JaradFugate.com

First, I must apologize for not posting as much as I should. I’ve been pretty busy this summer, and haven’t had much time to post or write in my weekly columns. I hope that some of this will transition together nicely and make for more personal time, but until then, expect post times to be erratic and random.

I lost my uncle a few weeks ago in his struggle against cancer. He fought against it and surpassed many people’s expectations. It was a particularly hard ordeal for my family and I. I miss him, and I only regret not being as close as I should have been with him.

I’ve been contracted by Mike Bryant of Centrant, LLC (pimpin your site, Mike!), to do some coding work this summer. It’s an excellent job with generous pay. We work primarily in PHP and MySQL, and I’ve been implementing some of my CSS work in for a nice polished touch on the projects.

Other than working with Centrant and handling the client invoices for my own business, I haven’t been up to much. I hope to be able to post more frequently soon. I hope everyone is having a great summer.

First off, I’m sorry that I haven’t been posting to the blog more. I’ve been busy with school-related activities. I’ve also been helping a few people out with things relating to the community. I will begin posting much more, including releasing free stuff like code snippets and more tech/web-oriented entries.

Stay tuned.

Having never been to a concert before, needless to say I was a bit ecstatic to be attending one for the first time. It was a John Mayer concert at Rupp Arena in Lexington on February 24, 2007. I had purchased two tickets for me and my girlfriend Tiff as a birthday present for her. It was going to be her first concert as well.

Neither of us had been to Rupp before. Upon entering Rupp, we were both quite surprised by how large it was. There were flocks of people in all age ranges everywhere. I had my new digital camera in my pocket, and was afraid that I would have to leave it behind. We nervously approached the security guards.

It was actually a seamless process of passing through security. I was never asked about my camera, so I was relieved about that. We had called the Box Office earlier, and they said that bringing a camera is not a big deal, as long as the flash was turned off.

We were seated in Section 33, which is directly facing the right-side of the stage. Being in Row F, we were pretty close to the stage as well, which delighted Tiff. I was hoping we would get good seats, as I bought the tickets the day after they went on sale online through Ticketmaster.

Opening up for John Mayer was Mat Kearney, a singer based out of Nashville, TN, popular for his single “Nothing Left to Lose”. As he stepped onto the stage, the lights quickly shut off and the crowd roared in celebration. The speakers were almost directly in front of us, so you could literally feel the bass boom as the drums hit.

After a few songs, Mat Kearney left the stage. The stage crew quickly jumped into action, taking down the flag with his name on it, as well as all of the other instruments. They assembled and set up the stage for John Mayer to enter. It seemed like quite some time before he did.

The lights went completely black. You could see figures moving onto the stage, and then a red light shined down upon John Mayer as he began to sing. A large assortment of blocks behind the stage lit up in various colors as the stage slowly lit up. The crowd stood and roared in celebration louder than before.

John sang many of his songs from his newest album, Continuum, as well as some older ones that were popular, even some from when he was known as The John Mayer Trio. Songs included “Belief”, “Slow Dancing in a Burning Room”, and many others.

Overall it was an awesome concert, and both Tiff and I were pleased with it. Having been my first concert, I have to say that it was a great one, and I hope to go to more later on.

What do you think? Have you been to a concert before at Rupp? Were you at the concert with us? Visit JaradFugate.com and leave a response, or e-mail me at jaradman@gmail.com. I appreciate your feedback!

I’ll tell you what, John Mayer and Mat Kearney put on one heck of a show!

Photo: John Mayer Concert - 2/07

When times get boring, I’ll occasionally look on the internet at news and whatnot to see what interesting things are going on. While I was reading an article on stand-up comedian Carlos Mencia being a joke thief, I stumbled on some interesting information that I really didn’t know.

Most people know who Larry the Cable Guy is. He’s the blue-collar stand-up comedian famous for the catchphrase, “Git-R-Done”, and for appearing on the Blue Collar Comedy Tour. But did you know Larry isn’t his name?

Larry’s actual name is Daniel Whitney, and he is originally from Florida, but grew up as a teenager in Nebraska. Larry’s southern accent is also not real. He claims in his autobiography ‘GIT-R-DONE’ that he is willingly able to “turn on” the accent.

Does that make Daniel a fraud? I really don’t think so. His persona as Larry the Cable Guy makes his jokes hilarious, they’re unique, and I think he is an extremely talented individual.

Daniel is not the only one with a different name. Mind of Mencia on Comedy Central stars Carlos Mencia, a controversial stand-up comedian who claims to be of Mexican descent. I was shocked to discover that not only is his name not Carlos, but he is not Mexican at all.

Carlos Mencia’s actual name is Ned Holness. His mother was Honduran and his father was German. Isn’t that a little surprising, considering he touts himself as someone of a different descent

This is certainly not earth-shattering news, but it’s still interesting to me. It goes to show that not only are some stand-up comedians great at cracking jokes, but they are also good actors.

What do you think about this? Voice your opinions by leaving a comment below.

I’ll tell you what; I bet you didn’t know that. As Daniel Whitney—err—Larry the Cable Guy says, “I don’t care who you are, that’s funny right there.”

I am pretty excited at the opportunity that I may be able to write a column in The Breathitt County Voice local newspaper. I had written in there previously, but under the name of my local teen website instead of myself.

I have decided the column will be aptly titled, “I’ll Tell You What”, which is unique and I think is rather fitting for my writings. I am awaiting the approval from The Voice so I can begin. I should find out sometime today.

If I do get approved, I will begin placing my writings online weekly each Friday under a category titled, “ITYW”. So check that out, I’ll keep you up-to-date on the situation!

How many times have you wondered, “There HAS to be a free alternative to this!”? Well low and behold, here is the motherload of freeware alternatives for over 450 common things you could possibly want to do with a computer, ranging from audio editing to shell replacements.

Check it out!

I have just finished replacing the old Wordpress 2.07 files with the newly-released 2.1. Please be patient while I get everything ironed out. If you find any problems, please leave me a comment!

Earlier this morning, I was getting ready to take a trip to our local shopping center when I decided it might be nice to burn a CD containing some of the newer selections from my iTunes library. No problem, right? That’s what I thought.

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When you think of searching, you think about going to Google or Yahoo! and punching in what you want to look for, sifting through thousands upon thousands of results until you find one that suits you. What if you could punch in what you wanted to search for, and have a live human do the rough work for you? It’s entirely possible thanks to ChaCha.com, the world’s biggest live search site!

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I just couldn’t resist posting this. This video made me laugh out loud for a long time.

For more videos like this, check out the originator at JoeWoody.com.