As most of the nation is cold today, especially those in Alaska, its nice to take a bike ride on the beach on a nice warm day, wearing only your bathing suit. It’s too early to get ‘boardwalk food’ such as Thrashers Fries. (I don’t know why they taste so good. I think its the time, place and the salt air that makes Thrashers taste so good).

So take a ride with me, down the Ocean City Boardwalk early on a warm July morning, before all the people, trams and traffic. It’s a peaceful ride on a quiet morning in Ocean City, Maryland.  The Boardwalk, officially known as Atlantic Avenue, dates back to 1902, when several oceanfront hotel owners got together and constructed a wooden walkway for the convenience of their guests. At high tide, it was rolled up and stored on hotel porches. Around 1910, a permanent promenade was built. It ran about five blocks and was expanded to 15th Street in the 1920’s. After being leveled by a storm in March of 1962, it was rebuilt to its present 2.5 mile length, ending at 27th Street. – Source: Chamber of Commerce

There are 274 photos in the slideshow. I took these pictures on July 13, 2008 with my Canon PowerShot A560

I made my way to the holy land last weekend. The trip to Notre Dame  included a pep rally, prayer, a tailgate party, hailstorm and a football game against Navy.

My friend Steve calls the journey “The Trip to the Holy land.” And I might agree after all we did, felt and saw. It was truly and inspirational venture with three of the best guys in the world.

Touchdown Jesus
We started out Friday with a trip to the Notre Dame campus where we saw the famous mosaic of Jesus. Touchdown Jesus as Steve calls it. From the photo you can see why.

Notre Dame Dome
Regarding the dome, Rev. J. W. Cavanaugh in 1925 had this to say, “Whoever looks at the beautiful campus now and considers how different the whole thing would appear without the dome will not hesitate to entertain any other suggestion. The truth is that the dome upon the Administration Building assembles all the other buildings on the campus around it and contributes to each a dignity which, otherwise, it would not possess.”

The Gipper Steps
In 1920, returning late to campus and having been locked out of his dorm, George Gipp, Notre Dame’s legendary gridiron All-American, allegedly slept on the front steps of Washington Hall, contracting the pneumonia that would take his life on December 14, 1920. On his death bed, he made this famous plea to Coach Knute Rockne: “Some time, Rock, when the team is up against it, when things are wrong and the breaks are beating the boys, tell them to go in there with all they’ve got and win just one for the Gipper. I don’t know where I’ll be then, Rock. But I’ll know about it, and I’ll be happy.”

Concert On the Steps
We were at the “Concert On the Steps’ as the band marched to the Stadium, parading in front of 20,000 Irish fans. In the Stadium tunnel, they say you can hear the echoes of Rockne, Leahy, Parseghian, Holtz, and the Four Horsemen.

Basilica of the Sacred Heart
We visited the Sacred Heart Church. The history of the Basilica dates to the last quarter of the 17th century when the French were attempting to establish both a colonial and a Catholic presence in the St. Joseph River Valley in northern Indiana.

The Grotto
Immediately behind the basilica sits the famous, yet intimate Grotto – a Marian place of prayer and reflection. It is a replica of the grotto at Lourdes, France where Mary appeared to St. Bernadette in 1858. I lit a candle in remembrance of my Mom and Dad who passed in 1985 and 1993. Dad raised us as Catholics. I miss them both. This trip was a nice reminder of them.

The TailGate
We were very close to the stadium. Surrounded by throngs of Notre Dame football fans, tailgating has taken on a life of its own on game day. We sure had a great time with people we just met. Notre Dame fans were allot of fun.

The Hail Story
Like a scene from God’s playbook, the bible, a hail storm appeared from nowhere and was gone just as quickly. It was an amazing storm but the tailgaters didn’t seem to mind. Everyone just huddled under tents and continued God’s work of making new friends and building old friendships.

The Notre Dame Navy Game
Probably the biggest reason we visited Notre Dame was the football game. Navy got sunk 56-14, on what was left of a beautiful sunny day. Here is a view from our seats.

Its a family tradition, eating Maryland Chesapeake Bay Blue Point Crabs cooked with lots of Old Bay Seasoning. Old Bay is a staple ingredient for steamed Chesapeake Bay crabs, crab cakes, and other seafood recipes.

Blue Point Crab is the Maryland State Crustacean and the subject of an extensive fishery.

How to Pick a Blue Crab

Flip the crab over
Flip open the apron
Flip off the top shell
Pull out the gills and innards that are hanging out.
The yellow stuff is called the “mustard.” It’s actually the crab’s fat and many people enjoy eating it.
Break the body in half, leaving the legs and claws on.
Squish down the flipper end (backfin) and twist it to produce a big piece of backfin meat.
Pull off the swimming legs and claws one by one. Suck out the little piece of meat at the end of each. Save the claws.
Take a paring knife and split each half of the crab through horizontally, exposing chambers of crabmeat. Use the knife to pick out the meat.
Take a claw and break it apart at the joint. Break the claw with a mallet and pick out the crabmeat.

If you like to drink, eat and be merry, the Duval Crawl is something you ought to try. Great for groups of friends.

Bars line the entire length of Duval Street, Key West, Florida, 33040. As you crawl from one bar to the next, you hear so much live music coming from just about everywhere. On the street, there were street musicians, in the bars there was an excellent variety of mostly late 60s to late 80s music. However the Irish bars still played their traditional folk music.

Here is the Duval Crawl List

Bull & Whistle
801 Bourbon Bar (had the drag queens out front)
Bourbon Street Pub (had the shirtless bartender)
Green Parrot (live music, funny signs)
Virgilio’s (stuffy, can’t eat in the window seats)
Rum Barrel (where we had great onion soup)
Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville Café (foofoo drink land, packed all the time)
The Top (roof of the Crowne Plaza Hotel, see slideshow for photos from the roof)
Hard Rock Café (ok place, but nothing that special)
Fat Tuesday (wall o frozen drink machines, many flavors ready to go)
La-Te-Da (where we had shrimp cocktail, shrimp good coctail sauces, not so good)
Rick’s Key West (live music, draft beer, long bar next to Durty Harry’s)
Captain Tony’s Saloon (suprise entertainer at Hemingway’s place)
Sloppy Joe’s Bar (loud, crowded, young and fun)
Hog’s Breath Saloon (folk music, older crowd, nice place)
Pier House Resort (really nice hotel at the end of the street)

Here are a few of the bars on the Duval Crawl List:

No snivelling, excess in moderation, hippies use side door, enforcing the two-tooth minimum at the Green Parrot. Come inside and see the invisible men the signs all said. We went inside, I had a Newcastle. This bar is NOT on Duval, but its on our list. This place has live bands.

We had frozen drinks at Fat Tuesday. They had a whole wall of frozen drink mixers. I had a Rum Runner – 151 Rum, Banana, Blackberry and Tropical Punch with Pineapple Juice. Got a brain freeze.

If you like drag queens, then you need to go to the show. Don’t look now but that one wants to talk to me. I said hi, then we went inside the bar portion of the place, we didn’t make the show. There were two bartenders who were serving a full bar like it was a walk in the park. They were fantastic as they waisted no moves mixing complex blender drinks. It was as if they were in a ballad and we were watching them dance around and make drinks. Oh, did I mention that this was a gay/transvestite bar?

These guys were great at the Hogs Breath Saloon. They played 60s folk music such as Simon and Garfunkel.

The Bull and Whistle bar are two bars in one. The Bull had nice live entertainment and a good variety of draft beer. This was our first stop, I ordered a Key West Pilsner, it was ok.

These guys were great, one played a 12 string guitar, the other, a 6 string.

Sloppy Joe’s was a young crowd with very loud music. The place was packed, yet the service was good. But this was not the Sloppy Joe’s that Ernest Hemingway frequented when he lived in Key West. If you want to have a drink at Hemingway’s favorite watering hole, you have to go to Captain Tony’s.

The live entertainment was just ok. But when this patron asked if he could play a few songs, and then did, the place came alive with appause. I guess he was better than most.
Here is the unknown entertainer’s photo take at Captain Tony’s.

I am sure Hemingway sat right where I sat at the bar. It was a lovely bar and the people were all nice and friendly. Many of the people at Captain Tony’s appeared to be local.

From Captain Tony’s to Jimmy Buffet’s Margarettaville Cafe to The Bull, even drinks in the 3 gay bars on the list, the walk along Duval and its side streets gave us three nights of fun bar hopping. And yes, we conquered the entire Duval Crawl list, having a drink at each one, but it took us 3 nights to do it.

The best thing was really the food. There were so many restaurants, great seafood, steaks, salads and more. I think we might just do this again.

On Monday, January 3rd, the State of Ohio had its Senate Confirmation of new and existing senators in the Ohio Capital Building. Ten Democrat and 22 Republican Senators were present, with one senator seat currently unfilled. (There are 33 Senate Seats and 99 Representatives for Ohio).

Family and friends gathered in Senator Bill’s office. Later that morning, Bill was officially sworn-in by Judge Robert R. Cupp during a private session held in the Finan Hearing Room.  Later that afternoon, Bill was ceremoniously and unanimously confirmed in a full senate session.

At lunch we had a Cincinnati fare including Montgomery Inn Pulled Pork and Skyline Chili. Governor John Kasich and Senator Rob Portman (on slide show below) were on hand to shake hands and to speak to anyone and everyone. I spoke briefly with Governor Kasich about his budget cutting plans and the de-railing of the High-Speed Rail program. The governor assured me that he was serious about budget cuts and that his administration would not make the same mistakes as previous administrations.

The Senate Chambers, fully restored in the early 1990’s, gave the ceremony an historic air. The capital building was started in 1839,  and was restored 1989- 1993. Within those historic walls, Senator Bill Beagle, from the 5th district of Ohio, was unanimously confirmed as the next senator of his district.

Afterwards we took a tour of the Capital Building. Tours are available every day the building is open, and are provided at no cost. Tours for casual visitors, tourists or small groups are given on the hour seven days a week, and groups larger than ten persons can schedule through out the day between the hours of 9:30 am and 3:15 pm weekdays.

As a conservative, I am glad to see the 129th General Assembly on a mission to cut government waste and assist Ohio businesses. My brother and Senator Bill Beagle, will be another voice for the small business person in an important elected position. As Senate President Niehaus has said, this senate is dedicated to representing the best interests of ALL Ohioians, including those Ohioans owning businesses. As a small business owner for over 24 years, I feel that finally we have a voice at the statehouse.

Best of luck to my Senator Brother, all those elected to the Ohio General Assembly and Governor Kasich in dealing with the $8 Billion budget shortfall by March 15th.

Beagle Supercomputer

The University of Chicago Computation Institute (UC-CI), and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) are pleased to announce the introduction of Beagle, a 150 teraflop Cray XE6 supercomputer that will support computation, simulation and data analysis for the biomedical research community. Beagle will be managed by the iBi. -Source:iBi

“A supercomputer is a way of answering questions that you couldn’t otherwise answer,” said Ian Foster, director of the Computation Institute and principal project investigator. “It’s like an accelerator of human ingenuity.”

The system is named after the HMS Beagle, the ship that carried Charles Darwin on his famous scientific voyage in 1831. While Darwin’s Beagle enabled discoveries that established a unifying theory for all life sciences, the unique capabilities of UChicago’s Beagle will enable transformative innovation in basic, translational and clinical research leading to improved diagnostic strategies and life-sustaining medical treatment.

Beagle is anticipated to place among the top 50 fastest supercomputers in the world and will be one of the fastest systems fully devoted to life sciences. Planned availability for early users is targeted for the first quarter of 2011.

More info: The Beagle has landed in Chicago!

When turkey’s on the table,

And good things I can scan,
I’m thankful that I wasn’t made
A v-e-g-e-t-a-r-i-a-n.
Heavenly Father, bless us,
And keep us all alive;
There’s ten of us for dinner
And not enough for five.

Now for the Serious Prayer

Our Father in Heaven,
We give thanks for this food
Prepared and shared by family and friends
We give thanks for our lives, for being together today
We are thankful for the freedom we share

As we eat this food,
We pray for health and strength
To carry on and try to live as You would have us.
This we ask in the name of Jesus Christ,
Our Heavenly Father.
Amen

Day One – Keynote: David Pogue
David was enlightening and entertaining as he highlighted the MEGA TRENDS in the tech industry.
He discussed his wireless everywhere prediction, mobile phone applications such as TWITTAROUND which lets you point your phone at a building ad see who is tweeting at that time. His prediction that phone calls will be FREE, was backed up by some good facts about the convergence of Skype, Line 2 and Google Voice into one service that can provide calls to any phone in the world, including land lines, cell, and skype.

The best point David made was that all those communication inventions haven’t gone away. TV was supposed to replace radio, But it never did. There will always be phones, radios, tv, the internet and what ever else is next. Just every new technology crows out and provides a smaller channel for legacy technologies.

Nice job David, too bad you had laryngitis AND you had to sing.

Session 1:
Science of Social Media Marketing
Dan Zarrella

An excellent expose of growth and market share charts to back up his scientific hypothesis.
To summarize, Google and Facebook have approximately the same number of views, but Facebook is on a much steeper growth trend than Google. He has created a report called “The Science of Retweets Report”
Dan also discussed other social sciences.

Twitter – Targetting Retweets and Influentials
Brett Tabke

Brett spoke about retweeting and how to be cool about targeting influential twitterers. He made the case for ‘getting’ your social network ‘before’ you need it.

I’m not sure if Brett brought up that a re-tweet could get your page indexed in Google in 82 Seconds or not, but that was a general thought for the day as this conference in general was largely discussing twitter and its effects on all things business including promotion of press releases via your relationship with expert journalist in your industry.

Session 2:
The Best Tactics in Landing Page Optimization
Tim Ash, Brad Geddes, Kate Morris and Joanna Lord presented their thought on landing pages and getting your estore products promoted and sold.
Pages with less clutter and more social ties do better than cluttered pages. Make sure you have a ‘Like’ Button on your product pages.

Session 3:
Twitter – The Latest Topics

Warren Whitlock, Dan Zarella and Chris Winfield spoke more on how important it is to have twitter be an integral part of your company marketing strategy.

Session 4:
Sarah Evans, Lisa Buyer, Sean Jackson and Victoria Harres spoke on strategies on getting your Press Release noticed by building up your twitter network with top people in your industry especially journalists in your industry. Sarah had a great story about the Chicago Earthquake. She tweeted in the middle of the night that she thought there was an earthquake. By the next day, due to her twitter network picking up that tweet, she was mentioned in new stories across the country. As a result, she picked up several new clients due to the publicity.

Session 5:
Why Google Doesn’t like your backlinks
Mac Leod spoke on google and the value of your links.

Day 2
Keynote Group

Melanie Mitchel, Chris Brogan, Sarah Evans, Scott Stratten, Brian Clark

Session 1.
The Convergence of Social Media & Search

Aaron Shear, Rebecca Murtagh, David Wallace, Bill Hartzer and Tony Adams discuss ways customers are finding companies with social advertising, search and relationships.

Bing is adding social connections to search results based on how many people clicked the “LIKE” button.
Google results include social profiles, which help you and your company dominate page 1 of results. Creating a barrier between you and bad pages from complaints etc.

Session 2
Keyword Research, Selection and Optimization

Photo: Amanda Watlington

Hosted by Stephanie Leffer, featuring Amanda Watlington, Stoney deGeyter, Marty Weintraub and Ken Jurina.
Make sure you are documenting and being methodical in your KW research, consider it a science.
Use Negative KW in your Google Adwords campaign and turn on broad match. For the best results have a huge negative keyword list. For example, job should be a negative keyword if you are not an employment service. Very good presentations. I look forward to the slides.
Mentioned Scrapebox, Kwyword Scraper

Session 3
SEO Design and Organic Site Structure
Taylor Pratt moderated Scott Polk, Tec Ulle and Michale Martin
Hyphens are preferred because they are easy for humans to read and add to the legitimacy of your page.
Look into MICROFORMATS – Read “Microformats Made Simple”
Move toward CSS3, explore WCBP features in Chrome, that’s where we are going

Session 4
How to Start and Grow a User Generated Content Community
Paul Edmondson
Social Media in the Public and PR Sector
Mike Chapman

Session 5
Super Session with Matt Cutts

Day 3
Keynote: Tim Mayer

The future of Search: Mobile, Social and Verticle
Session 1
How SMBs Can Use PR Campaigns to Grow Traffic

Hosted by Taylor Pratt with Guillaume Buchard, Lisa Buyer and Sean Jackson of Copyblogger Media

Write ‘socially-suited’ articles, ask the media for a link, create 120 twitter channel to help with re-tweets, optimize before you publicize your press release. Add a video to every press release. Video is cheap and easy, use it often. Like button everything. Lisa Buyer mentioned Muckrack, haro and pitchengine. Also Foursquare was mentioned, again.

The power of the retweet, 82 seconds to indexing in Google. – I think Guillaume said this but can’t remember. Someone said it damnit.

Sean Jackson talked about authority and how much it matters. First he defined authority broadly, then he sought to include any relative authority to the press release. Authority conveys authority. HEADLINES matter the MOST, limit them to 72 characters.

You need a quote from an authority in EVERY press release. Each press release should be 400 characters and include links.

PRNewswire is #1 best for SEO distribution. TIP: Send Word Doc with Links to E-Releases email address and save $300 in linking costs.
Businesswire and Marketwire are both good. BW owned by Berkshire Hathaway.

Always thank people who RT.
Make it easy for reporters to find you and your stories.

Read: Jeff Crilley, Free Publicity.

Session 2
Real World Low Risk High Reward Link Building

Lee Oden Moderates Greg Harnett, Dixon Jones, Rae Hoffman and Aaron Shear
Dixon recommends you organize bloger tweetups in your area to get links.
Look for companies going out of business and reclaim links in general. Majestic seo can help you find links
Monitor bankrupt companies, post on Yahoo Answers, Run “Good Will” websites, Use Clique Hunter and speak at conferences.

Greg started “Best of the Web” and recommends nitche directories, google places, (he mentioned my friend David Mihm)
Yes you can have multiple director listings for the same domain.
Read Searchenginejournal ’20 places to submit your blog’ mentioned the Librarians Internet Index

Aaron said look to Zappos and how their employees twitter. Also to reach out to bloggers.
Rae said to write about bad service to get attention and if you have clients, ask for a link.

Session 3
Tools for Competitive Intelligence

Todd Friesen moderated Michael Gray, Michael Streko, Matt Siltala and Andy Beal

Matt mentioned Spy on Hubs, PrWeb, Yelp and Digg to spy on competition Also SEOMoz and authority labs are good tools to review your competition.
Andy said to follow your competitors employees and other company social accounts. Read fan pages, create private twitter lists so completion doesn’t know your are watching them.
Andy also mentioned domaintools.com and oodle.com.

Michael Strecko recommends you take a look at the competitions code. Get their Robots.txt and go to places no robot can go. Monitor twitter with dotheyfolloweachother.com, Look at what domains they own. Call them on the phone as a customer.

Graywolf recommends Blekko.com a new search engine and Quarkbase.

Session 4
Community Hacking: 96 Baiting Strategies you can employ
Aaron Sear, Todd Malicoat, Gill Hartzer and Gillian Mussig
Bill recommends using link bate in the post titles. For example: Breaking News. Look for hot trends and blog about them. Provide giveaways, offers and deals. Social media participation is the key.

Gillian who is the co-founder of SEO MOZ talks about motivators:
Fear, Vanity, Guild Greed, Comedy, Shock
Top 10, list trends and news-bated posts.

Todd Malicoat likes linkbait on Facebook ads. Quarkbase and #followfriday

Session 5
Competitors from the Darkside – Rogue SEO Tatics
Joe Laratro moderated Steve Plunkett, Carolyn Shelby, Giovanni Gallucci, and Brett Tabke

They spoke of linkwheels and xrummer and recommended you do not use them.
Stumbleupon Bookmark every page in your website by every employee
use Youtube and Flickr often
Also FB and Twitter
He spoke of gaming Linkedin, bookmarking Demon, Twet Adder, Subvert and Profit
Get a page ranked then 301 redirect.
Know the rules, read Peter’s Evil Overlord List

Me and my brother, Bill Beagle, waiting for Senatorial Confirmation

Darke, Miami and Montgomery County just elected my brother Bill Beagle to State Senate in the Fifth District of Ohio. When you read the senator-elect’s Facebook page, one can realize that there was a huge effort by many volunteers to make this happen.

John Boehner and Bill Beagle

Bill received support from the Darke County League of Women Voters, Leadership Troy Alumni, Precious Blood Catholic Church, the Darke County Republican Men’s Club, the Republican party, hundreds of volunteers and many other groups/organizations. Bill was endorsed by the Tippecanoe Gazette, NFIB, Montgomery & Miami County GOPs, The Ohio Society of CPAs, Buckeye Firearms Association, ABC Associated Builders & Contractors, Ohio.

Bill said, “I am running because I want to go to the Senate to help businesses create jobs and to get the state’s financial house in order – not as a stepping stone in my career.” I am sure this no nonsense attitude is what got Bill elected.

Congratulations brother and Senator, Bill Beagle!

Central Avenue in Middletown, Ohio has changed over the years. Middletown was incorporated in 1833.

This west-to-east drive down Central reveals mostly old, vacant buildings and newly vacant lots from demolished old buildings. However there is a small patch where the city has tried to revitalize, this area is shown at the beginning of the slide show.

The Middletown is divided amongst two zip codes, 45042 and 45044. The dividing line for these two zip codes is generally Central Avenue.

As Middletown struggles to create an identity downtown, the future of Middletown really lies at the other end of this slide show. Where Central Avenue intersects Cincinnati-Dayton road. Most of the most recent development for Middletown lies on the east end of town.

Still, Middletown has many beautiful old structures on Central and around the downtown area. Just how do you capitalize on a downtown that is miles away from the real growth are of Middletown?