My Dad, Ronald C. McCord (born in Lawton,OK and lived in Broken Arrow,OK), passed away this past Easter night on Sunday, April 12th. It was an unexpected passing and he went on to be with the Lord while my Mom and the paramedics did all they could to revive him. He is now with my brother (who passed from colon cancer at the age of 32 in 2005) in Heaven watching over me and my Mom and that gives me great comfort.

I had literally half a day to get my Dad’s funeral arrangements in order (the slideshow and the letter) but I know he would be very proud of them both. A lot of my Dad’s friends and my friends asked me to share the slideshow so I thought what better place to do that than here on my own blog. I personally want to give Joe Cook, the Pastor and family friend, one of the biggest thank you’s of my life. I also want to thank SO many more people (James, Bird, Kasie, neighbors, Aunt Linda, Uncle Bob, Summer, Nikki, Laura, etc) but the list goes on too long.

So here’s my letter I read to my Dad at his funeral and the slideshow is below it:

Dear Dad,

It was 9:30am this past Easter Sunday morning and I called to tell you Happy Easter and that I loved you. I wanted Mom and you to know that James and I were actually awake and heading to our church for a great service and you told me Happy Easter, asked if the Easter Bunny had visited and then you told me that you loved me and to have a great day.

No one told me that would be the last time I talked to you.

So with that said, I have a few things I want to say to you, one more time:

You have been the best father a boy could have. I know I haven’t been your typical son: I didn’t like sports, I didn’t like cars and I sure didn’t like to play golf. I wasn’t your star-studded athlete like my beautiful brother was. In fact, I didn’t even like the taste of beer, which I think you guessed because I would always say “no thanks” and then go grab a glass of wine.

I wasn’t your typical son, in many ways, Dad. And the day that I realized I am who I am and that I finally figured out so many things about myself and came to peace with them, my biggest worry in the world was disappointing you. I will always remember the big talk I had with you and Mom one day and in typical Big Ron fashion, you interrupted me… stood up and walked over to me… and with the biggest bear hug you could ever give, you told me “I love you Jeffro. You are and always will be MY son and I love you just the way you are.”

And on that day, Dad, I felt my wings grow and you gave me the lesson to love myself just the way I am.  That’s a gift you have given me that will never be taken away and for that, I just wanted to say yet again, thank you. Thank you for REALLY loving me unconditionally.

You were always my adviser. We talked sometimes 3 times per day, but mostly you were always there to give me advice on my career, my finances, my relationships and even help with my Moxie Mo Show pod cast. You were my #1 fan and I knew I could always count on you, Dad. You were such a great dad to Steve and I. I hope you hear me on this: you are the best Dad in the world. You did your job well, and I want you to know that.

I also wanted to say thank you for loving James and my friends so much. You meant the world to every single one of my friends. Your “daughters” as you would call them,  Freib, Bird and Kasie, love you and they miss you a lot. Thank you for accepting James as your own son as well. He loves you like a father and will miss you more than you’ll ever know. Thank you Dad for loving every part of my life and accepting them into our crazy family.

Speaking of crazy family… mostly thanks to you, the McCord and Higgs family have always been called the Grizwalds for years now. You helped us carry that title with pride. Only our family really knows all the inside jokes and craziness that deems the McCord/Higgs as Griswalds, but just trust me… we are the epitome of Grizwalds when we’re all together for holidays and vacations. I’m heart broken to say that our chief Grizwald is no longer going to be with us, but I want you to know Aunt Linda, you’re most precious sister and best friend, will make sure our family stays as crazy fun as ever. Long live the Grizwalds!!

I have so many things to say to you Dad, but I know how impatient you are, so in closing:

On that terrible day in June 2005, when Steve passed away, I knew it had broken you and Mom’s hearts. As your son, I didn’t know what to do for a while. How do you heal your own Mom and Dad? Yet, through this horrible unfairness and misery, you and Mom continually put yourselves second to make sure we were taken care of. You and Mom raised two of the most precious girls I know. Presley and Savannah were your life, Dad, and every one who knew you, knew how much you loved your grand-daughters. That was my Dad – always putting people first. Always.

I know you held on as long as you could, Dad. I regret that I didn’t get to see you before you went to Heaven. I know you didn’t want to leave your family behind… but I also know you are with Steve. So Steve, I want you to listen to your little brother… I want you to tell Dad that we are going to be okay. I want you to hold him like he held us for so many years and I want you to tell him how much I love him and what a great DAD he was to us. Steve-O, please take care of our Dad and tell him I will take care of Mom, Presley and Savannah, Aunt Linda and the entire Grizwald family.

You are always on my mind, Dad.

Late Friday night, Travis Barker (formerly known from Blink-182) and celebrity DJ “DJ AM” were taking off from Columbia, South Carolina’s airport when their plane immediately crashed upon take off. Six were on the plane and four immediately perished, including Barker’s personal assistant, when the plane crashed into a street. The only two survivors are Barker and DJ AM (Adam Goldstein) and both are in critical condition with severe burns.

It’s a fun-filled show about hot topics going around the blogosphere and the world and I’m not afraid to talk about them! Why Steve Jobs’ health has become a hysterical video, Apple releases a brand new iPhone update, China is in some HOT WATER over their sneakiness to the media and bloggers and is there really a government coverup going on over Alien feces? Find out here on the Moxie Mo Show Episode 12!

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Moxie Mo Show – Episode 12 – HOT TOPICS! from Jeff McCord on Vimeo.

Forget Bootcamp and Parallels… it’s time to show you one of the coolest things I’ve learned and I need to give ALL the credit to Josh at Macgasm for this awesome tip! You can either watch my video below to show just how easy it is to create a “virtual box” (AKA a 2nd computer on your Mac) to run Windows XP or you can check out Macgasm’s step-by-step instructions on their blog here.

This is a FREE and pretty easy way to literally run a FULL VERSION Windows XP on your Macbook and you can literally switch between the two with one click of your Mighty Mouse! It’s truly amazing. I’m still in awe that few people only know about this!

I know this video is a bit longer than most, but trust me… just watch it and I promise you, you’ll be installing this ASAP. The only thing you need to do is have a Windows XP install disc (CD) and you’re ready to go!

Oh yeah, make sure you download Sun’s xVM Virtual Box here (it’s free!)

Watch the video in HD by clicking here or where it says HD on the video below…

Easy Way To Run Windows XP on Mac (HD Version) from Jeff McCord on Vimeo.

Web 2.0 is really awesome, if you ask me. One of hundreds of reasons why I love Web 2.0 is the creativity that websites are creating on a daily basis. Have you ever wanted to express yourself in a way that has never been done before? Well, I have the website for you.  My friends, you must check out Wordle.

Wordle was created by Jonathan Feinberg. According to Wordle, Wordle is “a toy for generating ‘word clouds’ from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text.” In other words, it’s a way of expressing yourself by something you write and then Wordle uses an algorithym to create an artistic piece of what you expressed in the words you wrote. I hope that makes sense.

So, the best way for me to show you (besides trying it out for yourself) is to show you my 2 Wordles that I created. I hope you enjoy them.  The first wordle is about 3 paragraphs I wrote about who I am, what makes me the person I am and what describes me.

My second Wordle was created by taking every word in this blog post and creating a Wordle from the words in this post.

So there you go! How cool is this? Go to Wordle and try yours out and leave your HTML code in the comments or show us a link to yours once you save it.

Mac OS X has some really awesome features, as most of you know.  However, I just came upon a new way to make a screensaver that really impressed me.  I want to thank MacMost for this awesome tip.  I will show you how to create a photocast in Flickr and then push that photocast feed into your OS X screensaver.

What is a photocast?  It’s a RSS feed with any tag(s) you want which will then pull all Flickr photos worldwide with the tag(s) you ask for.

In the example I have below (the video), I created a Flickr photocast with the tag of ocean.  A website called Photocastr will automatically create your photocast feed.  It’s really easy.  Once I created my photocast feed (the most 50 recent Flickr photos with the tag “ocean”), I then insert the feed into iPhoto which causes iPhoto to subscribe to the photocast.

After about 3 to 5 minutes, iPhoto pulls all the Flickr photos and then I open System Preferences up and click on Desktop/Screensaver.  I then scroll down and voila!  My Flickr “Ocean” Photocast feed is in my screensaver and now I have a really cool photo screensaver (I chose the “mosaic” option) that displays the 50 most recent ocean-tagged Flickr photos.

Here’s a quick demo to show you how easy it is and how cool the screensaver can be!  Enjoy!

Choose Full Screen for an easier view… please note, it “grayed” out only on the first 3 seconds of the video, it will correct as soon as you start watching.

This is why President-to-be Barack Obama will win this year’s Presidency, in my humble opinion.  No other candidate or former President has reached the millions of us who live our lives online in the internet world like Barack Obama has.  Whether it’s because he was the first to create a Facebook page (which influenced millions of college kids to start voting for the first time in their lives) or his own Twitter Profile so that millions of us could see where he was and what he was doing all along the contentious campaign trail, Barack Obama has the internet down.

If you recall, I wrote a post earlier on my blog discussing how frustrated I was when my family (names will be withheld) would email me absolute lies and smears about Obama and then go on to BELIEVE what the email would say!  They had no way of checking their facts.

So, I’m VERY excited to announce to you, my educated readers… Obama’s campaign just announced a new tactic in the online wars.  If you haven’t received an email, a YouTube video or a picture that shows Obama in a smear campaign, then you must be living under a rock.  Whether it’s an email accusing Obama of being an extreme, radical Muslim to a video claiming that Michelle Obama said “whitey” on tape, one thing’s for sure: these are all lies and smears.  And instead of just ignoring these damaging and politically-motivated lies, Senator Obama has decided to be the first President-nominee to proactively crush these smears online.

What better way to send a message “on the record” to every American out there on what is true and what is not than having Obama say it himself?  Well, my friends, the time has come.  Obama’s campaign just recently announced their new website Fight the Smears.  Obama and his crew decided to use this avenue for people to get the facts about Obama and then make their decision BASED ON FACTS.

So the next time I receive an email claiming that a minister heard from another bishop who heard from the Pope himself that Obama hates white people, I will make sure I send Fight the Smears link to every one of those people.  TRUTH ALWAYS WINS.  TRUTH ALWAYS WINS.

So, what are your thoughts?  Do you agree with most of the bloggers who say this was a very smart move for the Obama campaign?  Do you think it will help or hurt?  Regardless if you’re pro or against Obama, do you agree that Obama being the first “online candidate” to make the Presidential nomination will change the way candidates do politics in the future? Leave your comments below!