Charles W. Stricklin

The Personal Blog of Charles W. Stricklin of Shreveport, Louisiana

Tuesday, December 14th, 2010
by Charles Stricklin
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30 things I want to be before I die

The last of the three lists of 30 things my counselor wanted me to write was things I wanted to be before I died, so, in no particular order:

  1. Healthy
  2. Wise
  3. Respected
  4. Financially secure
  5. Loved
  6. Mostly happy
  7. Righteous
  8. A husband
  9. A father
  10. A teacher
  11. A mentor
  12. Creative
  13. Kind
  14. Faithful
  15. Cheerful
  16. Grateful
  17. Industrious
  18. Obedient to God
  19. Peaceful
  20. Thoughtful
  21. Friendly
  22. Calm
  23. Inspiring
  24. A role model
  25. Active
  26. Confident
  27. Balanced
  28. Loving
  29. Encouraging
  30. Constructive

Wow! That was the hardest of the three to finish!

Sunday, December 5th, 2010
by Charles Stricklin
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30 things I want to do before I die

Continuing on to the next list my counselor suggested I should make, here are 30 things I’d like to do before I die:

  1. Spend a week or two in and around Rockingham, North Carolina, learning as much as I can about my 4th-great grandfather, John Stricklin, born abut 1785, died October 1849. Particularly who his father and mother were.
  2. Spend a week or two in and around Lutts, Tennessee, learning as much as I can about my 3rd-great grandfather, Thomas Stricklin (20 Aug 1805 – 9 Jun 1889), and other members of my family who lived in that area.
  3. Spend some time traveling around Kendal, Cumbria, England, where my family surname almost certainly originated.
  4. Spend some time vacationing in the District of Columbia, seeing as many museums and monuments as humanly possible.
  5. Go on a cruise with a private stateroom, preferably the Caribbean or Hawaii.
  6. Travel first class (air).
  7. Become a published author.
  8. Be CEO of a company with a real office and real employees.
  9. Teach a Bible study.
  10. Teach a high school or college-level course, probably History or Government.
  11. Build a home that I, with the help of an architect, of course, designed.
  12. Move to a larger city, most likely either the Dallas/Fort Worth area or the Austin/San Antonio level.
  13. Learn Spanish.
  14. Learn to cook. I mean, really cook.
  15. Learn to play guitar.
  16. Learn to play bass.
  17. Learn to read music.
  18. Become a certified genealogist.
  19. Play in a band.
  20. Weigh under 200 lbs. once again.
  21. Have Lasik surgery.
  22. Get cosmetic dentistry.
  23. Have the excess skin under my eyes removed.
  24. Be someone’s mentor.
  25. Be a delegate to a GOP convention. (I was going to say, “Attend the inauguration of a Republican president,” but have you ever stood outside for an entire day in Washington, D.C. during January?!? It’s cold!)
  26. Eat a pizza from from Lombardi’s.
  27. Eat a Chicago-style, deep-dish pizza from Pizzeria Uno, 29 East Ohio, Chicago, IL, 60611.
  28. Eat a deep-dish pizza from Giordano’s.
  29. Eat a chili-dog from Pink’s in Hollywood.
  30. Watch my nephew graduate college and/or get married.

Notice I said I’d like to do these things, not that I expect to do these things. Some of them, maybe. All of them, probably not.

Saturday, December 4th, 2010
by Charles Stricklin
0 comments

30 things I want to have before I die

Thursday, my counselor gave me a challenge to complete three lists detailing 30 things I’d have, 30 things I’d do and 30 things I want to be, all before I pass away.

Okay, here goes with the first list (in no particular order):

  1. A Mac Pro with Two 2.93GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon “Westmere” (12 cores) 32GB (8x4GB) processors, a Mac Pro RAID Card, four 512GB solid-state drives, two ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB video cards, two 18x SuperDrives, two Apple (27″ flat panel)LED Cinema Displays, an Apple Magic Mouse + Magic Trackpad, an Apple Keyboard with Numeric Keypad (English), a Quad-channel 4Gb Fibre Channel PCI Express card and iWork Family Pack & Microsoft Office Mac 2011 – Home and Business Edition preinstalled. ($19,584.95, but it ships for free!)
  2. A Macbook Pro with a 2.8GHz Intel Core i7 processor, 8GB 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM – 2X4GB memory, a 512GB Solid State Drive, a SuperDrive 8x (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW), a 17-inch Hi-Resolution Antiglare Widescreen Display and a Backlit Keyboard (English). ($4,449.00, and again, it ships for free!)
  3. A Mercedes-Benz C30 Luxury Sedan, black with an almond/mocha interior and burl walnut wood trim; Premium 1, lighting and multimedia packages, illuminated door sills, keyless entry, rear-view camera, rear-seat entertainment center and sports grill. ($49,923)

Okay, let’s be serious:

  1. A wife that, for some crazy reason, still thinks I’m handsome.
  2. A daughter who is in college and dating a man who adores her the way I do.
  3. A son who makes me proud to be his Dad.
  4. Work that I find challenging but not frustratingly so, and I can’t believe people actually pay me good money to do.
  5. A house that I’d had a hand in designing.
  6. A cat that doesn’t poop or barf all over the carpet.
  7. An office with lots of nice things, like computers and a nice desk, etc.
  8. Good friends, some that I see on a regular basis and some that I call up and spend an hour or two talking about the good ol’ days.
  9. A church where I enjoy serving and worshipping.
  10. Good health, enough to be able to travel and get around by myself.
  11. Musical instruments like guitars, basses and drums, and the ability to actually play them.
  12. The ability to travel outside of the country to countries I’ve always wanted to visit, and some that I’ve missed and wish to visit again.
  13. The ability to give generously to my church and worthy charities.
  14. Elected officials that adequately represent my interests and don’t run up debt on needless social programs.
  15. Most all of my current teeth, or at least some good false ones.
  16. My hearing.
  17. My eyesight.
  18. All of my limbs and digits.
  19. My memory.
  20. My sanity.
  21. A comfortable chair in the living room.
  22. FiOS Internet access.
  23. A large, high definition, flat-screen television.
  24. A comfortable bed.
  25. Nice clothes.
  26. Season tickets to all the MSU men’s football games.
  27. Somewhere quiet, where I can read and work.
  28. A Mac Pro with Two 2.93GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon “Westmere” (12 cores) 32GB (8x4GB) processors, a Mac Pro RAID Card, four 512GB solid-state drives, two ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB video cards, two 18x SuperDrives, two Apple (27″ flat panel)LED Cinema Displays, an Apple Magic Mouse + Magic Trackpad, an Apple Keyboard with Numeric Keypad (English), a Quad-channel 4Gb Fibre Channel PCI Express card and iWork Family Pack & Microsoft Office Mac 2011 – Home and Business Edition preinstalled. ($19,584.95, but it ships for free!)
  29. A Macbook Pro with a 2.8GHz Intel Core i7 processor, 8GB 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM – 2X4GB memory, a 512GB Solid State Drive, a SuperDrive 8x (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW), a 17-inch Hi-Resolution Antiglare Widescreen Display and a Backlit Keyboard (English). ($4,449.00, and again, it ships for free!)
  30. A Mercedes-Benz C30 Luxury Sedan, black with an almond/mocha interior and burl walnut wood trim; Premium 1, lighting and multimedia packages, illuminated door sills, keyless entry, rear-view camera, rear-seat entertainment center and sports grill. ($49,923)

Yeah, I just had to slip those last 3 in there. Sue me.

Keep in mind that some of these things may not exist or will have been updated by the time I die, which I plan on doing May 6th, 2060. Also, feel free to purchase anything you see here for me as a gift.

Friday, December 3rd, 2010
by Charles Stricklin
2 Comments

Yep, I’m starting all over again

If you didn’t know any better, you might think this is my very first blog post, but you’d be mistaken. I actually started blogging while I was a Junior at Mississippi State, studying Business Information Systems, except back in 1998, almost no one was calling it “blogging”. We called it an “online journal” or a “personal web site” or something else. In those days, we were all concerned about installing guest books and fancy counters at the bottom of every page that looked like a car odometer, or steadfastly ensuring that our page display the exact day and time it was last updated or that it was “Best viewed in Netscape 3 at 800×600″, or some other silly nonsense.

No, back then I was just cutting my HTML chops, and CSS hadn’t even been heard of. I used to hand-code my “journal” because Blogger and Movable Type hadn’t been invented yet.

I made the switch to Movable Type in about 2002, I’d guess, and then jumped ship to WordPress around 2003 at the suggestion of a cyber-friend.

I started the first podcast centered around WordPress, appropriately called The WordPress Podcast in 2006, was the lead organizer for the first WordCamp Dallas in 2008, and was a featured speaker at what was then called the New Media Expo in August of 2009. A year later, the New Media Expo was merged with Blogworld to form the Blogworld and New Media Expo.

Between the 1st WordCamp Dallas and appearing at New Media Expo I formed my own consulting company originally called Four-Oh New Media, LLC, to assist small business owners and entrepreneurs in using Internet marketing tools such as podcasting and social media to market themselves. In 2010, I renamed the company New Media Magnet, LLC, and I’m currently in the process of readying a relaunch of both the company and the site, including a video screencast series that will provide in-depth instruction on the more technical aspects of new and social media marketing.

Also in 2010 I turned The WordPress Podcast over to a very capable friend and prolific coder, Joost de Valk who’s taken the show and run with it, putting his own signature on it and scoring some pretty sweet guests in the process. If you use WordPress to do your blogging or content management, you really should subscribe to what is now his podcast.

As for this, my personal blog, I decided earlier this year to just scrap the past archives and start all over again from scratch. Partly because, as those who know me can attest, I could easily head off on a rant about politics or religion, or spend 30 minutes waxing rhapsodic about a particularly great meal I’d enjoyed, and I doubt very many people would enjoy reading those, now or then, especially since I’m now a quasi-”public” person and should really watch what I say or write.

I was even once contacted by a man with my exact same name (same spelling and everything) living in another part of the United States who’d asked me to clarify that I live in Shreveport, Louisiana so that his friends and co-workers would not confuse the two of us and rough him up in a back alley, I suppose. Apparently, my Libertarian/Conservative, Christian political views were no where close to his, and he felt his reputation was being impugned. I only remember being irked at the insinuation and sending him a terse (and rather crude) reply.

That doesn’t mean, though, that I will be avoiding political screeds or discussions on faith entirely, it only means those posts that are either private or potentially divisive or both will be whisked away from viewing by the general populace, hidden where only those persons I wish to have the ability to read will have the proper access.

Mwahahaahahahaha!

Sorry, I suddenly felt the desire to let out a typed maniacal laugh.

Anyway, this is the first post in my renewed practice of blogging, and I just wanted to let you know I’m not a n00b at this.