Last week I made a goal to myself of making more posts, and then I flopped. I shouldn’t make excuses, but I know this is because of my work/school schedule this last week, which has afforded me ZERO time for the internet. I worked almost 60 hours and had school for about 12…which left not much time for anything else. Sorry about that.
Because of my increasingly hectic life and my goal to maintain great grades this semester in school, I decided to drop one of my courses for this semester. This still leaves me at a full-time status in school, but I feel like having this one less class will help me manage stress, get better grades, and focus on all my goals. I also signed up for a condensed summer course. I plan on taking some paid time off from work during the summer classes so I can get them out of the way.
My eating also slipped up this week. I found myself eating out several times through out the week because I was too busy to stop at home and prepare a healthy meal. Along with that, I didn’t work out at all this week (maybe once or twice). Yup…I feel like crap already. It’s amazing how fast you can go from feeling like you’re in great health to feeling cruddy.
In other news, I bought a few new websites and am working on restoring some old ones, since I let all my internet hobbies drop a while back. Who knows if anything will come of them, but it’s a skill that can only benefit.
This next week is a lot less hectic for me. I work my three 12-hour shifts, but they’re spaced out better this week. My class that has been dropped will allow me to have a little more normal schedule as well. So plans/goals for this next week:
1. Write some good, quality articles for this blog
2. Practice the guitar
3. Sell my car (Oh yeah, forgot to mention that. I’m selling my Nissan 240SX)
4. Work on my other websites, especially the forum on a particular site.
Wow…a whole two months since I last posted anything. Between school and working I have had almost less than zero time to do the stuff I really want to do. Do you ever get so busy you just feel like you’re running all the time? Anyway, I suppose I should at least post a little update about what’s been going on the last two months, so here goes.
Internet Stuff
I’ve been reading a lot lately and trying to really sink my teeth into CSS, XHTML, and PHP. It’s been really interesting to watch my learning curve. Because I’ve been so busy and because I’ve set myself back a little bit by deciding to learn PHP/CSS/XHTML better, I haven’t accomplished as much in the last month as far as final product goes as I would’ve liked to. I’ve got some really big plans in my head right now, for three sites in particular. Another thing I did recently was upgrade my webhosting from just a basic plan to a larger reseller plan so that I can manage my sites a little more easily (hopefully), but migrating can be a bit*h. I’ve had a lot of downtime the last week because of it. Oh well, life moves on.
New Toys
While scouring eBay one day (I do get a little free time), I noticed that Dell Latitude laptops were going very cheap in particular. So, on a whim, I decided to bid $200 on one and guess what…I won it. It’s only about a year or two old and is in sweet condition, it was a heck of a steal I think. I’ll make a full review a little later I think :).
School(Ugh)
So as you gathered earlier (I hope), school has been in full swing for me and it’s kind of killing me. I don’t think I’m doing poorly in my classes, but between the 18 credits (I dropped them down to 12 right before mid-term), working three 12-hour shifts a week, and trying to keep up with internet stuff and everyday life…it’s a killer! I think for next semester I’m going to have to scale some things back a little. BTW, my advice for anyone considering college (because if you’ve been through the shock already, you don’t really need this advice), do all you can to avoid working while going to school. I realize it’s a necessary evil for most, but it’s so much easier if you can devote all your energy to studying.
New Year
As 2008 is approaching, I like to kind of think about what I want to accomplish in the next year. Usually I put this together into some sort of list for myself, but this year I think I will post the list on here. It’s not done yet, but it’s coming along so watch out for it.
Well that’s it for the moment. I’ll try and be more dilligent about posting, but I can’t really guaruntee anything
Today is the sorta-launch of my new media network, Freki Media. This is going to be the company I run all my web stuff through, plus the site will serve as a place to update on my web-only projects (for the most part). Go check it out if you want to see what’s going on, just keep in mind it’s a work in progress.
Sorry it’s such a short post, but I worked last night, had class this morning, and am now on like hour 26 without sleep (I’ve only slept like 8 hours in the last 3 days). Time to hit the sack, I’ll make a more detailed post later I promise
Well this weekend should be a very exciting one for me. After working my 12 hour shift in the ER tonight, I’ll be headed down to Utah to go skydiving tomorrow afternoon (Saturday). This is my first time trying this and, little fun fact, I’m terrified of heights. But, I figure I need to conquer my fears. To get over my fear of needles, I volunteered as a guinea pig for a phlebotomy class and donated plasma/blood…I guess this is kind of the same thing? Anyway, don’t anyone try and scare me out of it until AFTER tomorrow.
To add to the excitement going on this weekend, I’ll be releasing a few sites into the wild before Monday, 3 to be exact. One is my first stab at a site designed solely for affiliate marketing, another is the home site for my new media network (I had to give all these random sites a name and purpose right?), and the third is the project site for a local organization (which I mentioned in this post). I also plan on releasing a photo section right here on this site, so you lurkers can all get a personal shot of my life.
And to top off all this excitement, school starts Monday, adding insult to injury in my already-busy life. Well I can’t complain too much, it’s one year closer to getting that silly degree they make you earn to be a doctor!
That’s right, I’ve laid my first trap…kinda. Kumiko over at CashQuests.com is having an advertising deal that was entirely too good to pass up: a link in her blogroll, with any anchor text you choose, until September 10th. A whole month for $10 on a fairly well-known site. So if you’re visiting from CashQuests, Welcome! I want to take this opportunity and direct your attention to a few specific areas.
Cool Music Tuesday and Free Link Friday! These are my two weekly features to the site. Cool Music Tuesday is where I reveal some really cool, lesser known groups to my readers. Free Link Friday is where I write a mini-review of sites I frequent and am impressed with.
About MeOf course feel free to check out the about me section. After all, how fun is a blog to read if it’s not personal right?
A Parable of Two Businesses Part I and Part II I’m no business major graduate (yet), but I’m fairly proud of myself on these two articles, so check them out.
My dog Kenya So I’m a fanatic when it comes to my dog. Shoot me. I’m sure you’ll fall in love with her too.
What’s this site really about though? Well I do tend to ramble a lot about what’s floating on my mind, but hopefully I’ll help someone, like me, just starting out in the online world to get a little farther. More on that bit tomorrow, so be sure to come back!
Oh, and for entertainment purposes…the inspiration for this post title…listen carefully!
There are a lot of solutions out there for a novice to get into the online scene. This blog, for example, runs off of WordPress, a great instant blog platform. All I had to do to set this site up was press “Install WordPress” in my Fantastico control panel and then choose a cool theme. Personally, I’ve never built a web site totally from scratch (excluding my 4th and 8th grade “projects”….all in pure html….yuck), so this week I’ve decided it’s about time to learn things from the ground up. It’ll be a site I’m donating to an organization I used to (still do sort of) volunteer for. In order to do this I believe there are two things I’ll need to get a good grasp on: php and css. I already have a fair grasp of HTML and XHTML, so that’s not a problem.
So far today I’ve gotten my design all sketched out in Photoshop and a nifty, but very simple, flash banner in ImageReady. Other than that I’ve been reading and experimenting a lot over the last few days. In my quest to learn CSS, here are some links that have been most helpful:
Right now I should be sleeping, but you know how it is the night before you’re supposed to go on vacation right? Yeah…too much to do. Well I’m writing this post to let people know that I will be enjoying myself (mostly) computer free for a week. No worries, I’ve stashed a few posts away to keep you entertained (don’t forget Cool Music Tuesday! and Free Link Friday!). This post is also to anounce that I have a new toy on the site. It’s a plugin called wp-quotes. So, while I am gone (and perhaps permanently), every time you visit the site you will see a new motivational quote to help keep you going. I know, you’re welcome.
Two weeks after I was told by Yahoo! Publisher Network that my application was denied, I received another email this morning stating that I had been invited and gave me a signup link. I am thrilled about this. Due to unknown circumstances (I honestly don’t know, I know I never violated TOS), Google randomly deleted my AdSense account. Actually the last two days I’ve been scouring the internet looking for a good contextual advertising for my sites. I was looking mostly into MIVA, Clicksor, and FindItQuick.
I’ve also been playing around with SaltWaterTalk in the background a lot. I’m in the process of designing a MediaWiki skin to use on the site for a fish and corals profile system. This way people can research information about species they may want to keep and if they can’t find something they can add it. So far it’s a challenge, so if anyone knows the ins-and-outs of MediaWiki I’d MUCH appreciate the help. The other thing I’ve been working on is minor ad implementation into the site. Basically I just want a banner at the top and then a single post-level ad unit. I’m using the AdMan plugin right now, but I’m looking at using the OpenAds system along with the WP-Openads plugin (installing as we speak). We’ll see how that goes.
The last thing I’ve been working on is getting some backlinks. This is harder for Google than Yahoo and MSN. In Yahoo! I have something like 3000 links, but in Google I’m not even recognized. This is probably because most of my backlinks so far are through comments on other people’s blogs, which usually have a nofollow tag. So after building links for Yahoo! and MSN this week, I’ll tackle getting a little link authority with Google next week.
Speaking of nofollow tags, at the inspiration of John Chow, I’m going to use the DoFollow plugin on my comments. This means you get free backlinks (and yes, even Google will count them) just by commenting. Hopefully I’ll be able to spark a little activity on this site.
One of the most important tasks when maintaining a website is knowing your visitors. Usually this is accomplished with some sort of tracking software, and who better to make website tracking software than Google? I use Google Analytics to track my sites, and today it looks like they’re testing out a new look. Take a peek:
Old Analytics
New Analytics
There’s a few things I do and don’t like about the new interface. I miss being able to see the little dots of where everyone is visiting my site from. In fact that was one of my favorite “eye candy” features of Analytics. I feel like the new continent shading scheme kind of generalizes and cheapens the whole thing. Speaking of generalizing, Google now lumps your referrers into categories rather than breaking them down individually. I haven’t delved into toying with the new interface too much yet as it was just released hours ago; hopefully there’s a way to customize what you see a little bit. However, I do like the new way that you see daily/monthly visitors and the new flash (I’m assuming that’s what they used) interface as it is smoother to operate.
This is all a brand-new beta, so I’ll play around some more. It shows promise.
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