something weird is going on!

Good morning!

Some of you may or may not have noticed that I have not been leaving comments to those who have commented.

Au contraire!

I always write comments – and, much to my chagrin, I just realized that my comments are not showing up in the comments section.

To all of you who think or thought that I was just being lazy – now you know what’s happened. I will try to fix this situation ASAP. Until I do solve this pesky problem, I will be emailing my comments to each and everyone of you.

Thanks for understanding.

MorganLighter

This is off topic -

I have a great site for you to visit and be able to not only download music videos, but be able to find the exact song you’re interested in, or your have a list of songs to down load from your favorite artist(s).

Once downloaded, you can make a DVD or a CD as this site will also let you listen to the song without the video.

I find this site a lot cleaner that YouTube, and so I’m giving this to you.  You’re welcome.

Stand back! Here it comes. You’re gonna love this one.

I can type about 50 wpm and then have to go back and correct about 25 mistakes. Not bad for an old fart who suffered from aphasia! Cindy, my beloved, can type 3 times as fast and rarely has to revise. I don’t know how she loves me as, obviously, I’m not her type. (Get it?)

Well, I ran across a friend (had to retype ‘friend’ three times) and he told me about this radio station that is just unbelievable.

Yes, it is.

SO, here’s the deal.

You log on to this station and then click on the section that says “Listen Live” where you’ll land on the page that tells you how to get set up. You should scroll down the page and install WinAmp.

The next step is to launch WinAmp and in the ‘header’ you’ll see a box titled “ShoutCast”. (This is where the real fun begins!)

I’m not going to spoil your fun by telling you anymore – other than this – I choose the selection that included older rock, and when Ted Nugent played ‘Strangehold’ my typing speed went up to about 300 wpm – but I still had to correct 50%, but who cares. Then I selected….

Now you don’t have to listen to some crappy station with commercials when you’re posting.  You can even set up your own play list and listen to your favorite artists while you’re at the coffee shop, or riding on public transport wearing your earbuds, or have to find some ‘quiet’ place while your roommate(s) is raising hell while they’re becoming brain dead from playing with their Xbox for 14 hours straight, or having to hear your mom telling you to take out the trash, get your haircut, stop slouching, clean your room….

Enjoy!

By the way, all the above is free and has more cool goodies than you can shake the proverbial stick at.

MorganLighter

I have a treat for you, well maybe not a treat, but some personal information to share with you, like it or not.

Cindy, my wife, and I live in a small town called Truckee about 30 miles west of Reno, in California. The reason we moved here 12 years ago was to get out of the insanity, where all the ‘lowlanders’ live. We’re about 15 miles north of Lake Tahoe, which is a lake shared by both the state of Nevada and California. If you’ve ever watched one of the ‘God Father’ movies, the house on the lake wherein Michael’s brother Freddie got whacked in the boat while fishing, well that’s Lake Tahoe. Years ago we were fortunate enough to know somebody who knew somebody and we able to tour the estate and grounds.

Truckee has the honor of being the town which has the largest subdivision in the entire United States. It’s called ‘Tahoe Donner’ and that’s where most of the tourists either have a second home or rent out someone else’s home. That’s also where we go to do 90% of our ‘day job’ business. More on that later.

We, ourselves, live in a smallish community called ‘Sierra Meadows’ – the name says it all. Practically everyone who lives in our neighborhood lives here full time. We know the names of all our neighbors as well as their dogs. I do believe there are more dogs in this town, per capita, than anywhere else in the U.S.of A. At least it’s the most dog friendliest town.

We’re at about 6500′ – where as Tahoe Donner’s highest point is around 7300′. Due to the altitude in which we live, there is absolutely zip for humidity. Also at this height, you need to drink water – a lot of water – a ton of water. We also don’t have mosquitoes or flies – well, maybe a few but I don’t remember the last time I saw one or the other.

Our town has changed in the last 12 years and soon we are to be like Vail, CO. or other towns who cater to the ‘visitors’ and don’t give a crap about the locals. But that’s okay as I don’t give a crap about the people who run this town and they know that – if only you could read the ‘letters to the editor’ from our podunk newspaper. (Did you know that the name ‘podunk’ is of Algonquin origin and denotes the Podunk people and/or marshy locations?) Anyway -

We are only minutes away from Squaw Valley which held the 1960 Winter Olympics. It’s a gorgeous place to go. You can ride a tram up to the top where you’ll be 8200′ in the air. I’d tell you more but I’m not writing a travel brochure.

If any of you have been watching the Weather Channel you’ll know that we have been getting hammered. In the last 10 days we have had approximately 10-15′ of snow fall on our front yard. Of course it packs down, but still, you gotta get it off your driveway, decks, and possibly your roof. And then there’s always the berm which the snow plow leaves at the end of your driveway.

Just so you don’t think I’m exaggerating, here’s some pictures. You ask why Cindy isn’t in any of them? We’ll, she’s shy. When I meet her she was so shy she couldn’t even lead the church group in silent prayer.

P.S. Don’t get me wrong, I love the town and the people that live here. It’s just the town council who is pissing all over themselves, doing whatever the out-of-towners want them to do. A case of the tail wagging the dog. Enough bitching.

So, without further ado, here’s some photos. Enjoy.

I’m 6′ tall – you can see the snow is almost as high as the eave. And we have a 4′ crawl space under the house.

Don’t ask me, Cindy liked this one, and who am I to disagree with her.

Thanks for dropping by!

and all of the geeks who would love to be able to measure anything under the sun.

Unit Converter is a tool that can take care of all your unit conversions even when off line.

Yes, I know this is an unusual tool, but aren’t we all just a bit unusual at times!?

It has an easy-to-use interface and contains most of the units commonly encountered while solving engineering problems. With more than 650 units, you are likely to find the units you are looking for.

Other features include the ability to add user-friendly conversions. Everything is built into a single executable file so no uninstaller is necessary. Its small file size makes it easy to distribute among friends and co-workers.

Be sure to read the Editor’s review. As well a the comments further on down the page.

You’ll be mightily impressed – especially since this puppy’s for free.

So, head on over to Quad-Lock Unit Converter.

MorganLighter

< rant >
Dear Safari Three,

I Detest You.

You and I had such a good thing going. It’s true, I didn’t ever like your illogical bookmarking arrangement, or the fact that you would suddenly crash for no reason, when nothing else was open.

But your interface was cleaner, and we could maintain a separate relationship on the side when I didn’t feel like opening up Firefox. I’m sure you know you would never take his place. You seemed… happy… during our torrid affair.

I don’t know if it’s a mid-life crisis or what. But I’m not liking your little Safari 3.0 beta party clothes at all.

I used to be able to use you to make blog posts that I couldn’t in Firefox, like videos, and manual aligning of pictures, because you shunned the Visual Editor. That was one of the things I liked about you. But when you changed, I accepted it.

At first.

Now, you screw up my posts when I edit. And you still aren’t compatible with StumbleUpon. So I lost some of the things I love most about you, and haven’t gained any advantages but the privilege of a slightly-better drop down option list.

I still love my MacBook Pro, and can’t even part with it for one night to get my Sims 2 DVD to eject. I’m still crazy about Apple, although I’m not buying an iPhone until/unless they add video.

But Safari? You and I need to seriously re-evaluate this relationship. Love-hate has turned to hate-hate, and apart from occasional angry-but-still-hot relations, we’re gonna hafta part ways. Opera and I are going to try our side fling again.

Firefox, if you’re reading this, know that I’m never going to leave you for any of these skanks. Nothing compares to you. When I’m with Internet Explorer, it’s only when I am on a business trip in an XP window. Safari, hell, even Opera means nothing to me.

They’re just quick diversions that I use like hoes so that I won’t taint you with my side activities, video fetishes and quick, personal work that has nothing to do with business or what we have together. I don’t want you remembering some of the windows I used to go to in Safari. If you play Real Player videos better, or zoom the way I like it, I would be willing to talk about not making Opera my side fling.

Safari, I gave it a shot when I had to upgrade or start using Firefox exclusively again. I tried. It’s just not working.

And it’s not me. It’s you.

< /rant >

I have been tagged in a Meme. 

Imagine my horror.

Not at memes, though the issue of timeliness often prevents me from participating. No, the horror is that I’m to answer five questions about myself. 

Because I never, ever, talk about my life, my attitude of gratitude, troubles, joys, or gossip about strange weeks, or anything of the sort, not in this blog.

Why would I do that when you can see me as some anonymous trouble maker on them internets, rather than an advisor, a business colleague, maybe even a friend one day?

All that sarcasm made me dizzy. Hat’s off to Heather at Home with Heather, who started all this madness in her birthday celebration (Happy Blirthday/Blogiversary!)  

Now, on with the Q’s and A’s.

(That was the letter Q, Morgan, not the letter T!)

How long have you been blogging?

My personal blogs go back as far as September 17, 2003, not counting forums that were set up as blogs in my old poetry sites. My business blogging goes back to July 14, 2004, with this site, which was once on another blogging platform, and on another domain. I have several other business blogs, but I only claim one in public, as the others really aren’t related and are infrequently updated.

What inspired you to start a blog and who are your mentors?

I was inspired to do some personal blogging by various passions I had. For professional and business blogging, inspiration came from the desire to lead by example.

Mentors. That’s a tough one. We’d be here all day and I’d forget someone really important. Check my friends list in Facebook and you’ll have a short list.

Are You trying to make money online, or just doing it for fun?

“Trying” is for punks! Sike.

I am making money online – my online activities have been my sole source of income since 2004 and at least 25% of my income since 1998. But that’s not Why I blog. It’s a healthy, welcome, side effect.

For example, this blog is for disseminating free information and fostering general good will with people I will one day work with, be associate with or smile at in the hallway when they come work for me.

Tell me 3 things you LOVE about being online.

1- No one can see the hideous doo rag on my head. In other words, my public image is under control of my best hair and makeup days.

2- Being able to reach people all over the world. ( I don’t feel like such a freak working nights if I log on, someone’s always on.)

3- Watching a movie every day during the more tedious parts of marketing my site.

Tell me 3 things you STRUGGLE with in the online world.

You mean besides the fact that it’s hard out here for a pimp? (Don’t act like you didn’t see that movie.)

1- Sometimes I work so hard that I look up, and a week has gone by. I have serious work vs home issues, and I think I’ll have to get another office set up out of the house.

2- Words are a very small part of communication. However good I am at them, however close we can get to the real thing, even with video, there are certain parts of communication that only translate when you are with people in person.

3- I tried to write a third response, but I couldn’t really get it together. After an hour of attempts, I’ll say this: most of the struggle I have with being online is the fact that I’m online.

Issues range from not being taken seriously by certain people to folks thinking that how well known you are translates to how big your shop is.

I could go on about various issues that have to how strange it can be to work online all day, so I’m going to stop here and tag some folks… here’s where the “maybe about you” part comes in…

 The five people I am infecting with the Me Virus are as follows:

1.  Maki
2. Andy 
3. Laura
4. Sherman
5. Suzanne

And that’a a problem since

1. The only beer I have in the house is one bottle of Guiness Stout and I’m more in a Heinekin mood.
2. It’s currently near 10 am where I am.
3. I haven’t had a drink since… um.

   Hm.

   Let’s just say I’m not a big drinker. Anymore.

Here’s my problem. For some unknown reason, the WordPress portion of my site operates perfectly fine for a while as http://freetraffictip.com, but not www.freetraffitip.com.

Then, for seemingly no reason, it starts to choke periodically, and I have to go to General, Options to switch it over to www. Then for a while that will work and I have to change it again. Higher traffic seems to affect it adversely, but not cause it.

The rest of my site is completely unaffected.

Smashing my head against the wall is not fixing the problem. Any ideas?

I would like to hire someone to fix it this week, but just like when I take my car to the shop, I like to have a ball park idea of what the problem might be, and what it might cost to fix it.

Thank you in advance for any input at all.

Oh, and I’m on 2.2.1 and am very much willing to upgrade sooner rather than later if it will eliminate this headache.

For those of you who haven’t realized it yet, the reason for those two pictures besides mine in the upper left corner are the addition this past year of my two partners to the entrepreneurial wing of my business. They are Morgan and Cindy Lighter, and I don’t know what I would do without them.

When I was struggling to get better, they were the ones who stepped up to the plate and said, if you have to retire, we’ll take over. They saved this resource and the others linked to it in more ways than one. Cindy provides most of our invisible backbone – the things you don’t see happening like sending an extra email when your order emails get caught by filters. She’s an organizational whiz and I can’t wait until she can take over the behind the scenes deployment of the newsletter.

Morgan’s the Friday face you’re growing to love. About a third of people who have stumbled us in the last two days were here because of one of his posts. They work really hard in marketing the site so that I was able to triple my production rate for posting and do it yourself products.

So please join me in wishing them 17 more years together – they make a great team, online and off!

edited: The original video screenshot was edited out due to column width restrictions and is available here.

In order to prove to a buddy, who shall remain nameless due to utter shame and embarassment (but who I will edit to name if he replies with a refusal of payment), yes, I do know how to get on a page in Google Finance in less than an hour (45 minutes to be exact) in an ethical fashion, and also draw traffic from it immediately.

Which means that I, Tinu, win the bet about it being about more than trying to spam Google Finance with bogus reference to publicly traded companies. There is a strategy behind it, and if your content is not useful to the people who come from there, they won’t click.

Static Snapshot of recent visitors using WP-ShortStat, to prove that it’s not just a display on the page, it’s actually bringing traffic to the site.

Silent Video Snapshot of the actual Google Finance Traffic page showing my blog post at 55 minutes after inclusion- thanks Jing!

(See video full screen here.)

Now, run me my money, fool, or I will expose you!!! Bow down and admit that I PWN U.

Dear readers, please excuse this interruption, it was necessary to claim my bragging rights. We now return you to your regularly scheduled traffic tips. Already in progress. (PS, to learn the strategy, click on Google Traffic at the top of the page.)

That’s right. We changed the template again.

Okay, I, Tinu, control-freak extraordinaire, led the changing of the theme. It was me. ARE YOU HAPPY?

Sorry. Skipped my wheaties again.

Anyway, it seems that after a long search, I’ve found the three column, widget-ready, lightweight, professional theme with shades of blue in it that I’ve been yearning for, lo these many couple of days. I’m going to ask Nina to make our professional WordPress template based on this one, with our narrow columns all on the right.

We’ll be bringing back missing features like MyBlogLog, the DoFollow notices, and BUMPzee over the next few days.

It was hard to break the tie between what we had during our Cutline design change, the three-right-column version of same, and this one, but in the end, blue always wins out over right-column bliss.

Though I have to say that on my newest blog about money, the Cutline three-right-columns version wins hands down, I just have to make all the header graphics.

So, what do you think of the design change? Can you see everything okay?