Steve Earle : Fort Worth Blues

Saw Steve Earle play last night in the Boulder Theatre. I did not really want to go because he has a tendency to start preaching about the war and death penalty more than he plays music. I think he must have figured out that he was annoying people because he played his first 5 or 6 songs without saying one word in between. He got in his two cents before the night was over but it was pretty tasteful. Anyway it was a great show he played a long set with no breaks and his wife Allison Moorer opened for him and joined him on a couple sets. My first impression of her when I saw her play last summer was that she was kind of a barbie doll with out much substance but I really enjoyed her set this time. Thanks for making me go Sarah!

Ryan Bingham - Southside Of Heaven: Video - Closed Captioned

great song and video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jg7H_KpispY#
here is the link for the video for some reason the one above only works about half the time.

CollegeWeekends.com Progress

The primary purpose of this post is to see if creating a CollegeWeekends.com blog might make sense. I have learned recently that web crawlers seem to love blog posts and creating a blog for your company and updating it regularly can do wonders for your ranking with search engines. So anyway I am writing this post to see how the search engines will treat it.

Recently we hired a web developer as an independent contractor to start on the complete redevelopment of the site. We are really excited about this guy, and hope that he will blow our socks off with the first couple of projects he has been given. It is my hope that he will indeed knock our socks off and then become a permanent member of the team.

This issue alone has caused my teammates and I a lot of grief. Some of us are strong believers that in order for CollegeWeekends.com to be a success it is important that we have a talented developer as part of the team. On the other hand there is the argument for hiring a web development firm to handle the creation of the site and then hire IT help to handle problems as they arise.

I am a member of the first team. I want to have somebody who goes to bed at night thinking about CollegeWeekends.com and how to make it better, not some team of robots that is treating our company and our business model as if we are just another line item in a long list of things to do. None of us have technical skills and all though I have a strong concept of how I want the site to perform I want somebody who knows about all the available technologies and all the opportunities on the web to direct the development. After all with out the Internet we have no business so we need somebody who lives and breathes the Internet to architect our site.

Bare with me this is for Google. CollegeWeekends.com, Charlottesville Hotels, UVA Guest Houses, college weekends

Ryan Bingham Rocks

My buddy sheats introduced me to Ryan Bingham's album Mescalito about two weeks ago. I have been listening to it on repeat since then. Every song is good and it is one of those albums you can put in without the urge to jump around. Some of my favorites are "Southside of Heaven", "Bread and Water", and "Best of Me" Check out his website at the following link

http://www.binghammusic.com/

GET BETTER BODA!!

I was just back east for my good friend Frank Brawley's wedding to Patricia Ballantyne. It was a beautifule wedding and it was great to spend the weekend with my family and so many friends that I have not seen in a while.

On Saturday night though one of the nicest and most widely admired people I know Robert Svboda fell off a deck at the house he was staying at and broke his back. He is undergoing surgery today, so please keep him in your thoughts and hope for the best.

Diddy Sucks @ Golf

I played golf on Sunday with Huston and Bronson and beat the pants off both of them. Really beautiful, long, and hard course @ the same place we slayed the bass. We actually all played terribly but had a great time.

HOLY BIG MOUTH BASS!!

you can click on these pics to see the full size

I just experienced the most ridiculous bass fishery I have ever seen or heard of. I am not afraid to tell you about it cause you can't go unless you are a big swinging you no what in Atlanta. My buddy H-dog has a little you know what but somehow finagled his way into this private club called the Piedmont Driving Club. This place has a beautiful golf course that is surrounding this 150(?) acre lake. They have a covered dock that houses about 20 boats all of which are rigged with trolling motors. Last Thursday Diddy and I got up at about 5 and were on the water at about quarter to six. I have been hearing about this place for a while but I am not a very optimistic person when it comes to places like this that have been hyped up because I carry a hex with me that makes most places suck when I make a big effort to get there. In this instance however my expectations were exceeded, and from what I am told we had a mediocre day at best when you consider the hogs that come out of this place every week.

Regardless of what normally happens I was totally blown away. I also quickly learned that every bass I have ever caught in my life was 2lbs lighter than I thought. We had a scale with us and with the first 3 or 4 fish we were throwing out 4-5 lb guesstimates for fish that actually weighed 2-3. I started out fishing with a white fluke while Diddy fished a 9" pumpkin seed worm with a slider. Neither really seemed to have much of an advantage over the other as we were both catching fish pretty steadily. Not to toot my own horn but one of the first moments we wish we got on tape was when I threw my fluke as far as I could right up against the 17th hole bulk head and a nice fish picked it up as soon as it hit the water. I gave this fish the definition of a red neck heave because it was a long distance hook set and I knew I needed to put a little extra ass in it. As soon as I set the hook it felt like a big fish and right as I start exclaiming, "it feels like a lunker" this thing comes all the way out of the water and throws the fluke about 4 feet up my line. Shortly after this Diddy hooked into a fish that is shown in the pics that totally dwarfed the fish I just caught. We ended up landing about 14 nice fish only two of which broke the 4lb mark.

About 7:30 I witnessed something that has changed my life forever. Right off of the 18th hole I hooked into a relatively small fish, maybe 1 lb tops. As I was rushing this fish into get it off my line I noticed some movement behind the fish. As I got the fish right up to the boat and squinted my eyes to see what was approaching from the depths, moby dick hit the gas and inhaled the bass that I was about to land. I almost fell out of the other side of the boat as it appeared an alligator had just attacked my fish. I immediately flipped the bail and let the monster run with my fish. I gave the fish about 30 seconds to run and in hindsight I should have given it at least a minute. I flipped the bail and put a little tension on the line it felt steady and heavy like I was hooked on a log as opposed to hooked up with a little fish. I preceded to reel down on this fish and give it another red neck heave only to rip the lips off of the little fish that had not yet been completely inhaled. I know people always talk about how big the one that got away was but I almost started crying. This fish's head was as big as mine and that is saying something. I can't even begin to guess what it weighed but it had to be in the double digits.

Anyway it was a great trip, and I can't wait to come back and visit.