Oprah Winfrey’s Make Me Even More Powerful and Worship the Ground I Walk On Live Your Best Life tour came to Charleston on Saturday, where more than 2,000 of the daytime diva’s biggest ego inflators fans showed up in the cold rain to hear her speak. This article in The State says it all, with fans like Carmen Brookshire saying “Oprah makes you proud to be a woman.” Lady, if Oprah makes you proud to be a woman, you need to do more than sit around and watch Oprah every afternoon; maybe get a job, vote, make me a ham sandwich? While the event allowed tons of Oprah fans to see their idol here in the state, it also served as a Guiness World Records-shattering palooza, with Oprah breaking the records for the most times saying the words soul, spirit, inspiration, and inner self in a two hour period. The thousands of fans who made it to the event were lucky considering tickets sold out in 120 seconds, or the amount of time it takes Oprah to make $85 million. While many fans complained about the high cost of the $125 tickets, Oprah defended the cost saying she was making no money from the tour. Shame on you, people. You should know Oprah makes her money from her TV show, TV network, movie studio, books, and magazines. On a related note, I spent Saturday afternoon having doctors surgically removed nine poisonous blowfish from my colon without anesthesia, and I had a far better time than I would have if I had went to Oprah’s lamefest.

While I could go on for days about all that’s wrong with Oprah, such as how she can say eating a live goat is great, thus making all of her fans go out and eat live goats, this article from The Phoenix does a much better job of explaining why her popularity is genuinely frightening. It’s appropriately titled Attack of the 50-Foot Oprah. Oh, and Oprah: If you’re reading this, this post must be nothing but lies. HA!

We’d like to announce that Colaspot now has a new home on the Interweb. Many thanks to the good folks at Dreamhost, who offered us several advantages:

• A tonabyte more bandwidth and storage space
• Advanced features like Rails (think of it as Ecstasy for web developers)
• Added value to leverage our existing market base moving forward… well, let’s just say it in English — they’re cheap.

Moving the Spot was almost as easy as drag-and-drop. Which makes us worry a little. So if you notice any problems at all with the site, please let us know post haste.

Thanks, and get back to work.

For about a year now, I’ve been saying penguins are the new monkeys. While March of the Penguins helped peddle penguins to mainstream moviegoers, today’s front page article in The State further propels these formal fowls. Riverbanks Zoo is now the proud home of rare penugins called Gentoos. While this article serves as one of those adorable human interest stories newspapers love so much, it also is possible foreshadowing of some disturbing future headlines. According to the article, if they were given room to build up enough speed, Gentoo penguins could fly. As chilling (no pun intended) of a thought as this is, you’ll be even more alarmed if your brain progresses to the next logical conclusion: If Gentoo penugins had talons, they would fly out of their confines at the zoo and become violent birds of prey, feeding on our young and wreaking havoc in the Midlands. Hopefully, Riverbanks officials are keeping us safe by cramming the penguins in tight enclosures, PETA be damned.

Needless to say, the title doesn’t refer to my posting volume. It’s rough times at the Junkie’s day job. There are plenty of things I’d like to say, but they’ll have to keep for now. The First Rule of Blogging is Never Blog About Work (or your affair, or your friend that drives you nuts, or anything else you don’t want showing up in a Google search, you moron).

We know the odds are against success. Nine out of ten startups fail. But we keep coming back, and sometimes the snake bites. The best we can do is learn from our mistakes and those of the people we work for.

In the meantime, I’m reading a book that’s keeping me optimistic. Add Seth Godin’s book, The Purple Cow, to your reading list. Right now. Hope springs eternal and all that.

Do you have a favorite book that’s made you see business in a new light? Leave a comment or email it to colaspot at colaspot dot com. Let’s share the knowledge.

If we can save even one person, our fight will not be in vain.

I was more than a little confused when I checked out Crazy Buffet, 1up’s new tri-weekly comic strip by John Pading. While I’m all for video game love in comic form, I was baffled by one of the female characters wearing a t-shirt with the South Carolina flag on it. Further inspection of Pading’s profile on his 1up page (which also links to his personal website) revealed the reason for his state flag affection - he resides in West Columbia. Descriptions that accompany each strip frequently mention Columbia happenings. For instance, commentary on strip seven tells the tale of a legendary local who rocked the Columbia arcade scene with his phenomenal Tekken skills. The biggest cause of my perplexion? How did a USC student get his own comic strip on 1up, something that ranks up there with beating Mr. T in an arm wrestling contest on my impressive feats list? Given my love for video games (you’ve noticed a trend with my posts, right?), I might have to knock on Mr. Pading’s Gmail inbox and see if he can give me a few pointers at catching the 1up staff’s attention.

In other 1up news, the site has a feature on the 20th anniversary of the greatest game series of all time. That’s The Legend of Zelda for those of you who didn’t know. Check this feature out if you want to be filled with overwhelming levels of Nintendo nostalgia. Happy birthday Link! The only thing more amazing than gaming’s favorite elf in green tights is the fact that I just wished a digital character happy birthday.

Remember the days when Colaspot was a happening place and regular updates were a given? How about the episode of Happy Days where The Fonz built a robot in shop class that fell in love with Richie? If you answered yes to the former, we want to apologize for completely dropping the ball for the past several weeks. If you answered yes to the latter, seek help immediately.

Yes, our promise of regular updates turned out to be a hollow lie disguised as a promise. And we’re sure the two of you who are still stopping by wonder what gives. Bryan has been busy starting a new career path, which you can read about here. Jonathan has been busy with work and a side project (prepping for the Great American Kidney Pie Bake-Off in Grand Rapids, Michigan). Myself? I’ve got the lamest excuse of all - battling in an underground freestyle rap tournament that goes down every night at Five Points.

While I can’t promise that regular updates will resume anytime soon, I can promise that we’ll I’ll do my best. I can’t speak for the other guys, but I’ll see if my rap posse can threaten some posts out of them. Stay tuned.

The other night, as my wife flipped through People while watching Entertainment Tonight, I looked down at my PowerBook, with Engadget and The Onion all loaded up in Firefox tabs, and sadly thought, “yeah, I’m a dork.”

Wouldn’t it be nice if us techies had a gossip site of our very own? Enter Valleywag. If you’ve ever wondered if Digg founder Kevin Rose is hot, or who Google’s Larry Page is on the outs with, wonder no more: it’s all in the Wag. And yes, they have an RSS feed.

Thanks, Lifehacker, for dishing the link.

On a more personal note, I seem to be back from a long dark teatime of the soul. And to all of you who sent me concerned emails asking if I’m still alive: why didn’t any of them show up in my inbox?