I’m sorry for the inconvenience. *sigh* That’s what viruses do, inconvenience people. :rants: GRRR!

Anyway, YOU can. I know some of you guys are interested in learning more about hosting your own blog, especially after hearing about JB Bean‘s horror story– her entire Blogger blog, Gmail account and checkout profile were deleted by Google. Google deleted the site because it thought JB Bean’s blog was a spam site, spewing malicious attacks. Yikes! You can imagine that a whole lot of people ditched their Blogger blogs.

I like Blogger, I have been with them for over a decade. But I moved all my important blogs to my own web hosting space on Hostgator. When I found out that Google essentially owns the content and can erase your work with one swipe, I changed over. I have never looked back, even though it does cost me about $120 a year. I can’t praise Hostgator enough. My blogs are up almost 100% of the time (I use Pingdom to track downtime), and the customer service is superior to all.

Anyway, if you have been wanting to get your own blog pad, here’s your chance. The sale will begin just after midnight, Friday, November 25th CST. I am an affiliate of Hostgator, so I get a commission if you click this Hostgator link or the Hostgator graphic below and buy something. It costs you nothing but means everything to me! I also offer basic tech help when setting up your blog, so if you have questions, leave a comment here and I’ll send you an email response.

I’ll have more details coming up about the Black Friday sale. So far, Hostgator has not released any details but last year, the price of annual hosting was slashed in half! That’s an amazing deal!

2. You spent half of the plane trip with the laptop on your lap… and your child in the overhead compartment.

3. You start using smiles in your snail mail. I thought everyone did this??

4. Your cat has its own home page. :whistle: OK OK Well, she doesn’t have her own HOME page but she is a frequent contributor on my home blog!

5. You wake up at 3am to go to the bathroom and stop to check your email on the way back to bed.

6. You decide to stay in college for an additional year or two just for the free Internet access. Meh, this was not so funny. Doesn’t college cost upwards of $20,000 a year? Ditch the college and get a T1 line for $10,000 a year.

7. You check your mail. It says “No new messages.” So you check again. I am proud to say that I am OVER THAT. No longer do I check for email right away again. I now wait a good 15 minutes!

8. You name your kids “Dotcom,” “Modem,” and “Emoticon.” Well, I haven’t gone THAT far…

9. You laugh at people with dial-up. *snicker*

10. You start tilting your head sideways to smile. :jittery: You mean you don’t do that?

How’d you rate? My favorite is probably #2 and #9. I used to have dial up and I remember those painful days of agony….

***

Speaking of blogs, my friend Karen has a really terrific charity going on. She will donate 50 cents for every comment to a charity of the month. For June, the charity is Joni and Friends. Her blog always has interesting posts, so it’s not difficult to rack up the donation!

***

I found this image on Donna‘s blog. It made me crack up!

I’m going to save it for one of those zany posts. I’ll insert it at the perfect time for a belly laugh. I’m not fond of sports at all, so it’ll be pretty easy to mock, lol.

***

I just ordered a bunch of new books from Amazon. One is a biography of Kathryn Kuhlman and the other two are compilations from her radio show. I am so excited and can’t wait until they arrive! It won’t be until Tuesday, though. In the meantime, I’m devouring a bunch of books. I’ve discovered the New Living Translation again. When I was a new Christian, my mom had this version. She loved the title on her Bible– THE BOOK. lol. Yep, it sure is. The NLT is a good one for reading (especially the Old Testament) and it’s nice to break away from my standard New King James for a bit. Another good version I’ve discovered is the New Century Version.

I’m also reading a few fiction-y books. I downloaded “Letters By a Woman Homesteader” on my iPad/Kindle app. That was very enjoyable. It is a printed book of real letters written by Elinor Rupert Stewart in the early 1900s (it’s public domain, so it was free). I also started a Frank Peretti book, The Oath. I haven’t read a Peretti book in…. gee, 20 years or so! His books are very good, very thrilling. And Peretti is a Christian, so the book lacks the vulgarity and smut of many modern books. I still don’t know why authors write swear words and epithets in their books. It’s bad enough, hearing it in movies and in workplaces. I have always thought that books should elevate the manners as well as the mind.

I agree wholeheartedly with Rose’s response to Mr. Allnut in the old movie The African Queen:

Charlie Allnut: A man takes a drop too much once in a while, it’s only human nature.
Rose Sayer: Nature, Mr. Allnut, is what we are put in this world to rise above.

That’s not meant to be snobby, but I honestly think our culture should be working toward respecting and emphasizing our God-given human nobility, and not crafting us into base brute beasts like the animals. I love language and etymology, and words do affect us as individuals and corporately as a people.

OK, off the soapbox, back to the blog. lol

***

I can’t stand Firefox 4. I managed to alter the browser appearance back to the old way that I prefer, but there’s this nasty issue with bookmarks that drives me nuts. I keep my bookmarks in a folder on my bookmark bar, and when I click the folder, the bookmarks menu will not drop down. I click and click and it does nothing. Then, at other times, i may accidentally hover over the folder without clicking, and the menu drops down and the page directs to one of bookmarks– all on its own! It’s driving me nuts.

On my laptop, I downgraded back to 3.6.1. I’m going to try upgrading to Firefox 5 for the desktop, to see if that helps. Man, Firefox has almost as many updates as WordPress and iTunes. :hmph:

Have a good weekend, folks! See you later.

The End

If you are a young person or know of one, who is struggling with questions of why you are here and is God real, and what is life all about? You should read the post. I was deeply touched. It’s called As in a Mirror blog.

Well, I have one giveaway going on, and it ends Saturday, January 8th at midnight. It’s a very nice DVD set of family-friendly movies: Secrets of the Mountain, The Jenson Project, and A Walk in My Shoes.

It’s VERY VERY EASY to enter. Go to my post and read the entry requirements. It’s EASY. It’ll take you, what, 5 minutes or less.

Another giveaway is the Coolest Undercover Giveaway by my pal Just2Techy. He’s giving away some very nice album cover art software. It would make a very nice gift for a teen or any music lover. If I win, I may use it to fill in all those blank albums that my iPod lists– very annoying! Contest ends January 22nd.

And another giveaway is from Renee at A Glimpse of Beautiful– it’s a book by Max Lucado out Live Your Life. She wrote a review, and it was so interesting that I entered the contest. This contest ends January 10th.

So giveaways abound! Good luck!

Thanks for visiting my blog! Freaky Frugalite is my personal blog, where I discuss all the crazy and interesting things in my life. Feel free to peruse at your leisure, or check out my other blogs here.

Please visit Creative BarbWire to continue the jog, or visit the Blog Jog Day Blog for a list of more participants. Have a great day!

I will admit, however, that some analytics are fun to toodle around with. :D I love looking at the search engine words or phrases that lead people to my blog. I get a LOT of hits like these: “are ladybugs poisonous to cats,” or “hand lotion eating cat,” about “how to remove leg wax from walls,” about “i want to flip the wires on a lightswitch, how do i not electrocute myself” and “how to tell if your shoes smell.” Oh yeah, there’s a fun side to blog analytics!

I admit, it is important to keep tabs on what your readers like. One such tool I have recently encountered is Blog Copy. It looks relatively new. Basically, you register for the site, install a piece of HTML coding into your blog, and sign in to see stats. BlogCopy monitors all the stuff on your blog that readers copy (both text and images) and paste and share to other sites (such as pasting quotes on their blog, or entering the text into a search engine). The technology blows my mind– you can monitor what people copy and paste from the website?! It’s all based on “user behavior,” which seems to be very “in” these days. BlogCopy generates the data, and shows the stats to you in your account.

BlogCopy is free to use. I haven’t heard a whole lot of chatter or reviews about BlogCopy yet. The website template looks just like the Twitter template. I’m still learning about how BlogCopy is able to monitor this data… apparently, they are the only ones who monitor the “copy and paste” aspect of websites.

Check it out, if you wish. Just another tool to micro-manage your blog analytics! Remember– ALWAYS backup your blog before adding or changing code or plugins!!

This post is brought to you by BlogCopy. All the opinions are mine! Thanks for reading. :D

• I haven’t visited all my beloved blogs in a while; and when I do, it’s always in a hurry.
• I never do Word for Wednesday regularly…. or anything regularly.
• I don’t leave comments as much.
• I have WAAY too many sponsored posts some weeks… but the pressure is ferocious because sponsored posts is how I earn my living (and how I am paying for my renovated kitchen).
• My posts are not as entertaining and *fun* as past ones… I’m busy, and when I’m not busy, I’m exhausted.
• My blog traffic is down because I am not as active on my blogs. And some blogs I haven’t updated in over a MONTH.
• I have a ton of unanswered emails in my inbox. Tonight, I was struck with the realization that I just may not catch up with them, ever.

I knew this kitchen renovation would be hard. I knew it. And it’s hard. I’m not complaining– this is the time we have been desiring and praying for, for so long. I am grateful for this time. But it does come with a sacrifice. Wow, it’s a really, really big job.



Saw this and it made me crack up. BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

So I’m sorry– my blogging has taken a back seat, big time. I’m such a bad blogger. But by golly, I am SUCH a good renovator right now. ;)

]]> http://freakyfrugalite.com/im-really-sorry/feed/ 4 http://freakyfrugalite.com/blaaaaaahhhhh/ http://freakyfrugalite.com/blaaaaaahhhhh/#comments Sat, 24 Jul 2010 15:58:40 +0000 Rebecca http://freakyfrugalite.com/?p=4973 I’ve been installing sheetrock this week. On the ceilings, as well as the walls. I finally collapsed last night. I thought the insulation installation was exhausting! I did this kind of stuff in the living room a few years ago, and even though the work was hard, I don’t remember being so bushed… what happened?! I am totally exhausted. As desperate as I am to get our home back to “normal” and as desperately as I wasnted to install sheetrock today… I just can’t. I am forced to rest. I must be getting old or something, lol. :brudder:

Lin at Duck and Wheel With String suggested that we bloggers initiate a “Blog Off,” where we totally disconnect from the computer, electronics, the media, etc for the weekends. I like that idea, although weekends are some of my most productive days. But these days I haven’t been blogging as much, anyway. When I’m not renovating or cleaning up after renovating, I’m working my job or doing multitudes of other stuff. But the principle is a good one. Everyone needs a break. :D

Anyway, it seems my blogs have lately attracted the attentions of advertisers and sponsors– I’ve been getting offers like crazy for about two weeks now. The offers are very nice, and I am tempted to take them all, because the money I make is buying my sheetrock, my cabinets, my flooring… but I don’t want to ruin my blogs. I dislike ads and sponsored posts plastered all over the place; I’m sure you must, too. I do try to talk about products or things that are helpful, good tips, interesting news, etc. Some like it, some don’t. But these things are paying for my new kitchen, so it’s all for a good cause!

So today is a perfect day to call it quits from renovating, and rest today. It’s too hot and humid to work much, anyway. I’m hoping I can still stick to my last-week-of-August deadline for this renovation project…

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