wangarific

Outside of reading blogs, I only listened to one podcast, Shoemoney’s Net Income, and watched one vlog (video blog), RocketBoom. I listen to Shoemoney because he’s made buckets of money online and the stuff he talks about on his show are things I want to learn. I watch RocketBoom because it found cool little tech tidbits and Amanda Congdon is smokin’.

When I found out that Amanda was leaving RocketBoom for greener pastures in Los Angeles I thought that was awesome, good for her, take it to the next level. Then, I discovered her blog which talked about the messy breakup.

If you look on RocketBoom now, her replacement isn’t that smokin’ and I realized the tech tidbits really aren’t that cool (that’s what Digg is for) and watching a vlog to get tech tidbits is really not that efficient (again, Digg). Guess I’ll be watching zero vlogs now (or maybe I’ll watch the four mentioned on her blog…Ninja, Tiki, Ze’s The Show, and The Richard Show).

This happens a lot. Something gets real big and the people who started it start that relentless power struggle and someone gets kicked out (this one was more like one guy being an asshat) and a good thing goes down the freaking tubes. Oh well… all good things…

Think of Emurse.com as a resume clearinghouse. You can upload or manually enter in your resume, track where it goes (if you don’t mind sending a little Big Brother-ish clear GIF along in your emails), and create a webpage for it. If you enter a Word document, it doesn’t get processed and entered in as an Emurse resume, it’s like a separate pariah of a resume that isn’t really in the system. I don’t understand what the big hoopla about this is… or it a case of another app that all the Web 2.0-ish companies out there are just pimping because it’s one of their friends?

Someone please explain why this is so wonderful.

Hugh Hewitt makes an excellent point about how the rail attacks in Madrid, the London subway bombings and the recent Mumbai (Bombay) subway bombings all could easily happen in the United States if not for the effectiveness of our law enforcement and intelligence agencies but that all of this is put into jeapardy by mainstream media hungry to reveal whatever they can in the search for “truth.”

It may take a decade, or a generation, or even longer, but if these papers survive (and there is great doubt on that score at least as regards the Los Angeles Times) a day will come when their editors issue an apology for the fecklessness. It will be too late for some future victims, but like Walter Duranty, Keller and Baquet will eventually be discredited and their papers shamed.

Sometimes people need to step out of their self-righteous role (that they often put upon themselves) and see what should be done for the greater good.

Bode Miller is complaining that the media made him the ‘most hated Olympic athlete’. Ha, what made people hate him was the fact that he won nothing and then acted like a worthless prick throughout the entire thing. It’s one thing to not win a medal, but when you stand up there saying you don’t care? C’mon, let someone who cares get a shot at a medal… if you screw around and mess up, people will hate you. If you’re good enough to mess around and still win, then you’re the better for it.

No one forced you to be an Olympic athlete, now get out of the limelight.

Give me a break. Where have all the adults gone? A fat tax because people are drinking too much soda and getting fat? I want a doctor’s tax for that time they said margarine was better for you than butter and then changed their minds and then changed back and then changed back again.

People should be accountable for their own actions, they should answer for their decisions, and they should show some backbone when they’re challenged. That’s all part of being an adult and being responsible. If you drink soda and you get fat, the onus isn’t on the manufacturer - it’s on you.

Let’s be honest, without the warning on cigarettes that they may cause cancel, would you believe that cigarettes are entirely safe? Would you really believe that inhaling smoke (it’s freaking SMOKE!) would be entirely harmless to the human body? Consuming large amounts of sugar is bad for you, you should know this, if you’re a child then it’s perfectly alright if you haven’t learned this, but as an adult you should. In fact, as an adult you should educate your children that massive amounts of anything is likely bad for you.

This is like when that guy was suing MacDonalds for getting fat. Sorry buddy, MacDonalds didn’t forcefeed you their food, you made that choice yourself.

Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger suffered a serious head injury this morning after his motorcycle collided with a car on Second Avenue near the 10th Street Bridge, police said….
Roethlisberger was talking and moving his arms and legs after the accident. He suffered injuries to his face and lost several teeth, according to city firefighters.

via Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

For those who don’t know, I run a few blogs that rely on Google’s Adsense program (not solely but a considerable amount) to generate some side income. One of the major challenges of Adsense (the publisher side, eg. me) and Adwords (the advertiser side, eg. the company) is click-fraud because it’s very easy to click on your own ads in the search for a few extra pennies. This is especially tempting when you’re starting out and getting very few pageviews and frequently see $0.00 days. It’s almost understandable, you want to see $0.14 instead of $0.00, and it is a psychological thing that makes you feel as if progress is being made.

Don’t do it. There are many reasons you shouldn’t click on your ads (outside of being kicked out of the program and seeing $0.00 per day forever):

1. If you’re in it for the long haul, your conversion rate will be awful and you’ll be smart priced. If you’re in it for a few quick bucks, I’m sorry to tell you but you’ll likely never see a check. If you’re in it for the long haul, your constant clicking (even if you mask it, hide it, click from random computers, blah blah) will be counter productive for you personally. It’s been discussed that publishers with low conversion rates might be smart priced which means you will be paid less per click because clicks from your site are less valuable.

Let me illustrate. A mortgage company buys up keywords that appear on your sites, they’re expecting maybe 5% of clicks will convert into a lead of some kind (visitor fills out a form). If your site instead gives them a conversion rate of 0.005% because you’re the one clicking (and not converting), Google might smart price you. This is especially painful when your site starts growing and the real money starts coming it. That’s when the chasing of pennies will cause you to miss out on dollars.

2. Click fraud lowers credibility of the system. Say that you’re a mortgage advertiser that starts using the Adsense advertising network expecting 5% and instead sees a lot of 0.005%, you’re paying for 100% of the clicks but only 0.005% are turning into leads (of which a smaller percentage will result in sales). How long do you think you’ll stay in a program where the returns are so low? Not long. Once that advertiser pulls out, there’s less competition for the keyword and if a lot of advertisers pull out… the keyword loses value and in turn, you make less money. You get the idea.

3. Ultimately, you’re stealing. Good people are paying good money into a good system that is in turn paying other good people for their hard work. Where else can a kid in a developing nation in an internet cafe turn a journal into something that can generate big bucks? $5/day to someone in the United States is an overpriced cup of coffee… compare that to how much that money is worth to someone in Zimbabwe? You’re stealing from the advertisers, you’re stealing from hardworking people using Adsense, and you’re helping bring down a system that’s helped a lot of people who are willing to work hard.

Watch the video… because al-Zarqawi and his crew were blown the f’ up.

Until this past weekend, when Martha and I went to Walt Disney World from Sunday until Tuesday, I hadn’t taken a “vacation” since a cruise last October. That’s a solid seven months without a “real” vacation and I sorely needed one. What’s funny is that we wouldn’t even have gone to Disney if our friends, who had access to a nice Sheraton timeshare for a week, hadn’t invited us because we just went to WDW two years ago. Alas, when the flight from Baltimore to Orlando costs only $150 and you don’t even have to pay for a hotel, it’s too good a deal to pass up. Ticket prices are pretty high ($50ish) but considering you’re spending the entire day there and what you get out of it all, it’s not bad.

We flew into Orlando at around 9am on Sunday (the timeshare was a Sunday to Sunday, why we started our vacation on a Sunday) and immediately hit the parks. The first day was spent at Epcot with the World Showcase, where we enjoyed a frosty $7 beer in Germany, and the various rides of Epcot. We rode that little gondala thing in Mexico, saw some acrobatics show in China, and found a Turkey Leg to chomp on in America. Most people don’t like Epcot because if they’re an adrenaline fiend then Epcot really doesn’t have much for you. If you’re the type that appreciates something like the detailing on a model train set, Epcot is perfect. A ride that was pretty cool was Soarin’, which is essentially a hang glider show. You pretend to be on a hang glider and they swing you all around the world. It’s pretty neat.

We left Epcot at around 5pm to check into the timeshare, get a shower, grab a bite at Fuddruckers, and then returned to the Magic Kingdom. Epcot closes at 7 but the Magic Kingdom closes at 11, when their fireworks show and parade runs. That night we rode on a couple of the kid’s rides (Winnie the Pooh and Buzz Lightyear).

Monday was spent entirely in the Magic Kingdom, where you basically need a day to soak it all in. Having gone pretty recently, a lot of the rides were familiar but it’s hard not to have a good time in Disney. We did a lot of walking on Monday… and whoever thought of FastPass deserves a huge raise. I think my favorite of the parks at Disney World has to be the Magic Kingdom, I like walking down Main Street and seeing the sights of the faux cityscape. I like the colorful rides too and sometimes I don’t even mind the screaming kids throwing tantrums because they can’t get some sugary candy. I, of course, had yet another Turkey Leg for lunch. (I had one yet again at MGM on Tuesday).

Tuesday was MGM which meant a couple rides on Aerosmith’s roller coaster, the Lights Motor Action stunt show, and Indiana Jones. Someone said the action show had been there a few years but I honestly don’t remember it. I have some video of the show on my camera which I’ll be downloading soon (pictures too). We ate at the Sci-Fi Cafe for dinner which is a 60’s (could’ve been 70’s, what do I know) style drive in theater where I enjoyed a rueben, something I had been craving for since we went to a diner after our friend’s wedding last weekend. Mmmmmm every last one of those thousand islands tasted great.

And to top it all off, our flight back from Orlando had a whole whopping 20 people on the flight. Not a bad vacation…

WDW Pictures

The stock market is like going to a casino without the free drinks and the cocktail waitresses pretending to like you.