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Let’s Hook Up!

If you are any one of these social networks, feel free to look me up and add me to your network or favorite me, whichever the case may be. If you see some here that you aren’t using yet, I’ve given a really quick synopsis of what they are and why you’d use them.


View blog authority

Technorati–probably the biggest blog directory and networking site.
My username there is ‘beefstooge’. I have a couple of active blogs listed there (including this one) and a couple of projects that are in the works. On Technorati, you “favorite” other blogs. They also have some great widgets you can use on your blog.


Digg!
Digg
I call this a social news filter. People nominate, or “Digg”, stories they like, and if other people like them they can Digg them as well, increasing the value of the story. Posts with high Digg counts are considered important and get displayed on the front page. Sort of a free market for the news. My name there is, you guessed it, ‘sadcox’. If you blog about something that is popular with Digg readers, be sure to submit it. This will result in a steady stream of traffic for some time to come.

Del.icio.us
I use del.icio.us as my primary bookmarking mechanism. Unlike bookmarking in your browswer, you can tag a bookmark into as many categories as you like. The other advantage is that you can reach them from anywhere, not just your computer. You are also able to tag stories for other people in your network. Read something you think I may like? Tag it as for:sadcox, and I’ll be sure to read it.

StumbleUpon Sadcox.StumbleUpon.com
Stumbleupon is just plain fun, but also a great way to drive traffic to your site. Using their browser toolbar, you can “stumble” onto great sites that other people have liked (you can choose to stumble only your friends’ favorites as well). For site owners, loads of traffic can result from a good stumble. My Stumbleupon address is sadcox.stumbleupon.com.

Twitter
My username there is ‘sadcox’. This one is great for quick-hit ideas or “tweeting” live events like debates, ball games, etc.

Blog Catalog–Blogger’s network and directory.
My username there is ‘sadcox’. Connect with other bloggers, build your network, and get widgets to display on your site.

MyBlogLog–Blogger’s network and directory
My username there is ‘sadcox’. Very similar to BlogCatalog. They were recently acquired by Yahoo!, so you can use your Yahoo! account to sign up.

There are countless other networking sites out there, but these are some of the bigger ones for bloggers and surfers. If there’s one I missed that you want to hook up on, let me know.

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Why Are Public Schools All or Nothing?

A friend at work home schooled his daughter up until high school, and one of the reasons he mentioned for sending her to public school this year was that she wanted to be involved in the band. That got me thinking. He pays taxes just like everyone else in the county. Why does his daughter have to accept an entire education that is inferior to the one he can provide her at home just to participate in band?

Then I really started thinking. Why can’t parents pick and choose which courses their children receive from public schools and omit the ones they don’t want? And isn’t disallowing a home schooled child the opportunity to take a single class that their parents don’t feel comfortable teaching them, say calculus, without enrolling in the full curriculum a denial of services afforded to all residents by the Constitution of the State?

I know the initial response to this is that state funds are tied to enrollment, but why can’t the school count students fractionally based on the number of courses (services guaranteed by the State) they use?

I’ll have more to say about this in the future, and I don’t want to jump completely off the cliff until I have time to think about it more and read a little, but this sounds like a reasonable proposition to me. In fact, I wonder if there would be grounds for a lawsuit against a county/state if a parent attempted to try something like this. I’m no lawyer, but it seems reasonable.

What do you guys think?

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We Co-Sleep, But Don’t Want to Argue About It

Over at Music City Bloggers there is a post about co-sleeping that thankfully hasn’t erupted into a full-on war over what is right and what isn’t.

We co-sleep with our four month old, and I think it’s great.  Of course, nursing, kicking, crying, grunting, cats, and trains don’t wake me up, so not a problem for me either way.  :)   The biggest advantage I’ve noticed so far is that the baby actually likes bedtime.  Hopefully this will carry over into toddlership.  The other advantage is that we get to spend as much time as possible with her while she still likes us.

However, that doesn’t make it right (or wrong).  Honestly, I don’t understand why people get so militant about this kind of stuff to begin with–breast feeding, co-sleeping, etc.  Do what works for you and your kids.  We’ll do what works for us.  It seems like most people spend their entire parenthood in survival mode, so I’m not sure what qualifies them to give advice or direction.  Or as I so tactfully put it on a message board a few years ago…

You worry about screwing up your kids, and I’ll worry about screwing up mine. 

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CyberMonday Pre-Rush Post

I’ve returned safely from the land of dialup and am back in the real world with an extra 5 or 6 pounds.

If my site is down later, don’t worry.  It’s more than likely getting slammed by CyberMonday shoppers who are getting everything here instead of one of the other 100,000,000,000,000 sites they could hit.

Honestly, I don’t quite get it.  Why Monday? I guess because everyone has a high speed connection at work?  But don’t most people who would do their Christmas shopping online have a high speed connection at home as well?

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Write It Down You Selfish Jerk!

After I posted my grandfather’s Thanksgiving thoughts last night, I spent the next few hours re-reading some other things that he wrote. I will definitely be posting more of it in the future. He was a great storyteller, and there are plenty of good stories in his memoirs.

TCH brought up something in the comments of that post that I think was pretty significant. We’ve all but lost the art of good, personal writing–letter writing was what he called it. I’m making a call right now with my small little voice that we do what we can to remedy this. If your parents and/or grandparents are still living, encourage them to chronicle the big events in their lives at a minimum, or to write an entire life story. You’ll be surprised how much entertainment and wisdom you can gain from their experiences, and you’ll probably make their day by just showing interest in their lives.

In the same vein, it’s worthwhile for all us to do the same. Blog software makes that easier than ever before (you don’t have to make the blog publicly available) but a pen and pad work just as well. I actually have everything my grandfather wrote scanned and converted to .pdfs, and it is cool to see it in his handwriting.

Some of the best stuff my grandfather wrote was about what it was like growing up in the 1920s and 1930s. It is really interesting to me because he grew up about 10 miles from where I did; yet his experiences were so different from mine. It is strange to imagine, but the way we grew up would be very foreign to the way kids are growing up today. Your personal description of the Atari 2600 or riding a bike with no helmet may actually interest someone somewhere down the line.

When I think of all the funny stories I have accumulated over the years, it is sad to think that they will all die with me. Maybe I’ll record them all, at least cleaned up versions of them, and no one will care. But maybe someone will. I should at least give them the opportunity to decide if any of it is worth the bother.

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Free Kittens (To a Good Home)

Okay, I already have feedback on my last post about the beggars outside of the supermarket. Some guys I work with read my blog (I write, they read, where’s the “work”?), and one of them brought up another case outside of grocery stores–free kittens.

The “free kittens” sign almost always includes the small print phrase “to a good home.”

What kind of home is good? Is it the kind where you don’t get your cat spayed, allow it to reproduce, then stand out in front of a store and give away the feline offspring to total strangers? Or, as my friend put it, “why do they care? By making the kittens free, they have determined that they have no value on the open market.”

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It’s All About The Process

Ken has a great post on a project his kids are working on.  They’ve researched 4th Amendment Supreme Court cases and are filming re-enactments (he hopes).  Technology has given them the opportunity to learn in a way that they couldn’t before, and even if they never get to finalizing filming and editing, he’s okay with that.  Unfortunately, others may not be as excited.

Because process doesn’t fill the seats and it surely doesn’t wow the eyes of the masses.

But it’s not about what they do with their understanding that creates the ‘wow’ factor; rather, it’s about how they reach that understanding that is the educational equivalent of CGI.

I had a ‘wow’ moment a few years ago that was very similar.  Unfortunately for me, I was 30 before I realized that the  process towards the goal is almost always more rewarding and educational than the goal itself.

Think about it.  Looking back, which did you enjoy more–graduation, or being in college?  Winning a championship in a sport, or the hard work you put into training so that you could win?  Getting the girl, or chasing her?

I’m on a tangent now.  Forget what I said, just read Ken’s entire post.

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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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What I Really Want To Do Is…

I just subscribed to an RSS feed that is work related.  There’s a ton of good information that flows through this feed, but since it’s work, I’m only looking for a certain few articles.   I dug through Google Reader a little bit to see if there was a filter option, but I couldn’t find one.

Any ideas?  Is there a way to set up keyword filters on a feed by feed basis in Google Reader?  What about on other readers?  I know that Yahoo has Pipes, and there are some others with filters, but I’m hooked on the Reader interface.

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Ron Paul in Local Press

The local (Knoxville) Ron Paul meetup group was featured in the KNS today.

I feed guilty that I have not been to a single event that the meetup group works. I really need to correct that. I’m on their mailing list and keep up, but just haven’t made it out. However, one cool thing about Dr. Paul’s campaign and his supporters is that it is grassroots, so there are many ways to contribute, one of which is writing a post or two here every now and then.

Or maybe I’m just rationalizing.