Lewies Blog

Man, I just don’t know why this is happening. Most people who are coming to my site through Google are searching for Mitch Hedberg. I’ve talked about much cooler things then this comedian.

Wait a moment - are there actually things that are cooler then him? Ok, strike that. They are coming because I am talking about one of the coolest guys on the planet man. I really wish I could have seen him with he came into D.C. recently.

Mitch reminds me of a room mate of mine that I used to live with up in Pittsburgh. He also went to the Art Institute of Pittsburgh. I was in Industrial Design Technology in the basement. I think Steve was in Visual Communications on the sixth floor. I hardly ever saw him when I was there, but he was cool with his style. He was always taking life casually and enjoying every moment of it.

I wonder how Mitch passes through life in his off time. One would think that he enjoys interesting and crazy adventures meeting with new people that you would only dream about. Although it may sound cool, I can’t imagine that all of them are amazing. My wife and her sister are always meeting with interesting and crazy people on there own adventures.

Anyway, it is getting early, so I’m going to try this sleep thing again.

I was just looking through my blogs statistics report and saw that someone had found me through Google searching for BlogAzoo. I was surprised. I plugged in the search term and saw that I was the fifth site listed. My word, how crazy is that? I’ve seen a ton of blogs write about BlogAzoo’s debut today, so how did I get that high on the list.

I now have three people signed up through my referral link for BlogAzoo. I’ll just sit back and watch those credits keep rolling in before long.

Ok, I’ve been working on little parts here and there for my little book. I’ve got some areas written out with some information to get me started. Others I just wrote a header and left it at that. I got a little over 3,000 words out tonight. That’s good work if this was just a NaNoWriMo novel. Maybe I’ll cut off at 60,000 words.

For anyone who is interested what I’m writing about, here is an outline of it.

Overblogged and Underrated 1

Blog 2

Blogging Defined 2

Pathetic cries for help 3

Templates 3

    Customizing default templates 3

    3rd party customized templates 3

    Building Templates from Scratch 3

    Tables versus Cascading Style Sheets 3

    XHTML 4

        Standardization 4

        Cleaner Code 4

        Portability 4

        Arguments 4

    Themes, Branding, and Logos 5

    Color Theory 5

        Contrasting Text 5

        Patterns 5

    80 x 15 Image Links 5

    Java Script 6

    Cascading Style Sheets 6

    User Interface 6

        Scroll Bars 6

        Cursors 6

        Fonts 6

Posts 6

    Attractive Titles 6

    Content of Posts 6

    Speed of Posts 6

    Staying on topic 6

Attracting Visitors 6

    Comments 6

    Track backs 6

Search Engines 7

    Meta Tags 7

        Title 7

        Description 7

        Keywords 8

        Additional Meta Tags 8

Directories 9

Building a Loyal Reader Base 9

    News Feeds 9

        RSS 9

        Atom 9

        Klip 9

        Digests 9

Third Party Services 9

    Loading 10

    Revenue 10

    Traffic 10

        Traffic Exchanges 10

    Statistics 10

Networking Friends 10

    FOAF 10

    XFN 10

    OPML 11

I’m starting to put together a little word document of my experiences towards building this blog. I’ve got some suggestions that I’ve put together within it for getting traffic, setting up templates, and some third party services such as statistics counters and traffic exchanges.

What I would like to do is see this document grow over time and then perhaps get a book deal going. Hey … It could happen. The document is extremely small, so I can’t do anything with it just yet, so don’t ask.

I saw some cool walpaper on the dull.name blog. It has a picture of enterprise near earth and the moon. I sent the person an email asking where they had got it. They forgot, but they were kind enough to send me a copy of it. How cool is that?

The website is pretty cool for Apple lovers. I’m checking out a few things to try out on my G3.

I’ve been seeing more odd search results from people who come from search engines to visit my blog. Apparently I’m not the only person with this problem. I was looking at Witchy Mom’s blog and found that she had similar problems. She is listed in the top 5 for “Satan’s Little Girls” and “Boob Shot“. She doesn’t know what to make of it. Should she be proud, or frightened?

I’m finding that I got 10 more hits since last night for Mitch Hedberg through Google. I also have the following additional search terms:

a series of unfortunate events blog

moon halo

robot vaccume (yea, I spelled it wrong on my blog as well)

mitch hedberg comedian

The good news is that I know of each post that these terms apply to. I think that the main problem here is that I never stick to one subject. Each post is always talking about something new … Most of the time. However, they are all related in that they are the chronicles of my life - Lewis Moten.

Maybe if I ever have kids, I can show them the blog and let them get a good understanding of who I am as a person, and not just a father. Like that would ever happen.

I was surfing blog clicker and found this Optical Illusion on American Dinosaur who had found it on Knowledge Is Power who found it at Strange Cosmos.

Take a good look. The image is not actually moving. It is all in your head.

Optical Illusion

Sometimes I get really desperate to get my sister in-law out of the house on her own. I’ll start looking at many work-at-home programs and get rich quick schemes. Most that I look at are just total junk. Actually - they are all junk. But I look anyway.

Last week, I heard about a program advertised on XM Radio. This guy, Buce Berman, was offering a free kit. All I would have to do is go to the website for more details.

The website was filled with videos that would play each step of the way while reading up on the program and filling out the form. In the end, it cost me a little under $3.95 for shipping and handling.

Today, I got a package. I fell asleep before I opened it and dreamt that I did open it. I dreamt that it was just a catalog of purchasing gold pieces and coins. The prices were up there and this was not going to work out.

Later in the day, Mom called and asked me what was in the package that she saw when she came over earlier. I told her that it was just one of those get-rich-quick schemes. I looked on my desk and couldn’t find the book of coins. I looked over at the package and it was unopened. This was totally weird.

I opened the package and saw the following:

• Book - I got here. You can too!
• Flyer - The Berman Differential
• CD - Making Money with Bruce A. Berman
• Software Collection
  • Business Planning and Money Raising
  • Funding Sources Guide
  • Hundreds of Instant Business Forms
  • Incorporation & Maintenance

At this point, I have skimmed through parts of the book and found that it takes a common sense approach to everything. I’ll have to actually sit down and look at it so that I can really determine if it is just a scam, a lost cause, or something that is actually doable. I have my doubts.

The cool thing - the book costs $25 on Amazon.com. The bad, bad news … If I keep the CD’s, I will be billed an additional $99.90. This really gets on my nerves. This wasn’t stated anywhere on the website. I’m going to have to pay some money just to ship these CD’s back. What a rip off.

This is pretty cool. I now have two people that have signed up through me to get an account on BlogAzoo. As they surf pages, I’m getting free credits for doing nothing! I didn’t have this happening to me with other programs. I’ll take the traffic any way it comes - especially if it is free.

I have been surfing the BlogAzoo traffic exchange service for a while today. It reports that I’ve read 49 blogs. I think they need another statistic that states how many unique blogs I have read. I continue to see many of the blogs over and over again.

These guys say that they have over 300 members signed up. I believe them because I referred a member with an ID of 304 this morning. I guess the problem could be due to a number of reasons:

It’s only day one, so I’ll give these guys a chance. Everything else about the service is great. For now, I’ll have to wait until some more members start showing up in the queue.