Digital Cowboy

I hope you’ve noticed the improvements to the blog and I hope they’ll make it more enjoyable to hang out here. Since I can tend to get carried away when I start to type, I’ve started splitting long posts and added a dynamic “more” link to them so you can expand to read the rest of a long post without loading another page.

I also added the fantabulous picture of my svelte self and an email link, categorized and added to the links, added blog stats and significantly beefed up the spam filtering with Bad Behavior. (At the very bottom of the page, you can check the count of blocked spambots. It’s pretty low right now, but those things tend to come in floods when they come so it should be interesting to watch, for me, anyway.)

Finally, the search function now searches posts and comments instead of just posts.

Next items on the list: finish fixing the popup comments layout, get live comment preview working in the popup and add a “quicktags” toolbar to the comments so you can add your HTML formatting with the click of a button instead of typing tags.

Also, I have a friend that is quite a talented designer and she tells me that she’s working on a custom design for this humble blog. We shall see.

Stay tuned and be sure to let me know if you have any suggestions or feedback, good or bad.

Addendum: I forgot to mention that I also changed the “Religion” category to “The Living Word” because I don’t much like the word religion and what it represents. Also, I have a list of topics for that category that have not yet been written, so we’ll get back to more of that kind of content soon.

My cigarette rolling skills have improved more quickly than I expected, but I still have a long way to go. After a little experience and some online research, I’ve come to the conclusion that part of the problem is that both the tobacco and the rolling papers I have are far from good. That’s not surprising. Since I had never rolled cigarettes before, I went with the cheapest tobacco and papers they had so that I could evaluate without spending too much money. I don’t regret that decision because there’s a lot of waste involved with the learning curve. Hopefully by the time this tobacco is gone, I’ll have enough confidence in my skills to spring for some better stuff.

I’ve never smoked as much as a typical smoker. I’ve always looked at cigarettes as mini cigars – fine tobacco to be savored; it’s never been a compulsion with me. That’s why I’m so picky about the cigarettes I smoke. I’ll do without before I’ll smoke a Marlboro or worse. One of the dirty little secrets of the cigarette business is that they prefer to sell filtered cigarettes because they can use lower quality tobacco and more additives. I learned that by experience before reading about it. I’ve made the mistake a few times of tearing the filter off a cigarette I bummed from a friend or lover. That’s really not a good idea.

Anyway, it’s quite clear to me that I’ll smoke less if I have to roll my own because it’s such a hassle. Of course, this cheap tobacco doesn’t exactly motivate either. Smoking less is not a bad thing. I’ve never tried to quit because I’ve never wanted to quit. But smoking less also means I’ll enjoy it more when I do… as soon as I get some decent tobacco.

One of my vices is that I love a good smoke. I smoke Lucky Strikes most of the time now, but I started many years ago with good cigars. It didn’t take me long to realize that it was a rich man’s habit and I was not yet a rich man. The cigars I preferred were generally in the 5-8 dollar range which meant, at that time, I could get about 60 Luckys – enough to last me more than a week – for the price of one Davidoff Mouton Cadet No. 5, which would last me about 45 minutes to an hour. In addition, I could buy the 60 Luckys and throw 40 on the kitchen counter until I needed them while carrying the other 20 with me. The cigar, on the other hand, I had to buy individually on or about the day I intended to smoke it because I didn’t have $200+ to lay out for even a cheap humidor.

As an aside, few things turn me on like a well dressed woman smoking a cigar. At the same stompin’ ground I mentioned in the stinky post, I befriended a very classy older woman that was a very high level executive for a multi-national corporation. One night the subject of cigars came up and she informed that she had just come back from a business trip and had half a box of very good cigars left over from entertaining clients. I said I would love one some time. She informed me they were outside in the trunk of her car and, since she had no humidor, they were going to go to waste. Minutes later she returned with one, pulled the label off, tucked it in my shirt pocket and lit the cigar. We shared it and it was one of the best cigars I’d ever had.

The next day I discovered the label in my shirt pocket and examined it. I wasn’t familiar with the brand, so I kept the label and showed it to my tobacconist the next time I went for a Davidoff. I told him the story and explained that I didn’t know this brand, but really liked it. I asked him if he carried them. He said he could special order them for me but only by the box because they cost… |inline

I was just looking for an old file on my computer and stumbled across the first two “commercial” web sites I ever did. Wow, is that embarrassing. I had completely forgotten about them and didn’t even know I still had them. Those pages are about eight years old now. I threw it all up on the server so y’all could have a laugh at my expense. (Be sure to click around. Except for external links, everything should still work.)

My design skills haven’t really improved all that much, which is why I don’t really attempt it anymore. But my mad code skillz, my writing and my business sense sure have come a long way, baby.

It’s got me thinking… I think I still have the first personal web site I ever did around here somewhere. It’s even older and I don’t think I ever completely finished it. If I can find it, I’ll upload it and then update this post with a link.

UPDATE: I found it. I was right, I never finished it, although I’m sure I had done more than is here. (The links within the site all work, but most of the pages have no content.) This must not have been the latest version. I also noticed that the footer layout is completely messed up on the main page. That wasn’t like that back then. I guess modern browsers just don’t like tables nested within tables that are nested inside other tables which in turn are inside a table which is…

This one’s about 9 years old. I look at it now and it seems so hokey and childish. I’ve grown up a lot since then and so has the weird wide web.

Bane’s taking a poll on men’s preference for or against perfume. It got me ta thinkin’ (and that’s always dangerous). I didn’t want to write a book on his comment thread so I decided to do a post myself.

As many other men there said, I really dig perfume if it’s used properly and is good stuff. I can’t stand any of that cheap, flowery Avon or drug store crap.

Bane also asked a side question:

Can any of you guys name the perfume your best girl wore in High School? I can! It was ‘Charlie’. Stuff still gives me a boner.

Mine wore Obsession and I’m with Bane – all these years later, you can put that stuff on a three-legged mule and I’m instantly turned on the second it wafts into my nostrils.

As for me, I burned through a bottle of Polo and a bottle of Drakkar in high school and the years shortly after. Right now I have a bottle of Davidoff Cool Water that’s about 12 years old and still not empty. (I prefer the scent of a Davidoff cigar.)

I also have a bottle of CK One that I rarely use. That stuff smells great on some women. The most chemically sensitive scent you can buy – it either smells like 10 pounds of erotic in a 5 pound bag or a toxic spill, depending on who’s wearing it. It seems to smell different on everyone that wears it. I was more than skeptical when it was introduced and marketed as a unisex scent, but I have to say I like it on me and I’ve had a few women tell me they do too. In fact… |inline