Archive for September, 2008
September 27, 2008 at 10:24 pm
I’ve just finished a month-long project: cutting way down on the number of groups I’m in on Flickr. Back in the day, I’d join groups willy-nilly and spread my photos far and wide trying to build up stats.
That, of course, was more work than it was ever worth. And when this project started, I was subscribed to more than 300 groups. Ack!
So, clearly it was time to cut that down to a more manageable number. I’m done:
I left groups that are dead, i.e. - groups that haven’t had any active discussions in 3+ months. And I left groups that I’d probably never upload new photos to — like a Wicklow, Ireland, group. Much as I’d love it, we have no plans to go back to Ireland anytime soon.
I think 97 is a more manageable number, and now when I go to post photos to groups, I don’t have to wait 30 seconds for my full group list to load. Nice.
How many Flickr groups are you in? Too many?
September 26, 2008 at 8:45 pm
I was on the road for most of the week, but managed to write a bunch before I left and then scheduled them for posting while I was gone. And even started on some new posts while on the airplanes, too.
U2diary.com
@U2 Blog
Hyperlocal Blogger
Small Business Search Marketing
West Richland Real Estate Blog
Richland Real Estate Blog
Kennewick Real Estate Blog
That’s a lot more than I expected at this time last week. Cool.
September 19, 2008 at 9:29 pm
It finally hit me that U2-A Diary is going to be released like … really soon. So, much of my free time this week was spent blogging about that and doing things to help promote the book. And there’s going to be more of the same in the coming weeks.
U2diary.com
Kennewick Real Estate Blog
West Richland Real Estate Blog
Pasco Real Estate Blog
Hyperlocal Blogger
Small Business Search Marketing
I’m going to be away from the computer for most of next week, so I doubt there’ll be much of anything to recap next Friday….
September 17, 2008 at 9:40 pm
Really, the image says it all. Click for larger version.
Need I say more?
September 16, 2008 at 11:37 pm
Some photos you remember exactly when and where and what it was like when you pushed the button on your camera. A blog called Wide Open Wallet recently found and used one of those photos:
That was taken on a flight from home to Atlanta, and it was snowing in Denver and the fact that there were three inches of snow on the ground didn’t slow anyone down. I remember looking out the airplane window as we landed and taxied and I’m sure I was shaking my head that we’d just landed on a snowy runway.
Here are three other places my photos have been used lately:
- My rural mailbox photo is on the Simple Makes contact page.
- My baseball-in-the-grass photo remains a popular choice — it was used on the Deuce of Davenport blog. That’s three months in a row that someone found and used that one.
- And finally, a new one — first time I know of this Snow Patrol CD photo being used, as it was recently on Create Digital Music.
September 12, 2008 at 11:17 pm
My mom and dad were married 55 years ago today — September 12, 1953.
55 FREAKIN’ YEARS!!!!!
I’m sure someday Cari and I will celebrate our 55th wedding anniversary but, at the moment, 55 years of being married borders on being unbelievable. It’s unheard of. Many marriages are lucky to last five years, much less 55.
When I was visiting them earlier this year, we talked about this accomplishment. As children are wont to do, I wanted to find out how they made it happen. How do you survive 55 years of being married to one person? I asked my mom for some insight, something I could use to help make sure Cari and I survive that long. I asked her … What’s the secret to a long marriage?
Her answer:
We never both wanted to get divorced at the same time!
Ha! Amen to that. And now you know their secret, too. It’s good advice, especially for those of you who recently married.
Happy 55th to my mom and dad! Here’s to many more…
September 12, 2008 at 10:38 pm
Another busy week, but I actually managed to get some blogging done. Still doing a good bit of work on what I hope will be great posts way down the road on Hyperlocal Blogger. For now, here’s what I managed to publish over the past week:
Hyperlocal Blogger
Small Business Search Marketing
Kennewick Real Estate Blog
Richland Real Estate Blog
Pasco Real Estate Blog
West Richland Real Estate Blog
@U2 Blog
All in all, not a bad week of blogging.
September 11, 2008 at 8:18 pm
I’ve been itching to go to a Seahawks game for a while now. Haven’t been to one in about 2-3 years, I think. My son has never been to one, and he’s been asking about it since at least last season, and maybe even the season before.
So out of the blue this week, I had this urge to find tickets for the home opener this Sunday. Ticketmaster had some tickets available, but they were the super-spendy Club Seats, minimum price about $225 per ticket. Found a few good auctions on eBay, and managed to win one yesterday morning! The tickets arrived today via overnight mail:
Gorgeous, aren’t they? We’ll be sitting up pretty high, but somewhere around the 40-yard line. These are from a season ticket holder who can’t make the game, and the final auction price was less than face value.
The Hawks might be lucky to score 10 points, but that’s okay. A day trip to Seattle for some NFL football with my #1 son is a guaranteed great day. Hope your Sunday ends up as good as ours will be!
September 10, 2008 at 9:49 pm
I’m one of the few men living in the state of Washington who doesn’t give a rat’s arse about the Washington Huskies vs. Washington State Cougars rivalry. (My allegiances are elsewhere.) The whole state is going gaga with both schools still winless for the football season. I couldn’t care less.
But when one of the big state schools does something cool or gets recognized, I’ll applaud and give credit where it’s due. And that’s what I did when I saw that Washington State made a list of the Top 25 Undergraduate Programs for Entrepreneurs.
That’s pretty cool. The rankings are done by Entrepreneur magazine and The Princeton Review. Hats off to WSU. After your football team lost its first two games by scores of 39-13 and 66-3, I think this kind of thing really needs to be promoted.
September 5, 2008 at 10:58 pm
You were expecting a blogging recap, right? Well, I wrote almost NO posts this past week — seriously, you could probably count them on one hand. But still, this is a different kind of blogging recap.
Thursday night, I tried to login to Small Business Search Marketing, but after about 20 seconds of trying, the browser spit back this error message:
Redirect Loop
Firefox has detected that the server is redirecting the request for this address in a way that will never complete.
The browser has stopped trying to retrieve the requested item. The site is redirecting the request in a way that will never complete.
* Have you disabled or blocked cookies required by this site?
* NOTE: If accepting the site’s cookies does not resolve the problem, it is likely a server configuration issue and not your computer.
The blog itself was fine - visitors didn’t know anything was wrong. It was just an admin login issue. I cleared cookies, reset my browser, did everything possible — even reset the domain/hosting at Dreamhost. Still couldn’t login.
I have about 6-8 blogs hosted in this one account at Dreamhost, and discovered that I had the same problem on the @U2 blog — but all the others were fine; no login troubles at all. Crazy!
Did some research online, but didn’t find any answers — just some others having the same problem.
So I finally gave in and contacted Dreamhost tech support. Someone named JJ helped me a bit last night, but we couldn’t solve it and I was super tired and called it a night. This morning, Robert in tech support picked up the support ticket and emailed me out of the blue. The problem was still there, but he couldn’t reproduce it until I gave him my login details. Sure enough, he couldn’t login, either.
He turned off all my blog plugins and was able to login. After logging in, he turned the plugins back on — one at a time — and made sure they were all updated to the latest version. After that, he was unable to replicate the login error. And sure enough, after I cleared my cookies one more time in Firefox, I was able to login, too.
w00t!
Robert did the same thing on the 2nd blog, and all was good with the world. He thinks it may have been related to not using the latest version of Akismet. In any case, after about 18 hours of back and forth, Dreamhost solved the problem for me. I used their customer service survey form to give this feedback:
Both Robert and JJG have been EXTREMELY HELPFUL with sorting out these strange Wordpress “Redirect Loop” issues I was having on two of my blogs.
I can’t underestimate how happy I am with the support team you guys have. Please give them big payraises, or some extra vacation time, or whatever. They deserve it.
Thanks so much, and PLEASE keep up the great work.
Dreamhost has had at least one major server disaster in the 2+ years I’ve been with them, and they took a lot of flack for it. But they handled that situation very well with complete transparency on their blog. And every time I’ve needed help, they’ve been quick to respond, quick to fix things, and good at explaining what was wrong and how they fixed it.
And that’s why I (heart) Dreamhost. If you’re looking for a hosting service like this, here are a couple links: my affiliate link or just go to Dreamhost.com.
So there’s your blogging recap for this week.
