Hi folks,

I’ve very limited time here but wanted to get a post or two up since I have this new fancy wordpress install.

Recently I discovered a very cool poker themed podcast hosted by Phil Gordon.
It’s ESPN Radio’s Poker Edge if you’re curious.

They were talking about the new legislation regarding online poker that has all the online poker players in the country panicked.
It’s being referred to as a ban on online poker.

Phil Gordon’s Podcast (two episodes in particular) did a pretty good job of summing up the situation.
The show is pretty good in general so you should check it out… but anyway here’s a run down and my take on the new law:

• Nothing is being made illegal that wasn’t already.
• On a federal level online poker has never been declared illegal
• This bill only affects the banks that process payments being sent to illegal online gaming companies.

A couple things to think about.

• Most people playing online poker either know how legal/illegal online poker is in their STATE… or don’t care
• This is a federal bill… so not a great deal is changing in their legal situation. (remember on a federal level online poker has never been declared illegal)

• Getting money in-and-out of a poker account MAY become more difficult, but…
• most people playing online poker seriously are using financial middle-men like netteller and firepay. These are services not unlike “paypal” but they are NOT US companies - and thus not subject to the new legislation.
  • Granted… I believe that Net teller will be towing the line on this new US law .. but I’m not sure why - and there are certainly other options out there.
  • Perhaps the biggest threat to those playing SERIOUS online poker is that inexperienced / weak players that lack the knowledge or motivation to use such methods may not be as abundant as they were before.

• This “law” is complete B.S.
• This was snuck into an anti-terrorism bill at the last second. It obviously has NOTHING to do with the larger bill - and is merely someone’s attempt to gain a political talking point in an election year.
  • This was not studied … just written in at the last second. However there ARE studies showing that upwards of 60% of American citizens DON’T want online poker to be illegal. THEY WANT THE RIGHT TO PLAY!
  • Clearly there’s a decent chance that the guy looking for a quick election year talking point will end up with a quick political spanking.

• This “law” is all but unenforceable.
• Putting the X on the bank’s back to check into EVERY transaction made in the country is NOT something they want to do. Hell it could bankrupt some of them!
  • i.e. the banks are likely lobbying on “OUR” side on this.

• Speaking of lobbying…
• The poker players of the country are lobbying too! “The Poker Player’s Alliance“, a lobbying group in DC, is working hard to get an exemption for online poker.
  • If the US Govt. REGULATES instead of eliminates the game it stands to gain 3.3T in taxable dollars. It only makes sense I mean consider this…

This country lets people BET on Fantasy Football. The rationale is that Fantasy Football can be considered a “game of skill” because players CHOOSE the football stars they have on their “teams” … poker is a game of chance because you can’t pick your cards. That’s completely the WRONG way to think about it.

In fantasy football you pick your teams… and then you’re done.
You have NO control over how they play - or if they get injured.
It’s like picking your dice in craps… you can choose the instruments… but you can’t make them DO anything.

In poker you are given your cards…
But YOU decide if you play them.
If you play - YOU Decide how to play them.
And YOU can stop playing them whenever you decide to do so.

Seems the common sense of the situation escapes those with the power to do anything about it.

all for now…

Ok folks we’re finally up and running on WordPress.
Dave helped me with the tedious conversion - Thanks Dave!

Now we should see a marked reduction (if not elimination) of the ridiculous spam that was flooding the site.

There are a few things you should know about the new system.

1) Your user name was saved - but your password was not.
(For security reasons even I do not have access to that data)

If you want to log in - you can use the “I forgot my password” link to get a new one if you’d like.

Of course you don’t really NEED to log in but it will save you some time.
Logged in users don’t need to enter in the security code to prove they are human. And of course the site will remember logged in users’ info … so less typing all around.

2) There are still some loose ends.

I am still going back and tagging old Blogs with appropriate categories…
This is a tedious process and may take some time.
Until it’s complete just know that if you click the “poker” icon at the top of the page you may or may not be seeing ALL relevant posts

Also the links, and Resume pages are not 100% just yet.

3) New Navigation concept.

The icons at the top of the page will take you to all posts with the categories that the icons represent.

I think that’s neat… but please know that those are not the ONLY categories.
As you peruse the site, should you stumble upon a post that has an interesting category… click it! There may be many more posts in that genre.

4) Photos to be re-done as well.

Soon (I hope) I will have the photos section moved over to a new (more robust) solution. Once that’s done expect a lot more photos of Ethan to be posted.

Attention !!!

The stupid slime eating hackbas have been filling my site with spam faster than I can delete them.

I can no longer allow links to porn and drugs to clutter the site.

To that end commenting has been disabled.

I am working on a long term fix and will post again when commenting functionality is restored.

ATTENTION Friends, Family, and Loyal Readers:

As you may have noticed DougMeade.com has been getting flooded with “comment spam”.

Some idiot hackbas that post porn links and what not on any site that lets them post a comment have found our little internet gem.

(if you know what hackbas means then you have truly been with DougMeade.com for a long time… comment with it’s meaning and perhaps I’ll send you a free DougMeade.com T-Shirt!)

Anyway…

There are a couple of things I COULD do to stop said hackbas.
I could build a security application into my site.
But that would take some time and effort that honestly… I’d rather not expend.

Or… I could move the site over to an entirely new system.
A “best of breed” blogging application.

There are pros and cons for each possible solution.

The UPSIDE of moving to a new system is that I will get away from my “built from scratch custom” web site.

While I used to take great pride in running such a web site… as I get older I find myself with less and less time to keep it up to speed with all the latest cutting-edge technologies.
(thus the hackba spammmers).
I still want to USE the latest cutting-edge technologies … I just don’t have the time I once did to write my own version of them.

The DOWNSIDE is that once the site was moved over all you wonderful registered users would likely have to follow the “I forgot my password” link to reset your DougMeade.com password and thus initialize it in the new site.
Annoying? Yes.
But a small price to pay if it means the end of spamming hackas.

Please post here if you have any strong opinion / emotion on this proposed solution.

By the way - anyone who posts a definition of Hackbas without a relevant comment regarding the possible move to a new web application will not be eligible for the T-Shirt.

If you aren’t gonna read the whole blog you don’t deserve one.

If you read the whole blog - take the time to comment - but don’t bother to say something relevant … you don’t deserve one.

Well in case you haven’t heard…

We had our Baby!

(click the image for a larger view)

Here’s a picture of our brand new bundle of joy.

Ethan Michael Meade.

As you can imagine I’m staying very busy at present.

I will update the site with more pictures and a more in depth blog soon… but I’m too tired to sting together more than two coherent thoughts.

So stay tuned.

Mom and Baby are doing great.

We couldn’t be happier.

Ok as promised here are the last round of 3D pre-Baby pics!

It was so much fun to go and see this in real time.

We have a DVD of the whole thing.

As you can see he’s a little bigger and more active now.

There were plenty of cute shots and I’ve loaded a selection of them in the photo gallery.

Check them out & Enjoy.

But to save you the huge hassle of clicking let me share a few of them with you here.

This one is a nice profile shot.

Isn’t he cute?

This 3D ultra sound stuff is amazing.

Ok here’s another.

In this one he seems to be smiling.

Adorable.

Seriously something must be really funny in there because he’s cracking up in this next one.

Wow I can’t wait to see the little guy in person.

And it could be any day now.

Seriously folks there a lot of great shots in the latest photo gallery.

To see them CLICK HERE

All for now… Take Care!

Hi everyone.

I know you are all waiting for me to post the latest 3D Baby Pictures.
I’m sorry it’s taken so long I will try to get that done very soon.

Work is keeping me pretty busy but I will get it done ASAP - certainly before the week is out.
In related news…

Jana’s doctor visit today yielded some pretty exciting / nerve-wracking information…
If our Doctor were a betting woman she’d be putting money on us having the baby two weeks early.
Which means we’d be having the baby… in two weeks.

TWO WEEKS!!

Wow that’s crazy.

We’ll keep you posted on if/how the doctor changes her bet.
In un-related news…

It’s our first baby’s birthday today!
Sterling is FOUR YEARS OLD!!!
A pleasant bit of sunshine on an otherwise gloomy date - 9/11.

Sterling is four, and in dog years that’s 28.
She still acts like a crazy hyper puppy.
And she probably always will.

Well I’ve got tons of stuff I should be doing right now so I’ll sign off.

– Stay Tuned.

High folks… long time no Blog.

Well as you can image things have been crazy.
But I haven’t forgotten all of you out there… pining for more Dougy Goodness.
I dispense said goodness…. now:

The new job is going very well.
I really enjoy the job, the people, and the company over all.
I can’t tell you how great it is to be at a company focused on technology.
I’m finally able to justify spending time learning about all sorts of things I’ve been “meaning” to get educated on.

For instance…
Web Analytics.

It’s terribly interesting stuff.
Now-a-days analyzing your website traffic goes much further than server logs.
Sure any hosting company can provide rudimentary site statistics… and even create fancy graphs based on those logs… but the data is pretty dumb.
It’s just raw data, and it’s not actionable on any significant level.

Websites that REALLY want to make use of web site statistics need to understand visitor behavior, and need to be able to take action on it.

Example:
Say you’ve got a website that sells sporting goods.
You’re going to launch an advertising campaign and put banner ads all over the internet.

At the same time you are going to send out a marketing newsletter to all of your 40,000 opt-in subscribers.

You need to make sure you get every bang for your buck that you can,
Here’s how web analytics can help

You design TWO emails and TWO banner ads.
Then you send each of the emails to 500 people.
You also place each banner ad on a few good sites for a short time.
Your web analytics platform will tell you which of your emails and banner ads generated more revenue.
You can then take the more effective email and send to the rest of your list.
And likewise put the more effective banner ad all over the internet.

Neat huh?

Well wait…there’s more.

Now that you’ve used your web analytics data to create a more productive advertising campaign… you’re going to get some more visitors.

Web analytics can show you how your visitors behaved while at your site. What were they most interested in. Why did the folks who didn’t buy … not buy?

Well by looking at the “conversion funnel” we can see where people dropped out of the buying process.

Did they look at a product? - Yes
Did they add it to the cart? - Yes
Did they click “check out”? - Yes
Did they enter in Billing Info? - Yes
Did they enter in shipping info - NO

Ah… something about the shipping dissuaded them.
NOW THAT’S actionable data.

So you quickly create an email that will be sent to all the folks that dropped out at the shipping stage of the process.

The email uses the web analytics data to generate an offer of FREE SHIPPING on the very product they had in their carts while they were at your site.

“What LUCK” says the giddy consumer! The item they wanted yesterday (but didn’t want pay shipping for) JUST HAPPENS to have a Free Shipping promotion!!

THOSE kinds of emails… targeted, personal, and relevant… they get much increased conversion rates than a “blind” advertisement campaign.

You can make more revenue with an email like that sent to a handful of users than you did with the large scale banner add and email campaign combined!

Really interesting stuff.

Of course there are many web analytics packages out there.
Some bigger and fancier than others.
Some free… some far from it.

So I decided to start using Google Analytics here on DougMeade.com
Google Analytics is free, but surprisingly powerful once you get under the hood.

Of course I’m not selling anything.
So a “conversion” for me isn’t a sale… I decided that a conversion for me is a new registered user.
I’m impressed with the data available already at this early stage.

I haven’t accurately defined the path a user would take through the site in order to register (a conversion) .. so I can’t give you any REAL insight as to where possible members are abandoning the process.

But stay tuned.

Oh and… a big hearty hello to the folks visiting from Bartlett, Tampa, Hattiesburg, Waco, Austin, and Lafayette.

Hello everyone.

Have a real quick update for you.

We recently went to get the first of our two “3D Ultrasounds” done.

It was pretty Amazing.

This new Ultrasound technology takes many pictures per second and generates a 3D view from them.

You can even see real-time movement in 3D.

An example pic is below….

but there are more examples in the latest photo gallery.

I can’t wait until the next one.

That will happen at about week 35.

He should be quite a bit bigger by then!

Ok ok ok…

Sorry, I know I’m not giving anyone much time to comment.

And I know I said I was going to wait with the pictures until the furniture arrived.

But here are some images of how the room turned out.

Painting the clouds was a lot of fun.

You can see more HERE.

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Stay tuned for more updates!