since I’m on vacation), to say thanks for stopping by. We hope to keep you coming back for more.