Author Archive

HGTV Rules

Thursday, April 26th, 2007

Instead of killing myself in the dining room, I’ve kind of shifted to the couch in the living room. I don’t typically like working off my battery but that’s because I no longer have bright view when I’m not plugged in. Considering how bright it is in the room, I’m not overly concerned.

Once I sat on the couch, Princess decided that she was lonely on the other end and waddled her way over here. She’s now on my lap and the two of us are watching HGTV. There’s a show where they basically remodel a room for little to no money at all. I can’t think of the name, but I think it’s pretty cool. They look for items around your house to bring into the room so you can pull it all together. I can walk around the house right now and instantly come across ideas for how to make the living room it’s own ‘unique’ area, other than just two chairs and a couch facing the TV.

They just pulled a huge painting out of this womens attic that’s gorgeous. I wish I brought all of my paint supplies down here, I have a pretty nifty idea for art work in the bedroom after we get everything remodeled. He’s got some wizard on the wall, and Yoda, sorry but those don’t fly well with me – they can be moved to the office.. :heh:

Savings and Back Pain … run together.

Thursday, April 26th, 2007

The office is too small to accommodate both Baby and I during the summer months. It’s literally like sitting in a box, because of this we’ve been working on redoing things to use the best amount of space without filling the room with useless items that we don’t need. He’s told me that he’d be willing to get another desk but I’m not one who likes the idea of a perfectly good desk being thrown out. I do know that he’s going to be upgrading to two LCD monitors sometime in the near future so that will cut down on space, which is exactly how the room will be rearranged. I do actually want a nice setup in there but in order to do it, I’m going to have to do some serious pricing on very important furniture.

We can’t spend all our money in the office though, we’re in dire need of bedroom furniture because there’s no way we can handle the setup the way it is now. I need to get some kind of a window ledge put together so Bella can have her seat back. Up until a few days ago we had the big chair underneath the window but since the air conditioning vent is right there, we wound up moving it to another side of the room – she’s now lost her seat. I want to build a box that’s an extension of the window ledge there now and then have a small ramp or stairs to help her get up to it. Now she’s making the attempt to jump up in the window (the way a cat would do) but since she’s NOT a cat, she doesn’t quite know how to contort herself to get where she needs without smacking her face in the window, or just plain falling off the ledge. It’s only a 2 foot drop and she leaps further than that whenever she hangs out in the book case.

So I need to get a night stand or small book shelf that’s open underneath for the air to come through, we also need a new bed. Of course a mattress is more important than a frame at the moment. Baby is already willingly sleeping on the floor, he hasn’t even done anything to deserve it but he’s got no choice based on how his back is feeling. I’m tempted to flip the mattress up and sleep on the floor with him. We may wind up doing that sooner than anticipated at the way I’m feeling.

From sitting in an uncomfortable dining room chair all day, to sleeping on an even more uncomfortable bed – my back is beyond messed up and all I can do is hope that some serious cash just falls into my lap so I can start doing some remodeling that will benefit not only the size of the room – but my back in general.

I’m most likely going to go with greatpricedfurniture.com because they literally have what they advertise, great priced furniture. Baby’s mom works for a furniture store and even at the factory direct prices, before the 300% mark-up the furniture is better quality and cheaper. So why not stick with affordability instead of paying an employee’s salary who just told you what colors you could get something in, you know?

New moms amuse me…

Thursday, April 26th, 2007

There’s a woman across the street who has a 4 year old and a 2 year old. The 4 year old was being fairly vicious this afternoon and bouncing the ball off her sisters head. While I don’t condone this, I have to admit that a child going out of her way to make a ball bounce high off a soft head kind of amuses me…to some twisted degree.

Her mom finally realized what was going on (she was busy on the phone or something) and told her daughter that if she didn’t stop by the time she counted to three, the ball would be taken away forever. So the girl gave her the typical snooty “Yea, ok mom” attitude and continued bouncing. Her mother than counted to three and the bouncing continued. Then, I don’t know how this happened, but the kid hopped off the deck and started running around screaming “Ha, can’t get me.”

Where did she go wrong? She didn’t smack the kid on the ass when she was standing right next to her. She went ACROSS THE DECK to count to three, giving the child plenty of room to take off. She then looked at her husband for help and he even said “Should have smacked her when you had the chance.” (Go dad!)

So he hopped off the deck, they caught up with her and he then cracked her on the butt. She stopped screaming, didn’t cry, just sat in the corner for her punishment while mom and dad continued playing with the 2 year old.

Lesson of the day, if your child is really ticking you off to the point that you have to COUNT. Punch yourself in the face for letting them get to that point.

Acquisio Search

Thursday, April 26th, 2007

Since a lot of people use their websites for monetary purposes, it’s not that rare to find out that they’re involved in multiple Pay Per Click sponsors on the side just to help bring in the extra cash. There’s a company named Acquisio that’s created a PPC Management Software. It integrates your Google Adwords, Microsoft Adcenter and Yahoo! Search Marketing campaigns, giving you the top level overview of all marketing efforts, the ability to analyze trends and the powerful ability to correlate the impact of changes on performance.

It’s powerful features include:

  • Imagine all of your PPC creatives, keywords, bid strategy, deployment and reporting, rendered in a single, beautiful flash environment
  • Provides agencies with a white labelled reporting interface ?¢‚Ć‚Äô Clients think it’s your own ingenious solution
  • Proprietary reporting measures the impact of every change on the performance of campaigns for variables like number of clicks, click-through rate, cost per click, average position, conversion rate, cost per conversion, and ROI
  • Deployment interface that is intuitive and simple, while powerful enough to exploit each individual vendor’s specific rules
  • User friendly interface – Your clients don’t have to be PPC experts to understand exactly what is happening with their advertising efforts
  • Official Google and Yahoo! (Overture) API integration, MSN forthcoming (Full scalability for further integration projects)
  • Collaboration at a new level. From within the interface start blog like threads, share excel and word documents, message, post to-dos and take snapshots of any report you like, then add your own annotations

Whether you’re an agency, small company, or large web presence, acquisio SEARCH offers the flexibility to accommodate your needs and coordinate all of your paid advertising efforts, on any scale, at a price you can afford.

I think this is a program that any one with these companies should consider. I should let Baby in on this because his boss’ website is LOADED to the rim with ads, maybe it’ll help him bring in some more cash – on top of the few thousand a month he makes anyway – haha.

Storms, Boyfriend, Vacations, etc.

Thursday, April 26th, 2007

A pretty nasty storm came through here last night. In the mid-west there were a series of tornadoes touching down and part of that storm made it’s way over to the east coast and basically flooded the community. There aren’t any real drainage systems and since all of the roads in this complex are fucked up, it just leaves massive puddles everywhere.

I went outside long enough to watch the drenching rain and the lightening shoot off like fireworks. It kept me entertained for a while and baby reassured me that since we’re right on the water, storms like this are frequent in the summer. Being as I’m a nut for any and everything STORM based, this made me very giddy and content with my choice to stay down here perminantly.

Our 10-month was on Saturday, we didn’t do anything special for it considering we’re saving up for our trip but that’s not too big of a deal considering we spend every single day together, to the point that we get on eachothers nerves if we don’t separate. I can’t wait until this vacation thing is over so I can go back to working outside of the house to getting bills paid. It’d be stupid to get an outside job when I’d already have to request for time off in two weeks, it’s not worth it. So I’ll do what I have to do after we get back from Atlantic City and then go from there.

For now, I guess I should get back to work so I actually have the money for the casino, eh? LOL

Billing made easy…

Thursday, April 26th, 2007

As a business owner, I’m always looking for new and interesting ways to make my life a little bit easier. I do not have a traditional billing system for my hosting clients, one of the most commonly known products is Modern Bill, I didn’t see the point in having a subscription payment going out just so I can keep track of the subscription payments coming in. Because of this, I use a very hassle-free method, a 3 ring binder. I have one for each server and each client is listed in alphabetical order (by domain name) with their email, Paypal address, and account status. All of my invoices are sent out with Paypal. But once a payment is received, it’s marked off on the users page as “Payment Dates” and since it’s mainly in pencil, I have a ‘running balance’ section to show exactly how much each client has made me.

Simplify This The problem is that, while this is a very organized process, it’s a bit more time consuming than I’d actually like at the moment considering everything going on. I’ve come a program for online invoicing and payment named Simplify This. It’s a web-based application that lets the user (you) easily invoice clients and get paid faster online. It’s designed for freelancers, small businesses and independent professionals. It helps you free yourself from using a complex accounting software so there will be no more forgotten invoices, and no software to install. Since it’s web based, you can use it anywhere. So if you’re at the library, work, home, or any other computer in general – you can still access your records. It does help for those whom do frequent conference calls with clients, this way you can log into your account and check on it anywhere.

There are some key features to this program. It’s easy to use, you can customize it to your business needs, invoices are sent via email, you can accept payments online and then track your payments as well. It even records one-time and recurring charges. Right now it’s currently a free trial, I think it’s worth trying out…don’t you?

Updating…somewhat

Thursday, April 26th, 2007

I’m in the process of moving categories and entries around so if things happen to look messed up sometime over the next few hours, don’t contact me about it, I’m most likely working on it.

I’m working on setting up Category based template files because I’m involved with so many different Paid-to-Blog programs that it’s kind of unfair to have all of the PPP footers linked for the other sites. Nothing wrong with PPP, I’m making a butt-load of money off them, I just don’t think it’s fair to keep a static image there for a sponsored post that I’m not being paid for through them.

Things with Baby have calmed down a bit, we talked it out and I let him know that if he keeps the bull-shit to the level it’s been for the last couple of days, I’m packing. I don’t like giving ultimatums but I also don’t like living in an angry environment. While I’m a highly confrontational person, I don’t blow up for no reason at all.

I’m still in the dining room, I have been all day. A massive storm came through here tonight which stopped me from finishing up work I’d started this afternoon. It was a fairly fruitful day. I pulled in about $120 which isn’t bad for a 6 hour day. I’m bringing in about $400 tomorrow. Plus I think there’s still like $200 worth of PPP’s coming in sometime over the next two weeks so it’s safe to say I’ll have met my goal for Atlantic City alot sooner than I’d planned. Considering I’m going up on May 12th, I guess it worked out perfectly.

I’m still waiting on my Paypal Debit Card to show up because you can’t take more than $500 out of the bank each day (ATM wise) and since I don’t have a bank account down here yet, I can’t exactly take $1000 out on my WAMU account. So I’m splitting it up and doing the double withdrawals. Makes life easy.

In any event, it’s after 5AM and I really need to get myself to bed. My back is KILLING ME from sitting here. I can’t wait until my new chair shows up. ::swoons::

Ticked Off.

Tuesday, April 24th, 2007

I don’t really understand why but MySQL is messing up more than usual lately. It seems like every other time I load my site, the Localhost is down. I’m really considering moving my personal site to another company, this is getting beyond absurd. I’m spending over $100 a month with this company and my site is constantly going down.

I don’t like going outside of my comfort zone (current servers) but I’m looking for outside help at this point. I need a fairly cheap reseller account (need hosting on about 6 domains, k.nu would be using the most bandwidth), not looking to spend more than $15 a month…any recommendations?

I just don’t understand.

Tuesday, April 24th, 2007

For the past few weeks, things have really been up and down. I know the move is taking a lot out of me (emotionally) but I also know that before anything was official, I was here for almost four months to at least attempt to work the kinks out.

Today was a pretty bad day, and I honestly don’t know what I can do to help fix it. I fell asleep around 5:30 this morning, I was up by noon and that’s pretty typical for me considering I work from home so I can make my own hours. Baby didn’t wake up until after 3:30. I don’t know if he’s not feeling good, or what, but he was just in a bad mood today. Asking him to do something that would have taken him not even five minutes of time turned into an hour long argument about how he doesn’t have time for shit because he has to work. Fine…whatever.

I go into his office about 10:30 tonight and told him that high tide is around 2AM and I’d like to go. I figured this would give him PLENTY of time to get some work done and then on his next break we can go watch the waves and come home so he could finish whatever he had on his to-do list for the day. He, yet again, went on a rant about how he needed to get shit done. Not even a half hour later, he’s asleep. He’s been asleep since 11, it’s now 2am.

He’s complaining that he’s exhausted, sick of doing everything – blah blah blah. All I can really say is grow the fuck up and quit bitching about it. He’s depressed, but won’t admit to it. He doesn’t like going out during the day so that’s why he’s either sleeping or in his office. While I’m not too keen of the sun either, I at least make the effort. Sure, I don’t get much further than the garden sometimes but at least I’m breathing in some kind of fresh air, something he isn’t. His idea of fresh air is opening the window. Meanwhile, today being as hot as it was, his complaint was that it was too warm in the office for him to concentrate. Hrm…here’s an idea – shut your computer down for more than a quick reboot and MAYBE it wouldn’t be so hot in there. The heat builds up overnight to a room that’s constantly closed off. He’ll sit in there all day while all this heat is soaked into the walls and he just won’t make the connection. “It uses less energy to run the computer than it does to boot it” okay, to some degree that may possibly be true, but when it’s running 24/7 it’s obviously going to use quite a bit of power considering it’s connected to two CRT monitors (not even LCD – CRT, those give off their own heat).

The office is trashed, that also adds to the frustration because you can’t find anything and since everything is so stacked up in there it’s going to seem like the room is smaller – which then makes you feel like you’re in a box. The bedroom is trashed but that’s because there’s only one vent in the room and the chair that Bella loves to sit on is under the window. The vent is under the window so the chair had to be moved in order to even get air in there. The sheets are all off the bed because of how hot it got last night. The whole living situation is just agitating to the both of us to some degree, and I still don’t understand why.

He could care less about the rooms being clean, that’s my department. I’m anal retentive about things. I like to sleep in a clean room and I’d prefer (more than anything in the world) to be working in a clean office. He asks why I don’t sit in the office and all I can say is “I’m uncomfortable” because while the chair is extremely uncomfortable, so is being in the room itself. There’s a lot of dust, he slams on the keys when he types and I really can’t stand hearing his music blaring out of his ears. He then wonders why he has trouble hearing sometimes, and it just amuses me. Hmm…maybe because you’re destroying your ear drums?

He just can’t handle someone asking him a question or showing him something because it’s going to eventually fuck up his entire day. I don’t know, at this point, I can scream at him until I’m blue in the face but that won’t get anywhere. I don’t typically like airing laundry out like this but if I didn’t write everything down somewhere I was going to pop. I’m going to surf through some other sites, maybe if I keep my mind of shit I’ll be able to sleep tonight without wanting to kick him in the face. He’s already on the floor anyway…wouldn’t be much of a hard target. :ugh:

Bloggers Choice Awards

Monday, April 23rd, 2007

Bloggers Choice Awards Some of you may or may not be aware of the bloggers choice awards. I’m listed for: Best Blog Design, Best Geek Blog, Best Gossip Blog and Most Obnoxious Blogger. Anyone who’s known me for a while knows that I pretty much fit into at least one of those categories, based on how you know me I’m sure you can make that choice for yourself. If you’re at all interested in helping me to win, register for bloggerschoiceawards.com and vote for me.

BCAAfter doing a sweep of the design nominees, I have to say that I’m a bit….ehh….about it. At least 80% of the websites listed in the Best Blog Design category have either pre-made templates or default templates that can easily be found by the initial activation of WordPress or even a Blogger.com account. There are very few templates in there that are actually MADE by the owners of the websites so if you want to keep real designers on top, make it a point to vote in this section. I’d prefer if you voted for me but if you happen to come across a better weblog template then I won’t be TOO offended.

So if you’re interested in voting, sign up today. It’s free, and no this isn’t a sponsored post…I just like winning things 🙂

MmMmm Coffee…

Monday, April 23rd, 2007

Considering it’s after 10, that’s usually when things around the house are being wrapped up and prepared for tomorrow. Now, while I know for sure that I’ll be up pretty late tonight, the smell of tomorrow mornings coffee is effecting me already. I just threw some in the brewer, set the timer, and now the coffee grinds have sent this wonderful aroma around the house to the point that I’m drooling over it.

There’s a way around this though, don’t get me wrong. High tide is around 2AM this morning, I just informed baby of this because I’d like to go. We didn’t go out last night because I know he had a lot of work to do, yesterday morning we didn’t get home until around 10AM because we watched the sun rise and then spent some time on the beach and eventually having dinner at a mom and pop shop on the boardwalk, so it was a fairly productive morning – that’s for sure.

We’ve been doing A LOT of walking lately. My legs still hurt from three days ago but we still manage to get in at least two miles a night when we go to the beach (the boardwalk is exactly one mile, end to end). Last night we took about a mile and a half around the complex since Bella had to be brought out for her nightly walk anyway. All -in- All we’ve been keeping ourselves at a good pace and hopefully something good can come of it over time.

I’m sure we’ll burn off a bit more over the course of the next couple weeks. It’s getting so warm down here that you sweat just lifting your arms up. I have no doubt in my mind that just walking in the weather will really cut a lot down as well.

It’s pushing 10:30, I think I’m going to go bother him now. It’s been 20 minutes 🙂

Too Confusing!

Monday, April 23rd, 2007

I’ve decided that I have no choice in the matter, I’m going to be getting myself an actual credit card sometime in the next few weeks. I love the idea of only spending what I have but now that I’ve moved, finances have changed and my outcome is a slight-bit higher than my income for the time being. I figure it’d be easier to get myself a simple card and work from there. My problem is finding the Best Credit Cards for my needs.

Who do you currently have your cards with? I know that there’s really only Discover, Master card, Visa and American Express. The thing is, each of those cards have quite a few companies attached to them, so which one are you with? Baby is with Chase and while they’re great for student cards, they aren’t that great for non-students looking for low interest rates. At this point, I’m not sure of where to turn. Sure, there are sites like creditcardsearchengine.com to help me out, and they have, but I’d like to know what my peers are using as well. So any and all comments on the subject would be nice.

In order to get a card with an interest rate under 14%, I need to have excellent credit. While I do have a high credit score, I’ve never owned a credit card so I’m completely stumped as to how to go about pursuing the “Excellent” credit based cards when I don’t even know if I’d pass. I know the proof is in the pudding and it only requires actually trying it, but I guess I’ll have to keep searching for it.

Charcoal

Monday, April 23rd, 2007

So it’s a few hours after sun-down so it’s beginning to grow a bit cooler here in Delmarva. The wind has picked up a little bit so it’s actually a lot more livable now than it was this afternoon. Dinner turned out a tad-bit burnt but that’s OK because I understand why. Baby got distracted with other things and completely forgot about flipping the burgers. It was pretty interesting to have a half charcoal half pink burger, but I still love him. I enjoyed my hot dogs more anyway, to be honest.

The dishwasher is running and now I’m just sitting here going through some things. I spent some time surfing around the ‘net looking for new and interesting things to keep me entertained but I haven’t really come up with anything other than a new program and a headache from finding a very gaudy website that was obviously designed by someone who was color blind. I don’t mind if you’re using a yellow and red combination but it really depends on the TONE of the colors you’re using. A bright neon yellow background plus the typical #FF000 hex code really does NOTHING for anyone. Try looking less like a hot-dog cart and more like a website.. :ugh:

I have some comments to catch up on, I think I’ll get my butt in gear with those now.

How secure are you?

Monday, April 23rd, 2007

PPPWith identity theft steadily increasing over the last 10 years, it’s important for computer users to really make sure they keep on top of everything they do on their computers. Some may be thinking “Oh, it’ll never happen to me – I have a difficult ten+ character password for all of my accounts!”. This doesn’t mean it still can’t happen to you. Just sending out an email, you send out more of your computer information than you realize. It’s important to be secure in what you do, it’s really not that difficult either.

It’s kind of rare to come across a website that offers you a highly secure and free program to protect your confidential and personal information. One of my newest bookmarks is SecureZIP – The next generation of ZIP. With this program you can secure information stored on PCs such as tax records, bank statements, medical records, passwords and other private data all with the click of a button. You can automatically protect email messages and attachments sent to friends, family, banks, accountants and others that you normally would share sensitive information with. This program integrates flawlessly with Microsoft Outlook?Ç¬Æ to automatically encrypt, digitally sign and zip email messages and attachments.

I downloaded the program just to test it out and it’s fairly simple to use, you can download it for yourself at www.securezip.com. It’s a completely free download and only requires a valid email address to get your hands on it. Use it to keep yourself secure. With all of the terrible things that can be done to users online with the smallest bit of information, why not look for a way to protect yourself? If you happen to come across a free program like SecureZIP, I’m sure you’d realize the importance of taking advantage of this offer as well.

Disclosure: SecureZIP

Abscent

Monday, April 23rd, 2007

It’s been a pretty busy couple of days, which of course would explain my absence. I just spent the last hour going through email, commenting back on sites and putting some final touches on my May template before I actually start coding it for WordPress. It’ll look a bit different than what I usually do. Visitors will notice the lack in banner ads because I shifted things around a bit. It’s not like you won’t be able to see them, but they won’t be so prominent on the page.

Right now I’m waiting for Baby to get back from the store, it reached about 90°F (32°C) today and since it was as warm as it was we decided a BBQ would probably be the best way to go. So the burgers are ready but I’m waiting on him to bring home some buns, cheese and hot dogs. I’m not a huge fan of burgers, I only really eat them when I’m in the mood for them. I don’t think tonight is going to be any different.

We’ve got the air conditioner on because there really was no other way to go about the rest of the day. It’s just too warm to even be comfortable sitting alone, let alone surrounded by heavy furniture that holds heat very well. Even now I’ve got my laptop propped up on the table so I don’t have to feel the fan on my legs, it’s pretty shitty but that’s going to change within the next few days. There’s supposed to be some big storm coming this way on Thursday so I guess we’ll find out just how much cooler it’s going to be. The weather report even says some shower activity tomorrow, but more lightening/thunder than anything – who knows.

For now I need to get back to what I was doing, I figured I’d update to get rid of that dumb A+ Certification post considering it’s been sitting up for so long.

A+ Certification

Friday, April 20th, 2007

Baby is really into computers, so much so that he’s basically had a hand in building every computer being used in the house. For quite some time now he’s been considering going to school to get his A+ Microsoft Certification. There’s a school down here that offers it, A+ Certified ON THE BEACH! is it’s selling point. He doesn’t really like class rooms though. While doing my usual daily surf I came across PrepLogic. They offer Microsoft MCSE Training, CompTIA A+ Certification, CCNA, Network+, Security+ and CISSP with PrepLogic Practice Exams and Video Training. The main point of the company is to complete the skills you need to get certified without ever having to open a book. The LearnSmart Video Training gives you a complete classroom experience, without having to leave your home. For those who learn better on a one-on-one basis then home training is obviously the way to go.

If you’re looking for your certification, maybe you should consider heading over to preplogic.com.