Tucows is a cool company. Why? Because they used my photography on a recent update to one of their websites.

Tucows offers a TON of services people can use to run a business: Email, domain names, certificates, backoffice solutions, web publishing, and more. Check out their site.

Yesterday, the good people there asked me if they could use one of my photographs. I’ve had it on flickr since January, and apparently they found it and love it. Here’s the letter I got from their representative in Toronto:

Hey Jason,

My name is James and I work for Tucows in Toronto. We
absolutely love your picture of our squishycows here and we
are planning on using it on one of our websites. I see you
have released it under Creative Commons and that you’ve
said commercial use is okay.

Let me know if this is okay with you - we’ll credit you by
name of course.

James Koole
Communications Specialist
Tucows Inc.

Naturally, I gladly allowed them to use the squishycow photo. After all, it’s their cows I’m showing off. The photo can now be seen on the site: http://services.tucows.com

If you like it, let them know!

skaters glide on the ice at the Rockefeller Center’s skating rink in midtown Manhattan, New York, in this file photo from Dec. 8, 1949. The skating rink turns 70 on Christmas Day, 2006. (AP Photo/John Lindsay-File)

This Christmas also marks 1 year since I was at that very spot.

When I was 14 years old, I had summer reading for my AP (Honors) English class. Don’t blame my English teacher for my bad grammar, that’s my fault. Anyway, back to the story…

One of the books I had to read was Fahrenheit 451. It is a book by Ray Bradbury, and I really liked it. I had never read a book all the way through before this book, so it felt like somewhat of a milestone for me. In order to do it, though, I had to listen to music. One day, while listening to a local NPR station on the radio, I recorded a classical piece of music onto tape. I listened to this music every day while reading the book and it was ingrained into my memory. After that year in school was over, I lost the tape. I never knew the name of songs on it. All I knew was how it sounded. I asked my dad then if we could call NPR, but i didn’t think I could explain to them the song I wanted to know about. I listened and listened to all kinds of classical music, but I could never find it. I made a promise to myself then to try as hard as I could to find it–That was 14 years ago.

Last week, while listening to the Rhapsody music service, I stumbled on a familiar sound by a romanic-period composer by the name of Anton Bruckner. I knew instantly that this guy must have composed the music I had listened to every day when I was 14, so I kept listening to more and more of his symphonies. Finally, after about 20 minutes, I found it.

Listening to it brought back so much emotion in me and so many memories from when I was 14 that I could hardly get a grip on reality. I was fixed on my younger days. It’s been nearly 11 days since then and I’m still listening to it every day.

In case you’re curious, the Symphony this is all about is “Anton Bruckner’s Symphony No. 2 in C Minor”. Listen to it in its entirety if you can. It’s really amazing. It may not hit you like it hit me, but then again I have this really old connection to it.

Have you ever had an experience similar to mine with music? Share it!

Today I questioned myself. I wasn’t sure if I was a good manager or not. I haven’t been a manager long, and after what I did today I might not be a manager much longer.

I decided to dig around online for what other people think it takes to be a good manager and after much introspection, I have come to the conclusion that I am, in fact, a good manager–at least in some respects. I like to have fun and I like my guys at work to have fun.

Let’s take a look at what some website I found today considers to be good traits of a manager:

[Some] management qualities to look for:

• Action-oriented
• Approachable
• Able to deal with ambiguity
• A sense of humor (CHECK!)

Yeah, I think i have a pretty good sense of humor. At least I have one of the four traits as a manager. Case in point: One of my employees, Kevin, has a birthday tomorrow. I and another one of my employees decided to give him a birthday “present”. We wanted the present to be big, and not necessarily costly for us. Well, the office has plenty of chairs, so we thought it’d be a great idea to give him some…or a bunch. We even neatly stacked them on and around his desk for him. That way when he gets in tomorrow he will certainly see his present.
Another thing: for some reason Kevin is an Abe Vigoda fan. I don’t know why, but I think it’s funny. So I decided to print a really big picture of Abe and stick it on his door. That’s really nice right?

By the way, if you’re wondering if Abe is alive, check here

Here are the two pictures of Kevin’s desk area: [Picture 1], [Picture2]

I had a load of fun this weekend. I finally got to go back on the pitch and photograph a soccer game. This weekend’s action included a 4-1 win by FC Dallas over the Colorado rapids. Nunez scored twice in 5 minutes–it was nuts after that goal. The image to the left shows the team celebration after the goal. (Picture taken by yours truly)

From mlsnet.com:
Bobby Rhine had given FC Dallas an eighth-minute lead, but Kyle Beckerman pulled the Rapids level in the 34th minute. Then Nunez scored in the 71st and 74th minutes — the first on a rebound, the second directly from a free kick — to give the Hoops the advantage. Kenny Cooper scored in stoppage time to put the game away.

After the FC Dallas game, Everton took the field. It was certainly fun watching them play. The crowd really got into the game.

I may post more photos of this game later. They may show up on 3rddegree.net as well.

Well, you might have noticed a change. It was a hard decision to make, but I moved over to Wordpress. My old site had been limping along for quite some time. I wrote the old site completely from scratch before there were cool publishing tools like Nuke, Postnuke, or cooler things like Wordpress.

My old site had problems:

• People sometimes couldn’t post.
• My HTML didn’t exactly pass validation
• My code was crap. I didn’t use any design pattern really, and it was hard to track where things were sometimes.

So, That’s why I switched. I like wordpress’ user-community and I like the admin interface to the website. It’s also really nicely designed and the theme engine is pretty nice.

No worries folks, I’ll try to make this one feel just like the old one. It just might take a bit though. Thanks for your continued support of this site. Get to the comments people!

It can’t…. at least not in my book.

So there’s this supersecret spying program that President Bush has going on the people of the United States. Media outlets are calling it the “Warantless surveillance of terrorist threats”. Whatever it’s called, big brother is watching you.


Bush told a White House news conference that the domestic spying program “is designed to protect civil liberties” and declared that “it’s necessary.”


I don’t think even someone in MENSA could convince me that the act of spying on me is somehow related to the protection of my civil liberties. Those two seem mutually exclusive.


This brings to mind the following:

“They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

- Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759.

For the past couple of years, I’ve hosted a shoutcast radio station simply for the benefit of those who love Christmas music. I love Christmas music, and enjoy sharing. I hope you like it:


Click here to listen in winamp or Windows Media Player.

Here are the stats.


A big thanks goes out to Tim Clarke for making the intro.


Merry Christmas everyone!

42-0. That was the score when the NFL’s Seattle Seahawks were done stomping a mudhole in the Philadelphia Eagles this week. So what happened to the Eagles? Are they at such a low point because of the whole Terrell Owens debacle? I bet Owens was sitting on his couch laughing his ass off and saying “I told you so”.

Former Dallas Cowboys receiver Michael Irvin was charged with misdemeanor possession of drug paraphernalia after police searched his vehicle during a traffic stop, police said Sunday.

was arrested on an outstanding warrant for speeding in Irving after being pulled over Friday afternoon for speeding in Plano, the Plano Police Department said. Police spokesman Mike Johnson said he didn’t know what kind of paraphernalia was found.

Irvin paid a fine on the speeding ticket and posted bond on the drug paraphernalia possession charge. He was released about an hour after he was pulled over.

I hope ESPN allows him to continue his studio analyst position–I think he’s funny on the air.