A busy time!

Like most of you (not that there are that many readers I’m sure!) I have a lot of projects I’m working on:

First and foremost is my home based business Watkins. This is a “self employment” process that I have been working for roughly 10 years now, and when I am active, it does good, and I’m active again, or at the beginnings of being active anyway! If you are interested in working for yourself, go here. An income stream that I control per say.

TDBell Enterprises, Inc., the second part of my self employment in which I do two things: Help Start Up business find money, and fix computers (software mainly, but hardware too). Again, a revenue generating practice to increase my income flows via multiple streams of income.

While it is on hiatus at the moment, Circular Wind Ryu, which is my martial arts school. Another self employed job. Here teaching martial arts. I plan on re-opening this aspect of work in the very near future.

ExsposeYourBlog.com. I am the owner and one of the admins of this blog exchange where you sign up (free and paid options), surf five blogs (read five blogs) and then post your blog or blogs on the site for others to read. Each day (hopefully ) you surf a few blogs, leave comments on those you like and earn credits so others can come see your blog when they surf. With this project I also have up a forum I work on, and both aspects take time in coding, fixing, monitoring and surfing. (GREAT blogs there worth reading on a daily or at least weekly basis!)

During they day, Monday through Friday I work as a OR Supply Technician until I can get into the IRM (Information Resources Management) department. This, for now, is my main income source. Not what I want to be doing, but hope to change that soon. (See top three jobs listed here. )

I am a Sir Knight (4th Degree Knight) with the Knights of Columbus, which takes up several hours a month in various functions and events, and I’m the web master of our site (http://www.kofc1487.org).

And I am studying theology on the side via reading and researching. I plan on taking this up formally once my income stabilizes and I have enough left over each month to take the next step.

What does your week look like?

Missing Links in Side Bar and New Page.

After receiving a message from someone who was concerned with the 1152 links to her site from my blog, and in reading various things on blogs and sidebar links, I have decided to remove the links from my sidebar and create a separate page for my links. This should cut down on the Google clutter those links will receive,and give them a more valid link count for their site so they don’t get hosed somehow.

In doing a lot of research on this this past two weeks, I am finding that having your blog roll in your side bar is not a good way to do things as far as Google and Yahoo ratings, as well as the other rating systems go. Many of them probably consider those links to be bad, as EVERY message (presuming that you are using most of the current blog packages out there with sidebars that are on each page) is a page that has those links, as well as the home page, etc. And each of those messages and “Static” pages show as a link count.

Something to consider to help your friends out, as that link count may look bad for them!

I’m bummed…

For the last few years I have been using bloglines.com as my feed aggregater for blogs that I have been interested in, but that I didn’t want to go to each day unless there was something new there. If the blog was in Blog Explosion or now ExposeYourBlog! I didn’t need it there, but there are some that weren’t/aren’t in either place, so I used BlogLines.com.

Well, as of October 1 they are going to be closed down. BUMMER!! I liked the service, I liked how they were set up, and I used them daily to check on my blogs of interest….

Now to find another aggregater to use… Any recommendations?

Growing trend?

I’ve been blogging for several years now, and recently I’ve seen a trend that I’m not sure I like. In fact, I KNOW I don’t like it.

People are writing their blogs with short excerpts on the front page, with a “read more”, “click here to continue” link at the end of the excerpt, which then takes you to the whole message they have written. When I see these blogs, unless the excerpt is EXCEPTIONALLY good and leading, I tend to ignore the whole blog and move on.

Why do this? Is it to get more entries on one page? That is the only reason I can see to do it. It is not to keep them on your blog, as they are already there…

Now, I can see submitting only excerpts to sites such as bloglines.com and such so you get the reader to come to your site, and hopefully stay a while, but in general, the front page of your blog, to me, should have the whole message there and not require me to click to read it all.

Another trend is in format, again one I’m not liking, and how the blog looks. Many people are choosing a three column format in which two of the columns have squares of excerpts with the “read more” and the third column is full of ads and junk. Looks VERY cluttered to me, and is often difficult to read, so I move on and don’t read them….

Another one of those I don’t get it days I guess…

Next Week..

Next week I am on leave from work, and I plan on staying pretty busy working on ExposeYourBlog! so if you have anything you want to see added (or removed) please be sure to comment here or on the forums and I may consider it. I have a couple of surprises I hope to release during the week!

I will also be busy on a couple of other web sites I manage, and hope to keep this blog and my other three blogs current as well.

I plan on working on my “workout schedule” as well. I need to get my fat behind back in shape, like it was 10ish years ago, or as close to it as I can!! I hope to be getting a mountain bike (pedal kind) next week as well, so that may help.

Looking forward to a week of from work that is for sure… Was supposed to go to Florida and get what is left of my stuff out of storage down there, but my Mother-In-Law broke her hip, and while she is now home, we felt it was better to hang here just in case. Good thing too, because the VA decided to make an important exam for me, as I try to up my compensation for my service connected disability, and they made it for the middle of next week!! (Good thing I don’t have to use up sick leave for it!!)

Anyway, if you have anything you want to see changed on ExposeYourBlog! Let me know!

Cursing…

I am an avid blogger in the sense that I post sometimes on three or four blogs I have “ownership” of, and I read SEVERAL blogs regularly directly and several indirectly through BlogExplosion.

What I find baffling is the need for some of these people to curse with every other word like it makes them special! News for those of you that do that, it makes you special alright!! Just not in a good way!

Now don’t get me wrong, I curse just like a sailor at times, but to do it in writing and heavily for the world to review just doesn’t make sense to me. Now, cursing is just words, and probably shouldn’t be a bad thing, but when the intent is to be bad, it is bad…

New Renter!

It’s that time again! The old Renter moved out and a new one has moved in. You have, for your reading pleasure this week, The Weatherman. He will be here for a week, so please do click on his link and check him out! (And if you are reading here from BlogExplosion, join in and help him out! Click on the link to the left there!)