Category Archives: Misc
The Tush Push — Everything you didn’t know you wanted to know.
Three Articles out of One:
Recently Google burped. And the whole Internet Community freaked out.
Seriously! It is kind of like the punch line from that old joke:
Q: Where does a 500 lb gorilla sit?
A: Wherever it wants!
The fact of the matter is that Google is the biggest most powerful search engine for the Internet on the Planet. And when Google changes how it calculates page rank, hundreds of thousands of very smart people go to work trying to figure out why their web pages are no longer ranking high and they try to figure out how to get their pages to rank high again!
I write online at Squidoo.com and the folks at Squidoo do all that “figuring out” bit for me. Over the past few months, Squidoo has been changing things up a LOT! All in an effort to regain the lost ground from Google’s last ranking system change.
I’ve actually been very lucky. Most of the changes at Squidoo have not affected any of my lenses. None of my lenses were caught by Squidoo’s new rules designed to weed out spammers and retain only original creative content.
In fact my lenses were moving up in rank and getting paid more as Squidoo weeded out all the garbage lenses. Woo Hoo!
Well at least until Read the rest of this entry
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Changing up how I report on the Top Ten Line Dances
There is just not enough time in the day…
Keeping track of the Top Ten Line Dance Reporting lists takes time. Lots of it. You’d be horrified about how much time it takes. So I decided to change from reporting on the Top from Weekly to Monthly.
Up to now, I’ve had a detailed page where I put the Top Ten Dances from each site:
- Copperknob
- Kickit
- World Line Dance Newsletter
- LineDancer Magazine
On each of these detailed pages I had, for each dance:
- The dance’s current rank #1, #2, #3, etc
- An indicator of whether the dance was moving up or down the list
- Details about the dance, like count, # of restarts & tags, difficulty level, etc.
- The name of the dance and the name of the choreographer
- Link to a stepsheet for the dance
- Link to the music on Amazon.
- Link to the music on iTunes
- And embedded videos of the dance, both demonstrations and teaches
Then I had two “summary / review” lists which I created myself:
- TxCowboyDancer’s Weekly Summary – which basically listed the Top Ten dances as a simple list and then had a link to the more detailed page.
- TxCowboyDancer’s Weekly Review — a kind of Best of the Best “Most Popular” which listed only those dances which appeared on at least two of the four websites.
Whew! I’m getting tire just listing it. The “Weekly Summary” didn’t take that long, but the detailed page. OMG!
So… I’m keeping the “Weekly Summary” but I’m switching the detailed page to a monthly report instead of week.
Here’s what I’m doing. I’m keeping track of the dances for each week during a given month. Then I use some statistical magic and list only the top ten dances for the whole month. In other words, only the VERY MOST POPULAR dances make the top ten for the month.
Which means [drum roll please] I save time and you, dearest readers also save time. Why? Because instead of learning a potential of 40+ dances per month… you can look at my Monthly survey and learn only the top 10. Woot! Uh-huh! Doing a happy “chair dance”!
Coo huh?
So.. Here is my very first one that I’m unveiling —
The Top Ten Line Dances from CopperKnob for the month ending Sept 21, 2013:
Enjoy! See ya on the dance floor!
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Thoughts on blogging, noses, unmentionables, wallowing and starting over…
What to write?
One of the problems with writing a blog is that people actually do read it.
In my case, not a lot of people, about six of you including my mom. Ok, ok, there’s more than six but my little blog reaches only a few hundred folks, not a few hundred thousand. But that’s enough to count. LOL
And it is enough so that I, like any blogger, have to decide just how much detail to include from my personal life.
Ok… I’ll give you a moment to process that.
Give it a bit… think about ALL of the things you do on a daily basis. Now think about all the things which you do that you DON’T talk about in polite company.
Just for the sake of being obvious, and to indulge in a moment of juvenile regression, here are some examples of normal routine ordinary things which we all do, but usually don’t talk about or in this case, things we usually don’t blog about…
- …how many times we go potty in a day. The nature and quality of the products eliminated from the system during the potty process.
- …whether or not we really wash our hands after going potty.
- …how many times we insert our fingers into our noses. The nature and quality of the *ahem* product of finger insertion.
- …how many times we scratch *ahem* unmentionables located in places usually covered by clothing while in public.
- …and other such random acts of physiological grossness and impoliteness
Ask yourself:
- Do you Read the rest of this entry
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Random thoughts while having my morning coffee…
Good Morning…
As I’m having my morning coffee, I thought I’d share some random thoughts….
1. My friend Ragen who blogs posted a really good post this morning: Low Hanging Health Fruit. Here is my favorite bit from the post:
There are any number of things that have been shown to improve our health – more sleep, less stress, fruits and vegetables, movement, water, and that’s just a start. We are never going to be able to do all of them all of the time.
2. I’m drinking my coffee out of my Monet “Water Lillies” mug that I got when I was in Chicago for work and had a chance to visit the Art Institute . I really like this mug. I love Monet and the Water Lillies series is one of my favorites. Anyway, just picking it up and looking at it gives me a warm fuzzy
3. Running a low grade fever for day 3. I thought it was a cold but I think it is sinus infection caused by allergies. This year I’ve been sick more than any in my entire life. Ugh.
4. I have this post-it note program that came with my Mac called “Stickies” and I jot things there as they occur to me: Blog post ideas, Zazzle design ideas, Squidoo ideas, shopping list stuff… just “stuff” Here is a few for your morning amusement:
- Why does one side of your nose always seem to clog up more than the other?
- I hate dust
- Housework shouldn’t make you sweat. or get out of breath.
- You know you’re no longer part of the “corporate world” when you have to go actually buy pencils and pens.
5. I’m out of fruits and fresh veggies and a bunch of other stuff. So I need to hit the grocery store today. Hmmm… I wonder if I should wear one of those paper mask thingies? Maybe my fever will be gone by mid-afternoon. I hope so. I’m getting sick of staying home. I don’t actually feel that bad other than the icky factor but I don’t want to give people what I’ve got if it is a cold.
Food so far today:
- Breakfast: coffee, bowl of cereal
Ok, time for cup #2 of the coffee so…
See ya on the dance floor!
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Recap of today… (Thu)
Brief version of today food journal…
I’m tired and about to go to bed so, here’s the run down.
- Breakfast was a bowl of cereal, juice, grapes. (and coffee of course)
- Mid morning snack was Yogurt (non-fat) and some almonds
- Lunch was a slim-fast shake (because I was on a roll on the computer stuff and didn’t want to stop to fix anything) and a glass of V8
- Afternoon snack was the last of the grapes some almonds and some of those baby carrots
- Dinner was a Jenny Craig entree (Salsbury steak with veggie medley) to which I added more veggies: beets and beans.
Tomorrow will have to be a shopping day because I’ve gone though all my fruits that I bought earlier in the week.
nite john boy, nite carol ann, snnnnnzzzzzzzz
5-6-7-8 Dancing My Way to a Healthy Me! 