Lewies Blog

I began working on my Atom client to interact with blogger again. I am able to access my feeds that list the ten most recent entries that I posted on my blog. I can not get a list of other entries. I think that I have over three hundred of them, so there should be a way to access them.

After studying the Atom API on this subject, I have learned that the feed itself should contain a link with a “rel” attribute that has a value of “next”. The blogger.com Atom feeds do not contain this link.

I’m still hunting around with the hope that maybe someone can point me into a good direction on this topic.

I have been listing my blog at a ton of places all over the web. I am starting to run out of places to go. Apparently, this means that I’m left with the core of blog promotion to become famous, and that is to be mentioned by other bloggers.

In real life, I’m not a social person. This is going to take a lot of work. I don’t know if I should start replying to articles on other blogs, send trackback pings, link to blog articles through my posts, or just forget about it and let people find me.

I have a few loyal visitors that I am aware of. Kelli, Aurora, and Lisa. I got these people because I read there blogs a lot and leave comments. It appears that it may be the best way to go about getting more traffic. Unfortunately, I can’t handle a social life by corresponding with hundreds of people everyday. There must be more to this then just collaborating.

Blog Explosion had been helping me drive traffic to my site, but I don’t think that I have that many returning visitors after I stopped using the system. It seems that people were only coming to my site because they had to. Perhaps, this means that I need to find a more defined purpose for this blog that will attract visitors.

Duct Tape Wallet,
originally uploaded by lewismoten.

Aurora posted a link on her forums last month to a website that was selling duct tape wallets. I thought it was a really cool idea and so I began to work on this little project. I found another website that gave instructions on how to make duct tape wallets and I picked up a roll of duct tape at Wal-Mart that was purple. I figured I would give it to my little neice as a gift for Christmas. The wallet turned out to be pretty good! My scissors started to get gumed up pretty bad towards the end though.

I wanted to get a detailed opinion about what someone may think of my site. I found one website that does this pretty well and also gets me a little bit of exposure at The Weblog Review. They claim that you can get your site reviewed free, but there are never any open slots, so I paid them five dollars through PayPal. The cool thing is that they guarantee two reviews within five business days, or your money back.

After the weekend, and four business days, they came back with two reviews of my blog. One was pretty good and another was ok. Actually, I had started working on my blogs layout and such and addressed a few last night before I was made known about the completed reviews today. Of course, my blog is always a work in progress - whose isn’t?

Here is a portion of one of the reviews:

Lewis E. Moten III surely hit the jackpot with this blog! When I opened his blog, I observed a very nice looking blog and assumed that it may be a great look to cover up some writing disabilities but man, was I wrong!

Lots of bloggers seem to like quizes about personalities and such. I just took one that checked out my Bloginality.

Apparently, I am an INTP.

As an INTP, you are Introverted, iNtuitive, Thinking, Perceiving.

This makes your primary focus on Introverted Thinking with an Extraverted Intution.

This is defined as a NT personality, which is part of Carl Jung’s Rational (Knowledge Seeking) type, and more specifically the Architect or Thinker.

As a weblogger, you might not be as concerned about popularity, but more with the ideas and theories that you strive to understand. Because routines aren’t your strong point, you might be more likely to work on the concept of how to do a blog, but not be as excited to keep it up.

In the blogosphere I am very concerned with my popularity - so this is quite the opposite of my real-life personality.

Lost Skin,
originally uploaded by lewismoten.

On my trip to the doctors today, I took a few pictures with my cell phone. The first thing that came to mind was that we were put into a little room with guts all over the walls. Ok, it isn’t as bad as it sounds. It was just a lot of illustrations of the stomach, heart, nervouse system, lunngs and all of that. Fortunately, there was also a painting that wasn’t showing us our internal organs.

Ever since I started my studies of the craft and astronomy, I have known that my element is Air. When I first met my wife, she claimed that I was Water, like her. Today, when I brought this up, she is accepting of my claim to Air. She went on to say that together we make rain. She loves the rain, that I know without a doubt.

Anyway, I took an online quiz and sure enough, it came back with Air.

Your Element Is Air

You dislike conflict, and you’ve been able to rise above the angst of the world. And when things don’t go your way, you know they’ll blow over quickly. Easygoing, you tend to find joy from the simple things in life. You roll with the punches, and as a result, your life is light and cheerful. You find it easy to adapt to most situations, and you’re an open person. With you, what you see is what you get… and people love that!

I took off work to go see my doctor. I showed him the test results that I got back from LA Weight Loss. He said that I was apparently doing the rite thing because everything seems to have improved. Most noticeable was the cholesterol. He said not to worry about the good cholesterol being so low because it is usually a genetic problem. I got a prescription for a blood test for more accurate results. Angel lost a lot of weight as well.

After the doctors, she and I headed over to Wal-Mart go get a head band and a Lion King coloring book. She looked at some shawls but didn’t like the color choice of red or black (or was it the size?). I found one in another part of the store near the dressing room that was purple and she got it. I also got her two belts. We couldn’t find any descent lion king coloring books, but she found something else. I picked up some purple duck tape for a little project that I’m going to work on for my niece.

Everything came to about sixty dollars and I wrote out a check. The check got caught in the machines feed and the woman didn’t know how to fix it. After about five minutes, another woman who had come over was able to just open up the bottom of the machine and pull the check out. She left and the cashier tried to run the check through again. The machine would start complaining that it couldn’t read the check. This went on for about ten minutes and the other lady had to come over again. Finally the machine worked properly and we were on our way home.

My sister in-law asked me later how I got money since I was broke. I mentioned that I just signed a check and that the banks wouldn’t start processing it today since it was after two pm. She then asked me to go out to get some cat liter and milk. I went out and figured I would pay with what little cash I had to avoid the problems I had earlier. I also picked up a pair of scissors for my duck tape project.

I’m out of fruit and vegetables as far as my diet goes, and I’m getting low on protein. Payday is so close. I was supposed to go to the LA Weight Loss center, but I really wasn’t in the mood to deal with them and the LA Light problem that I ran into on Monday.

I didn’t get to sleep at a decent hour last night. Today has just been a really bum day. I woke up around nine and went back to sleep until about one thirty in the afternoon. I haven’t been feeling emotionally well after an hour of emotionally negative attacks last night.

Angel has depression, anxiety, and multiple personality disorder (MPD). The last of the three is something that I have known about since day one. She can switch between being different people on the fly. Sometimes it seems that she is a cross between two. I think this has to do with her improving condition in that they are somewhat merging into one person.

I have accepted her MPD and tried to be understanding. However, I try to treat her as a normal person. This gets me into problems. It may sometimes appear that I do not acknowledge her condition. The problem is that I actually can’t tell, or that I am just not a very observant person. Even when I am observant, I would have to give a few guesses before I can tell her who I think she is. She has names for each personality (or most of them).

So with these three conditions, sometimes we misread each other. Actually, it is very hard for her to read me because I always close up when I hear things I don’t like. I’m an emotional clam. I’m actually not good with emotions at all. I can’t express myself. I am very open minded, but I live inside my head. I’m a loner in a way. I’m also suffer from depression.

We are so much as opposites that this is probably why we are still together. No matter what has happened before, we are still together. We haven’t given up on each other, but we have done a lot of emotional damage. I’ve had good times and bad. I just hope she still sticks with me for a long time.

A walk through the park,
originally uploaded by lewismoten.

I took a walk over to another office building to get some lunch today. My office building is in fairview park. The place looks like a park. I love how the shadows add detail to the images.