Campbell Cuts. Did you vote for this??

People who honestly voted Liberal in the last election must have a hard time holding their heads up in this province. As we are getting ready to host the Olympics for the world, lavishly spending on billion dollar highways to playgrounds for the rich, famous and elite, the poor, seniors, those with mental and physical disabilities, people with AIDS/HIV, students, schools, non-profit organizations, arts and culture, social housing...all of us are getting ripped off and impoverished.

Terrible cuts in funding from gaming revenues which were promised to us when government approved gambling was first set up are eviscerating community services all over the province. Check out this website, www.campbellcuts.com to view the list of cuts, look at some great cartoons and read some terrific political satire. Go to the protest page and sign up with some fine organizations to let your voice be heard. Send feedback to the authors, who will be blogging shortly as input arrives by email!

Conservatives extend poll lead over Liberals. Who are you people?

Who ARE you people anyway??? You change your minds as often as you change your underpants about who you would vote for. Based on WHAT? The CBC says that more people will vote Conservative and in fact the Conservatives would end up with a clear majority were an election called for today. This is based on the fact that the Prime Minister has been traveling internationally and the fact that last weekend he showed up at a convention to play the piano and sing "Let it Be."

As for the first, no one voted for me to be prime minister last time I traveled abroad. What's with that? It is part of his job. And as for singing a Beatles' song, it is a damn good thing that Paul McCartney isn't dead because otherwise he would be spinning in his grave.

It is shocking that so many Canadians based their political choice on the nice blue sweater the Prime Minister wore before the last election. What were you thinking? That he looked warm and fuzzy? That you would actually hug him? Eeeeeew. Failing that, would you buy his CD featuring cover songs and his imaginative piano stylings? What has any of this got to do with running a country?

This is the government that is disemboweling the CBC, extended our tour of duty in Afghanistan, who is doing absolutely nothing about the wipe out of the wild pacific salmon, is instituting climate change program cuts, cutting aid to farmers, I could go on for ever.

People should be basing their political choices on policy, not on parlour tricks and fashion shows. Some days I despair.

The traitor within the gates

At the supermarket, I parked beside a large black SUV which had a decal on its window that said "This vehicle protected by THE CLUB." The club is a metal bar that attaches to the steering wheel, making it impossible to turn. I looked inside the car. No club. I felt like robbing the damn car myself, just out of spite. Protected? I'll show you protected, buddy.

Then it occurred to me the number of times I leave my house without setting the alarm. I pay for the stupid thing, there are signs outside my house saying "This house protected by Blah Blah Alarm System." I even get a cut rate on my house insurance because I have it. But when I run to the store for milk, do I ALWAYS turn it on? Well, now I do.

I can extrapolate this further to the rest of my life. The times when I say I am doing one thing and I do not do it to my own detriment. As in,
“Yes, I often go for brisk walks for at least a half an hour.”
“Yes, I have cut down on eating bread and cheese and I am eating way more vegetables.”
“Yes, I am up at the crack of dawn every day, seated at my computer working by 8:30 on the dot.”
“Yes, I am washing my hands 18 times a day to help prevent the spread of swine flu.”

Sigh.

I call this the "Traitor Within the Gates Syndrome." Opening the postern gate so that the Visigoths can get into the city.

Now. Let’s look at your website. If you have forms, do they have a captcha? Are they in php? If not, why not? Your email address. Are you using the old fashioned mailto: tag? If so, get your email address encrypted at once. When you surf the net, do you have McAfee Site Advisor to tell you which sites are “Code Red?” If not, it is free. Get it at immediately. http://www.siteadvisor.com/

Time for us to stop being traitors to ourselves personally and professionally. I don’t want to be skulking around the back door anymore. I want to be at the top of the wall with one of those cool pointy helmets with the nose covering thing and a big honkin’ bow, screaming defiance.

This is my second anniversary of not smoking.

After smoking for 40 years, I quit and have not had so much as one puff for two years. I still have friends who are smokers. My daughter still smokes. I am around people who smoke all the time. But I never want one. I never dream about it anymore (for the first few months I would awake in the morning absolutely horrified after dreaming that I had smoked again). 

I have a little Firefox add-on called Quitomzilla that keeps track of how many cigarettes I have not smoked. As of today, I have not smoked 14,633 cigarettes and I have saved about $6,000. When I did the math, I figured that over my life, I have smoked over a quarter million cigarettes- almost 300,000 actually. And I am still standing. What a miracle

I was told that George Harrison quit smoking a month before he died, and he was glad to "not be a slave." I feel the same way and I thank the goddess every day that I am luckier than George was.  

I am so grateful to the people at Alan Carr Easy Way to Quit Smoking who supported me throughout the process. I would never have made it without them.

Kids build web sites don't they?

I have just been through an excruciating process with an ex-potential customer who thinks he knows best. He thinks that a one page website on Tripod will do the trick. Even though he is headed out next week for 6 months in the Philippines, he is shocked and appalled that web sites cost more than about $50. After all, "Kids build websites don't they?"

Tim Knox in his article "Why You Need a Website" says "It's actually better to have no website at all than to have one that makes your business look bad. Your site speaks volumes about your business. It either says, "Hey, look, we take our business so seriously that we have created this wonderful site for our customers!" or it screams, "Hey, look, I let my 10-year-old nephew design my site. Good luck finding anything!"

And this would have been a hard slog anyway. He wants to share his book of very bad poetry in the hopes that someone will send him a cheque and actually BUY the book they can download for free.

Here is a small sample, I would not torture you by giving you more.

"Thinking of you
In so many ways
Really helps to
Brighten my days"

Excuse me for a moment while I study Grey's Anatomy. I will be removing my own appendix next week. Since doctors are getting younger every day, how hard can it be?

Learning more about blogging

I took a survey that took far too long through Technorati today. In fact after a half an hour, when I STILL hadn't finished it, I thought, "This is ridiculous," and just closed the window.

But the questions set me thinking. The poll asked how I was promoting my blog. Did I register it with Google? Huh? You can register it with Google? Who knew? So I did, even though it is actually DMOZ and my website design site is already there. You sign up under Computers: Internet: Web Design and Development: Weblogs


Then it asked me had I attached my blog to Twitter. Huh? You can do that? I went to Twitterfeed.com and created an account and managed to figure out how to link my blogs to Twitter. This ought to be interesting. I presently have 29 followers, most of whom are complete strangers to me. And the other thing is that the least frequent amount of time you can choose for Twitter to check your blog is once every 24 hours.

Hell, even people who love me don't want to hear from me every 24 hours. AND I am supposed to come up with new, original thoughts every 24 hours? The pressure is killing me and I haven't even started!

So I will be blogging more frequently, but I have decided not to stick to web sites and web design. I am going to range far afield. My next blog will be about something completely unrelated. Like how come I used to hate my daughter's boyfriend. That ought to be a good one.

The simplest things you can do to improve your web site

Have you taken the time to put yourself on Google Maps? Go to Google Maps. Select your default location. You will see a link to "Put Your Business on Google Maps." If you have an account, sign in and just do it. If you don't have a (free) account, create one and just do it. It will take you five minutes or less and local people will be able to see you instantly.

The next thing you can do will take you maybe 10 or 15 minutes a week. Or every 2 weeks, just do it on a regular basis. Find a forum that concerns your business. Hats? Construction? Life Skills? Whatever. Join the forum. Regularly add useful information to the discussion. Forums allow you to create a profile and a link to your website next to your name. Be a part of your business community and build inbound links.

What about a blog? Easy as pie to set up and attach to your site. If you can’t do it, your webmaster should have done it by now. Again, regularity is important. Write something. Write anything that is useful about your business. Trends or new products or improvements to old products. Ideas you have to improve on old services. Make it real and make it useful and helpful. Every time the browser bots come by they will think, “Hey, new and interesting content! Let’s up the page rank for this one!”

There are quite a few directories that will accept links for free to your website. www.dmoz.com and www.jayde.com are two. Find your section, sign yourself up. Directories are not as important as they used to be, but every big in-bound link helps. Do not do reciprocal links to your friends and pals if they are not in the same business as you are. If you have a medical advice website, keep your links to medical resources and information. Having a link to your buddy’s motel down the road will do you no good and in fact, maybe the opposite. At the very least, it will make your site appear unprofessional.

McAffee Site Advisor is used by millions of people all over the world. If your site has not been checked, it will show a gray bar at the bottom of their browser. If you have been checked and you are "good" it will show green to go! If you are a bad person, it will show red or yellow and people will avoid your site like the plague. It is free. Sign up or get your webmaster to do it for you. http://www.siteadvisor.com

Do you have a Facebook Page? Do you Twitter? Myspace? Social marketing is here. I am not suggesting you spend hours and hours to the point where your business suffers, but a little effort can yield big results. Don’t lose out on opportunity just because you don’t understand it or don’t have the time. Hire someone who does. Give that person clear direction and let her or him do what they know the best.

Good luck in your future business!!

When do I have the time to do it all?

Write a blog. What the hell is blogging? Why do it? Does anyone really read it? Nope, not so far.

Keep up with Facebook. What is Facebook? What does it really DO? Social networking, but really, it is a huge sucker of valuable time. Aren't emails enough?

Twitter. I don't get the point of Twitter. 149 characters with keywords. I have 30 people "following me." Do I care? does it DO anything?

Put fresth content on my websites. Do Wordtracker for keywords. It is NOT intuitive. Read what is coming down at WebProWorld, involve myself in a few forums. Go to the business networking meeting twice a month. Do photoshop and web site development tutorials.

Oh, and shop, cook, take care of the garden especially now when it is really hot and the vegetables are ripeing on the vine. Mow the lawn. Clean the house (hahahaha), and with any luck have some sort of marginal social life.

Oh, did I mention trying to find new work, keeping up with bookkeeping and staying on top of the 60 emails I get a day?

They say that our generation has it easy compared to our grandmothers. I am beginning to wonder. My grandmother did laundry by hand. One day a week. I do laundry three times a week AND I have to make my own living doing two jobs. My grandmother probably did not whine as much as I do either.

How long can a person keep this up and be sane? I am an experiment in progress. My sanity is still intact, but we shall see....

Word Tracker and SEO Blogger

Getting traffic to my blog is harder than it seems. My fault, naturally, as I do not blog often enough to make a difference! I have started to use Wordtracker's SEO Blogger, which pops this nifty little screen right on your browser window.

If I type in "web site design Vancouver Island" there are no search results. Huh? Vancouver Island web gets me a bunch of webcam links. Duncan BC gets me a bunch of suggestions, too, but not website design Duncan BC. Not sure how useful this thing is. Website design services is pretty frequently searched too.

There is something nifty about this. If you add your phrases to the chosen keyword section, it keeps track of how often you use your chosen keywords in your blog. I think I like it!

You can learn all about Wordtracker SEO and download it here.

Oh I just get so annoyed when I don't get paid

So I have a client. The client has a rush job. She is the contractor for a bigger organization, I am the sub-sub contractor. We work on the design of the new website for four days until it is just right. I understand that she cannot get me a deposit up front like I usually require, but I will get half on Friday and the other half on the following Friday.

I put everything on hold. I work like a slave for 2 ½ days with little sleep. I do not move from my computer. I meet the deadline and everyone is wildly happy with the result.

Friday comes and I go to the corporate office for my cheque and guess what? No cheque for Sharon. Must be an oversight. Too bad, and oh, guess what? Everyone is taking Monday off. So the earliest I can get a cheque is The following Tuesday. But now I want the full amount. No half now, half later.

Here I go again making someone a top priority, when apparently, I am not THEIR top priority. The site will come down in three days unless I get a big, fat, honkin' cheque. By hand...NOT in the mail.