I just realized something. I was looking at a blog with the Blog Catalog widget on it, and I am a member so my avatar and user name show up in it whenever I visit. My user name there is mountainmama. I just happened to look at the widget a little closer than I usually do, and it cuts off my name smack in the middle of the last m.
So instead of mountainmama, it appears to be mountainman. Even more notable is that my avatar is a cartoon girl…
Don’t laugh. It’s not funny. 
Well, NaBloPoMo is over, and I didn’t manage to post every day for the whole month. Sometimes it was my fault, others it was things beyond my control (such as Internet outages).
I hope I can participate successfully next year. Maybe things won’t be so crazy for me by then. I’ll certainly give it my best shot. I’d like to participate in NaNoWriMo as well, though, because I’ve started on several novels only to stop after a few pages. Maybe I’ll manage to do both next time around.
I’m considering selling a couple of my websites. I haven’t made a final decision yet, but I’m seriously thinking about it. Here’s the info on them if anyone wants to try to convince me. 
TBA Deals- I’m pretty sure I’m ready to let go of this one. This is the first real website I owned. I didn’t start it myself, it was around for a few years before I bought it from another work at home mom. But I rehauled the whole thing to work with CSS, and added some new content. It made me a decent amount of money for a while, but I’ve gotten so busy with my writing work that I haven’t been able to devote the time to it that I should. It comes with several ebooks to sell, there are directories that I sell advertising in, and I’ve made some money with affiliate programs on it. It was a PR 3 before Google started acting dumb, but as of right now it’s showing up as a 0.
The Work at Home Scam Blog- This one I’m not sure whether I’m ready to let go or not. It’s a blog, but I had big plans to add more stuff and make it a full-fledged site. Again, my writing work got in the way. The blog is a total labor of love- I haven’t made a red cent off of it. But it has some well-researched content and draws a good amount of traffic for a blog that is not updated frequently. Even after all of the PR mess, it is currently showing a 3. If someone wanted to make a profit from it, they certainly could.
So there they are. I’m not ready to put them up for auction yet, but if anyone is interested email me at kristy at awahmsblog dot com for more info and I’ll be happy to discuss them with you.
Google has made a lot of bloggers angry lately with their whole PR hullabaloo, myself included. Many sites have lost PageRank over the past couple of weeks, and the majority of them have been blogs. Of those blogs, the ones that have suffered the most are the ones who monetize through methods other than Google’s own Adsense. Coincidence? I think not.
I’ve tried Adsense, and quite frankly it sucks. I’ve had it on one of my non-blog websites for about a year and a half now, and I still have yet to break $100 so that I can even get paid. To be exact, I have $36.27 in my account, and it’s not because I don’t put the ads where anyone can see them.
They just want to punish those of us who have found better ways to make money. I know they won’t lose any sleep over it, but I’m going to remove the Adsense ads I do have up and replace them with something else. No point in making money for a company I am truly beginning to hate and getting nothing to show for it myself.
Another thing that we as webmasters need to do is quit using Google as much as possible. I’ve been using the Scroogle Scraper for my search needs lately, because it gets results from Google without the annoying paid results and without letting Google put a cookie on your machine or track your searches. But I’m going to take it a step further and start using a different search engine for my everyday search needs.
It will take a little more effort on my part. Ask.com has most of the flexibility that Google offers as far as searching for various media and with added parameters, but it’s not quite as up-to-date. MSN Search is pretty up-to-date but doesn’t offer quite as much flexibility, and I don’t like Microsoft much more than I do Google. But between the two of them, maybe I can accomplish all that I need to.
If anyone knows any other good search alternatives, drop me a comment. And bloggers, if we all band together and find alternatives to everything Google, maybe we can (1) make PageRank less important and (2) hit Google where it hurts: In the pocketbook. (If you’re interested, check out their stock prices.)
I’m so tired that I’m bordering on incoherent right now. But I realized that I have missed two days posting here as promised for NaBloPoMo. I should have known that I was biting off more than I could chew.
Well, if this post had been about an hour earlier, I would have only missed one day. I could have backdated it, but everyone already knows that I’m a slacker, so why try to hide it? 
I will make up for it sometime this week. You have my word.
I haven’t done a Favorite Things post in a few days now, and I just barely got my daily post in for NaBloPoMo yesterday. I guess that makes me a slacker. As far as my blogging goes, anyway.
I did get some work done on my big writing project yesterday, but not nearly as much as I needed to. In my defense, there really aren’t enough hours in the day to get as much done on that as I should. But I also slept in for a few extra hours because I wasn’t feeling very well. 
I’m still working my butt off on that monster of a project. I’ve got to get enough done to get paid soon. The bills are not going to pay themselves, and my other work didn’t amount to much last month.
I’ve got something that I really need to vent about, but I really don’t have the time to write about it in a way that makes sense. So I guess I’ll save that for another day. As well as my next Favorite Things post, because I don’t have time to think about it right now.
Have you ever heard of NaNoWriMo? It’s an annual thing where writers commit to writing a novel in a month’s time. It has piqued my curiosity for the past couple of years, but I haven’t had the time or ambition to give it a try.
NaBloPoMo is more my speed right now. It’s going on right now, and I just signed up. Participants commit to writing one blog post each day all month. Maybe I can handle that. I’m certainly going to give it a try.
If you’re already signed up, or if you decide to do so, stop by my page and add me as a friend!
I know what you’re probably thinking right now: What the $#@! is a Thoof, and why should I care? My thoughts exactly, until I finally decided to learn a little about it. Now I’m glad I did.
Thoof.com is a website that delivers personalized news with very little effort on your part. All you need to do is sign up and visit, and you’re presented with a page full of news stories and blog posts for your perusal. All you have to do is look at the ones that interest you, and Thoof learns from your choices. If you end up looking at something that doesn’t interest you, just click the appropriate link and it will disappear from your listings, and Thoof will adjust future listings accordingly.
But wait, there’s more. You can submit your own posts and get a nifty little Thoof badge to put on them which will showcase your post’s rank. Using these features can help drive quality traffic to your blog. Cool, huh?
Thoof is a whole new concept in personalized news, but it seems to be really taking off. Whether you just love the concept of having the news you want delivered to you with no fuss, or you have a blog that you need to promote, it’s well worth having a look at.
My computer problems have gotten a bit out of hand. I have a hard time completing my writing work because my desktop PC has gotten so slow. That leaves less time for family, blogging, and extra work. So I made a wish at the Robinhood Fund to try and win money to help me get a laptop sooner.
If you could take a minute to vote for me, it would be much appreciated. And if you have a wish there, leave me a comment and I’ll be happy to return the favor.
You’d think so as long as it’s been since I posted, anyway. I’ve been insanely busy, as usual.
I finally took a break from it all this weekend by way of a family camping trip. We had lots of fun, even though it rained a lot. It was just what all of us needed- a change of pace and some time together.
Tomorrow I’m taking Pumpkin to see my mom and niece. My niece is a year older than her, and they don’t get to see each other very often. Her parents are out globetrotting (lucky dogs) and my mom is keeping her for the day. She called and asked if I would bring Pumpkin up, and I agreed. So we’re going up for a few hours. Then I’ve got to get back and get some work done.
My poor blogs have been neglected through it all. But hopefully that will change soon. I plan on quitting my day job before too much longer, and then maybe I’ll have time to blog more.
