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[Request for information] Classic Fruit Certs

For some reason the classic fruit flavor Certs came to my mind tonight as I popped a BreathSavers mint into my mouth. Part of the reason is I’m in Germany and I noticed you can’t buy Certs anywhere. Which had me wondering whatever happened to that great tasting fruit flavor I remember as a kid…which led me to your blog. So…what would it take to get a few packs (or 20) of “classic fruit” headed my way? I’ve looked everywhere on the web and there’s no place to purchase it. London Drug seems to have it on their site but they only ship to Canada. Have you found any other source than your twitter connection? Thanks!

Mitch

Well, Mitch. To answer your question, Canada is the only source I’ve found for the classic fruit flavor Certs. And other than my Twitter contact, I’ve not found any other source. Your best bet is to find someone you know from Canada that can ship those to you directly in Germany. And given my sparingly consumption of these wonderful Certs, It may be another year or so before I request more from my Twitter contact.

For anyone else that wants a return answer, your best option is to leave a comment in that particular blog post. That provides me with an email address that I can reply back to with an answer.

Helping people with answers. It’s what I do here on Banal Leakage.

I’m sure that’s been a question on everyone’s mind all summer – mine included.

I won’t be boring you with the details of my never-ending distractions, various forms of bullshit I deal with on a regular basis, a short summer [it was shorter than normal this year] and just general time wasting. Nope. Just a simple admission that I’ve been a Scooter Sunday slacker.

Until now.

Scooter Sunday Season 3 Episode 01 is up now.

um.. ok. *nudge, nudge* um… Marty…. where the hell is it? There’s no video below. Is this a joke?

Nope. No joke. Scooter Sunday has a new home.

Original image found here

Say What????

Yes, Scooter Sunday has moved to it’s new home at scootersunday.com. Stick with me while I go over the changes.

The New Site

Below is a screen grab of the new scootersunday.com site.

Going directly to the scootersunday.com site brings up the main viewing part of the site. This allows you to watch episodes and then rate them. Then when you are done, you can click into the actual post to leave a comment. The latest episode is always going to be shown when you first open the site. Below is a legend with number points that are referenced from the screen shot above.

1. This is the play button, similar to how the videos worked here on Banal Leakage. Press play to watch the latest episode
2. This is the download progress bar. To best experience the video without buffering interruptions, let it fill up all the way before playing
3. This is a new feature. You can rate the video after watching it. Based on 5 stars, where 5 is excellent and 1 (or none) is poor. I plan on watching the stats on all of the episodes.
4. Clicking here will take you into the actual blog post to leave a comment.
5. From the main window of the site, you have the option of going to different episodes without actually going to a specific post link/URL. Nice to go through and re-watch those favorite episodes.

Pretty cool, huh? But wait, there’s more.

The sidebar has three main areas which are self-explanatory, but more detailed below

1. Click on one of the categories to show all of the posts associated. Notices, which will be those rare posts that do not contain videos and then a category for each season, currently with Seasons 2 and 3.
2. This is a pull-down list that allows you to go to a specific month to view episodes.
3. Along with this new site, there is an associated Twitter account for Scooter Sunday. Follow this account for tweets on when new episodes are available. And as it gets more followers, there will be contests and other cool and fun tidbits posted.

Ok… almost done. Just a few more items of business here.

Work In Progress

While the majority of the site is up, there are still many changes I want to make. Logos, some formatting, all of my Season 1 Scooter Sunday videos and more. So feel free to watch any of the currently uploaded episodes, rate them and leave comments. All of those things won’t change. But cosmetically, things will change over time.

Notification of New Episodes

For those of you that only want to check this blog but like to watch Scooter Sunday videos, I won’t leave you out in the cold. I will put up a post when a new episode is available, with a link to scootersunday.com that will redirect you to there. Comments will be closed on these notification posts, as to encourage you to leave a comment over on scootersunday.com [cause I'm sneaky like that]

Questions

Any questions, rants, concerns, suggestions… leave a comment below and I’ll do my best to have a satisfying response.

I’ve removed my Blogroll page. I know.. shocking.

Actually, it shouldn’t be shocking. The popularity and usefulness of the blogroll on people’s blogs has been waning for some time now. I’ve noticed a lot fewer blogrolls out on the blogs I visit and read.

Sure, it was a way to say, “hey, I like these blogs.. check them out.” But I got to wondering something. If I wasn’t looking at the blogrolls on other’s blogs, then how many people were looking at mine? If you do, let me know, but I’ll take a guess [and using my page results from Woopra and Google, it's not a page that gets hit that often] that it’s just not needed anymore.

If you miss it, then maybe I can do a post every so often where I mention blogs I visit.

And of course, if there’s a blog I like, I’ll add it to my feed reader and visit, read and comment.

So long Blogroll. You served your purpose back in the day.

No witty comments or fun contests [saving my next contest for my two year anniversary and the return of Scooter Sunday Season 3] or anything smart or clever.

Just marking a milestone for me.

Now when I reach 500 posts out here, then it’s time to celebrate.

I fix oatmeal for my wife and I most mornings. It’s rare that we have something else.

Pretty much six days a week, we have oatmeal for breakfast. She has hers with cinnamon, milk and sometimes fresh berries [if they are on sale or in season]. I add a nice chuck of butter to mine with a few dashes of cinnamon sugar. It’s healthy [well, maybe not the butter] and fills us up each morning. It’s not as fun to have as say Lucky Charms or biscuits and gravy, but for the sake of trying to be healthy, it works good.

So the other day, I was in my feed reader and saw that someone had shared a post. It said it was from “The Oatmeal”

Trying to think positive, I wondered: Was this a site dedicated to oatmeal, giving me extra tidbits and suggestions for how to fix and eat oatmeal? Was it filled with statistics and cholesterol numbers that would make my daily mundane choice of a first meal go down easier?

Sparking my curiosity, I clicked the link.

Click on the image above to go to The Oatmeal

Ahh… now this is the fun that oatmeal is missing.

I’ve updated my theme. The one I had before was pretty good and it was clean and had a nice look to it, but it was trouble whenever I changed some things around. I had to resolve that, especially if I wanted to move to WordPress 2.7.1 anytime soon. [I'm still at 2.6.5 for a couple more weeks]

Gone is the ad in the upper right part of the header. Also gone are the colors. Gray and black may seem bland, but I decided that the cleaner, sleeker look would be much easier on the eyes. And my eyes are not getting any better these days.

Also, the Blogroll is now on it’s own page. Something about better page results for SEO.

In time, I’m also going to go back to my older posts and take some of the extra formatting that the previous theme needed to display properly. Things like extra line breaks and odd paragraph formatting will be a lot smoother.

I’m also still working on some graphics and other enhancements to this site, which this new theme should be easier to configure for the future.

So hit me up in the comments with any feedback, problems, issues or praise.

Since I started this blog on April 1, 2008, it’s been a lot of fun. I’ve done all sorts of blog posts with subjects covering my car, politics, food I like, my scooter, Top 9 lists, videos with snow and many more. I thought for sure, after 100 blog posts, I’d have thousands of weekly visitors and get regularly featured on TWiT, Digg and have my videos mentioned on an episode of Tekzilla. But alas, none of those popular web sites came calling. But, I must say that I have a nice bunch of regular visitors that I look forward to seeing here and that’s what matters.

So how do I show my appreciation for my readers?

Free Stuff

What’s that you say? You’re giving away free stuff? Fuckin’ Sweet!

um… wait a minute… what’s the catch? What kind of crazy hoops do I have to jump through to win a prize?

Read on.

Only One Thing You Need To Do….

And that’s leave a comment on this post. Pretty simple. For you readers that never leave a comment [you know who you are], this is your chance to make yourself known, even if it’s just this one time. You can leave multiple comments, but only one entry per person will be counted. How will I know it’s really you posting more than once? By email address, of course [also your IP address, which shows up when you post your comment], which is why you need to use a valid email address. How else did you expect me to contact you if you won?

Now I don’t have any of those fancy tools and what have you to check for cheaters multiple entries, so I’m really trusting that everyone will be honest here. I mean, if you really wanted to, you could login under 12 different names with 12 different email addresses and from 12 different locations and that could count as 12 different entries, increasing your odds of winning a prize. But that would just prove what a douche and fraud you are. So be cool and be honest. It’s not like I’m giving away a brand new scooter or the original suit from IRON MAN.

Ok.. enough rambling already…..

… Show Me The Prizes!

• COOL LEAKAGE (3 prizes) – $10 iTunes gift card
• RANDOM LEAKAGE (1 prize) – 8gb SanDisk USB Flash drive
• TOP LEAKAGE – (1 prize) – $25 Amazon.com Gift Certificate
• GRAND LEAKAGE – (1 prize) – $50 Visa gift card

I wanted to do something for my readers, both loyal and brand new. For those of you COOL LEAKAGE and TOP LEAKAGE winners that are non-US residents, I can provide an equivalent valued prize. If you are a non-US winner of the GRAND LEAKAGE prize, then let me know where you want your gift certificate to and we’ll make it an equal-valued amount. I won’t leave anyone high and dry here [even though the US dollar sucks in exchange rate value].

DID I WIN???

Sheesh… greedy, are we? I will announce the winners on February 1, 2009. That’s a Sunday – a Snowy Sunday, to be exact, and the video that week will be me announcing the winners. So that gives you time to post a comment [and for me to make sure I have enough cash to purchase the gifts]

How Will I Get My Prize?

Damn, you people really are greedy…

Ok, so if you win one of the $10 iTunes gift cards, the 8gb SanDisk USB Flash drive or the $50 Visa Gift Card, I will mail those out to you, which means you would have to provide me a physical mailing address. For the $25 Amazon Gift Certificate, you can choose to have that redemption code emailed to you. We’ll work out those details when I announce the winners. Are we good? Cool.

Good Luck

Well, that’s it for now. Thanks for celebrating 100 blog posts here on Banal Leakage. Leave your comment [where you can ask any pressing questions], cross your fingers and come back on Feb 1st to see if you won…. well, you can come back anytime for new posts and an all new Snowy Sunday this weekend.

UPDATE: Comments are now closed for this entry.

Sure thing.

And how about I make it a remake of one of my favorite holiday movies…. really?

Yep. Check it out.

Snowy Sunday Ep. 007 from Marty Mankins on Vimeo.

For the YouTube version, click on this link: Snowy Sunday Episode 007

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Behind the Scenes

I spent the better part of Friday indoors, fighting off a nice cold that I caught. It wasn’t all that nice, but I did get outside for some good ol’ fashioned snow shovelin’ …. Yee Haw!

The amount of snow we got was HUGE…. pretty close to a foot in our driveway. Since I didn’t have to work, [but my wife did] I went outside for a meet up with Mr. Shovel. Cold or no cold, the snow has to be removed. It was my morning workout.

Speaking of workouts….

I’ve got a couple more posts in me before the end of the year, one of which is an update on my workout program. It’s still going on, but there’s some changes that I’m making to help get me back on track and to get some better results. The best part about all this is that I’ve not gained any weight. I’ve not lost any, either. I’ll go into more detail in the whole post.

For Those Who Like The Snow… or NOT

Utah wasn’t the only place that got snow. Lots of people I follow on both the blogosphere and Twitter got snow. Like Brandon over at Down With Pants. I especially like the photo he found to represent his “love” for the snow. Even Wayne from Blog of Whall got snow in Texas. Want proof? He caught it on video.

Ski You Later

Ok, I don’t ski [it's literally been over 20 years], but I wanted to end a blog post with that.

Scooter Sunday Captured Ep. 007 from Marty Mankins on Vimeo.

For the YouTube version, click on this link: Scooter Sunday Captured Episode 007

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Regular Posting

Now that I have a major work project [mostly] behind me, I can get back to regular blog posting. With the exception of Scooter Sundays, the last two weeks my other blog post has been weak and lazy. Starting this week, I’ll have an additional post, which will be tracking the results of my workout program [now going into it's 3rd week]. The first post was supposed to go up this last week, but thanks to the major work project sucking every last bit of energy and time from me, I’ve had to put it off. Plus, I’ve got several new posts in the works: New Top 9 Lists, one or two more political posts [I know... I know... people are sick of all this political shit, but it's almost over - we hope] and many others. The subjects are just pouring out of me.

And starting in January, I’ll be launching a new blog in addition to this one. I will be posting more details on it later, but I did a brief mention at the end of a previous blog post.

AND… something else that’s new will be coming soon. I’ve not mentioned this one before, but I will go into more detail about this at a later date.

Thanks for being patient with me these last few weeks. I’m working to get it all back together on the blog front.

Scooter Sunday Captured Ep. 006 from Marty Mankins on Vimeo.

For the YouTube version, click on this link: Scooter Sunday Captured Episode 006

Minor Formatting Change

All of my previous posts have had some form of formatting to them. I used a SPAN tag that formats the text to a Verdena font. It seemed to work ok, but there’s some feed readers and browsers that had an odd display to it. The formatting looked like there were tons of space between paragraphs [I am still using the < p > tags for each paragraph]. So the last post and all posts from here on out will not be using the SPAN tags. It appears to format the text better, at least from what I’ve seen. Let me know if you see any difference.

How Many More Episodes?

I’ve had a couple of people ask me how many more video episodes of Scooter Sunday Captured will I be doing this year. Well, that all depends on the weather here in Utah. So far, it’s been cold in the mornings, but warm during the day. We had a cold snap last weekend with some snow, but this weekend has been very nice… in the low 70′s. Perfect for scooter riding. But as I’ve mentioned before, cold weather is just around the corner. So enjoy the videos while I still have scooter-friendly weather. Once I’ve put the scooter away for the season, I’ll still be making videos… just something that’s more winter-friendly. I’ll post the details on that soon.