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My Blogiversary: 4 Years of being AWESOME…

Posted in blogging with tags anniversary, blogging, blogiversary, personal on March 10, 2010 by Paxton

I started what became this blog back on March 10, 2006, four years ago today. It all started with a nondescript article about Windows Vista. Actually, I posted like four articles that day. I don’t know what the hell got into me there. And two of them were about Microsoft Vista.

As you can see from the picture above, my blog originally started out on Google’s Blogger platform. I was still finding my feet over there as my articles were all over the map and even less focused than they are now (if you can believe that). I made the move over to WordPress on Jan 18, 2007 with an article about the return of Jack Bauer on Season 6 of 24; Jack Is Back. The very first name of this blog over on Blogger was Pax’s Technotainment Blog as I was going to talk about movies, books and technology. It eventually evolved into What I’m Thinking for a few years and then, in May 2008, I changed the blog’s title to the now infamous, Cavalcade of Awesome. Along with the move to WordPress and the name change, I also registered my own URL, http://paxholley.net. I still need to nail down www.cavalcadeofawesome.com.

It’s been a fun four years. I still enjoy writing and posting articles. I’m not doing four articles a day like that first day, but I think the quality has increased. I’ve also met several bloggers along the way that I’ve come to know and enjoy. People like Shawn Robare over at Branded in the 80s, Jen at The Movieholic & Bibliophile’s Blog, Trish at Trish’s Book Reading Nook and Naida at the bookworm. These people are not only entertaining bloggers themselves, they have enough badassery (totally made that up) to keep coming back to my blog and subject themselves to my particular brand of awesome. Got to love them for that.

Anyway, I hope everyone here has enjoyed the last four years as I plan on continuing this little ride for the time being. Stay tuned for my continuing Cavalcade of Awesome.

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Weekly Geeks 2009-20: Guilty Pleasures

Posted in life, personal, Weekly Geeks with tags life, personal, Weekly Geeks on June 1, 2009 by Paxton

Weekly Geeks time!!!

What’s your non-reading guilty pleasure?
Trashy TV?
Trashier movies?
Junk food?

Guilty pleasures mean that you are embarrassed what other people think about that particular action. For the most part, I enjoy what I enjoy and am not embarrassed about it. Everyone that knows me knows I like this thing or that, I don’t try to hide it. However, here are a few of my non-reading habits that might be odd to a normal person, but are just another part of the magnificent AWESOME-ness that is me.

1. Checking out supermarkets I’ve never been to.
Whenever I travel by myself or with my wife (or family) if we pass a cool looking supermarket I’ve never been to, I have to go in. It’s just something I enjoy. When my wife and I went to Paris in 2007 I actually had us go to Mona Vie, a Parisian supermarket/department store. I found a bunch of cool sodas and chips. When I go to one of these new groceries, I check out the soda aisle first to see if that particular place has any new sodas I’ve never seen before. I then go check out the snack food aisle for any cool goodies I’ve never seen before; chips, snack cakes, etc. I then check out the cereal aisle for any cool boxes I’ve never scoped before. If I find anything cool, I’ll either buy it on the spot or take pictures of it while in the store. The links within this paragraph go to several of my Flickr sets highlighting the appropriate items I’ve found during some of my travels. If you click the picture of the Giant Eagle up there you’ll go to my Flickr set of Supermarket chains I’ve visited. Check them out.

That would probably be the biggest “guilty pleasure” of mine. What else do I like to do….hmmmm…

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My Own Album Cover and Action Comics #1 goes up for sale

Posted in comic books, random, Superman with tags comic books, personal, Superman on February 27, 2009 by Paxton

Okay, had an interesting week this week. Work and personal stuff kept me from typing a proper article. So, I have a potpourri of stuff to talk about today. The first is a cool email exercise that creates your own personal album cover, including band name and album title. It’s totally random and uses Wikipedia and Flickr to find the info. It was first sent to me by my friend Steve and I’ve passed it along. Here are the instructions:

1 – Go to Wikipedia. Hit “random”
or click http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first Wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.

2 – Go to Quotations Page and select “random quotations”
or click http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last few words of the very last quote is the album title.

3 – Go to Flickr and click on “explore the last seven days”
or click http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days
Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

4 – Mash it all together.

5 – Post it, with this text and TAG the friends you want to join in. (Or just the ones that you think might have the skills to know how to do this – that is why I tagged these people!)

So, without further ado, here is my album cover. My band name is Run Like Hell and the album’s name is “Doing Something Interesting”.

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Gate River Run: My declaration of intent

Posted in Gate River Run, life, personal, running with tags exercise, personal, running on February 16, 2009 by Paxton

Jacksonville’s biggest (read “Most Popular”) race is the Gate River Run (click image up top for more info). I”ve been lurking around the event since I started running several years ago. However, I’ve been too chicken to actually sign up and run it, preferring to only run 5K races. Well, the wife got fed up with me saying that someday I would do it so she pretty much has forced me to do it under threat of spousal violence (ie kicking my ass).

So, I officially started training this past week and I turned in my entry form on Saturday. And just to keep myself honest, I’m making a delcaration of intent to the 3 readers who randomly happen by my blog looking for info about the Hula Burger. I’ll be running the Gate River Run 15K (9.3 miles) on March 14, 2009. It’s possible I may (repeat MAY) try to parlay this into a half-marathon by the end of the year. We’ll see.

Today is President’s Day. My wife, as a first grade teacher, has today off so I decided to also take it off so we can spend it together. Have a good day whether you have it off or not. I’ll be back in a day or so with another article.

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Whoops! I guess I took the last two weeks off

Posted in blogging, life, movies, The Godfather with tags movies, personal, The Godfather on January 2, 2009 by Paxton

Well, as with most everyone else, things got busy as crap these last few holiday weeks. I had this past week off work and I planned on writing something but, as it happens, life got in the way.

I had a great Xmas with my family and drank copious amounts of alcohol. Then we drank again on New Years Day. Really, Steph and I need to go into rehab after this holiday. We’ll also probably have wine tonight and tomorrow because we are having Italian Night. Italian Night (aka Gangster Night) is when Steph cooks lasagna, we drink Chianti (or another Italian wine like Sangiovese) and watch gangster movies. Some of the past flicks we’ve watched are Godfather Pt I and II, Casino and Good Fellas. For Xmas, I got Steph the Blu-Ray DVD of the Godfather trilogy. So those will be screening for this edition of Italian Night. But, back to the drinking, it’s out of control, seriously.

Anyway, I won’t let my personal vices like drinking, eating, watching bad movies or gambling on women’s golf keep me from my stated duties; entertaining the tens of people that read this blog. Never fear, I’ll be putting up a proper article next week.

Hope everyone else had a great holiday. Back to reality in a few days, including the L-O-O-O-O-O-N-G stretch to my next holiday Memorial Day. 5 months. Ugh.

Maybe I’ll even take down the Christmas decorations. Now that it’s January 02, 2009, the green, red and falling snow is tap-dancing on my last nerve.

Peace out.

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