haha, you know I was thinking today about the whole cliche with waiting in a hospital room pacing back and forth until the doctor finally bursts forth with the news!  Okay, I understand the people that want to be surprised… I always kind of thought that I did… but in reality, the technology is here, and it really does help with preparation time to know what the kid is going to be.

We went in for our first Ultra-Sound today, and got several pictures, that I’ll post some time when I have more time.  For now suffice it to know that Rose and I’s child is a boy, and at “normal” size for the 22nd week mark (they have her at being 21.4 weeks pregnant).  Just getting the news that it’s a boy is actually kind of exciting (I’d be excited either way).  Now I’m just gonna have to make Rose read “Wild at Heart” and its sequel “The Way of the Wild Heart” both by John Eldredge

Raging Thunder is one of those games we’ve been watching since the App Store was first announced, and now it may have reached another milestone. Polarbit says that with version 1.0.3, which is in the App Store now, they’ve released online, real-time competitive multiplayer. They say it’s an App Store first, and I think they’re right — a few games have offered wifi multiplayer before (Apple’s Hold’em does, and Raging Thunder did previously), and some games have done some non-real time multiplayer (Loot Wars is interesting in that way) but allowing players to play competitively online in real-time is something that hasn’t been done much.

It’s not quite on the level of Xbox Live yet — Polarbit is offering a free beta of their server software on the website, so you’ve apparently got to have your own server running (or sign on to someone else’s) to race against your friends online. I just gave it a shot, and it worked well. The lobby system is a little awkward and without voice chat (strange how much I’ve just taken it for granted in multiplayer nowadays), it’s hard to tell whether people are playing or just waiting in a room (or why they’re dropping out of the race, as a few players did while I played). But once you get into the game, it’s Raging Thunder with other people driving the cars. Well done.

It would be nice to see player names above cars. Easier to do trash talking when you know who you’re talking about. This is only the beginning, however — here’s to many, many great online multiplayer experiences on the iPhone.

Deadline is a really great web-based alternative to the standard desktop to-do apps. There are several ways to interact with it and access your to-do list, including via Jabber/Google Talk, through Atom, RSS and iCal feeds, and email. Deadline understands input in natural language, so you can write something like, “call mom on Tuesday,” and the web app will schedule it appropriately.

The Deadline UI is well-designed and not distracting, with edit and delete buttons readily accessible next to each item. Inspired by Twitter, to-do items have a 140 character cap to accomodate SMS support (which is forthcoming for Deadline, but not quite there yet). The 140 limitation doesn’t have much practical effect, because date, time and location information can be submitted through brief natural language, no fancy syntax involved. There’s an XML API, too, if you want to experiment with Deadline yourself.

In preparation for the NXE launch this Wednesday, Xbox.com and the Xbox forums will go offline for about four hours starting at 12:01AM Pacific today, Nov. 18.

According to Major Nelson, this will “NOT” affect Xbox Live and service should remain (relatively) reliable. If things do go wrong with the Live service, be sure to leave little love letters to Microsoft in the comments below.

In today’s economy I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw a surge in the use of Lay-Away! Companies that offer Lay-Away especially during the Holiday season are going to be operating further in the black than those that do not right now. K-Mart has stood fairly strong, despite some rough times against the conglomerate Wal-Mart evil menace of our society for several years… and I don’t see that changing any time soon. People are going to be looking for ways to stretch their finances in the days to come and I think that Kmart with the Kmart Layaway program will have a huge advantage over other one stop shopping type places.

When it comes to the general welcome feeling I find the new Kmart, and sears stores to be very inviting! Unlike some hospital or warehouse like stores with their white tile floors, florescent lighting, straight rows, and open ceilings. I find Kmart’s to be more pleasurable with decent color schemes, sometimes varying aisle directions, and lack of warehouse feel. And you still get the same great prices, often times even better! Not to mention they have a great Lay-Away program if you didn’t catch it before when I mentioned it.

Something that Rose and I are really in need of this year is some furniture, and Lay-Away is a great way to get what we need! Such as this gorgeous table set:

Usually I don’t really get how people talk about the bad economy and things… at least for the average worker. I mean you’ve got the chance to get fired, you have that all the time anyways, but your pay isn’t really going down or anything like that. If you’re providing value then you’re pretty secure. I’m really starting to see the crunch right now though… everybody is starting to tighten up, including myself. Being a blogger I make most of my income from advertisements, one form or another. Many of the smaller companies have simply quit advertising all together… which sucks because they filled in the gaps when the bigger companies weren’t going big. And many of the bigger companies have reduced what they pay out in advertising. I do P3 opportunities, and PPC stuff with Yahoo. Just at the beginning of this year my average cost per click was $0.40 nothing spectacular, but with 20 clicks in a day you still make $8 now my average cost per click is $0.11 and I’ve been scrambling to get as many visitors as possible to my sites to capitalize on those clicks… anything I can make is better than nothing. I’m also seeing more and more $5 opportunities with P3 and that’s really starting to strain things. I’ll take a couple, but man, writing that much a day for $15 really isn’t worth it.

I know that we’ll make it back up to that point when the economy picks back up, but it’s going to take some time… and it’s hard right now. Luckily since I’ve been moving up to a minimum of 20 clicks a day up to as much as 50 when things do pick back up I’ll be doing very well. I’ll also start selling more TLA ads! Just have to find a way to hold the fort until that day… I was considering getting a craptacular part time job (Something like McDonalds) for overnight, and then Lifetouch when I can in January… hold both until February or so, then just LifeTouch. That way I can put about $200-$300 a month into nothing but building link quality for my websites, then when the LifeTouch season ends my sites will still be making 20-50 clicks a day, and with some work from me they can start pouring in the cash!

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I just finished an awesome session of watching Underworld! Well Underworld and Underworld Evolutions really one of the best vampire/werewolf movie series ever! The end of evolutions really makes me think that one day they’ll make a sequel. If they don’t that’s fine too, it’s still a great movie series, but I’d like to see a sequel at some point in time.

Watching it got me uber pumped about internet marketing though… is that strange? I was thinking about how linking and link quality are so very much like the bloodlines in Underworld. My first site was this one Archmaille.com, it’s been dormant, and gone under a lot of changes, but the strength of it is still unmatched. kclanparty.org is my next site, and it too even though it has been removed from Google for pagerank, it is still amazingly powerful. The combination of the two with MagpieRSS has just been amazing though! I can rank and get my pages listed with Google dang near instantly! The power flows down from one site to the next, and as they get older they just get more powerful. Taking the bloodline from one old site, and transfusing it with a newer one only makes the two sites so much more than they ever could be alone… and it is that which I am finally able to do! With the combination of CodySortore.com, Archmaille.com, kclanparty.org, ArchmailleDesigns.com, and ApplyMyWay.com by the end of next year I’ll be making at least $6k a month from simple advertisements, and another $5k a month or so from affiliate marketing and clickbank! Oh, the possibilities are growing, and the future looks beautiful.

Right now I’m stealing the blood lines of about 20 very powerful sites (or families if you will). Using places such as Squidoo, Xanga, and Digg to piece together my measly existence. That existence grows with every page I add to their networks and link back to myself. Very slowly I inch my way to the top, soon with the development of ApplyMyWay.com I’ll be able to create my own family so powerful that I’ll dominate all of my key niches. Blogging with CodySortore.com, gaming and hardware review with Archmaille.com, Technology news with KCLANParty.org, jewelry with ArchmailleDesigns.com, and social networking or quizzes with ApplyMyWay.com with the five sites, each with its own respective niche they’ll grow and thrive together pulling in a variety of visitors to cover seasonal, and non-seasonal peak times for making money online.

We’ve seen lots of controller mods around here. We’ve seen voice recognition controllers. We’ve seen controllers with hidden buttons. Until now though, we hadn’t seen a controller with no buttons. Okay, technically it does have the start, back and Guide buttons, but just follow along, mkay? The mod you see above — created by one Mactastic Mendez — uses tiny digital joysticks located under the controller for face button input. How does all of work? It’s quite simple really: magic. Well, that, a soldering iron, and some handy crafting skills. Check out a video of the controller in action after the break. Then head over to AcidMods to see how it was made.

[Thanks, MactasticMendez]