I’ve been trying to find something new for the site. While I don’t mind writing — especially when it comes to sports — I tend to get bored with it when it becomes repetitive and dull. The same story over and over. Same thing for reviews. I don’t mind writing them, but I really get bored with writing them over and over again when they sound so much alike because they are so much alike. Looking back at all of the posts I’ve done here, the best ones by far are the College Football related posts. Just saying.

I thought that perhaps a new layout might make things a bit more unique, a little more fresh, and give the site a brighter future. Not so much, because the content is still an average product that anyone can get anywhere. The problem is far beyond something a simple layout change could hope to resolve. It’s a shame, but it’s true. This is why I’ve allowed the site to virtually die out. I figure it’d be best to start from scratch, and I think that is what I’m going to have to do to help it last. This never was about popularity among users. The site was active as it was, and how it is now. It just isn’t worth wasting the time spent on it for the bland product that it was.

So, I’m starting over. Going to come up with a new, more unique concept rather than the dull, bland and overused blog template and will look to hopefully give everyone something to enjoy more than the latest news.

Welcome to Hell; or at the very least Gainesville, Florida. Saturday, the Gators lost a heart breaker and the night is being spent to drown sorrows, find easy, young, heavily intoxicated girls to “release some stress” with, and so on.

I understand why this is currently happening, and I have been part of those parties in the past. Not in Gainesville, but in my home town when I was younger and I didn’t have children. Now, these parties appear to me differently; a problem. They are keeping my kids awake. They are keeping my wife awake. They are keeping me awake. And the worst part is that it shows exactly how 100% useless Gainesville Police Department is.

The cop who happens to live in my apartment building is an amazing cop… Whenever he wants to be. Swapping Corvettes and actually having the balls to ask for a garage to be built at the apartment complexes expense so his precious Corvettes won’t be out in the rain. But let’s not forget a credit card fraud scheme he uncovered by being called in on a person using a stolen credit card at the local Walmart. Wow, amazing. He just happened to be the officer to arrive at the scene, make the arrest, the wuss caved and shared the info’ with him. Next thing you know, he is a hero.

Further more, workers for the complex who handle leases among other things in the front office live well within range of seeing the cars coming in, hearing the loud music, and of course the cars peeling out while girls are screaming and stumbling all over themselves. I am just waiting for one of these cars to come smashing into one of the buildings out here, another car or worse — a person. At this rate, it seems highly likely. Hell, I’ve already heard one fight break out.

This is just another night in hell. Our entire time living in this town we’ve had nothing but bad neighbors with the exception of one pair of neighbors. She was a sweetheart. She went to Church every Sunday, and her daughter worked through highschool to earn her own money to put herself in college. They were wonderful people. Very kind and generous.

The rest? Countless drunks. A child molester. A man convicted of vehicular homicide, drug dealing, and was the local pimp. A group of illegals. Violent neighbors who attacked us, and attempted multiple other attacks. Abusive parents. Brainless morons who light candles and leave cats in said apartment so they can burn it down. The list goes on and on…

I just wish that for once that this town would actually prove to be nice to live in. Instead, the residents — both locals and students — seem almost entirely made up of worthless human beings with far too few decent people around.

With that being said, I head off to bed to smother myself with a pillow until I pass out since there, like every other time in this town, will be no end to this partying — courtesy of our courtesy officer. I just hope these assholes keep his ass up as well.

Cops don’t do shit for anyone!

My wife and I live in a college town, and she even works for the University of Florida. That comes at a price. Our friends come and go, and many of the friends we’ve made — grown to trust — have long since relocated after graduating or transferring schools, just life taking its course.

What this means is that we’ve got pretty dull late night lives. While I could probably out party most of this town, I’m a humble husband and father of two who spends his days enjoying the company of his son and daughter. Very rarely do my wife and I have the privilege of a night out alone. In fact, I can count on my hands the amount of times we’ve gone out together without the kids.

While we have of course had times where I’ve gone out of town for a couple days, for the most part we’ve been super glued to our children since birth. Tonight is one of those nights where one of us gets to get away for a bit. Of course this isn’t under the absolute best of circumstances and it isn’t a situation that is optimal for relaxation, it does provide my wife an escape for a little bit while I watch the kids.

I got to enjoy making dinner tonight — something I don’t get to do enough of. We also watched some classic cartoons such as The Flintstones, and are fixing to have a movie night complete with popcorn which was thankfully on sale recently.

Tonight has been fun so far, and the kids sure seem to be enjoying themselves. I do love being a Dad, and am thankful for moments like these. And for those of you wondering why I was quiet, yesterday was our wedding anniversary. Was a tad busy.

Historically, I’ve stuck with blues and reds, and I’ve yet to really expand into a orange or yellow. I think this came out decent, and if put to use, it’d surely be functional. Again, this isn’t actual size and will be expanded.

This post marks the 100th post here on SHiNTER.NET, and I think it’d be nice to take a look back at everything that has happened so far on the site, and talk a little more about the future of it as well.

Since the start of SHiNTER.NET, I’ve covered a wide range of topics. From serious topics like the Russia-Georgia conflict, to personal experiences of Tropical Storm Fay. As of late, I’ve been leaning more towards doing reviews of movies and music, sports (mostly college football) analysis, and have started working on the Opinions articles that are generally commentary on popular topics in the news.

Not that long ago I tried to open up a community half of the site, but I never had any time to dedicate towards actually putting the word out about it and eventually scrapped the idea for now. I’ll likely bring it back once there is more interactive users for the site. While we have readers, the site is lacking in interaction on the users behalf with polls being the exception.

I’ve also recently cleaned out the store and will be designing some new items that can be purchased to help support the site and to give you a little more bang for your buck. But since the store is currently empty, the best way to support the site is to donate. And speaking of designing, I’m still working on mocks for a redesign for the site. I’m even considering a color scheme change from using Red, Black and White to some other scheme.

We’ve also had obvious issues with things like Google AdSense officially denying my appeal, which has left the site hurting for some income, and all of that has been well documented on the site. But despite that, things have been going pretty good for the site. I’m looking forward to expanding the site into new avenues.

I’m looking heavily into starting up an internet radio stream. As for exact details on what quality/bands/genre of music that it’ll be, I’ll go into that a bit more in an upcoming post. I’m also looking into a video stream, which I’ll also go into when the time comes.

I’m quite pleased with how the site has progressed and changed since its launch, and here’s to hoping for an even brighter future!

Or to go into more detail…

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So, nothing changes. Google gets to pocket almost $60 in earnings generated by my website and they get away with it by claiming my site is a serious risk. It’s ridiculous, unfair, and above all harmful for my site because now I am definitely out hosting money and am lacking in funds to cover its upcoming costs. At least I know for a fact now and have my answer. That’s all that matters… Kinda.

Google stole my money!

I still very much down that Google will have the brains to actually overturn their stupidity. I wonder if I could sue them for stealing the income of the site and causing the eventual demise of it? They effectively killed the site by stealing the money meant to pay for the hosting. Ah well, now I’m the one being stupid.

Georgia was hailed as a great team at the end of last year and many felt that it was robbed of its trip to the big dance. In return, they were given praise and a preseason #1 ranking. Since the start of the season they’ve seemed weak, struggling against South Carolina — a team that was beat by Vanderbilt — and barely pulled off a win. They lack the ability to really blow up a game and take full control, or at least they’ve yet to show it and if they have any desire to show up for a BCS Championship game, it is time to game.

Florida featuring Tim Tebow has seemed extremely lackluster compared to its expectations — especially for Tebow’s expectations. Perhaps the Heisman pressure is getting to him? Either way, the Gators have yet to have a really big game that shows they are a solid team deserving of a 2nd BCS Championship appearance in the past 3 seasons.

Auburn and LSU will square off this weekend and will settle at least the question of which of those two teams are better. Currently, Auburn has no offense but a very good defense. LSU is a decent team, but nothing compared to their Championship team of last season. Still, I personally expect them to take it to Auburn and likely walk away with a nice, convincing win. Even though I think LSU is better than Auburn, LSU isn’t a BCS National Championship caliber contending team this year and will fall short.

Tennessee who hosts Florida this weekend lost to UCLA of all teams, and due to the severe shellacking UCLA took by BYU, Tennessee might give some other SEC teams problems, but any win from them here on out only makes the SEC look weaker. If I were a Tennessee fan, I’d be rooting for UCLA to go on a tear and look impressive. Otherwise my team looks like a joke.

Alabama has been a shifty team. One week they’re bad, the next they’re good. They need to find consistency and if they do, they could win the SEC Championship. Unless something catastrophic happens to the Top 10 with upsets galore, I really don’t think Alabama has a shot at reaching the BCS Championship game.

Arkansas died once Darren McFadden went to the NFL. While they always will have a punchers chance, I don’t see them doing anything more than upsetting a team or two in the SEC. Otherwise they’re a fairly weak team this year. They have a chance to make me eat my words against Alabama. That’s their job to do.

Ole Miss almost beat Wake Forest, but the ACC is just horrible, so don’t take much from that. The fact that they still lost to Wake Forest is actually bad even if Wake Forest is ranked because of the extremely weak factor of the ACC. We’ll see how they do against other SEC teams, but I really don’t expect too much from them either, and expect even less from Mississippi State. Kentucky has too many of the top SEC programs lined up back to back and won’t have the ability to really make it through the season in a good standing. Still, they remain one of the better teams in the SEC.

Vanderbilt has been a surprise this year. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not going to start saying they’re gonna win the SEC Championship or get to a BCS Bowl. I will say though that Vanderbilt will give the SEC issues and if they can remain healthy, they could really turn that program around and put the entire SEC on notice that they’re done taking beatings.

Overall, the SEC’s overloading in talent is starting to trickle out to the NFL, and many of the teams are at the rebuilding stages while other conferences like the Big 12 have experience and the Pac 10 — most notably USC — has skill. This year looks to be a down year, but expect to have the SEC back in form come next season.