Reposted From WordPress.org (almost every site I work on is built on the wordpress platform)

Internet Blackout Day on January 18

Major sites like Wikipedia have gone dark for 24 hours

WordPress.org is officially joining the protest against Senate Bill 968: the Protect IP Act that is coming before the U.S. Senate next week. As I wrote in my post a week ago, if this bill is passed it will jeopardize internet freedom and shift the power of the independent web into the hands of corporations. We must stop it.

On January 18, 2012 many sites around the web — from small personal blogs to internet institutions like Mozilla,Wikipedia, reddit, and I Can Has Cheezburger? – will be going dark in protest and to drive their visitors to sites likeamericancensorship.org to take action and help fight the passage of the Protect IP Act. So will WordPress.org.

If you want to join the protest by blacking out your WordPress site or applying a ribbon, there is now a variety ofblackout plugins in the WordPress.org plugins directory. While joining the protest in this manner is laudable, please don’t forget to also make those phone calls to U.S. Senators — they’re the ones with the voting power.

• Get a protest plugin
• Take action at americancensorship.org

My buddy @ZackTanner7, who works in the Consol Energy Center control room shot this video tonight of Sid’s introduction. As a Pittsburgh Sports fan, tonight has been one of the most exciting nights in a long time!

Video after the break….

Sid didn’t waste any time making his presence known either, he put the puck in the net with his signature backhand shot about 5 minutes into the game!

I’ve been thinking about this post since my flight home on September 12th. A little recap of the summer that was, with pictures of my travels and a story or two.  Finally today, I had time to sit and put words to print.  The past year has been a pretty crazy roller-coaster for me.

I can say this with 100 percent seriousness: It feels so good to be home.

Charleston

If you haven’t been following along at home; at this time last year, Mackensie and I had made the crazy decision that we were going to pack up our lives and move from Pittsburgh to Charleston, SC at the beginning of this year.  As it turned out, that didn’t happen because I took a new job here in Pittsburgh. So we moved into a new apartment, got another dog and Mackensie made a huge career change too (which I am really excited about).

One thing is for sure, Mackensie and I will end up in living in The Holy City at some point in our lives. For now, Charleston will continue to be our second home.

But enough about that.

Summer of ’11 came into focus in May, when I was offered a position, as an extension of my job, to join the Lucas Oil AMA Pro Motocross tour as a technical manager. In a nutshell, I would travel 10 weekends to the racetracks, and set up video feeds, jumbotrons, produce commercials, etc. Right up my alley for sure.

I started Memorial Day weekend with an event in Southwestern Pennsylvania, then I went to Maryland, Colorado, Michigan, Minnesota, Washington, New York, Massachusetts, another one in PA, and finally a trip to California last week.

Portland International Airport

I saw my fair share of airports this year.  If I wasn’t so lazy I probably would have wrote some reviews on each one.  Minneapolis and Portland were my favorites.  Pittsburgh, both Chicagos and LAX were the worst.

I’ve been told by travelers from elsewhere in the country that Pittsburgh is their favorite airport. And it is a pretty good airport, but it’s here in Pittsburgh and well I’m getting into a rant about Pittsburgh… not today.

Leaving every Wednesday and coming home on Sundays didn’t leave me much of a summer at home, but I really had a great time seeing the country and if things work out, I hope to do the tour again next summer.  I made some great new friends along the way and I learned a ton about moto and action sports in general.  I also had a great team of people working with me to make the live feeds work each week.

Before I end this post, I wanted to take a second to thank Mackensie for all her hard work at home this summer with the dogs, her jobs, our wacky apartment and our crazy families. I missed her like crazy while I was gone, and next summer I’m going to drag her along on a few of the trips for sure.

Worst part of the summer… I say ‘for sure’ all the time now. Shit.

Below is a gallery of shots from the wacky places I found myself this summer.  Oddly enough, almost every week there was some kind of festival, concert or street party going on in the city I was in.  And many times I found myself wondering how those people made it to work on Friday.  Since I didn’t spend every single day of the summer on the road, I added a few pictures from the non-working days.

On Tuesday, July 26th, I attended the final United States stop of the 2011 U2 360 Tour at Heinz Field in Pittsburgh.  Along with 60,000 other people, I experienced one hell of a show.

U2′s awesome set list included

Even Better Than The Real Thing, The Fly, Mysterious Ways / Someone Somewhere In Summertime (snippet) / Promised You A Miracle (snippet), Until The End Of The World / Anthem (snippet), I Will Follow, Get On Your Boots, I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For / The Promised Land (snippet), Stay (Faraway, So Close!), Beautiful Day / Space Oddity (snippet), Elevation, Pride (In The Name Of Love), Miss Sarajevo, Zooropa, City Of Blinding Lights, Vertigo / Two Hearts Beat As One (snippet), Miss You (snippet) / , I’ll Go Crazy If I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight / Discothèque (snippet) / Life During Wartime (snippet) / Psycho Killer (snippet) / Please (snippet), Sunday Bloody Sunday, Scarlet, Walk On

encores: One, Hallelujah (snippet) / , Where The Streets Have No Name, Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me, With Or Without You, Moment of Surrender, Bad / In The Garden (snippet) / Walk On The Wild Side (snippet) / 40 (snippet)

A big thanks to Mark Chase for bringing me along along with Joe Harry and Mark Zeltner.  This was the first time I got to see U2 and it was a great time for sure.

Here’s a gallery of pics I took from the show.  Oh that stage….

I’m up in Rochester, MN for work, and I was really dreading this trip to middle of nowhere farm land.

Turns out I had it all wrong! Rochester is a cool city with loads of bars and restaurants. And on Thursdays during the summer they shut down a street right thru downtown for a big festival with music, crafts, food, beer, you name it!

Here are some pics I snapped while walking around.

I took this picture on a flight from Chicago to Pittsburgh in June

It’s hard to believe it’s the middle of July and summer 2011 is flying by. I’ve spent most of the summer on the road for my job with the American Motocross Championship, in a new city almost every week.

This weekend I was fortunate enough to have a weekend off and I feel like I made the most of it.

Friday I finally made it to a YinzTeam softball game, that was almost rained out (See #YinzWeather report). Saturday I hung out with Mackensie and many of my close friends.

Sunday, the slowest day for sure, I just spent at home, catching up on some much needed sleep.

My next day off isn’t until July 30th, so I try to make the best of my time at home.

When I’m home, I play softball on Friday nights with a bunch of media and technology professionals from the Pittsburgh area.  This week, worried about how much rain had fallen, I ran up to the field a few hours before game time to check the conditions.  Bored, I decided to create a little weather report using my iPhone…..

Every year on April Fools’ Day, I wait to see what funny things Google will come up with for the (stupid) holiday.

This might be the cruelest yet….

After a great opeing Keynote address from Pittsburgh City Council member Bill Peduto, I’m now in a session about search engine optimization.

Andy Quayle from Techburgh.com is speaking about ways to get your wordpress to the top of the search results, using both plugins and smart writing and tagging.

I’ll be posting updates all day, but you can be a part of the conversation by logging on to pittsburghpodcamp.com or using the hashtag #pcpgh5 on twitter!

As a two sport town (I don’t count the Pirates), Pittsburgh’s pro sports season starts this weekend with the Kickoff of the 2010 NFL season.  The season kicks in to high gear in a couple weeks when the Penguins add NHL hockey to the electric of the city, opening the new Consol Energy Center.

As excited as I am about the Penguins, today is about the Steelers and my expectations for the 2010 season.

My 2010 prediction:  While I want to have have pretty low expectations for the Steelers this season, I still think they will make the playoffs and maybe even win the division.

Here are the 2 reasons why I think the season will go this way.

1. Dennis Dixon will become our new slash, his ability to tuck the ball under and take off will make him a formable threat to any defense.  I’ll go as far to say that Dixon will replace Ben Roethlisberger as the starting QB even after Big Ben comes back.  This prediction, I know, goes against just about every NFL talking head out there, but we’ve seen it before here in the ‘burgh.

2. DEFENSE – The Steelers defense, powered by a healthy Troy Polamalu will be able to keep teams out of the endzone more often than not this year.  Defense will win at least 5 of the games for the Steelers.

Let’s take a look at the 2010 Schedule..

So that’s 9-7 on the season, but with 2 losses to Baltimore, the Steelers will have to count on a win at Cleveland in week 17 and a loss by Baltimore at Cincinnati to take the AFC North.

After that I see the Steelers making an early exit from the playoffs.  (But it would be so great to see the Steelers take the Super Bowl in front of 100,000 Dallas Cowboy Fans).

I think that Baltimore will be the only other team with a realistic shot of winning the division. (Cinci will implode over the ego battle between Ocho-Stinko and T.O. and Cleveland, hahaha well…)

2 hours ’till kick-off, let the games begin! Hey-oh.

What do you say Pittsburgh? Sound off in the comments!