clanMcGraw.com

From the Google Operating System blog:

Google brought back the index from January 2001 to show how many things have changed in almost 8 years. At that time, Google’s index included 1,326,920,000 web pages and it was the most comprehensive index of a search engine.

Of course, I tried looking up a few things using the 2001 search engine and result set:

clan McGraw - #1 with a bullet!

Brian McGraw - Seeing as how I hadn’t yet started using the clanMcGraw.com domain, I think #3 was pretty good.

Amanda McGraw - Amanda was #5.

Brandon McGraw - The little guy was #1. Not so in 2008.

Caleb McGraw - Sorry, little buddy. You weren’t on Google on the time. But you were definitely on the web.

That was fun. Look around long enough, and you’ll even find pictures of Brian with a full head of hair.

What caused our economic crisis?

One sunny day, an old man approached the White House from across Pennsylvania Avenue , where he’d been sitting on a park bench. He spoke to the Marine standing guard and said, ‘I would like to go in and meet with President Obama.’

The Marine replied, ‘Sir, Mr. Obama is not President and doesn’t reside here.’

The old man said, ‘Okay,’ and walked away.

The following day, the same man approached the White House and said to the same Marine, ‘I would like to go in and meet with President Obama’.

The Marine again told the man, ‘Sir, as I said yesterday, Mr. Obama is not President and doesn’t reside here.’

The man thanked him and again walked away . .

The third day, the same man approached the White House and spoke to the very same Marine, saying ‘I would like to go in and meet with President Obama.’

The Marine, understandably agitated at this point, looked at the man and said, ‘Sir, this is the third day in a row you have been here asking to speak to Mr. Obama. I’ve told you already several times that Mr. Obama is not the President and doesn’t reside here. Don’t you understand?’

The old man answered, ‘Oh, I understand you fine, I just love hearing your answer!’

The Marine snapped to attention, saluted, and said,

‘See you tomorrow Sir.’

Besides the fact that they’re on-time, have never lost or destroyed my luggage, and charge less for airfare than their competitors… I like to fly Southwest because they’re fun.

On our flight to Orlando, the flight attendants led the kids in singing the Mickey Mouse Club song. And one of them gave me a free Monster Energy Drink, because she said that I “was going to need all the help that I could get.”

Brian’s deli.cio.us links for September 24th:

• PETA Urges Ben & Jerry’s To Use Human Breast Milk - In an unrelated story, the playboy mansion is now known as the Playboy ranch.

So last Friday, while recovering from the 39-hour uptime, I met Kevin in our hotel lobby, to go and grab some lunch. While we were waiting for some other guys, Kevin mentioned that 9/21 was going to be the last baseball game in Yankee Stadium. It’s scheduled to be demolished and replaced with a new stadium. We were both talking about how cool it would have been to go to a game in the “House that Ruth Built”.

Then it dawned on us… We were very, very close to the stadium.

Kevin called StubHub, and found 4 tickets for $40 each.

We talked with the hotel concierge (Mary at the Sheraton… You are wonderful!!) and she laid out bus schedules, train schedules, and a game plan.

So, in the tradition of the MasterCard commercials…

1 Ticket to the Yankees / Orioles game… $40
Train fare from Philadelphia to NY Penn Station… $33
Subway fare to The Bronx… $4
Being able to tell your kids that you ate a hot dog at the original Yankee Stadium… Priceless.

A set of blurry cameraphone pictures are also available to browse.

Sorry for the delay, folks. I spent last week in Philadelphia, and had no time to post these links. In fact, I still haven’t had a chance to upload all of the pictures I quickly snapped on my Blackberry, although those of you who follow my twitter feed saw most of those, in real time, as they were uploaded to twitpic.

Our pictures have been uploaded to Google, and broken out by day.

The photos that the Disney Photopass staff took can be viewed here for a limited time.

Hope you enjoy!

You’re welcome.

You see, I am single handedly responsible for the drop in temperatures. You may be saying, “That’s impossible. How can a single mortal impact that which God alone controls?”

Simple.

On August 30th, I bought a new A/C to replace our outside unit, which had failed. That was a very expensive weekend at the McGraw house. And, of course, it happened before we left for Disney.

We’ve returned from Disney to nothing but nice temperatures. I almost willing to go so far as predicting a very mild winter, because while the A/C was being replaced… I also opted to replace our old furnace with a new one. So I’m willing to bet that for the next 12 months, average Alabama temperatures will hover between 50 and 80.

You’re welcome.

“We’ve lost our identify…”

Sister, you got that right.

Live Coverage… 4 TV stations in 1 Browser window.

(HT: ABC 33/40 Weather Blog)