Happy Halloween!

I had to pick a free tshirt that correlated with my red devilish hair for the day! And no, this is not what I’m wearing tonight – you’ll have to wait and see pics from then…

Anyhoo, today’s featured t-shirt is from GenieKnows.com, a vertical search engine specializing in…

Games – Find downloads, cheats, articles, recommendations, blogs, communities, competitions, contests & more!
Local – Navigate like a local with the only search engine that helps you find what you’re looking for around town & online with interactive maps and neighborhood lookup.
Health – Get focused search engine results for health topics from conditions and treatments, to research and articles, to news and blogs.

Their sale staff has called and emailed me several times to join their advertiser and/or publisher programs.  I applied for a “Publishing Solutions” account, but I am waiting to ”be reviewed by a GenieKnows representative who will contact me regarding my application.”

I hope they aren’t like the CPA networks that call and leave a message (cuz I don’t answer 99% of the calls on my work phone) that want to know how I’m going to promote them, blah blah blah before they will approve my application.  Um, you asked me to apply.  Now you’re asking me why I applied?  </rant>

Anyway, if/when they approve my publisher account, I’ll test it out in terms of if it is profitable to promote as well as if I think it’s a place I’d want to advertise as well.  Thanks for the shirt!

I was just catching up on Twitter (do you follow me yet?) and read Darren Rowse’s tweet about BlogRush shutting down.  What?!  I knew nothing about this and swear I just saw the widgets on my sites.  I immediately clicked on this blog and saw an empty space in the sidebar. So I clicked on over to BlogRush.com to read John Reese’s notice that BlogRush is now indeed dead.  It was exactly six months ago that I recommended BlogRush as it sounded like an interesting concept to filter traffic between blogs. I can’t say I received an increase in traffic from it, and obviously it wasn’t fruitful for others either.

So, it’s time to move on to bigger and better things (and fill up the empty space in my sidebar) -  I’m giving Jim Kukral’s ScratchBack TopSpot widgets a try. Please hold as it says it only takes thirty seconds to sign up…

Okay, that was quick and painless.  I had to rearrange my sidebar to get it the TopSpots widget to fit, but I think it will work.  There were 16 style choices.  Although Style C would have been my first choice for this particular site, I went with Style F to fit the sidebar better.  I could have picked the “Tip me, & I’ll Get NAKED!” style, but you already have to put up with me in my pajamas, and I didn’t want to scare off any more visitors.

I decided to only add 5 spots to start with because if nobody “tips” me, I think I’ll look like less of a loser only having five empty spots available as compared to 10 or 20.  If, I mean when, (think positive, think positive) I sell 5 spots, I’ll open it up to 10 and so on.  Look right. Look right —>

So there you have it.  It’s only $5 to get a “Top Spot” (you get to specify URL, anchor text and mouseover message) which is cheaper than buying me a drink in most places (although locally I can get my Rootbeer Schnapps with Diet Coke for only $2.25). They say money can’t buy happiness, but it sure can rent it for awhile.

Okay, gotta watch Sarah Silverman on Jay Leno. I love her The Great Schlep Video and her Matt Damon video. She’s another one of my girl crushes (right behind Justine Ezarik and Melissa Salas).  G’Nite!

I originally went to college to be a commercial artist.  And well, you can see where that got me.  I never got into computer graphic art (I’m definitely no Jen Goode).  I have to bribe my brother for logos and such after I free-hand sketch them out.

It seems I’ve always been obsessed with creating collages, as you can see from this 80’s era poster* to these shoe pictures I created. So I had an idea when I was building my new house that I wanted to completely cover (aka wallpaper) one of the walls in my office with business cards from people I’ve met.  Well, I’ve been in my house over two years now and just decided to start on my “wall of names”. 

Last night, I started glue-sticking (is that a word?) my collection of business cards to poster boards (as if I had nothing better to do) and plan to cover them with shellac of some sort before tacking them to the wall.  The award for the most business cards from different companies goes to Brook Schaaf.  Funny to see how people have changed companies and focuses over the years.  Some people even fell off the face of the earth.

This sample pic doesn’t do the project justice, it really is cool.  I ran out of posterboard and glue sticks, so hopefully it won’t take me another two years to start working on it again.  Stay tuned.

*If you like that 80’s creation of mine, you’ll love my painted Zena jeans.