Brian Guy

Web Developer, Writer, Dad, Aspiring Adventurer

Best Comedy of All Time

by Leave a Comment

OK, there is a more than a bit of hubris in that title, but this is my blog and I’m just screwing around for now, especially with this post. Actually, I don’t have time to be making this post, which is exactly why I am making this post. My brain is dumb. No, no. Not like that. I’m actually pretty smart by almost any measure, except for that thing where you look at a flat diagram and have to determine what kind of 3-D shape it would fold into. I suck at that.

Anyway, procrastination is my name and ADHD is my game, or vice versa. So, here we go, no pictures no meta data, no SEO, not much content. I’ll do all that later… maybe… if I get around to it.

Don’t hold your breath.

Monty Python

Let’s face it, finding funny Monty Python gold is as easy as falling out of a boat and hitting water. Rather than fill this page with all the glorious hilarity of Monty Python, I will direct you to the French Taunting.

Now go away, or I shall taunt you a second time.

Monty Python and the Holy Grail

Vampire Missionaries

The reason we are gathered here today is someone sent my high schooler a joke about Transylvania University reaching out like all of those other mailers we have been getting since the day she score decent enough (pretty impressive actually) on the PSAT test that high schools in Colorado have their students take so they don’t have to waste everyone’s time on some sort of other standardized test (see also: CMAS, I’ll spare you my rant, but someone is getting rich off of that and it ain’t the schools).

Anyway, it triggered my memory of the greatest vampire joke of all time. This tweet is from 2018. It seems to be the original. I give you Vampire Missionaries.

https://twitter.com/MicroFlashFic/status/1022573616809041923

Turk Lipsyncing and Dancing to Poison from Scrubs

This is so much ha-ha funny as just glorious and fun. It’s actually hilarious if you watched the show and knew the characters. I’m putting it here anyway. It’s from Season 5 Episode 9 of Scrubs titled My Half-Acre which isn’t the greatest episode, but for this scene? Worth it.

The Bet From Friends

There were a lot of bets in Friends, but the one I remember and love is when Chandler and Joey bet Rachel and Monica about who knows who better and Ross makes up a Jeopardy-style game show to determine the winner.

I’m in a hurry and it looks like YouTube videos come in 5-minute segments or whatever, but here is the meat of the scene. From Season 4 Episode 12.

If you know the show this scene is outrageously hilarious.

“Transponster!”

This cuts off the first part of the game, so you are missing Chanandaler Bong. Go search for the first part if you’ve got some extra time.

Actually, here you go. I set it to start at 2:30, otherwise there is some setup. Your call.

—

Plethora – Three Amigos

The movie the Three Amigos is comedy gold from beginning to end. I laughed and laughed, but like many Gen-Xers I also learned what a plethora was from this movie.

Either way, it’s time for me to grab kiddos from school, so the link is as good as it gets for now.

Alright. I’m going to get back to work for now. I’ll be back. I’m sure I’ll think of more funny stuff when I’m supposed to be working.

So, I Had an Idea

by Leave a Comment

So, I had an idea. Yeah. That might not be the best. Nonetheless I’m going to try it. First up a link to this story I wrote about Cookie Rush Kingdom Cookie ranks and my ridiculous attachment to an amusement I started working on because my kids wanted me to be able to send them a mostly meaningless daily gift within the game.

Next up is one of my disclaimers. This is only here to pad out some word count, so please ignore.

Brian is a former Certified Financial Planner and financial advisor. He writes for the Finance Gourmet and other financial publications. The material provided on this website is for informational use only and is not intended for financial or investment advice. At the time of publication, Mr. Nelson did not own any securities mentioned above, however, that may change at any time without notice. ArcticLlama, LLC, FinanceGourmet.com, and Brian Nelson, assume no liability for any loss or damage resulting from one’s reliance on the material provided. Please also note that such material is not updated regularly and that some of the information may not therefore be current. Consult with your own financial professional when making decisions regarding your financial or investment options.

Then I’m going to randomly say some things about my local grocery store situation because the King Soopers is on strike. That is fine, but that means that they go to the Safeway across the street. This is an issue for me because the smaller Safeway that I go to in order to avoid crowds at the bigger King Soopers is now swamped under by KS shoppers trying to support the strikers by not crossing picket lines.

Also, I’m supposed to be scheduling my kids’ dentist appointments and rescheduling tennis lessons because the wind ripped down the Littleton tennis bubble.

There we go. That’s enough words.

Enjoy not knowing my idea.

Can my Level 42 Sorbet Shark cookie really defeat my Level 46 Cotton Cookie?

Making Ferrari Money

by Leave a Comment

I have a whole social media campaign planned out around the concept of me using various platforms and strategies you always see people on the internet insisting they use to make tons of money, and you can too!

The idea is to make enough money to buy a Ferrari like this one YouTube kid I randomly saw using different money making ideas and platforms that influencers say put them in a place to travel the world, buy sweet houses, and yes, own a Ferrari… or two… with a Bugatti. It even turns out that I drive past a local Ferrari dealership all the time. When the time comes, I can just drive up and say, “How much money is a Ferrari?”

I have some scripts to write and some TikToks to film to start the campaign off. But, as they say, a funny thing happened on the way to the Forum.

red ferrari money
Turns out there is a local Ferrari dealership on my usually driving path. Even though this Ferrari is on hold for someone else, and I took this picture through a window, it’s a solid example of what I’m shooting for.

Amazon Flex For Flexing Dollar Bills

One day, I was sitting in my chair scrolling through my phone, like my wife hates, and I came across a Facebook ad for Amazon Flex. Amazon Flex doesn’t need drivers everywhere, but apparently they were hiring in the Denver area, and even though I haven’t recorded my TikToks, or sent out my tweets, or put together a email list for people to subscribe to, I signed up.

Acorns is a good way to save and invest money.

I figured it wouldn’t be a big deal because I could sign up and get while the getting is good, and then just wait for the appropriate moment in my social media and content management campaign to document using Amazon Flex to make money. However, I didn’t really PLAN on doing Amazon Flex at all, and after getting through the sign up and on-line training process, I had this app just burning a hole in my pocket.

So, I started doing Amazon Flex.

Amazon Flex First Delivery

Usually, using Amazon Flex is a bit of commitment, at least when you’re used to being your own boss at your Denver-based freelance writing business.

You sign up for 2 hour, or 3 hour blocks, for the most part. As it turns out, the warehouses you start at are in my city, but not close to my house, per se, so not only am I signing up for a 2-hour shift, I’m also signing up for a 30 minute drive there, and a drive of who knows how long from wherever the route ends.

But, Amazon Flex has this setting where you can indicate that you are “Available Now.” Then, if some sort of delivery comes up with a bit of urgency, it pages you to say there is an immediate delivery available in your area. As it turns out, my house is about halfway in between two Whole Foods stores, so I’ve gotten a couple of buzzes. I declined the first one, but the second…

It was a delivery from Whole Foods to somebody, and I basically blundered the whole thing.

Despite watching all the training videos, my brain went, “I know what to do next,” and just took off. What I was supposed to do is click the button on the app that says, “I’ve Parked.”

You see, Amazon Flex is structured as a step by step process that requires you to indicate that you have done each step. So, when you get to the customer’s house, you don’t just get out of the car and take the bags up to the door, you click, “I’ve parked,” and THEN it tells you that the customer wants the packages a certain way. Then, it tells you to scan the bags to show you’ve delivered them.

I floundered around outside the house for a while before I noticed the “I’ve Parked” button. When I clicked it, everything because crystal clear.

The good news is that I had a chance to learn from my mistakes on a baby delivery and not on some long route that I fell way behind on.

Amazon Flex Second Delivery

I signed up for a second delivery today. It’s also a small one, but this time I get to practice going to an actual Amazon fulfillment center rather than just a Whole Foods. This time, I will look for a button to press every step of the way.

I don’t think Amazon Flex will earn me Ferrari money, but we’re going to see a movie this weekend, and it should pay for the tickets. I’ll need another delivery to pay for concessions, though.

Use It Or Lose It

by Leave a Comment

I set this WordPress site up on Amazon Lightsail.

I was just getting into it and figuring it out when my to-do list came crashing down and I kind of left it by the wayside. Then, I got sick, and it completely dropped off my radar. It happens all too easy when you are a writer with lots of websites.

Now, I’m trying to add some content and rehabilitate this website and I don’t really remember how Lightsail worked, or what advantage I thought I would gain by setting it up here. The biggest current deal is that I need to update the PHP version, and I really don’t know how to do that.

So, here we go.

Hey, check out my Basic 401k Recipe for the best way to invest 401k money.

I’ll start using it again. Hopefully, along the way, I’ll pick up a valuable skill and add to my overall website building, content generating, money making, yacht buying ability.

What Is With the Yacht Thing?

We took a quicky vacation to San Diego, California earlier this year. We went whale watching on a yacht that is a replica of the original yacht that one the America’s cup.

I don’t want that yacth.

But, I want one of the yachts we walked by on the docks. I’ve never been a boat person, though I love the idea of the beach. After walking through them though, something twinged inside me. I want a yacht. I don’t have the money, the location, or the need for a yacht, but that doesn’t matter. I’ll figure it out as I go along.

bring me the yacht

Can a Professional Writer Have Too Many Websites?

by Leave a Comment

Being a professional writer means being a writer.

In an underrated, classic starring Billy Crystal and Danny Devito, called Throw Momma From the Train, Crystal’s character is a writing class instructor. He says, “A writer writes. Always.”

Always Writing

What Crystal means in the movie is that as a writer you should always be writing. I’d go a step further and say, as a natural writer, you can’t stop writing.

writer writing always

I’m often writing in my head. Sometimes it’s nothing more that narrating something that happened to me. Often, it is some fantasy scene playing out in my head. Other times, it’s writing an article for publication.

The catch to always writing is that you always need places to put your writing. As a result, I have numerous websites. Some of those websites make money for me. Some of those websites are just informational, and some of those websites are just places to allow my creativity to spill out onto the page. The only way to truly stop writing something in your head is to write it, for real, in the real world.

Once upon a time, I had a website called brianenelson.com. I have this website because BrianNelson.com was already taken. The idea was that this website would be the “me” website. A place where I could dump my ideas and thoughts, and blathering on. All of which would be pre-written in my head.

I took it down after worrying that specifying my middle initial was too person and might lead to identity theft. Ironically, finding my middle initial is probably the least difficult piece of data to track down about me.

A New Place for Personal

What all of these words are getting at is that I’m debating whether this Brian Nelson website is where I want to put “me” even though it has the .pro extension, or if I want to pull my other Brian Nelson information website out of mothballs and make that the “me” website.

Honestly, either one makes sense. I could contain my pro stuff to my Colorado-based freelance writing website and then use this as a “Yes, I’m a professional, but I also do all of this stuff everyday,” website. A lot of the “me” can be diverted to other websites I already run like, my parenting website which I use both as an outlet for all things parenting, as well as a money earning website with parental information and keywords.

Or, I could keep this as my “me, but professional,” website. I could talk about computing conferences I attend, and things I do as a professional, like training, writing, and glitches in programming and website design, while keeping the me things like weight loss, cancer and getting healthier on my other non-pro website.

Anyway, welcome to my brain dump. I’ll keep you posted either way.

I’m a writer.

I write.

Always.

(And, now I also go find stock photography, build links, choose categories and tags, and fill out meta data – An online writer links. Always 🙂