Webmaster Cookbook

Lucky Linda (short story I wrote)

Jowlstar — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 03:31:17 +0000

Lucky Linda
by J.D.R.
       The track smelled good and his luck was hotter than his wife. Jared
has been placing bets with a bookie and watching the races at the
track. Getting reckless in his betting Jared finally hit the big bet
on a horse named Lucky Linda. He bet $350,000 on this horse because
his bookie Vince told him it was a sure win.
       "And they’re off," the announcer’s voice boomed.
      Jared could only watch as Lucky Linda took to the outside, which is a
prime spot on the track. Lucky Linda was doing great, maintaining
second place for a while and then the horses were approaching the
final stretch.
       "Stupid horse! Can’t you friggen learn how to go faster; faster
please! Go faster!" Jared said as Lucky Linda began to lose speed.
       "The horses are coming down the last stretch of the race and its
Surlee’s Temple followed closely by Brunce Bowler. Katie’s Gonna Win
in third, followed by Madonna’s Losing, and finally Lucky Linda in
last place," said the announcer.
       "Please, oh please, win, you stupid horse."
       The announcer was about to tell everyone the winners when Jared put
his head in
his hands. If he lost the $350,000 bet not only would he be bankrupt,
but he wouldn’t have enough money to cover the entire bet.
       "And the winners are Brunce Bowler, Surlee’s Temple, and Katie’s
Gonna win. Followed closely by Madonna’s Losing and Lucky Linda."
       Jared heard a ringing coming from his khakis; his cell phone he
thought.   He stood up, answered it, heard a whisper on the other
line.
       "Jared, we’re going to collect." Vince whispered.
       "Sure, I’m just going to be at my house tonight." Jared said.
       "Okay, my boys will be out to your house to pick up the $350,000
tonight. Oh and by the way if you try and screw with us we’ll be
paying your lovely wife a visit she won’t forget."
       Silence.
       His heart racing 1000 miles a minute, he walked over to the tents
where his wife was entertaining a few charming men.
       "Sugar, we need to talk," Jared said.
       "Can’t you see I’m busy with these bachelors?" Linda replied turning
away and continuing her conversation.
       "It’s very important"
       He finally had to grab her by the arm, and take her away from the
other men. They walked over to the lavatory area, where they were
alone.
       "I just blew $350,000, which we don’t have."
       "What the hell are you talking about!" she said as she began to mutter several
derogatory comments under her breath.
       "Its not so bad, my bookie is only going to take everything we own
and then probably break my legs since I know we don’t even have
$350,000."
       "Not so bad? You’re being stupider than you look right now, quit
being a pompous moron. This is a time to think about us both, you got
us into this. Now you’re going to get us out of this."
       "We might be able to escape from my bookie if we get home and pack
really quick."
       "So be it."
       The ride to their house seemed like an eternity; they exchanged
glances of disgust and began to try and talk to each other but it
wasn’t working for either of them. They finally got to their house,
popped the gate open and rushed in.
       "Sugar, grab the clothes while I pack the rest of the stuff." Jared said
       "All right, but make sure you grab my jewelry its extremely valuable
to me" Linda said.
       Linda headed upstairs to the laundry room and began packing their
clothes. Linda heard a noise behind her, turned to look, and was
frightened by what she saw.
       "Don’t say a word," Vince said.
       She didn’t move her lips at all as Vince pressed his clothes against
her’s holding her tight.
       "You’re going to go downstairs and bring me Jared right now, understand me?"
       "Yes," she said, moving her head frantically up and down .
       "I’m going to wait here in this laundry room, but if you screw with
me I’ll make sure you eat lead."
       Linda headed downstairs to look for Jared; quickly finding him in his
office. He was picking up a gun when she made a motion for him to
follow.
       "Sugar, what is it?" Jared said.
       "Just follow me," Linda said as she started pointing upstairs.
       "All right."
       Jared followed Linda upstairs and they both stopped at the laundry
room door. Linda was a pale color and wasn’t moving.
       "Sugar, what’s the matter?" Jared said as he entered the laundry room.
       "I’m the matter," Vince said as he leapt out from behind the dryer.
       "Vince?" Jared said as he looked at the man tackling him.
       "That’s me. You thought you were going to skip out of town and not
pay me my money?"
       "Well, no, I didn’t."
       "Then why were you packing?"
       "We’re going on a vacation; we were here waiting to pay you the money
but you hadn’t shown up yet."
       "Really, I don’t believe you at all. Boys come in here," Vince said
as he yelled towards the door.
       "We’re here boss," the boys replied.
       "All right stand there and wait. If our friend Jared here doesn’t
have $350,000
we’re going to rip Linda limb from limb right in front of him, understand?"
       "Right, boss."
       Linda was more terrified than Jared had ever seen her. He tried to
keep her happy as he knew that she’d probably not be alive much
longer. Jared put his head in his arms once again and tried to block
out what was going on.
       "Jared, where’s your safe?" Vince asked.
       "Downstairs to the left; behind the picture of me,"
       "Thanks for the information. Now, go get me the money. Remember we
have your wife."
       "I’ll be back as soon as I can"
       Jared walked downstairs once more and headed towards his safe which
held about $1,000 in cash. Jared had formed a plan to put a grand
with a bunch of bricks in a bag and then try and con that over on
them. He ran outside and grabbed the bricks, and proceeded to quickly
attach them to the bills. He shoved all the bricks into a bag and
headed back upstairs.
       "I’ve got all $350,000 for you," Jared said as he shoved the bag towards Vince.
       "Thanks," Vince said as he began to look into the bag. "Do you think
I’m an idiot? These are bricks with money attached to them." he said
as he motioned for his henchmen to shoot Jared.
       The two henchmen shot at Jared, one missed horribly and the other
bullet grazed his right arm. Jared let out a screeching howl of pain,
and Linda began to cry.
       "Don’t kill him," Linda said.
       "We’re not going to kill him yet," Vince said as he approached Linda
and withdrew his knife.
       "What are you going to do," she asked.
       "We’re going to cut your limbs off one by one and let your husband watch."
       At hearing that statement her husband managed to get up and run at
all of them, Linda managed to get out of their grasp and run down the
hall. She was heading down the stairs when they opened fire,
terrified she didn’t realize that there was stuff in her walkway. She
tripped on a broom and went head first down the stairs, Jared began to
hyperventilate uncontrollably. The two henchmen and Vince stood there
in amazement, as Jared darted down the stairs to see his wife.
       "She’s dead." Jared said.
       Jared’s eyes transfixed on his wife’s body, he lost a part of him.
He knew he’d never be the same.
       "Now you are too," Vince said.
       Vince had pulled out his gun, and was firing at Jared who had not
taken too much time to stay for chit chat. Jared dodged several
bullets as he ran out of the house, luckily neither Vince nor his
henchmen were good shots. He hopped into his car and was heading for
a motel when he began to think of what just happened.
       "They killed her," he said as he began to talk to himself. "Those
bastards killed her and they can pin this on me. What can I do?
First I need some money. Wait I had started a life policy a long time
ago on her. That’s the ticket, I’ll go collect the change from her
life policy in around five days."
*****
       Five days past with just Jared in his motel room, he continued
talking to himself, and to a knife which he had named Linda. He found
that to be his only source of entertainment during those five long
days. Finally the time came to talk to the insurance company, he had
to go get some nicer clothing first. So he stopped by an outfitting
store, where he decided to grab a pair of nice dress pants with a blue
dress shirt.   He went on his way to the insurance office and walked
on in.
       "Hello I’m Jared Stevens," he said.
       "Hello Jared, what can we do for you?" the insurance agent said.
       "Well, my wife died recently, and I’m here to collect the life
insurance check."
       "I’m sorry for your loss, if you’ll sign a few papers we can get the
ball rolling."
       "Signing papers won’t be a problem. Please hand them here."
       Jared seemed eager to leave the place as he signed all the papers, he
kept looking at the clock. It read 2:20 P.M.
       "Can we hurry this up, I’ve been sitting here for 30 minutes."
       "Sure we’re just getting the final arrangements taken care of, sir
you’ll be getting a check in the mail in about a week."
       "Check? Mail? What?"
       "Yes, we don’t carry that kind of cash here at our insurance
agencies, so you’re going to have to get a check from our corporate
office sometime this week."
       "All right I guess, thanks for getting it rolling."
       Jared left the insurance agency with a sense of anger in him. He
would finally
return to his house he thought. So he drove all the way down I-97,
and into the lot where his house stood.
       "Home sweet home," he said to himself.
       A couple of men advanced from behind the bushes, and took Jared by surprise.
       "We’ve been waiting in your house for several days," Vince said.
       "Why are you here, you already killed her," Jared said.
       "You’re best friend Billy Snider was bought off by us and has a photo
convicting you of killing your wife," Vince said.
       "My best friend, why?" Jared said.
       "Every man has their price,"
       "You’re not going to get away with this."
       "I believe we already have, now you have till noon tomorrow to get my
money, and if you don’t, we’re going to kill you."
       Vince and his henchmen left, and Jared stood there in amazement.
Jared was being betrayed by his best friend.
       Jared began to hear a voice inside his head, "Linda is that you?" he
said as he pulled out his knife which he thought was his wife.
       "Linda, you’ll never leave me," he said to the knife "You’re love is
enough to stay with me for a lifetime, right?" he said.
       The knife just shined back at him, and that was enough for him.
       "What is that Linda, you want me to kill Billy? But I couldn’t
possibly do such a thing, you say he deserves it? All right lets go
get Billy!"
       Jared drove very fast down the highway, and reached Billy’s office.
He didn’t even care to knock at the door, he just knocked it off its
hinges.
       "Jared, I’m glad you’re here," Billy said.
       The man drew closer towards Billy, and closer; Billy could feel
Jared’s breath on his shoulder.
       "Where are the pictures of my wife’s murder," Jared demanded.
       "Well I’ve got some interesting news for you; I’ve found the murderer."
       "Oh that’s interesting, very interesting."
       Jared began to slide his hand into one of his trench coat pockets;
feeling around he finally found his knife which he referred to as
Linda.
       "The picture shows only one person," Billy said as he cleared his
breath to tell his best friend the bad news.
       "Who was it? Come on let the god damn information out!"
       "The picture shows you pushed her down the stairs."
       Jared began to yell, "Linda’s coming, Linda’s got an agenda to do!
Linda wants you!" Jared ran at Billy, and Linda pierced Billy’s body
quicker than his mouth could say help.
       "You’ve been a great friend until now, but Linda says you must die."
       With Billy’s last remaining strength he let out an ear shattering
screech, and reached for his phone. Linda wouldn’t have that, Linda
with one simple slash took off Billy’s hand.
       Noises encroached his mind as Linda took over once more.
"What’s that Linda, Linda you want me to kill Vince? But I couldn’t
do that Linda, yes he’s been a bad person, alright I’ll kill him."
       Jared grabbed his trusty knife and rushed into his car leaving his
best friend in a puddle of blood. The ride to where his bookie was
seemed to go quickly, once he was there he pulled out Linda and began
to look to her for guidance.
       "You want me to go upstairs and get them," Jared said.
       The knife didn’t utter a word and just stared at him, he waited
intently for Linda to give him a way to go. Linda still didn’t say
anything to him, he was very frustrated at this point when suddenly
Vince and his cronies walked up.
       "Do you got our money?" Vince said.
       "Well about that, I don’t think I’m going to give it to you," Jared said.
       "You’re what?"
       "Not going to give it to you," he repeated with a slight irritation
in his voice.
       "I’ve lost my patience with you."
       "As have I, you’ve destroyed my life and are now trying to take
what’s left of it away."
       "I’m going to count to three, you understand me?"
       "Count away, I’m not going to give you any god damn money!"
       "One, two," he said as he paused to try and give Jared one final
chance to pay up.
       "Why did you stop counting?"
       "Three," he said as his voice ripped through the air, he shot a look
at his cronies.
       Jared had reached his hand in his pocket again for Linda.
       "Linda, doesn’t like this."
       "Linda’s dead you idiot," Vince said as he began to give the cronies orders.
       Jared received an order from Linda; to kill them. Jared began to
make growling noises as he looked intently at Vince.
       "Guys, get ready to shoot on my command" Vince said as he aimed his
gun right at Jared.
       "You’re done for," Jared said, shining Linda in their faces.
       The fight lasted two minutes, Vince and his henchmen didn’t move an
inch but Jared did. Jared thrust the knife towards them and with
cries in the night they hit the pavement all that remained was Jared
and Linda, together at last with nothing to stand in their way.

The Stiletto, Serius Satellite Radio

Jowlstar — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 18:42:59 +0000

The Stiletto 100, the newest Serius satellite radio reciever by Serius is what I recently got as a present,

The pro’s of the Stiletto are,

1. It’s small, and easy to carry
2. It stores alot of songs, and you can record songs from the satellite radio
3. Using the satellite headphones your able to hear satellite radio
4. It has two batteries the big one which is the 4 hour, and the little one which is 2 hours
5. Its Wi-fi enabled

The con’s of the Stiletto are,

1. In order to recieve the satellite part outside, you must be wearing the headphones which hurt my ears
2. When walking around outside the signal gets messed up and it has to rebuffer

Ask for my review of the Stiletto, it’s a slick small and easy to carry device that fits in my back pocket. While i’m walking I enjoy the channels Buzzsaw which is a rock and roll channel, and Hair Nation, and of course the always elegant Howard Stern. On sunday nights I enjoy walking and listening to the Bears on the Stiletto. I’ve transfered Mp3’s to my Stiletto, and have been listening to them,

I’ve also recorded music while listening to it on the Stiletto. I found one problem though if your listening to a great song on the Stiletto and you want to record it, you can but if you hit a bad signal area the song wont record that part which really was sad for me to find out. While listening to the Stiletto outside my home, I have to wear these headphones to get the reception for the channels, the headphones hurt my ears.

When I first got it I realized it came with two batteries, both of mine are currently charged, the small battery which is the two hour one takes two hours to charge. The four hour one takes four hours to charge, the greatest thing about the Stiletto though in my opinion is the WiFi, I probably use this the most of anything else. Everyday I bring the Stiletto to school and listen to it before and after school, the WiFi enables me to listen to it in my room, in fact im listening to it right now. Overall the Stiletto gets a straight A- from me, and I will post new developments as they occur.

Taking time to just write

Jowlstar — Tue, 16 May 2006 03:15:40 +0000

in this case I just sat down at my computer and wrote, this story has no name yet.. this is first chapter called
Brothers sudden disappearance.
Whispering in my ear, I heard the voice as I sat their asleep. I could barely hear the voice of my brother telling me to wake up and get dressed, I had not slept good in the past week or so and was dreadfully tired. I stumbled out of bed to notice the time was 5:00 am, which was unusual for me as I went to school at 9:00 am. Me and my brother lived together in a apartment building on Chaplin Street, my name is Sarah Mcalister, and my brothers name is Brian Mcalister. I got dressed and got into his car with no idea of where we were going, he turned on rock and roll like he usually did in the morning. We drove quite fast, and I asked him where we were going. He muttered something, and I could barely understand what he said but i did catch the words “to pull a job”. We pulled up to a building and he got out of the car, my brother said in a stern voice “Stay here, dont move a muscle” and I obey’d, I stood in the car for about 20 mins before I heard a noise. I got out of the car and walked through gravel to the large warehouse, I didn’t see anything at first. I opened the warehouse door to find the warehouse DEAD EMPTY, my brother was no where in sight. I began panicking and suddenly found something. I found a dead body, I could not figure out who the person was but I knew to call the police, I hurried to the car and grabbed my cell phone and dialed 911. They said they would trace the call as I had no idea where I was and it ended up taking them a while before they got to the scene of the crime. The cops looked for clues to my brothers whereabouts and were quite interested in every single detail I could remember, I told them everything from that morning till now. They said the guys name was Bruce Chung, a known gang of the Mafia. Bruce Chung was wanted for alot of small crimes and more, they said my brother was in some sort of trouble also but when they finished looking around my brother was gone. I was taken to the station and was questioned some more, and was put into a orphanage and was told if my brother was found I would be called on the spot.

Figuring out where we are at, 25 podcasts behind it seems

ChefTD — Thu, 12 Jan 2006 20:14:28 +0000

Though the blog hasn’t been updated since almost the middle of December we actually have had a live show every week. Just a reminder to folks following this blog. We do a live stream of this show every Friday after 3:30pm PST. Sometimes it’s right at 3:30pm PST, sometimes not, but we haven’t missed a week yet.

As for podcasts, we have missed several of those and have been very inconsistent. Here’s what shows haven’t been posted yet (also serving as reference for us, and this will be updated after posting, just FYI):

Recent shows / podcasted not posted (15 podcasts)

show #55 - Friday October 14, 2005

show #56 - Friday October 21, 2005

show #57 - Friday October 28, 2005

show #58 - Friday November 04, 2005

show #59 - Friday November 11, 2005

show #60 - Friday November 18, 2005

show #61 - Friday November 25, 2005

show #62 - Friday December 2, 2005

show #63 - Friday December 9, 2005

show #64 - Friday December 16, 2005

show #65 - Friday December 23, 2005

show #66 - Friday December 30, 2005

show #67 - Friday January 6, 2006

show #68 - Friday January 13, 2006

show #69 - Friday January 20, 2006

show #70 - Friday January 27, 2006

Older shows / podcasts not posted (12 podcasts)

show #39 - Friday May 20, 2005

show #40 - Friday May 27, 2005

show #41 - Friday June 3, 2005

show #42 - Friday June 10, 2005

show #43 - Friday June 17, 2005

show #44 - Friday June 24, 2005

show #45 - Friday July 22, 2005

show #46 - Friday July 29, 2005

show #47 - Friday August 5, 2005

show #48 - Friday August 19, 2005

show #49 - Friday August 26, 2005

show #50 - Friday September 2, 2005

The checkbox will be checked and strikethru on the show number/date once we are caught up, unless otherwise noted above. The plan will be tomorrow to post within an hour after each show so at least we stay up with the current shows.

We skipped from show #38 to show #51 and were actually good about posting the podcasts right away after each show for three shows, stopping again at show #55.

My Goals

Jowlstar — Tue, 20 Dec 2005 05:50:55 +0000

People with no goals usually don’t succeed, atleast thats what I heard. So I made a list of my webmaster related goals and here they are-

1. Be prepared to each show, with something to talk about (No dead air)
2. To get lots of traffic for Webmaster Cookbook
3. To get Spawn to say something more than yes, no, maybe, during the show
4. To get into a routine of posting something everyday on both Webmaster Cookbook and Orting
5. To get into a routine of getting traffic and visiting blogs on Blog Explosion

These are just 5 of my goals, but I wonder what are your goals? These goals that I talked about are all short term goals, one of my long term goals is to become a great engineer and I am making lots of progress to that.

Scratch card Jowl!

ChefTD — Sun, 11 Dec 2005 20:42:57 +0000

I’ve noticed that Jowl has renewed excitement in Blog Explosion. Perhaps it is that they are running their $1,000 Christmas cash giveway or the new scratch card game.

What Happened On Show #63

Jowlstar — Sun, 11 Dec 2005 20:07:24 +0000

We started the show a bit late because I came into the studio 10 minutes late because my teacher would only accept late work if it was done at school. I ended up staying and getting 4 assignments done which was good, then I came to the studio and the show starts up and ChefTD out of nowhere says Jowl and Spawn I am going to let you guys have this 15 minutes to talk about how we could improve the show during the week. Spawn could not help saying anything more then yes, no, maybe. So I basically ended up talking alot of the time I suggested that we start doing blogexplosion every day to increase the amount of traffic coming. Spawn suggested that we should start saying the link to our chatroom at the beginning of the show and I thought that was a great idea. Then the show came to the end and we asked everyone if they had any ideas on how we could improve the show during the week. If you have any ideas be sure to tell us because we are open to any ideas.

What happened in Show 61

spawn — Fri, 02 Dec 2005 19:44:25 +0000

Today in the show we talked about our new camera that we bought. It is called Kodak z760. We linked a picture from putting the camera into the computer onto webmastercookbook and we called it a dust covered phone. We also spoke a little bit about forms, me and ChefTd worked a little on it before the show. We put codes together and we mixed alot of other things to create code that now seems familiar to me. We are going to talk more about it on next weeks show.

The dust covered phone is shown below:

Jowl the cartoon

Jowlstar — Sat, 26 Nov 2005 00:23:56 +0000

This is the real Jowl as a cartoon

Demoing the Kodak z760

Jowlstar — Fri, 25 Nov 2005 23:49:21 +0000

This was a demo close up that we took of a dusty studio phone using the Kodak z760