note I’m seeing a bunch of search traffic come in on this one. Solution: Mouse over the video and click the Video title to watch the video on Youtube.

I wonder what the point was for making sure that video player is of a certain size to play the video in this case?

Also, how do you expect your video to get views if you can’t share it?

My guess is that they didn’t want the video to be able to play at a size where ads would be too small to display so they forced a minimum size. Update From the links at the bottom, this is exactly what’s causing it. Turning off advertising for a video will allow it to be played.

I had to figure out what the difference was so I made a quick page to compare them as you can see in this screenshot:

Let’s take a less restrictive channel and see if these work. I give you John Green of the Vlog Brothers

This works just fine. So now the question remains… why can’t you play music videos on Facebook?

Here’s the Vlog Brothers video

Update At least I’m not the only one having these issues. Found a Yahoo Answers question regarding this. The solution was to up the video player size. And here’s a Youtube group posting

It’s been BUSY around here. Whether it’s work or home; there’s always something going on.

We’ve been busy in the yard lately. Not only trying to get the garden going (update on that soon) but also to get some of these plants greened/flowered up so that our house can stay looking less covered in brush.

The tulips grew fast this year and were done and gone a few weeks before their typical Mother’s day viewing.

This plant didn’t look like this last year when we planted it. I’m hoping to start seeing some hummingbirds.

Of course the pets don’t help with this. I snapped both of these within a minute or two of each other. The dog had decided he didn’t want to go outside with me and opted to do this on the couch instead.

Megan and I have also been going to a baby preparation class on Monday nights. Last night was the 3rd of 4 classes and Megan got a little bored. I was obviously totally focused on the discussion.

Baby Dez is due on July 17th and that means we only have 9 more weeks to go until Megan is 40 weeks along (31 weeks today). He’s been making her tired, but she’s been a trooper this whole time. I try to do what I can to help make her day easier, but sometimes even that falls short.

We’re excited for him to get here and hopefully we’re ready for him. But really, who can be fully ready for that big of a shift. I mean, we have pets, but they’re decently independent.

Megan and I are going to try our hand at Square Foot Gardening this year. We did the work of putting up a raised garden bed, and bought the special mixture of dirt needed to make it easy to manage. However, the dog declared war on the compost contained and started digging it out. So we had to build a fence.

Step One:

Watch this video (and take a multitude of mental & physical notes)

Step Two:

Build a fence

Start with your fence posts. See those tarps? Those are bullet proof vests for gardens to protect against fast moving dogs.

Wait out the rain, which was supposed to only be spotty showers during the day, but instead last until mid-afternoon. Once you wait out the rain, plug in your circular saw, swear at it profusely because it doesn’t work, go to Home Depot buy a new one. Once that is done; successfully build a fence panel. Sit back, enjoy a beer, take pictures and tweet it.

Taking your new found talent of building panels, build more. Quit before it gets dark because operating power tools in the dark is better left to vampires and those with night-vision goggles.

After you wake up early the next morning (because you passed out from working so hard the day before) check your local city ordinance for the times when operating power tools in your backyard is legal (in my case 9:00am). Wait until your phone tells you it’s 9:00am and start using without worry.

Finish the remaining panels, but don’t forget to move anything bigger than the gate entry into the garden first (wive’s are good at the reminding part, thanks Megan!).

Add your gate and make sure it actually opens (a lesson I learned when installing a storm door a few weekends ago).

Add mulch to make it look pretty, sit back, tweet, and claim your completeness.

Realize that your fence resembles more a castle wall than a garden fence (after tweeting of course) and take decisive action of cutting the posts down to a manageable level. Hopefully you have a saws-all for this one as the circular saw will just make you sad. Also, take out an annoying tree while you’re at it, for whatever reason it makes you feel better.

Send out another picture to Twitter claiming that you lied the first time and now it’s really done.

Step Three:

Gloat that you successfully built a fence due to instructions you learned by watching a six minute video on the internet, once. You could also just write a blog post about it and post pictures to make all your home-owning friends with dogs and gardens jealous of the fact that your garden is now, in fact, dog proofed.

We’re 9 hours 57 minutes away from the end of the overnight website challenge. I woke up at 5:30 this morning and was here by 6:45. We’ve got a great client and this has been a lot of work by me and Team Pegacorn (That’s Pegasus + Unicorn).

Lots of activities going on today, but since I’ve never had a caricature done of me… ever… and they had comic artists out there I got myself all done up robot style. It was drawn by Kevin Kosmo

So I’m going to try worm composting. However, I’m not willing to just buy some worms, throw them in a bin and throw waste in there as it becomes available. I’ve been doing some research and talking to some people that do worm composting already. But I know some of you, dear readers, probably also do composting or at best worm composting.

Any tips, resources, references that I should use. I’m going to be building my compost center this coming weekend. I have some time to do the research first.

I’ve just started Unit 1 tonight and I’m in the middle of the unit right now, but took a quick break to watch a video of Grace Hopper on Letterman (More on that in a bit).

Back to this Udacity thing. It’s an online unversity that’s being offered at no cost. There aren’t accreditation for taking the courses, but you get to learn from some amazing people. The course I’m taking right now is how to build a search engine. In seven weeks I’ll have learned how to build a search engine from one of the co-founders of Google and some other people.

There isn’t much more to say about it than that, but half-way through the first unit I’ve already learned a TON.

One of the things I learned is that late night talk shows used to have guests who were more than just entertainers. Sure, they still do that sometimes, but nothing like the video below that I was sent to as a side-viewing interest video from Unit 1.

Here’s Retired Rear Admiral Lower Half Grace Hopper on the David Letterman show.

I’m going to get back to the course now, but I thought I’d write up a post quick saying that if the late night shows would do more interviews like this one, I’d probably watch a lot more. Stupid pop culture.

From Boing Boing

This is awesome and totally worth watching for 5 minutes. Lots of explanation on what exactly is going on with the droplets orbiting (note: it’s not because of gravity) so make sure to have your sound on.

The astronaut, Don Pettit, explains that it’s this type of interaction with solar particles and Earth’s magnetic field that gives us our auroras.

We purchased a Canon Powershot ELPH 300 HS last night at Target while it was on clearance. We’re taking it back today.

Why? the pictures are grainy! even at normal viewing size for Facebook the images look grainy. The high burst mode is even worse making 12.1 megapixel pictures looked like pixels exploded. The flash left light artifacts on the pictures in lower light situations.

The video camera was great as long as you didn’t start zooming. As soon as you pressed the zoom in the lighting quality went to shit (even if you hadn’t moved the lens).

The last straw on this camera was that it didn’t charge via USB and had a proprietary battery that needed to be removed from the camera to charge at all, removing the ability to quickly get a camera up for cute moments.

So, Megan and I are looking for a decent point and shoot in the intermediate range (we don’t want a DSLR) so that we have something for when the baby gets here that will produce pictures that could possibly be printed on photo paper for hanging/saving physically.

Any suggestions?

There are plenty of examples out there regarding customer service on the social channels that are good. Companies using their own customer service departments to monitor tweets and public Facebook posts or posts to pages that actually get handled. However, this falls apart for many companies that outsource their social networking channels as well as their customer service departments.

Social Network service can be ruined by having a marketing agency handle replying to reviews and postings without a direct tie to the company they are servicing. This leads to complaints falling on people that have no real power to help the customer having issues. I’ve complained about Comcast in the past regarding service issues, but their Twitter team is actually employees in the customer service department. Which means that they can listen and actually help fix issues.

My latest issue was with TMobile’s Twitter team. I had an issue lately with my bill after combining my wife’s and my accounts into one bill and contract. I was switching from unlimited text messaging my own account and 1000 message limits on my wife’s account (which she consistently used under 100). Because of the switch the messages that she and I had sent out since the last bill were thrown into a limbo state that their billing system thought was overage use. I got charged $45.20 + tax for the overage. The bill I got had just come through and wasn’t due to be auto-paid for another 20 days. I called in.

This is where the Service Theater idea comes in with outsourced customer service departments. The poor CS rep that I spoke to couldn’t do anything to help me. She told me that the money would be credited back to my account in the next billing cycle (March). I told her that what she was suggesting was ridiculous and that I would like to speak to a supervisor. She put me on hold for a few minutes to go check to see if a supervisor was available. Once she came back, she told me that all the supervisors were busy helping other customers and that it didn’t really matter since the supervisor wouldn’t be able to help me with anything either.

I don’t fault the CS Rep for any of this. Her hands were tied in regards with what she had permission to do. The calls are so scripted that delving off into uncharted territory leaves the agents unable to handle slightly different from the script. I wouldn’t even be surprised that the “my supervisor wouldn’t be able to help you” comment is on a script for ornery customers (which I was).

The last part of service theater was the twitter team. I’ve complemented Tmobile on their service before, and did so when I switched Megan and I to the same plan because we were saving money. They were very quick to respond on Twitter and always have been. However, when I complained about the bill I got silence. When I complained about the silence, I got silence. When the matter was resolved and I tweeted about it again, I got a reply that they were happy that it was resolved. When I questioned them on the fact they hadn’t replied to any of my complaint tweets I was told that they can’t respond to every one. I’m translating this to: We can’t do anything if you complain anyways, so we just don’t reply.

Luckily this whole thing had a good ending. My account isn’t going to get charged the extra $45.00.

I laughed my way through this:

How to Plan a Wedding without Losing Your Mind (or being an Asshole)

Favorite quotes:

About people helping:

So they’re honored guests, not slaves, right? Got it? Okay.

AND

Be grateful for the help you’re getting, no matter how big or small.

Or, as my father said during his wedding toast, “Don’t be an asshole.”

I’m redoing a menu page for a new menu relaunch for a restaurant’s website that I host. When I created the menu page they had a Pie dessert option which they are now removing. I made myself laugh when I saw the following:

<!– The following line is the saddest line ever –>
<!– End of Pie –>

I made myself giggle.

With Megan being pregnant and being more exhausted than normal; I’ve taken over a lot of the cooking duties. In the past when it was my responsibility for dinner we would eat out. However, that’s not entirely possible considering that we’re trying to save money for the baby and an emergency fund (since it will affect not only us anymore).

This means that I’ve had to start standing in front of the stove and prepare something that’s mostly healthy, filling, and can provide us with some leftovers for lunches.

I’ve never been afraid to cook and have even held a job cooking in a bar before. But Megan is an amazing cook/chef (chef because she’ll create her own concoctions based on what’s available). This means that I’ve been spoiled rotten the past few years that we’ve lived together because she has taken care of the preparation for 90% of the meals that we have eaten.

This switch over process has been forming over the last month or so and I’m not entirely disappointed in the results with myself. I already knew how to make a lot of the stuff that I’ve been cooking, but had not had a lot of practice doing it.

So for the past three weeks or so there’s been a lot of fresh stir fry, hamburgers, pulled pork, beef stroganoff, and some other really easy stuff to make.

Last night I took it up a notch (a bit). I made turkey breast, mashed potatoes from scratch, and steamed broccoli. The only thing really difficult was the mashed potatoes. I’ve never made them from scratch before and I made the rookie mistake of not cubing the potatoes before boiling them. They. Took. FOREVER. Ended up pretty delicious, if not super chunky, though.

Being that I’m taking over a good portion of the cooking, and Megan is getting sick of so much stir fry; I’m starting to meal plan now.

The menu for this week is all mine (except for Tuesday night) thanks to recipes I found in a few of Megan’s cookbooks:

Sunday: Spinach Tortellini and Garlic Bread
Monday: Ramen Beef Stir Fry
Tuesday: Grilled Cheese & Roasted Red Pepper Tomato Soup
Wednesday: Cheesy Beef Hash & Green Peppers
Thursday: Chicken Fajita Bowl
Friday: Breaded Pork Chops & Green Beans
Saturday: Indian Take-out (India Palace) <– I could try, but those guys are good.

I’ll try to add some pictures during the week, but Megan has done her part and written up the menu already.

On Sunday night I watched “The Big Waste” on Food Network. I was Appalled.

Here’s the description from the page for those that don’t like to click on links:

First class chefs Bobby Flay, Michael Symon, Anne Burrell and Alex Guarnaschelli tackle one of the most massive problems in food today – waste! Divided into two teams, with only 48 hours on the clock, they are challenged to create a multi course gourmet banquet worthy of their great reputations, but with a big twist; they can only use food that is on its way to the trash. The chefs’ hunt takes them from grocery aisles to produce farms, and orchard lines to garbage piles, as they attempt to source enough ingredients to feed a gathering crowd. Bobby and Michael square off against Anne and Alex, as they challenge their views of food waste and how and why it is created.

Don’t get the description wrong. They weren’t pulling rotten looking food out and feeding it to people. They were taking food that wasn’t perfect (usually visual only) to the consumer and saving it from the trash. This included vegetables, fruits, meat, baked goods, ingredients and other things. They used a food safety inspector to make sure that temperatures were good from a safety perspective which was a nice touch.

How is it possible that we have become so needy as people that we can’t handle anything less than perfection in the way that our food looks? I’m just as guilty of this as anyone else.

Apple has a little bit of a bruise on it? Not for my apple pie/cut up apple/in my mouth usage of this.

One of the farms reported 40% of the food they grow goes to waste (compost). WTF?!?!? The images they showed of the compost pile looked like what a “perfectly fine to eat” produce section in the super market would be. I can’t remember correctly if the show also said that America wastes ~40% of the food in this country as well, but it was mentioned a few times.

I did learn a few things though. When a tomato gets too much water it splits and heals giving it a scarred outside texture. However, this makes it better to eat, but harder to look at. Put it in sauce. I learned a lot about tomatoes from Bill’s post on tomatoes and this adds even more to it.

Sadly I had just been grocery shopping before watching this. So I’ll have to wait until next time to pick out the vegetables/fruit that are just as good as the others but just don’t look as nice. I’ll be applying this rule when I go to the farmers’ market as well. Insert “It’s what’s on the inside that counts analogy” here.

Hopefully this spring I can get a good garden going and not waste 40% of my food.

Thank you for reading.

</rant>

When we first got Jeff we thought it would be funny to show him the laser pointer. However, he just scratched at the carpet.

Lately we tried it again (after finding the laser pointer). He no longer scratches at the carpet, but he is obsessed with it and now I have video to prove it.  Sorry about the overlaid music on the second one, but there was a cialis commercial on in the background.

link to video

Look at how fast his tail moves in this one.

link to video

He’s obsessed with the pointer and when he comes back in from outside immediately starts looking for the light  and now that he’s figured out where it comes from (and that we control it) he just stares at us.

Dear Readers,

I am proud to announce that i’m going to be a dad. Sometime around 7/17/2012.

Also, this baby is blog fodder (obviously) and you can see updates as they happen at http://bambino.iamdez.com