Before magic face cream

After application of magic face cream

You can see how well my magic face cream really works – look at what a huge difference it makes. I should be making a ton from this stuff! Let’s call it liquid photoshop.  Reduce the appearance of lines and wrinkles, smooth the skin and voila!  Are we really falling for these advertisements for age reducing face creams?

Man, it’s hard to keep up with Google these days – once this integrates with the site feature stuff they recently implemented, it’s going to explode and Google will be the biggest cyber business in the universe.  Hold on to your data!

Bum (n.):

1. A tramp; a vagrant.

2. A lazy or shiftless person, especially one who seeks to live solely by the support of others.

3. An incompetent, insignificant, or obnoxious person

You can see from the definition that lazy is really unnecessary – kind of like cash money.  But today it occurred to me the difference between a bum and a lazy bum: A lazy bum doesn’t lift a cheek to fart.

As the fog lifts over Coeur d’Alene, I feel less disconnected, isolated and depressed.  Although the weather is only a part of my overall affectation, I feel better having put this down.  Maybe I’ll turn off the computer and head back into society for a spell.  There was a game of Apples to Apples going on at the Floating Patio and I sure would like to have gotten invited to play – but you know, I could have asked.  And I walked right past my friend sitting at the end of the bar, wrapped up in my mind, creating my own isolation amidst a crowd.  And the ray of sun streaming through the patio door is reminding me that I alone have control of my emotions.  And I’m choosing to leave isolated and disconnected behind so I bid you good day and am signing off.  The only communication with me today is if you see me face to face.

I could ask myself why anyone would want to search for such a thing but I know for every topic that exists in the world, there’s somebody searching for it.  The thing that gets me is the Google data mining aspect – that they keep records of every single search.  Think about this – it’s as if they are mapping human minds – a giant social project that someday could explain the inner workings of human thought.  What conclusions could someone draw about you if they had detailed data of everything you’ve ever searched for on Google – in addition to an analysis of everywhere you’ve ever been on the internet?  Would it be something you’d like to know if you were trying to sell a product – you bet it would – and my guess is we haven’t even seen the tip of the iceberg yet on how Google will profit from this data.  It will be shock and awe.

Just a humble prediction, what’s your thoughts?

Fire Otto – he’s a great guy but hey, everyone knows the deal with an autopilot – nobody’s flying the plane

Get out there and comment more.  I actually read the articles and leave intelligent comments (because I can) and they’re bringing new readers here.

To encourage new readers and comments I have installed the dofollow plugin so they get credit for their link, I further installed KeywordLuv so they can use comments to anchor text their link, and went a step further and joined CommentLuv so their last blog post will show up under their name.  The only thing I didn’t do was write a comment for them.

The to-do list also includes, cleaning up the categories, building anchor text links in archives, editing old blog posts and directory submissions.  Not much fun but hey, if I don’t do it, nothing will change.

I first learned about the nofollow attribute when I checked my strategy of signing up and submitting  internet articles to various sites such as eHow, associated content and similar sites.  In the profile pages of these sites, they let you put your blog url and you can even put your url in the article itself.  One right-click, view page source and i’m looking at a tag right before my url that says “nofollow”.  Hmmm – quick google search and there’s a lengthy discussion of the implementation of a nofollow attribute, intended to discourage spam comments.  Apparently it’s other suggested use by Google is when users submit links, to avoid association with “unknown” content, the nofollow tag is encouraged.  So basically, my efforts of trying to get some page rank by submitting content to third party sites was nil.

Bloggers have been told repeatedly that making comments on other blogs is a sound strategy for receiving page rank by back links but the nofollow tag essentially removes any page ranking criteria from the link.  Google states that the bots don’t follow the tags and apparently Yahoo disregards the tag although there’s only one search engine that I care about and that’s Google.  The traffic from other engines pales in comparison so the campaign of back linking by comment is worthless if the blog in question uses the default setting of nofollow for comments (ie WordPress).

Let’s talk a little about comment spam – I hate it and so does everyone else but the fact of the matter is that Askimet does a great job of catching it.  Since I started this blog, Askimet has caught 1,902 spam comments and I have 5,53 in my spam que.  There are no spam comments on my site unless I intentionally let them in and frankly, I’m not bothered by this issue.  According to WordPress, the nofollow attribute did nothing to stop comment spam (yet has continued to leave nofollow as the default setting.)

What I have done about this nofollow issue

Since I was completely unaware that the nofollow comment attribute was on my site I disabled it.  I believe that if you leave a comment on this site you should have a back link.  That’s the way I want it on sites I comment on.  Comments are useful in many ways – they’re user contributed content that can help by adding keywords and help to make a site feel more like a community than a one-sided conversation.  So I installed a WordPress Plugin called Dofollow.  A moment later, the “evil nofollow attribute from your comments” is removed.  Will this result in more spam comments – I don’t really care since the Askimet plugin is catching them anyway.

About Comment Etiquette

When I go to a blog and make a comment, I actually read the post and try to add something intelligent to the mix.  A comment like “Great Article!”  isn’t really a comment, is it?  Yes it may take a few more minutes to actually read and say something useful but those kinds of comments are more likely to be clicked on by other readers than an obvious spam comment for the sole purpose of back linking.  The other thing in comment etiquette that you shouldn’t use your url in the name field – a) Askimet flags that as spam so I have to override it and b) you’re already getting a link, no need to be greedy.  I sometimes let these through but I’m just going to let Askimet kill them from now on.

With that said, please feel free to comment and get a back link that might actually contribute to your overall page ranking since the nofollow tag is gone here.

What do people think when you tell them you’re a freelance writer?  Well, typically freelance anything equals unemployed.  But I have this great portfolio of my work and references from happy clients.  The market for freelance anything is fiercely competitive.  With so many millions of people unemployed today, don’t you think they’re thinking the same as you – well, hey, I can freelance.  A flood of talent on the market that was otherwise gainfully employed equals a falling rate of pay for freelance work.  How cheap are you willing to sell your stuff for?  Especially if the guy starving next door is willing to undercut you.

Today I woke up and had to look at a calendar to know what day of the week it is because in my freelance world, there’s no difference between Friday, Saturday, Sunday or Monday.  I sit in front of the computer for ten or more hours every day trying to make my daily funds necessary to keep from getting a regular job.  This amount of computer time has some weary effects like the beginning of carpal tunnel.  I have back, neck and shoulder pains constantly from the interface with a keyboard.  It’s just a hazard of the business and of course, there’s no health insurance unless you’re willing to fork out the funds for your own private insurance.

Now hey, I’m not trying to stop anyone from realizing their dreams of being their own boss.  I love it (most of the time) until tax time comes around then there’s a whole separate problem that comes from getting 1099’s like self employment tax and other considerations of self employment.

In looking at freelancing in general I think the absolute best freelance job is as an expert witness.  During my time as a lawyer, I saw these guys and gals who had the credentials to call themselves an expert at something and frankly, they could make enough money freelancing to make the hassles worthwhile.  For instance, they would take a retainer of  $2,000 to $5,000 just to begin a case which typically would involve reviewing the file and making an initial report.  Then they could command $200 an hour for deposition testimony and up to $500 an hour for trial testimony.  Who could be an expert witness?  Anyone who has significant experience (10-20 years) in a field with advanced education and professional associations could call themselves an expert witness.  Becoming an expert witness could be a great way to transition out of a long career and not get complete boredom during retirement.  Expert witnesses can pick and choose the cases they want – they can turn down cases they don’t like and they can basically charge outrageous fees with very little, if any legal exposure to themselves personally.  This I think is a freelance business that makes sense.