It was only a week after the harvest, whilst I was walking through the village square on the way to the tavern for a feed, that I heard a commotion in the alleyway. I should have known better, but my curiosity got the better of me. It was in a small recess of the alley that I saw Kilander raising his huge fist about to lay another blow on Jandoram.

“Well, what have we here Kilander, are you about to hit Jandoram again, even after the village elders had warned you against it?” He stops mid swing and glares at me, hatred in his eyes, and even though it wasn’t quite noon I could smell the liquor on his breath. “You stay out of this Sire, it’s between me and my son.” “Come Kilander, If his real father was alive today, you would be the last one to raise a hand to the lad.” By this time I had edged him out into the alleyway, giving Jandoram room to scurry past his demented tormentor.

It seems that the reference to him being less a man than his predecessor seemed to infuriate the man and he charged me. Unfortunately for him I knew what to do with a bigger opponent. As he came at me I grabbed the scruff of his shirt with both my hands, rolled backwards pulling him down onto my feet and using his own momentum I straitened my legs and thrust him behind me. Such was the force that he flipped into the air and landed in the village square itself. Even though the force of the landing knocked the wind out of him he still managed to get up. He came at me with a round house punch that had it connected would have ended the fight then and there. As I saw it coming I ducked letting the momentum expose his his torso where I landed a well aimed punch just over his kidney. I was pretty pissed off by this time, so as he double over in pain I kneed him in the chest, and then instantly brought my hands, which I had clasped together, into the back of his neck, bringing the fight to a end.

By this time a little crowd had emerged clamoring as to what was going on. After my explanation, which was collaborated by Jandoram, they carried the limp body to the building which on occasion acted as the jail. I decided then and there that it wasn’t safe for Jandoram to stay in Hahndorf any longer, so I made arrangements for him to become my apprentice. The next day we left on our journey to see what adventure we could find.

Jondoram had never left the village before and even though he was exited at first, as soon as dusk arrived and the forest took on an eerie presence I could see that he was starting to get nervous. As it was to early to make camp I decided to distract him with a story.

Did you know Jandoram, that right throughout the ages,  many a great man left his village, some in search of fame and glory and others just to make a new beginning. There was one particular traveler that comes to mind, Gennaro of Wanderlust who was said to have been born to travel. Legends have it that ever since  he could crawl his parents had to tie him down to keep him from wandering away. Even at the tender age of three it after searching for him for hours they found him playing happily in the forest, a forest that terrified the bravest of men. It seems that he had decided to take A Hike Into The Wilderness.

As a traveler, there are many things that you must learn, otherwise at best, you may never get to where you are going, and at worst you may not live long enough to enjoy the fruits of your travels. In your wanderings, you are bound to come across situations that will cause you to falter and it is my job to show you how to get from stuck, to traveling fast. If you pay attention to all that I have to say, then you may one day find the fame and fortune that you seek. Not everyone is as lucky as Gennaro who was born with a traveling gene was one of the lucky ones, you my lad my need a little instruction, but that is fine, for we have some time on our hands yet. So, I think that it may be time to rest for the night, and where better than by the side of a lovely lake where the sounds of the waterfall can lull us to sleep.

Other posts in the

• Sire, The Wandering Bard series.
• Sire’s Big Moment A Total Flop
• Google The Tyrant, A Tale Of Old

The FlexSqueeze Theme gives my blog that professional look. I loved it so much that I bought the developers license. It's the easiest most customizable theme I've come across. See how easy it is to change your theme's appearance! Compare it to Thesis to see how much better it is!

I highly recommend you to get your FlexSqueeze copy today!

I’ve found that the hardest thing about choosing a Host for my blogs is that unless you follow someones recommendation you don’t really know how good any particular host is. Even when reading a review you sort of wonder as to how biased the author is. What is the motivation behind the post, is the author being honest or is he merely promoting another affiliate? Shit, he may not even use the host and the whole review is centered around the fact that it pays the best commission.

This brings me to the crux of this post. I want to talk about LunarPages, and yes that is an affiliate link but I figure if this post encourages someone to join then at least I will get some credit for it. I originally moved to LunarPages  from my Australian host because they were more price competitive and they were also offering a free domain for life. I have had no problems at all with them until recently when they moved me from my normal server because my CPU usage went through the roof.

WTF, was the first thing that popped into my head and I immediately started searching the net to find out what might be the cause. I happened to stumble across several comments left by others who were actually suspended by their hosts. It then came to me that LunarPages could have done the same thing to me and they would have every right to do so as my high CPU usage was affecting the performance of other uses sharing the same server. Instead of doing that, moved me to another server to give me time to solve the problem.

The trouble is that every time I make a particular change I have to wait 24hrs to find out if it has any effect. Luckily for me Stratos offered to help after I left a comment on his ‘When Things Get Extremely Wrong‘ post. Knowing how smart Stratos is, as he’s developed Blogger Buddy as well as some nifty WP plugins, I jumped at the chance. He has already worked out that I have too many plugins but is currently trying to suss out which ones are chewing up all the CPU. I have deleted the least necessary ones and have already noticed that the blog loads a lot faster. Hopefully the culprit was amongst those, I reckon I have to just wait and see.

Anyway, to cut a long story short I find myself lucky that LunarPages has at least given me the opportunity to fix the problem rather than just cut me off and leave me hanging, which apparently some other hosts are prone to do. I reckon that if I was based in the state and there wasn’t the time difference, I could have picked up the phone and talked to one of the technicians and we could have nipped the problem right in the bud, but being and Aussie I am stuck with conversing through emails. Lucky for me Stratos came to the rescue.

It seems that the global financial crises has hit everybody including the makers of the famous Barbie doll which just happens to turn 50 this year.

Being your average bloke, I am not really interested in Barbie but I reckon this is the best opportunity for me to introduce an excerpt from an email I received today. Perhaps Barbie’s developers are thinking of introducing Divorced Barbie to increase this years sales thereby combating the current downturn.

One day a father gets out of work and on his way home he suddenly remembers that it’s his daughter’s birthday.

He pulls over to a Toy Shop and asks the
sales person, ‘How much for one of those Barbies in the display window?’

The salesperson answers, ‘Which one do you mean, Sir?

We have: Work Out Barbie for $19.95, Shopping Barbie for $19.95, Beach Barbie for $19.95, Disco Barbie for $19.95, Ballerina Barbie for $19.95, Astronaut Barbie
for $19.95, Skater Barbie for $19.95, and Divorced Barbie for $265.95′.

The amazed father asks: ‘It’s what?! Why is the
Divorced Barbie $265.95 and the others only $19.95?’

The annoyed salesperson rolls her eyes, sighs, and answers: ‘Sir…, Divorced Barbie comes with: Ken’s Car, Ken’s House, Ken’s Boat, Ken’s Furniture, Ken’s Computer, one of Ken’s Friends, and a key chain made with Ken’s balls.

The FlexSqueeze Theme gives my blog that professional look. I loved it so much that I bought the developers license. It's the easiest most customizable theme I've come across. See how easy it is to change your theme's appearance! Compare it to Thesis to see how much better it is!

I highly recommend you to get your FlexSqueeze copy today!

A little while back I did a post called Duncan And Norm’s Big Night Out, and it had quite a bit of Aussie slang woven through it. I reckon a lot of you may have got the general idea of the story, but I believe that there may have been a few words that had you scratching your heads. So, without further ado I present to you the translated version, and perhaps you will be kind enough to leave a comment as to how well you did on your own.

This is a story about two friends who lived in the middle of nowhere. Though one of them was a Queenslander, Duncan, and the other a Tasmanian, Norm, they were both real Aussies as they loved their beer, sport, women and were a little on the uncultured side, but they were really good friends. They were never angry with each other and loved their beer.

One afternoon they were going really fast on their bikes heading for the local bar. They thought some good food was in order as it was way past their lunch time. Duncan ordered a pie floater (a meat pie floating in pea soup) while Norm has a pastie (pastry filled with tasty vegetables) with a bit of sauce. While eating they where talking about some of the things they’ve been up to. Ever since they were kids they’ve been friends and loved having a talk.
Norm: “Duncan, d’ya remember that day down at the deli where you bumped into that woman with the lovely set of tits?”
Duncan: “That’s not really fair pal, that wasn’t my fault!”
Norm: “You sure got slapped silly, Blimey, I can still see you falling over, and the look on her face when you asked if they were real, no wonder she wouldn’t have sex with you! Ha ha, she went crazy.”
Duncan: “Too bad because I reckon she would make a lot of noise if I got to have sex with her.”
Meanwhile Norm farts and the stench would send you right out outback of Australia..
Duncan: “Shit, Norm I reckon you better go off to the toilet and have a crap pal, I reckon you’ve had too many curried eggs for breakfast today!”
Norm just laughs and decides he had it coming to him so instead of complaining he changes the subject and says: “Say Duncan did you hear the one about the Englishman who goes to Australia with his wife; they stay in a 5 star hotel and hire a Limo for the day. While driving along the road, his wife asks, “Look! What is that man doing with that kangaroo?” The man replies, “My God! Don’t look, it’s disgusting!” Further down the road the wife says, “Look, another one!” and the husband says,
“Disgusting! I shall report this when we get back to the hotel.”
They arrive back at the hotel only to find a man with one wooden leg masturbating on the steps of the hotel. The husband charges in and says to the manager,
“Look, we come here in good faith, to stay in your 5 star hotel and what happens? We are driving down the road and we come across a drover having sex with a kangaroo. Further on, there’s a man having sex with another kangaroo. Then we get back here only to find a man with one wooden leg, masturbating on your front steps. Well, what do you have to say about that?”
The manager says, ‘My God mate, you expect a man with one wooden leg to catch his own kangaroo?”
Not to be outdone Norm replies with a grin. That’s nothin’ pal, hows about the Texan farmer who comes to Australia for a holiday. There, he meets an Aussie farmer and gets talking. The Aussie shows off his big wheat field and the Texan says, “Oh! We have wheat fields that are at least twice as large. Then they walk around the station a little, and the Aussie shows off his herd of cattle. The Texan immediately says, “We have longhorns that are at least twice as big as your cows”. The conversation has, meanwhile, almost died when the Texan sees a herd of kangaroos hopping through the field. He asks, “And what are those?” The Aussie replies with an incredulous look, “Don’t you have any grasshoppers in Texas?”
Duncan in a fit of laughter falls off his chair right in front of this man and his stuck up wife who just happens to be as ugly as hell. Now this man is huge and tries to down Duncan with a haymaker but Duncan just ducks and then hits the dickhead with one straight in the gut. As he doubles over he knees him in the chin and knocks the idiot out cold.
Norm then gets up, tells Duncan that was a job well done and that it was time that they should leave.

I have been using Google Analytics for a little while and although it provides a lot of useful information I didn’t like the fact that the data seems delayed by at least 24 hours. It would be a hell of a lot better if it could give an analysis of what was happening on my blog in real time. Luckily I came across something that would do just that. It’s called Woopra and it’s just what the blogger or webmaster ordered.

I can’t give you a proper review of it yet as I’ve only just started using it yesterday, but there is one thing that I have tested, and it seems to work fine. Once I installed the the code in the footer, there is also a Wordpress plugin available, and downloaded a program to the computer I discovered that apart from collecting real time data I was able to initiate a chat with my readers.

I am now able to see what visitors are doing on my blog in real time, including which post they are reading, whether or not they leave a comment and I’m pretty sure that it even shows if they click on a link. So, if you see a little box pop up in the bottom right hand side titled Woopra Chat, that says “Webmaster:” followed by a message, please don’t run away because it’s only little old me wanting to say hi. So far I have chatted with Dennis who’s looking for guest bloggers, Mitch who is trying to improve the style and appearnce of his Firefox and I think I have also managed to scare off Kristi and I dearly hope that the experience does not set off another episode of sleep paralysis. I’m not sure what happened to Pheak Tol, perhaps I caught him at the wrong moment and he was analyzing his writers block post to see if he could add anything to it.

This seems like the perfect addition to those sites who may require a one on one with their prospective customers, but for me I just want to have fun.

If you do stop to chat I promise not to take too much of your time.