property values in my neighborhood

Pic clicks to site

Major recon and salvage started on that this last weekend. That forum was rescued by fans when the original Lexx.com sold off. I sat in on that auction, it sold for $8000 something. This is what that domain is worth now, according to GoDaddy. Which is sad because the pointer is being completely wasted.

That got me curious about my own dotcoms. What is Lexxperience worth? Well, it depends on who you check with. GoDaddy says this.

Valuemydomain begs to differ.

Statchest says this. Yowza. I guess it depends on what part of the world you're in or something.

So I got to wondering about Pinky blog. Valuemydomain says it's not worth very much.

Statchest has a little more faith in me.

GoDaddy says they're nuts. Pinky blog is cool, like the Fonz.

So what about my Janika dotcom? It just sits there, right. I mean, I never do anything with it, it's just a place holder for later, blahblah. *FALLS OUT OF CHAIR* I had popped over to freevaluator to see how that looks. Surely that can't be right.

Valuemydomain said that was a pile of crap but I still kinda stared at that again.

And then statchest just blew me completely away. HOW???

GoDaddy told me to calm back down, lol.

So depending on where you check, Lexxperience isn't doing too bad, and JanikaBanks is kinda hot. I wanted to keep checking but most of those sites stop you at 3 and then require either a login or buying premium to see more. Guess I'd better get on the new analytics property settings. Pretty sure setting all those as verified properties with google IDs is what made them worth anything, and I'm guessing WordPress is what made Janika more valuable. Funny that Blogger isn't more valuable... lol. I should move all my Lexx stuff to WordPress just in case something really big changes.

Always something. I really do need office staff.

Quietly not pointing straight out that I'm worth more than Lexx....

let it blow

This is why I'd like to have staff. It just eats too much of my time.

click for a ridiculously wordy tutorial and reasons why it's a supposedly a good idea

And that is exactly why I'm not fond of WordPress. The sheer amount of work it takes to actually set it up correctly in the first place is dumb. I've got what, 5 WP accounts now? I've never downloaded ANYTHING. Nada. I blog just fine, got 2 domains just fine, and yeah it looks sloppy and unprofessional like my jeans and t-shirt, but it's easy, fast, and still basically 'mine'.

What brought this up? Stupid verifying pinterest, that's what. I'm actually verified. I've got the checkmark, have had it for at least a year. They turned it off because I'm not 'famous'. #facepalm I've got gravatar verifying my stuff, G+ verifying my stuff, my Lexx on G+ actually has a checkmark thanks to Xanga, but WordPress and pinterest are like oil and water now. 'WordPress' is no longer considered professional enough for pinterest (which started off with loads of incredulity itself). If you wanna be business savvy enough for pinterest now, you've gotta self-host.

I know a guy who let his site sit completely dormant and empty for two years because he was waiting for a team to help him properly and professionally set up his coding. I know he had to pay money like I did to keep that site, but I didn't let mine sit empty. I started salvaging and repairing the shreds asap and loaded public backup over to new blogs just in case. I WORKED. ~~HARD~~. Not saying anything against biding time, more like get outa my frickin way and let. me. WORK.

I've been made fun of (rolling my eyes) by another person who has not only let sites sit around doing nothing but point, but paid tons of money to do it. And for what? Again, no hard feelings, but while other people sit around waiting for some idea of 'professional' to happen, I'm mangling lappy and stomping it flat in between cups of coffee. IF I WAIT I'LL DIE. Does no one else have a sense of urgency?

All the fancy blog stuff is like paint detailing a car and thinking that makes your content more special.

This is more my style.

Done now?

It's so tempting to go back to the real basics and make it all look like geocities super crap because THAT was magical. Yeah, like this guy. I'm in heaven, he's even got the crappy electronic music.

My Yablo's House used to be kind of like that, only it was on AOL Hometown. By the way, I'm split shifting runs into town today. This post is sort of like quality control on the job. Every little bit you gotta let the employees blow off some steam with a potluck or monthly birthday cake or something.

Why Doctor Who fans are on the leading edge of world cookie sync

The 'new' EU cookie thing. If you're an American diary blogger and still don't know this, time to catch up.

In the blogger user overview.

In your WordPress widget selections.

What is this about?

Why Your Site is Now Illegal in Europe

UK 'cookie law' takes effect: What you need to know

I've crawled all over my blogs for three years and just now noticed these, and the only reason I noticed was because I created a new domain the other day and there it was. So now most of my blogs have a little strip running across when my pages open up. This is the WordPress disclaimer. It also contains an 'accept and close' button.

This is what WordPress says about it.

EU Cookie Law Complience Message

This is blogger's disclaimer, pops up on the top of the page for viewers outside the U.S.

This is what Blogger says about it.

Cookies notification in European Union countries

Since I use Google analytics, I'm probably more likely to get noticed for not having a cookie disclaimer up, even though I don't monetize.

To review:
What to do about the new EU cookie law

I've said in several places that we're going through growing pains until all the internet eventually syncs up. Whining about this won't stop it or even slow it down. Readers have the right to privacy, and using cookie disclaimers allows them an opt out. (I love lurkers.)

click me >=D heh heh

The reason this came up today is because a reader in Australia let me know on twitter that this page looks blank now since I put the disclaimer up. I gave Google feedback on that, hopefully it's nothing they can't quickly fix. :edit: Nevermind, it was blocked at work, lol. You guys surfing my blog at work- I love you.

Americans don't like being told what to do, but consider that one day all our pages will go blank to outside readers unless we keep up with the rest of the world. Ignorance isn't bliss. I've played around in fandoms for a long time, and fandoms are probably on the leading edge of world sync, even ahead of business. Fans find ways to get and share real time info like no one else in the world, and entertainment is trying to catch up with that. Live tweeting the Day of the Doctor with Doctor Who fans from all over the world was pretty awesome. This is what cookies is all about, guys. San Diego Comic Con is another example of real time world sync that depends heavily on cookies.

And now let's get our teeth into what's still coming. This may become the gold standard.
Massachusetts Law about Internet and Online Privacy
Understanding The New Massachusetts Data Protection Law

This is why I don't opt out.
EU Cookie Law Could Be the Death of Digital
"If you opt out, the next time you go to Netflix, you won't receive any movie recommendations because Netflix won't remember what you've watched in the past. Amazon's famed 1-Click experience will have to be replaced by 15 clicks. Ratings and reviews will cease to exist, effectively silencing the critic in all of us. Google searches will give you results for the wrong city."

Those of you who already know all this stuff, fine, you're on it. Put a gold star on your forehead. This post was for us regular people grinding through coffeejobdaycareschoolcollege and dragging back in our doors to watch a little TV before we collapse back into bed.

when blogging gets real- go hard or go home

A couple of you subbed to my work blog may have accidentally gotten a sneak preview yesterday of a section I was working on before I realized it was no longer a private draft.  Just keeping you on your toes.

I got it pulled back so fast, though, that you might've felt the earth roll back a few seconds and suddenly got deja vu.

You didn't see me like this while I moved space and time.

So heads up, those of you who work on WordPress- draft mode will go live and send out to all your connected network and subs if you're not paying attention to how you update/publish. A nice pop up asking if I really wanted my draft to be published now would have been sweet.

By the way, blogger enthusiasts, got a heads up from my wireless tech support that Google has decided to shut down their Google Apps platform and will do a data purge this summer, plus this quote- "We will also be providing instructions for how to export other data that you may have stored in your Google account (such as calendars, Picasa image albums, documents and YouTube videos)."

Scream sports.

rounding up the Sunday brain cell posse

Yesterday was a very burrito day. Her first beeline was straight to grampa.

After a big breakfast of pancake and banana and egg she helped her mama sort her old clothes and put them in the ebay store. I can already see a natural knack for retail because she just loves being busy.

The road trip to see Great-Granny next door was fun! Grampa found her mama's old wagon in the basement, yay!

Of course, on a day like yesterday you have to go buy punkins, and she came home with an apple as big as her tummy.

Things got a little crazy after that. I am now the proud owner of Pumpkin Art.

I wasn't surprised when burrito and grampa both conked out for a couple of hours, they got pretty worn out. Not sure if she'll be back today for football, but after the brainwashing we've done in the past switching her out to a Moss jersey, that's probably our fault.

Oops, this turned into Burrito blog. Better turn it back into Pinky blog. 

Pinky is halfway through prednisone taper. I'm usually pretty crabby with it by now, but either I'm handling it better or I just needed it that badly. Yesterday I got the blood pressure drop that sometimes comes with it, so I had to skip my blood pressure pill and monitor. My fasting glucose has been wonderful, but rises with a vengeance through the day because prednisone forces the liver to dump all the backup emergency stores every time you take a dose, so all it takes is 5 carbs to keep me around 180 all day, which is pretty ridiculous. I made the mistake of cutting a small carrot into my caramelized brussels sprouts and onions yesterday, won't be doing that again. Since I don't control with meds, I can tell exactly where the high blood sugar headaches come from, and they suck. And since I'm severely restricted to only one pain pill a day, I can't go around popping pills for mistakes like that. By the way, yes, carrots = donut to an untreated diabetic. Not all veggies are 'healthy' all the time.

On the other hand, I've had remarkable clarity since this all started. The brain fog I've lived with for YEARS has been nearly nonexistent this week. No idea if that's thanks to the prednisone or thanks to getting off wheat. I'm discovering that wheat intolerance is sometimes associated with brain fog and even mental illness, yowza. I don't think that's my original cause, because onset in 2004 came with a viral infection that hit my neurosystem, but it seems to be becoming part of my ongoing healing now. The intolerances I've developed since another severe viral infection in 2007 directly impact all my systems, including my brain function, so I'm really not surprised to be running into other people noticing stuff like this, too.

At any rate, I'm getting a very pleasantly surprising amount of work done lately, huzzah! I'm playing musical chairs with deadlines, have some decisions to make by Halloween about directions for the rest of the year. The blog moves HAVE to be done by then, the continuing investment must be sorted out, and *then* it's back to getting the first book off the ground. I can't take this annual Xanga shredding.

Advice to writers- if you are literally writing blogs in order to publish, omg back them up continually on a disk or something. I'm very seriously not joking about having written probably 2 million words in the last few years. All of it is raw and unedited, and none of it was backed up on anything else but a blog host that suddenly nearly went *poof*. The only thing that stopped it all from disappearing was the opportunity for heavy investment. Lesson learned. I will never again assume any other blog host won't nosedive any second, not even wordpress.

Today needs a plan. Looks like lunch will be bbq pork steaks, baked beans, and cheesy broccoli. The apple pie is nearly wiped out, so maybe I'll make autumn cupcakes for Scott to take to work tomorrow. Need to keep an eye on my team this week, had reached the point of 21% underdogs before I started fixing on Thursday, egads. I am currently 8th in the standings and as of this moment my week 3 matchup still looks pretty dismal.

It's nearly 5:30 a.m. now, the day's a-wastin'! This post got pretty long.

embracing iframes

Still in high gear, but I can tell I am perilously close to brain crash. Last day on high prednisone dose and managing my blood sugar very well, huzzah! The weird vertigo is gone after two months, so nice side effects happening. I'm sure my ears had swimming pools in them.

Noticing my android won't show embedded youtubes from my blogger posts. I had the same problem with Xanga when they first went mobile, and since the sweeping rewrite, lost original vid embeds anyway. I've been playing around with mobile youtube viewing versus different browser interfaces on my laptop, and all I can say is if you haven't gotten Chrome or Torch yet on whatever desktops you use, sorry but I've gotta march into the future. I may as well stop this juggling and commit to iframes now, because there is no other way I can view youtubes on my phone through blogger, which is odd because Google (which parents both youtube and blogger) strongly supports android interface, which blogger's built in video editor stymies. I tried for a couple of years to accommodate the variety of technologies I see coming in on my stats across all my blog experiments (wordpress is the best for allowing multiple device interface viewing), but until I get actual feedback in comments requesting fixits, I just have no idea what other people can see or not on their iphones, tablets, and laptops. This is what I can see on my end since I created this blog yesterday.

The device stats I get back through the stat counters installed on my Xanga blogs last spring are more detailed, so I've learned a lot about incoming. The biggest thing I've learned is that wordpress isn't the end all beat all of world dominance, lol. I love their categories, wish blogger had that, but by far, blogger still has the most incorporation options. I can ~play~. Tumblr has pleasing options but is so load heavy that I find it a drag to keep up with. G+ and facebook are sadly deficient in organization, and myspace razed my stuff to the ground with the upgrade awhile back. I had a pretty cool myspace going. Not going to try rebuilding that, although you can still get to it by clicking on this gif. Yes, that is really Kevin Smith following me. It's just fun to say that.

Anyway, I have finally, after a whole year of resisting, decided to back a bunch of stuff up onto blogger, and have spent several very hectic days transferring and fixing, and I think this last year of blog experimentation is just about over. I'm not abandoning Xanga by a long shot, because of this.

I also love that wordpress allows automatically sharing a post to a variety other sites. Google is a little stingy getting blogger up to that kind of sharing. Hoping and praying blogger doesn't cave to all the hectic change sideswiping blog hosts left and right, because I really really wanna keep my cute little codes.

Our outside thermometer says it's 108... 

I keep walking away from this. Probly need to just hit send. Here, have a googly burrito face.