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Two Hours Late

Driving in this morning I was listening to all the school and business closings.  Several of them were running “two hours late.”  Here in the South, the slightest bit of snow or ice is enough to cause schools to open either one hour late, two hours late, or close altogether.  Basically, those are the only three options.

I was reminded of a day when I was in sixth grade and our school opened two hours late because of snow.  After we arrived, we spent at least another hour sitting in our homeroom class while the administration figured out how to schedule the rest of the day.  Not that I really minded sitting around and goofing off with my friends for an hour, but I remember wondering why they hadn’t planned for this in advance.

I mean, there were only 3 possible scenarios, and one (being closed) meant that they wouldn’t have to plan at all.

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Numerous Results and Micro Pimping

I thought I’d go ahead and address several things in one post–recent scientific polls, Christmas shopping, and my numerous (un)successful endeavors.

First Annual Backlink Drive–a resounding success. I picked up a link from it (thanks Ivy!).

Rico/Suave–by a majority of eleven to four, many more of you are “suave” than “rico”. Gerardo respects and appreciates that, and in your honor has removed his extensions and his shirt.

BlogRush update–I’ve come to the conclusion that the absolute best way to use Blogrush is to feed it a single post that you know will attract some traffic. My CTR has gone up considerably since I’ve implemented this strategy by itself. I also received a link from a PR4 site regarding my current Blogrush post. So what if the guy completely disagreed with me? I ended up with a nice link and some good traffic from his site.


Earn $$ with WidgetBucks!
Again, I’m not running Widgetbucks ads on this site, but I am running it on another one where it is outperforming Adsense. The CTR is slightly higher, and the PPC is much higher. Granted, these are somewhat targeted ads on a niche site, but it’s working pretty well.

Amazon Christmas Banner–for those of you who do your gift shopping through Amazon, please consider stopping by here first and clicking through my little banner. I’m working on a couple of product reviews for some things I’ve bought over the past year that would make good gifts.

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The Real Crisis

As I huffed, puffed, and struggled through a short run at what should be a comfortable pace in cool weather this morning, I had a little bit of an epiphany:

We don’t have a health care problem. We have a health problem.

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Top Marathoner Dies in New York

The craziest thing about this story to me is that he was only 6 miles in. As they mention in the video, autopsy results are pending. It is very scary to think that something like this can happen to a top athlete with unbelievable endurance. Scary and very sad.

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Some Shameless Pimping For WidgetBucks


Earn $$ with WidgetBucks!
I try to keep advertising to a minimum here for loyal readers by doing a few things. First of all, no ads in my RSS feed for subscribers, although there will be one at the end of this one as an example. Secondly, I only put adsense in the middle of older posts after they are archived and not very likely to be read by loyal readers. Thirdly, I try to keep ads unobtrusive (in the sidebar, end of posts) for my regular readers. Lastly, I try to keep them limited only to things I think my readers may actually be interested in.

So, mainly, I’m advertising to other bloggers. Because no one seemed interested (and it was pretty ugly), I’ve replaced the web hosting ad that was in the margin with a link to WidgetBucks (net gain of 0 ads). WidgetBucks is pay per click advertising that works pretty much like Adsense. Contextual ads show up on your site based on what you write, and you are paid for each click you receive. Just another ad network? Not really. They give you $25 just for signing up as a publisher! Also, you can get paid through PayPal, which is nice.

Honestly, ads don’t do very well on this site, but that’s okay. I have more fun with this site than any of my others that actually generate (very little) revenue. So the WidgetBucks link is not one of their ads, just an affiliate link to their site. That’s right–there’s something in it for me if you choose to go there and get $25 from them.

I’ve posted an actual WidgetBucks ad at the end of this post so you can see how it looks. I’ve been running them for a few days on a couple of my other sites, and they’ve done reasonably well, outperforming Adsense in some cases.

Oh, by the way, I’ve also added my latest del.icio.us bookmarks in the margin, if you are interested in what I’m reading outside of here.

Anyway, the ad is below (please don’t click it unless you are actually interested in what is shown). Of course, you can choose different colors, sizes, and styles.

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Chicago Marathon Controversy

Mark Draughn at Windypundit.com reports that some runners had no problem with water, while some did. If there was a shortage of water on the course, that is definitely a problem. The organizers may not have expected the temperatures in the 80s months ago, but they surely had a few extra days to prepare based on the forecast. Having said that…

I’ve run this race twice, so I can speak with a little experience. Most of what happens in a marathon is up to the runners themselves.

Too hot? Didn’t you train for 18-20 weeks for this race during the hottest months of the summer? If so, you should know your limitations in the heat, and if you push yourself beyond that, you are the one who made that decision. If you didn’t train in the heat, what were you doing the past five months that made you think you were prepared for a marathon?

Not enough water? That is definitely a problem with race organization, but again you should have trained enough to know that you can’t push yourself without hydration. I’m not sure what I would have done in that situation, but I hope it would involve slowing my pace or dropping out during the race and raising all kinds of hell afterwards. Can you say refund?

Don’t get me wrong, it is completely ridiculous to have water shortages for a race this size, and I’d be pretty upset about that if I’d paid the hefty fee to run this race, especially based on its reputation. But ultimately, you are responsible for your own health.

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New Feed Subscriptions in September

Here are all of the new sites I added to my reader in September. When I say “new” I mean new to me in most cases.

Total Diatribe
If you were impressed with Billymacs ability to consume adult beverages, you’ll be even more impressed with his ability to find nutty stuff and add cleverly biting commentary. A new blog, and I’m expecting great things from it.

Donklephant
Here’s one I can’t believe I just found. A common sense moderate political blog. I don’t mean to imply that common sense can’t be found there, but usually only as it exists on the line between Democrat and Republican. Very pragmatic, as opposed to the, uh, idealism(?) you find here.

KTownLowDown
Another new blog authored by Little Bigfoot SVD. So far a lot of the lowdown that exists there is on a personal level, but he’s running a poll right now asking what you want him to blog about. One man, one vote. If you don’t like it, you had your chance to change it!

Ideas From Free Minds
I found out about Michelle’s blog after seeing her on Tucker Carlson’s show and wrote a post about her. My only complaint is that she doesn’t post enough–there was a huge opportunity to make this blog big when she appeared on TV. I hope she takes advantage of it!

Taylor the Teacher
As Taylor states on her site, she’s a philosophical anarchist who loves to help children learn. Sometimes the public education system even helps her in this endeavor.

TED
Technology, entertainment, and design videos. You’ll agree with some, you’ll disagree with others, but they are all pretty interesting.

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A Possible Book Ban?

SomeONE apparently didn’t like a couple of paragraphs of Lee Smith’s “Fair and Tender Ladies”, and wants the book banned from Washington County Schools.

Makes sense. High school kids these days really aren’t prepared for that kind of language, mostly because they’ve been failed by our school systems. Back in my day, we could to hande the “F” word and anything else a book could fire our way because we’d already learned all about that stuff in middle school–on the bus.

Seriously, be glad if your high schooler is reading a book at all. Didn’t book banning go out of style some time in the 70s or 80s? Weren’t all of these kids running around named Holden and Pheobe named so in commemoration of its death?

via Michael Silence

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Overheard at the Hospital

I just returned to the hospital from running a couple of errands, and I came in through the cafeteria entrance, which has a nice outdoor dining area. There was a group of people unpacking their cooler (white bread, baloney, mayonnaise, and Lay’s potato chips) and I overhead the following statement:

“He’s got four warrants out, owes $14,000 in back child support, and he ain’t even lookin’ for a job.”

That’s funny.

Have you ever noticed that most of the people at the hospital look really unhealthy? I don’t mean the people that are in the hospital, I mean the people visiting. There are tons of overweight people (haha), and most of them are standing outside smoking. I’m not talking about heavy people–I could lose a few pounds myself. I’m talking about really obese people puffing away. It makes you wonder if the people they are there to visit are there mostly because they share a similar lifestyle.


Worse than the friends and family doing this outside are the nurses.

Is this what our money would go to support with nationalized health care? It’s no more fair for them to chip in and pay for my knee surgery because I chose to play a collision sport with a bunch of 20 year old kids than it is for me to chip in to pay for their health problems due to their lifestyle.

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This Week on The Dukes of Newport

Revenuers come to Hazzard, err, Newport to investige a mini-casino, cock fighting, and moonshine production that is all being orchestrated by Boss Hogg under the protection of the ultimate dirty cop–Roscoe P. Coaltrain.

Of course, Boss Hogg and Roscoe try to pin it all on Bo and Luke. Enos, a pawn in their game, is forced to arrest the Duke boys. Luckily, Uncle Jesse and Cooter are able to give Daisy a ride to the jail, where she is able to distract Enos. This gives Bo and Luke just enough time to get Flash to bring them the keys to the jail, climb into the General Lee, jump a creek where the bridge is out, beat up Boss’s cronies and turn them over to the revenuers and the state police from Capital City.

Of course, Boss Hogg denies all knowledge of the vice operations, and gives all of the money confiscated to the Cocke County orphanage. Then everyone gathers down at the Boar’s Nest, where Loretta Lynn sings one song in exchange for having a bogus speeding ticket ripped up.

Sometimes I scratch my head and wonder why everyone thinks we are all stupid rednecks.

***UPDATE***
They also shot some arrows with dynamite taped to them. The Duke boys aren’t allowed to have guns because of previous convictions for running shine, so they are forced to use dyanamite instead.