I was tagged by Leah Dossey of Creative Wisdom from Blue Leaf Creative. The point is to link up with other bloggers and have them link up with you. The rules are pretty simple from what I am to understand.

Step #1 - Link to the person who tagged you. I already linked to Leah and her blog in the first sentence I wrote, but I’ll happily do it again, right here.

Step #2 - Write Five Fun/Interesting Facts about yourself. This gives fellow bloggers (and your readership) a chance to actually get to know you better.

Step #3 - Tag Six Other People and link to their blogs. Then let them know you’ve tagged them by twittering them or leaving a comment on their blog.

The process repeats and people get links and forge new friendships, all while learning about one another!

Sounds pretty easy right?

Five Fun Facts about Dominick Evans

1. When Changing My Name, I had a hard time settling on Middle Names: The only thing about my birth name that I kept the same was the fact that I had two middle names. Getting the exact and right combination for my two “new” middle names was hard. I tried several versions of the two names, before I finally settled on Matthaios Antony.

2. I have crooked pinkies. A genetic mutation in my family that skips certain generations gave me crooked pinkies. Mine stick out almost at a 45 degree angle mid-pinky. My maternal grandmother has crooked pinkies, too, but mine are by far the most crooked and distinctive in our family. People has “assumed” this was caused by my muscle disease, but this actually has nothing to do with my SMA at all. I believe it might just be a recessive trait.

3. My dream college is the University of Michigan. I always wanted to go to the U of M. I even visited the campus when I was in high school. However, coming from a relatively poor household and knowing the state of Ohio would only pay for me to go to college in my home state (since Ohio has a wheelchair accessible school - Wright State), I had to push that dream out of my mind. Well, now that I live in Michigan, I might just get to finish up my degree at my dream school.

4. I’m obsessed with fast wheelchairs. I get really upset at the prospect of having to get a slow wheelchair. I admit I have a bit of a speed problem when it comes to choosing a wheelchair. When nobody is around me, I like to let loose and fly with the wind. I might just be a biker if I could walk, after all. Seriously though. I love to go fast and can’t stand the fact that insurance usually likes to pay for slow chairs. Luckily, my wheelchair guy knows I’m a speed-a-holic and hooks me up!

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We celebrated Halloween on Friday and Saturday. CT is 13, so this is the first year he didn’t go out trick or treating. On Friday night, he stood in the doorway of my bedroom and said, “I guess trick or treating is over.”

I said to him, “Yes, CT. It ended about three hours ago.”

To which he replied, “I meant for me. Forever. Trick or treating is over for me forever.”

He was so forlorn, so I told him being older meant he might get to go to fun Halloween parties and when he’s older he still might dress up. This made him feel better.

I can’t believe I spent nearly two days completely offline. I feel out of it and sluggish towards getting back into the groove of things. CT watched horror movies for the first time. He always thought he’d be afraid (his mom is a huge horror buff), but he thought they were fun when he finally sat down and watched some of them with us.

We watched Pet Semetary, Pet Semetary II, Halloween 4, Halloween 5, Child’s Play, and then we watched some movies we had to review, Tinker Bell and Get Smart. Of course, it wasn’t Halloween without watching It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown! I’m pretty sure CT knows the whole movie by heart.

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Back in the day, candidates didn’t use the same type of smear tactics we see today in campaign ads. They used fun, memorable, repetitious cartoons, jingles and other entertaining methods to get people to vote for them.

I can just imagine what the campaign teams could come up with for McCain and Obama.

How about (depending on what side of the fence you’re on):

McCain, McCain, as bad for you as cocaine…
or
McCain, McCain, unlike Obama he’s never done cocaine…

Obama, Obama, he’s better than your Mama
or
Obama, Obama, he definitely ain’t yo Mama

Barack, Barack, used to do the crack rock
or
Barack, Barack he’ll knock you off your socks

McCain, McCain, we know he is a pain!
or
McCain, McCain he’ll win your heart Again!

Palin, Palin believes in promiscuous datin’
or
Palin, Palin she’ll be the one who’s bailin (us out of trouble)

Oh, you get the picture!

That being said, I’d like you to look at some of the interesting campaigns from yesteryear. So, sit back, relax and check out these videos of a time where campaign advertisements were much more simple and fun!

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Check out my shirts and other products. If you like anything, but want it on another product, let me know! I plan to update and add more stuff regularly!

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Ever since the server meltdown with the Planet, everything has been so crazy. I’ve had to try and makeup doing reviews for all the days I missed and finding the time to get caught up has not been easy. On top of that, I’ve been out and about quite a bit. I have had quite a few appointments and with the prospect of finally returning to college after the five years since my injury made me leave, I’m even busier than ever.

I feel like I haven’t really been able to sit back and relax. Sure, I’ve had time playing with the PS3 and the Wii (we got some new games to play and we’re working with new companies who want us to review their games…including Rockband. How sweet is that?), but even that has its moments where I think “I’m just doing this for work purposes”. Our one business is booming so Ash has spent all her time running packages to the post office and constantly apologizing for not being able to work on her reviews. I figure I can get caught up on mine and then go back to work on hers. As long as we’re steadily sending in our reviews the companies don’t seem to mind if they’re a little late.

I’m also trying to get Big K’s website going. I have an idea for the design, but he doesn’t really deal well in me explaining my vision. He would do better seeing it. That means I’m just waiting on him to give me a list of links he wants up on his page. I know he has the potential to rack in the dough with the website, which is one of the only reasons I’m doing it for free (that and I’m a nice brother-in-law), but it is hard trying to explain to a somewhat computer illiterate person what links are and why I need them!

CT is dragging his feet lately. Just a few more weeks of summer reading and then he begins 8th grade. The last book or so he’s been sitting around for hours until something good is happening in our house, then he tries to rush through reading because he wants to go do that ‘good thing’. I keep trying to tell him that he gets his designated computer and Leapster handheld time after he does his work, but that doesn’t seem to appease him anymore. He’s more receptive to the “once your summer reading is done you have free time until school begins”.

I feel like I’ve wasted a lot of time trying to convince him to read, but know he’ll transition better to when he has school since he had summer reading and not just a non-working summer break. What I don’t get is, once he’s reading he’s totally into the books I’ve chosen for him. It’s just getting him to start reading that is so damn hard!

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I have just finished moving my very last site over to my new server. This post is going to be short and sweet because I’m absolutely exhausted. The trouble began just over two weeks ago. We had hosting through The Planet. We’d never really had problems with our server going down, though tech support had become exceptionally rude in the past few months.

When our server went down, I went in, filed a ticket, and an hour later we were back up. When it happened again later that day, Ash and I were not happy. We filed another ticket. I also talked to Live Support to get the server up; this time in about 10 minutes. I was assured the issue would be investigated so it could be resolved. In the next 4 days, we crashed nearly 2-3 times every day. Every techie at The Planet had a new theory. One was that our server had too many visitors and Apache had to be set to allow more. After fighting with Apache, I realized tech support wouldn’t be helping with the issue. They had various other theories, none of which they would fix, of course.

One of my tech friends had recommended Rackspace. They’re a bit more expensive, but their tech support is stellar. After having a family meeting to discuss the price issue, we decided it was worth it, since our business sites are on the server and we cannot afford to have those sites down. It took me an additional 4 days of non-stop work (excluding meals and bathroom breaks) to get everything transferred over. Part of it was due to the server crashing and part of it was because I’d never moved MYSQL DBs before. It was a learning experience, but we eventually had the chance to move everything over. I just finished tonight.

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Note: This was written in anger and doesn’t necessarily reflect my opinions on all people with mental disorders.

I just had to write a piece on this disgusting phenomenon that I know has been going on for a while, but I just haven’t had the chance to write on it, until now. This is something that hits pretty close to home. I was born with a muscle disease. It’s called Spinal Muscular Atrophy. It’s similar to Muscular Dystrophy and is covered under the 40+ neuromuscular diseases in the MD family. It’s really too complex to explain. All anyone really needs to know is that it’s like MD, but isn’t technically MD. This usually just means I tell people I have Muscular Dystrophy. It’s much easier that way.

That being said, I should tell you I’m wheelchair bound. I have been since I was 16. Before then, I used a scooter to get around and walked with a limp. I should also add this is going to be a discussion of something that is quite graphic and mature in nature. I’m warning anyone under 18 to stop reading and turn away now. You have plenty of time to worry about subjects like this after you become an adult.

I don’t know if I like calling this a phenomenon because there is nothing phenomenal about it, but for lack of a better word I’ve called it that. Ultimately, it’s a craze that only certain people seem to be going through and it’s becoming a big thing on the internet, with support sites for these psycho-sickos popping up around the net. A doctor called the three groups Devotees, Pretenders and Wannabes. There’s a whole group of these lunatics and I don’t know which group of the three is the most disgusting. All of them are suffering from severe paraphelias. Of course, no excuses should be made. Pedophilia is a severe form of paraphelia and it’s downright disturbing. Likewise, the DPW movement is equally as disgusting.

Next to children, who is one of society’s most vulnerable groups? It is a pretty good and accurate guess to say those with disabilities. Being a person with a disability, I’d have to say, in many instances, this is sadly the truth. A lot of this is because folks with disabilities have few governmental protections and not as many opportunities to flourish. Sure, many of us are smart enough to overcome our disabilities when given the right resources, but those aren’t always out there, so in many instances, we are left vulnerable.

Like children, who must fear pedophiles, those of us with disabilities must fear DPWs. They are predators who get sexual satisfaction and pleasure from being deranged assholes. I don’t know any other, nicer way to put it. You could argue, oh these people are sick. Yeah, Ted Bundy was sick, too. Sick in the head, but we still wanted him to go to prison and die. Still, there is no punishment for DPWs because by governmental laws, they aren’t doing anything wrong.

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