I’m the absolute first to admit that I’m nowhere near the blogger that Shoemoney, Problogger or John Chow is and will probably never reach that elusive height of being categorized as an “A-List Blogger”. After all, I’m a relative Johnny-come-lately on the scene and I’m doing everything differently from them. And if they and 2 million other how-to-make-money-blogging authorities are to believed, everything WRONG.

Let’s face it, I can’t get Adsense to bring in more than pennies and Project Wonderful literally brings me about 10¢ per day on a good day, so you won’t be seeing photos of $30,000 checks in my hand unless I win a lottery or something.

But, there’s hope.

In the course of my blog hopping, I happened on Singapore Entrepreneurs TLE and got caught up by his latest post titled Disruptive Innovation in a Web 2.0 World. He shows us how the big guys get ultra conservative in their approach to brand expansion and innovation. They do new stuff in small steps instead of taking risks and doing wild and crazy things.

On the other hand, the new guys on the block have nothing to lose, so can try radically different things and thereby create their own niche.

And I can truly see how this would work, thanks to the example provided by “Boss” of WalMart’s success story.

I know that I for one am tired of hitting on these make-money-blogs only to read the same article on how to monetize only with a slight shift in wording. I came really close to just doing a drop and run here, but thankfully I stuck around since this guy has a fresh approach and he makes sense with it! He gives me hope that I just haven’t reached critical mass yet with my scatter gun (and some would say scatterbrained) method of writing. I say I’m giving a lot of different people something to come back to read.

Or maybe I just WANT it to make sense and give me hope — you read it and tell me what you think.

Brilliant or Bull?

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You may have noticed that my site was down all day yesterday and most of today.

There’s a story about that (you KNEW there would be, didn’t you?). My domain name was kidnapped and held for ransome.

Yep -that’s what happened…

This blog used to be hosted at wordpress.com but about a year and a half ago, I started writing some paid posts for a company and wordpress suspended my blog (no notice, no opportunity to retrieve my intellectually owned data, nothing just no access period and no response to any attempts at “making it right” — let that be your warning if your blog is hosted on a free blog host such as wordpress.com or blogger — your blog is NOT your own!). Anyway, the company I was blogging for purchased the domain and secured some hosting for a year. When that year was up, I was to take over the financial responsibility for the renewal of name and host.

Well, when the time came, I decided to move hosting and the package I paid for included a domain renewal fee. The company I worked for advised me when the domain renewal notice came up and I fired off a note to my host reminding them that I had paid the fee to renew and to make sure it was done. The support ticket was closed with no response from them and I assumed the matter was taken care of. No, the matter was NOT taken care of and so, my domain name expired.

When I contacted my host and asked about this issue, they told me that the company that the domain name was originally purchased from would not allow them to renew the name and claimed to have let me know that (well, NO you didn’t let me know that!). By then, the site had been down some 12 hours.

I contacted the company who held the domain name and was told that it was in “redemption” and that it would cost me $70 to reclaim it PLUS the $10 to renew for a year. That’s where the kidnapping and ransom comes in.

Because I had “allowed” the domain to expire and because it’s an active domain with updated content and indexed and valued, I had to pay this exorbitant fee to get it reinstated in my name.

To add insult to injury, they changed the dns to point back to their servers, so the site was down an additional 14 hours to the 24 it was down over the domain name thing. The only way I found this out, was to keep pinging the whois service to see the status of my site. When it showed the dns servers being the old host, I knew the site would never come up if I wasn’t adamant about getting everything back the way it should be in order for the domain to propagate.

It took 8 phone calls and countless emails between myself and the two hosting companies to get this issue resolved, so let this be a lesson for you — just like with your car insurance, renew your domain name ON TIME. Bug the dickens out of them until the job gets done right. Don’t ASSUME anything ANYBODY tells you.

Now, back to our regularly scheduled programming…

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I call Mama every Monday afternoon on the way home from work.

I get to get caught up on all the family news since my sisters call over the weekend and I get to find out all the things that are going on in Mama’s life that week.

Mama is a QVC watcher. She loves gadgets and orders way too many of them for her tiny apartment. Many of them end up being returned, but a fair number find a spot in her kitchen or living room. Eventually, most of those retained find their way to mine or one of my sisters’ houses or to Habitat For Humanity’s store.

This week, though she surprised me by saying she had ordered some of what she considered the best wrinkle cream and couldn’t wait for her UPS man to bring it. WRINKLE CREAM? I felt like I missed something somewhere as I never saw that particular item coming from her.

I am having trouble figuring out just what an 85 year old is worrying about wrinkles for, but I suppose we all have our vanities. It’s just that wrinkle worry wasn’t one I ever had any idea she had.

After 57 years, I thought I knew my Mama, but evidently, I don’t.

Does your Mama have worries that surprise you?

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Woke up this morning and logged into my bank’s website to see that our stimulus package payout had been deposited as we slept. Since we already had plans for ours, it’s basically spent already and not on new gadgets or cars or grocery store gift cards (as one website was advocating since the store in question had a deal where they gave you your incentive check plus 10%). No ours is going into one of our savings accounts and on bills.

I’m of the opinion that a significant number of people will be doing the same thing with theirs as well which means that as an overall stimulus to the economy, it’s going to be a bust.

1. the discovery of a new, easily mined oil reserve somewhere not in a volatile foreign country OR
2. the discovery/development of alternative energy fueled motor for automobiles.

I know — another poor title…..but it’s going to be a dynamite post, so read on.

Am I the only one in the US who feels more and more despair over the choices our country is going to have available for President?

On the one hand, we have a semi-clone of the existing buffoon.

On the other hand, despite the rhetoric about “change”, we’ll have one or the other of two who will not change a darned thing about how politics are in this country.

They’ve already exhibited that in their campaigns.

I was seriously considering voting Democrat in the Presidential election until these last months of campaigning by the two senators. They’ve made it very apparent that they are in this for ego’s sake. At least the Republicans had the good sense to get together and say who they thought would be the most electable so they could get on with addressing the issues (whether I like his answers or not). At least within their party they are able to operate in a “for the good of the many” manner.

This ego pandering is bound to carry over into office once the hooting and hollering is done and I’m sorry folks but, just like I need some weight loss pills that work, this country needs a President that is capable of putting his or her ego aside and working for the good of the PEOPLE. They have to pull the two sides together so we can get legislation enacted, budgets approved and foreign policy in place that will result in the US getting it’s mojo back.

We’ve lost the room for “you’re wrong and I’m right” actions and need to get down to some serious compromising so the economy can begin healing, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan can begin winding down and the international strife between Russia, Palestine and Iran can be eased. This work won’t be done over night, but it’s got to start NOW.

It can start with one of the two runners for Democratic nomination stepping down in favor of party unity.

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I just joined a community that is designed to help promote this blog to more people.

Why do I care how many people read what I write? Well, it’s an ego thing, I’ll admit. I was never the popular girl in high school (well, except when I was writing the gossip column in the newspaper — then everyone invited me to their parties and stuff). I’m not a “make myself noticed” sort of person in public. I dress conservatively and look normal (appearances can be deceiving), so it stands to reason that I would like my public face i.e. this blog to be noticed and noticeable. This blog is like one of those trade show displays for my writing and photographs and I need it to be seen and read and viewed by others in order to make my “profit” of comments, page rank, and Alexa score.

I joined EntreCard with that in mind and have reaped benefits from the effort involved in being a member of that community. I’m taking a more active participation in StumbleUpon, Digg and Technorati so it just seemed natural to include Blog Upp in the repertoire especially since it only required about 10 seconds on my part to get started and won’t take much effort to keep going.

Let’s face it, the 4 things I’m active in do take up a lot of time, so I needed one that didn’t to round it out.

BlogUpp is a social networking tool that rotates thumbnails of blogs in your sidebar. You just go to the site, copy the code and paste it into your sidebar. Works on all blog platforms, so no having to use a specific software.

Since I just joined, I can’t say whether it IS helping, but it’s certainly not hurting. What have you got to lose? Join me and thousands of others who are using BlogUpp to popularize their sites. Then YOU can be part of the “IN” crowd <G>.

And while you’re here, Stumble, Digg and Technorati favorite me, please?

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Image via Wikipedia

Here I am scrambling around hunting for a pen again. I need to write down a phone number and there’s no pen anywhere to be found in or on this desk! GRRRRRRR!

It seems like it’s only the cheapy bic pens that don’t walk off my desk, but I hate trying to write with those as half the time they skip or are all clogged up, so either don’t write anything or leave a big blob in the middle of a letter so that when I go back to read it, I can’t tell if it’s an l or a b.

My pen of preference is the Uniball Vision which writes smoothly and has gel ink that doesn’t smear on the paper.

Do you have this problem too or do I just have a bunch of kleptomaniacs in my office?

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April and May are horse racing time for me.

In April, we have a local event called the Blockhouse Run which is a steeplechase for amateur steeplechase riders. It’s become quite well-known over the years and if you’re not riding in it, you’re watching it.

A lot of people dress up and many women wear hats that rival any you see worn at Churchill Downs. A lot of us just wear comfortable clothing suitable for the weather — April weather being rather fickle with temps in the 80’s one year and in the 30’s the next.

Not the riders in the steeplechase, though. They are all decked out in their equestrian clothing consisting of coat with tails and jodhpurs and knee high boots shined to perfection. The horses themselves have braided manes and tails and are washed and groomed to the nth degree.

The Blockhouse is a lot of fun. It’s a huge tailgate party for the spectators and we bring loads of food, loads of booze and just have a great time. I took this video last year as I didn’t get to go this year. I got sick the day before and had to miss out. What a bummer!

Of course May brings the Kentucky Derby and this year’s Derby was both thrilling and sad. Big Brown’s 4-1/2 length win over the field showed a horse with astounding promise and sparked rampant speculation over a possible triple crown winner finally after so many years since Affirmed’s wins in 1978.

Second place winner, Eight Belles’ tragic injury at the end of the race brought the ugly side of thoroughbred racing to the public eye. It highlighted many of the things wrong with the thoroughbred racing industry beginning with running the horses at too young an age and ending with track surfaces too hard for fragile legs. Of course mention of drugs given these animals was also made and it seems there isn’t a sport Americans participate in that doesn’t have drugs involved. Even PETA has involved itself over this tragedy making a farce of the real issues surrounding thoroughbred racing.

In two weeks, we’ll see the running of the Preakness and we will hope that it doesn’t bring further tragedy with any of its entrants.

What do you think of the events surrounding the Derby? Do you think the horses are run too young? Are you in favor of mandatory track surface renovations at tracks using natural surfaces rather than artificial? Do you think thoroughbred racing should be discontinued entirely? Do you thing Eight Belles’ jockey should bear any of the blame for her injury and subsequent demise?

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