20 minutes ago, Tyler Dog was sitting at Kelly’s feet playing with one of her socks. Then the sock wasn’t there anymore.

After a few minutes arguing about whether he actually ate the sock or just hid it somewhere when we weren’t looking, we finally decided that we should call the vet. The friendly lady that answered the phone suggested that we induce vomiting by giving Tyler a few tablespoons of hydrogen peroxide.

So we did. Kelly held him and I poured a shot down his throat.

3 minutes later - success! Completely disgusting success:

Eric - (just walking back outside) - “Has he puked yet?”
Kelly - “Yeah - but I need something to poke through the massive blob.”
Eric - “OK.” (picks up a stick from the yard that Tyler thankfully hasn’t swallowed.)
Kelly - (staring at the vile, foamy mass in the grass) “Oh geez - is that it?”
Eric - “Ugh…I can’t believe that’s a sock.”

8aweek is simply brilliant.

The service tracks your browsing habits, enables you to create settings to limit distracting sites, and serves up nifty reports detailing your web history:

…and your “grades” on several web browsing productivity indicators:

This stuff is golden for the metrics-driven masses such as myself that love nothing more than to watch trends graphed over time.

I installed the Firefox toolbar last week, tuned the settings to include my “restricted” sites (insidecarolina.com, nytimes.com, craigslist.org, facebook.com, etc.) and have already seen improvements in my browsing (read: time wasting) habits.

Automatic notifications like this are irritating, but do a great job of keeping me on track:

Will be interesting to follow the company as it attempts to monetizes its users…and navigates the obviously sticky privacy implications.

It is also worth noting that a similar company - RescueTime - sells to businesses and appears to track desktop apps in addition to web browsing. Both are YCombinator companies.

To the person that Googled this and found my site…

…the answer is Bronto.

Despite the lack of activity on The Boggs Blog, summertime is chugging along. Some things have ended up about like I expected:

- The online media start-up I’m working with is showing promise.
- I continue to try to plug myself into the local technology entrepreneurial scene.
- I’m not very productive working from home, but getting better.
- Our backyard gardens are awesome - more herbs and veggies than we can eat…
- Lots of good down time with Kelly, Tyler Dog, and friends.
- I started sweating around June 1 and haven’t stopped since.

…while others haven’t. Namely - getting laid off from an internship. Yes. I was laid off…from a 10 week part-time internship.

Of the many insights I’ve gathered - and will probably continue to gather - from the experience, these two are near the top of the list:

1.) Do your due diligence before accepting a job - no matter how short the contract.
2.) Be wary of joining companies that recently botched a $30MM acquisition.

I feel like I’ve done a pretty good job about keeping a positive attitude about the whole thing.  As the “I have an ulterior motive for buying your lunch…”conversation unfolded, I very quickly decided that I wasn’t going to be a jerk or a whiner baby. I laughed openly about the situation, explained the irony, etc. that caused my laughter, asked some thoughtful, candid questions, and left on great terms with my supervisor - whom I actually really liked.

I certainly don’t harbor any grudge toward the company - these things happen. Integrian is a good company with good people and exciting technologies - it’s just facing a tough market in a tightening economy.

Plus, I’m pretty sure that I was one of many lay-offs company-wide. So there are other people with children, responsibilities, etc. (read: not part-time 10 week interns) that are probably in a pretty tight spot right now…

I’ve filled the spare time with more work on the other venture and accelerated efforts to find a new solution to a problem…or a latent problem to solve…or any company/idea that gets me beyond the first couple steps of consideration. It’s slow going, but steady and strangely exciting.

On an unrelated note, my brother Evan comes home from 6 months of military training this weekend. I haven’t seen him since Christmas, so I’m looking forward to the family time…and sucker-punching Evan while we wrestle in my parents’ swimming pool…and then running away because he’s a much larger/stronger man than I…

Wow - such a great tool.  It makes benchmarking sooo easy, at least in instances in which site traffic characteristics indicate market strength, engagement, etc.  I’ve found a few inconsistencies between Compete.com and Alexa.com, but the data usually seems on point.

The search analytics feature is especially interesting.  It’s pretty funny to see the strange keywords that actually drive traffic to a site…

Here’s a video of Tyler fetching a pine cone in the neighborhood pond:

Watch Tyler Dog go crazy with his puppy toy, get scared of a squeak, and then follow a hand signal.

…but he’s still pretty funny.

Watch his interviews promoting National Geographic’s upcoming Stonehenge documentary.

Watch Spinal Tap perform “Stonehenge”.

iTunes just serendipitously shuffled to “Nosering Girl” by Nerf Herder, my favorite song from one of my most favorite bands from high school. Such a great song and great lyrics:

Yeah she had pretty hair and beautiful eyes.
and a dalmatian jacket…a dalmatian jacket.
And she was the kind of girl who you would give up eating meat for,
No more salami, no more steak or potatoes.
Yeah you would walk on down to the health food store
And buy hummus, and tabouli, and baba ghannouj, and
Ricecakes ricecakes ricecakes!

Nosering girl! I love you!

My high school band, The OHT, could pull off a pretty hot cover of “Nosering Girl” and “Annalee” - another great Nerf Herder song. Jacob - who sang lead on “Nosering” - always cleverly altered the lyrics to say:

As it turns out, she was the cousin of the ex-girlfriend of my good friend Eric, my very good friend Eric.

“Eric” instead of “Steve”! Lyrics and phrasing be damned!  Yes - We. Were. Awesome.

Though “Van Halen” was Nerf Herder’s most “popular” and probably their best song, we never covered it because I wasn’t good enough to pull off the two-hand tap guitar solo at the end.

In case you were wondering, the Beijing Olympic Organizing Committee has introduced an “official” Chinese cheer for the Olympic games.

Strange, though I guess it isn’t any different from the ubiquitous “U! S! A!” chant…save the subtle vestiges of Communism such as the uniformed masses performing the cheer in this video.