If you are reading this post, you are a member of a very small group. I was somewhat surprised to see how quickly traffic dropped as soon as I stopped making posts that were relevant to my core readership.
My core readership for the last year has been been people with an interest in the Kimkins scam. I published Part I well over a year ago. I think I would be doing a service to those people by stating that it is very unlikely that I will have anything else to say on the subject.
I am fascinated by people who decide to become full time bloggers. Jimmy Moore is one example. He has a compelling personal story and an engaging personality, but I’m sure that he would tell anyone who asks that his blogging is HARD work. I like to think that I am smart enough and determined enough to become a professional blogger, but I am far too risk averse.
This blog was part of an advertising marketplace up until recently. I have to be honest about my reasons for the change. The money that could be earned through ‘paid posts’ dwindled to the point where it became a waste of time. This happened for two reasons.
The demand for this type of advertising dwindled after Google penalized blogs that were participating in the practice.
Tens of thousands of bloggers from Malaysia and other low wage countries joined the first come first served marketplace.
I wasn’t paying that much attention in economics class, but I think that a reduction in demand combined with a surge in supply is a situation that forces a market shift.
So, anyway, I was able to justify spending several hours blogging everyday when it was helping to provide for my family. That is not the case anymore.
I doubt that there is
anyone reading this
who has not
witnessed long term
relationships that
were begun and/or
ended as the result
of social activities on
the Internet.
Early adopters of
social media are
not representative
of the general population, but there have been many waves of adopters recently. I think it is time for someone to start a serious study to determine whether social media and online dating have been beneficial or detrimental overall.
My wife and I were aghast when we found out that a certain blogger had left his wife for another blogger after a few months of mostly online flirtation. Wait, we were not aghast at that point. It was more mild disappointment and guilty bemusement. The man had left his wife and driven 11 hours or something to be with his new lady who had just recently left her spouse. The two started playing house in a new place. It was blogged about. The ‘aghast’ part came when he returned to his wife after only a few weeks. Oh, and he stopped blogging (yeah, right.)
Successful online matchups are not as apparent. I know of at least one personally. I just heard about a self help book for single women that deals extensively with online dating.
I did the math, the cord should have been fine with the electric kettle. It wasn’t. Last year, we bit the bullet and bought a half dozen good quality surge protectors for the office. The bargain cords and multi-plug gizmos have been relegated to less vital tasks. I have another one of these KHiND extension cords and I don’t think I will use it for anything.
The thing that disturbs me is that the plug contains a 13 amp fuse that did not blow.
With fuel costs breaking new records everyday, lots of people are considering curtailing their driving. For some people, this may involve putting a car into storage for months or longer. I was considering it and I realized that there are probably a few things that I should do to the car if I want it to stay in the condition that it is in. Here are a few links with helpful information:
AAA has advice that seems to cater to people with really nice cars.
After moving in 2005, we went carless for a whole year. It can be done. I consider my 1990 Skoda to be a time saving device. It is not a necessity and it is not a part of my identity.
We are going to the gym 5 mornings a week. I have to confess that I am the reluctant one most of the time, but I am really feeling much better. I rarely get that dragged out feeling during the workday.
Exercising in the morning before starting a day’s work is something that I would highly recommend. I did a quick web search to see if people agree with me and it is a bit of a mixed bag. I saw a few people on boards saying that they can’t exercise on an empty stomach. When I lived on my parents’ farm, I used to have a cup of tea and an apple before the morning chores (I did a good 45 minutes of shoveling and pushing cows around). The real breakfast came after chores; grapefruit, oatmeal and a soft-boiled egg.
Seth Godin has at least one book that is basically a hardcover printed copy of dozens of blog posts. I may or may not have one of these. You see, I thought it would be a great idea to have it with me while I was in a long lineup at the bank. I accidentally left it there. While the information in the book was just like a blog, the hardcopy medium enabled me to leave it somewhere. Two things happened, this information is no longer accessible to me AND the information is sitting in the bank being readily accessible to its employees and customers. This is not how blogs work.
I don’t like Facebook very much and my participation in it is minimal. One app that I did add to my page was a music player. I uploaded an MP3 of my own singing and guitar playing. Yesterday I tried to play the thing and I found out that it is disabled because of a demand made by the RIAA.
I suppose a lot of people were using this application to illegally share copyrighted music. This is not what I was doing. I’m a little bit disappointed.
This is Tetris. I played this on a Nintendo System on the first weekend that I spent at the parents of my first girlfriend. It was about 15% more fun than having stilted conversations with my future-ex-in-laws. A few years later, my future-ex-father-in-law got me to try one of the middle generations of Duke Nukem. It was a 3d first person shooter game. It actually made me feel a bit nauseous.
This question probably has as many answers as there are users for both social websites combined. The thing that I keep coming back to is this… While I dislike both of them, I feel conflicted about abandoning Facebook because it is populated by so many family and friends from the tertiary wave of internet users. I had a telephone conversation with one of my Facebook friends this month and we talked about our mutual underwhelmedness of Facebook. I just don’t care about MySpace, I added all the puppets as friends and then abandoned it. The fact that it is full of viruses is just that much more reason to stay away.
While I was writing this post slagging Facebook, I went there and sent a video to everybody… and I looked at an old school friend’s photo album.
