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My Almost-daily Journal |
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| About I love trying out new things, especially when it comes to internet technology. I never really kept a journal, but it's something that I've always wanted to do. Now, everybody will get a chance to look inside my twisted, and somewhat-warped mind.
I've also subscribed to Audio Blog, so a few times a week, I'll leave actual voice blogs. Very cool!XML Newsfeed  |
Tuesday, August 30, 2005
Mars VideoThis is just plain awesome! Continuing to deliver fantastic bang-per-buck, the Mars rover Spirit has traveled all the way from its landing site in the Gusev crater to the summit of Husband Hill, giving it a much loftier vantage point from which to survey the area. On it’s way there, Spirit filmed some amazing images of dust devils scouring the landscape. These mini tornados are believed to contribute to the level of dust in the Martian atmosphere. NASA has put together an animated sequence for viewing. Click here to watch video! posted by Dino at 6:16 PM (permanent link) (0) comments BlogSharesBlogShares - My Almost-daily Journal Peter pointed this site out to me. No idea what it means. I don't even have an account there. Perhaps Blogger does it automatically. posted by Dino at 4:38 PM (permanent link) (0) comments Friday, August 26, 2005
Google AdsenseFYI: I recently added a few Google ads onto dinofilias.com. I figure as long as it's tasteful and non-obtrusive, any residual revenue generated is a good thing. With all my gaming sites and parked domain names, I'm making about $1.00 - $3.00 per day. Not bad, really. Before I sold cheatcodes.net, that site was pulling in $5.00 per day in just the first three days I added them. That number could have gone up as much as $10.00 per day if I kept the site and kept updating it with new game cheats. The reason I'm mentioning Google Adsense, is that I think the ads are pretty slick. If you look above, the Google ad engine scans a page's contents and posts ads that are relevant to content. This blog page talks about baby cribs, wood floors, and everything in between. You should see ads above for cribs and wood floors. I think that's pretty darn slick. posted by Dino at 10:26 AM (permanent link) (0) comments DishwarsherNot sure if I wrote about it in my blog... A really long time ago (9+ months), my dishwasher blew up. It was on its last legs when I bought the house almost nine years ago. It had a slow leak that I didn't discover until last year. After pulling the junk dishwasher from the cabinets, I finally realized why I had an ant problem a few years ago: dry-rotted floors. Carpenter ants are attracted to dry-rotted wood. In a nut-shell, the kitchen is getting gutted in a few weeks... probably about the time that we'll be having a baby. Bad timing on our part. We're both slow to commit to any major purchase. Since we're getting a new kitchen, I've held off to buying a dishwasher. On my list of domestic chores, washing dishes by hand is the last on preffered list. I HATE washing dishes by hand. "Hate" is too kind of a word. Perhaps DETEST is a better descriptor. I finally bit the bullet and decided to just go out and buy a dishwasher before the old kitchen is gutted. I picked it up last night and had it installed right before dinner. Installing a dishwasher is relatively easy. There are only three things that need to be connected: water supply, drain tube, and power. It's pretty mindless, especially if all those lines existed from previous dishwasher. It wasn't easy. First off, I had to cut a piece of OSB to create a makeshift base for the dishwasher. Remember, my floors are rotted down to the builder's floor. Any weight on the floor in that area, and you'll end up in the basement. Not really, because of the 2X6's, but it's not a sturdy floor for a dishwasher. Secondly, my water supply line is copper tubing. It's not very flexible and accomodating. Try lining up inflexible copper tubing to the bottom of a dishwasher, as the dishwasher is pushed in place 90% of the way. Oh, and add the fact that my dishwasher line's water shutoff valve doesn't really turn the water off. Water was trickling out of that thing about a thimble-full a second. So timing was everything. Of course, getting that line connected took me about 10 minutes. So imagine what a floor looks like with 600 thimbles-full of water on it. Good thing for cotton towels. Third, the exit tube has been sitting unused for 9+ months. There's been standing water in it just sitting. It's connected to the garbage disposal. I had it closed off with a clamp and towel. Man oh man. I'm surprised the health department wasn't notified. When I cut the tube to fit the new dishwasher (I decided to use the old one that was already connected to garbage disposal), about a quart of the most vile-smelling liquid leaked all over me. I almost lost my lunch. The lingering smell of decaying carion still haunts me a day later. It smelled like death. Power was the easiest to connect. I even turned off the power down in the circuit breaker box. I hardly ever do that. Made the connection process so much worry-free. So, we finally have a dishwasher again! The quality of my life improved 100%. It's just sitting there freely, not really mounted to anything, so it is kind of janky. But a jankily-installed dishwasher is better than no dishwasher. When our new kitchen is installed, it will be professionally installed. I can't wait for that. posted by Dino at 10:06 AM (permanent link) (2) comments Wednesday, August 17, 2005
The To-Do ListTime is ticking, and it's ticking pretty fast. Let's see what's in store for the next seven weeks: 1) Living Room - Danielle and I need to decide on living room furniture. We've seen every type of couch arrangement ever made and visited every furniture store in Michigan. I think we have it down to one style. Now the hard part will be selecting the fabric. If we get gray slate, we can have the sectional couch in a week. If we select any other color, it will take 8-12 weeks for the couch to arrive. I'm pretty sure if we select any other color than slate, I'll have to repaint the living room. 2) Kitchen - Danielle and I put 1/3 down on the kitchen. Cabinets are supposedly ordered. Next, we need to go to Creative design center and pick out handles, sink, counter top and faucet. Doesn't sound like a big deal, but if you examine our decision-making process you'll find that simple decisions take congressional inquiries and evaluations that take months. Hopefully it will be simple. Nonetheless, cabinets won't arrive until the middle to end of September. Ouch. Baby is due October 6. It takes a little over a week to complete the work. 3) Crib Bedding - If baby arrived today, he/she would sleep on a bare mattress. We still haven't decided on a bedding set. Congressional Inquiry, remember? It will take us the full seven weeks to decide on what bedding to put in the crib. Add the complexity of deciding on a rug, and you can see, we have major hurdles to overcome. 4) Painting the kitchen - This is a big issue. Painting the kitchen is no small task. Do we paint before or after the cabinets are installed? Since a large portion of the drywall is being cut and re-fabricated, it only makes sense to paint AFTER the cabinets are installed. So I guess I will be painting the kitchen in the two weeks that I'm off on FMLA. 5) Painting the family room - Guess what? The family room needs to be repainted too. That I could do right now and it shouldn't be too big of a deal. The hard part won't be prepping the room for paint, taping edges, carpet, and trimming out corners and trim. The hard part will be deciding on a color. That may take weeks. 6) Family room carpet - Baby is going to need a place to crawl since our whole house is hardwood flooring. Danielle wants new carpet in the family room. I agree, we do need new carpet. Question is, what comes first, the carpet, the paint, or the kitchen (the appliances will need to be put somewhere when they're doing the kitchen floor)? 7) New side entrance door - Danielle and I have talked about it. It's not a priority. It would be nice to have. Probably no chance in getting a new door before baby is born. Too many decisions. 8) Kitchen table - Danielle wants a new kitchen table. I bought it from my cousin, Lilly, about eight years ago - solid oak. Very nice table. We're going to replace a $1000 solid oak table with a $200 beechwood table. At least it will look nice for a few months. Again, decision making process will probably push this into December. Probably better to wait for the kitchen to be complete. 9) Buying dishwasher and microwave - We still need to purchase a dishwasher and microwave for the new kitchen. I'm going to make an executive decision on these and just buy middle-of-the-road. This task needs to happen before kitchen is complete, obviously, since contractor will have to install them. 10) Birthing classes - We have birthing classed to go to. They're mainly set up to teach Danielle how to breath. I'm pretty sure that I won't leave the classes with enlightenment and epiphanies. They teach the father how to support his wife? What's the alternative, me yelling at my wife? C'mon. 11) Infant CPR - Danielle signed us up for this class. I know CPR. I've taken first aid and lifesaving courses ever since I was a cub scout... no... I learned mouth-to-mouth back when I was taking swimming lessons at the YMCA. I tried giving CPR to a newborn kitten in college. I don't think I'll have a problem with this course. I hope I don't fall asleep in class. CPR classes are set up to teach CPR to the lowest common denominator human. I need to take something a little more challenging like skydiving CPR or underwater scuba CPR... or performing a kidney transplant using one of my kidneys and a pencil. Now that would be an interesting class! Seven weeks. Lots to do. posted by Dino at 5:56 PM (permanent link) (0) comments Monday, August 15, 2005
My Theia Kiki Passed away on 8/10/05When we thought things couldn't get any worse with the Filias clan in Agios Basilios, Greece (my parents' home town) with the death of my Theio Yanni two months ago and the death of my cousin two years ago, my Theia Kiki passed away on 8/10/05. So it's official: there are no more original Filias' in Greece that bear our surname. It's up to Peter, myself, and two cousins in Florida (one of which has two girls) to carry on the family name. Here's some pics of the most loving person that ever walked the earth:    It is very sad watching all the elders in these pictures die away, one at a time. posted by Dino at 8:29 AM (permanent link) (0) comments Scanned Over 241 Pictures This Weekend...Just reiterating post from my bulletin board... Not sure what got over me this weekend. Perhaps it's because a few of my mother's album have been collecting dust in my computer room. Of the four sitting there, I only managed to get one scanned. Yeah, just one... over 241 pictures... add sorting, auto-leveling and sharpening... not something I really enjoy. If I don't do it, who will? Oh, one more thing: Kodak Disc Cameras... they really SUCK. It's the worst thing that ever happened to the world. Resolution is the worst. Pictures are the grainiest I've ever seen, with 0% chance of enlargements. Film from the 1900's had sharper resolution than film from the 1980's. I guess technology regressed. Below is the album's description: Another album, and yet another archivist's nightmare. Scanning is the hard part right? Wrong. The hard part is putting pictures taken out of the album in order. This one was a gem with Christmas of 1984 at the back of the album, with Christmas of 1985 starting the whole thing off. Oh yeah, Christmas of 1984 can also be found in the previous album too. I'm surprised that I didn't find Christmas of 1996 in here. Other than the continuation of Christmas 1984 from previous album, this album should contain mostly pictures from 1985. I'm sure it won't be a surprise to find 1985 pictures in the 1990 albums. I'll let my kids sort this mess out. Click here to see album! posted by Dino at 12:41 AM (permanent link) (0) comments Thursday, August 04, 2005
Domain Sale - Cheatcodes.netAfter seven or eight years of ownership, I finally parted with one of my first domain names ever purchased during the birth of the internet. Back then, domains cost $35/yr to register, with a minimum of a two year committment, so they weren't at all cheap. I forgot exactly when I bought cheatcodes.net... it was either in 1997 or 1998. But I do remember my reasoning: Peter was making money hand-over-fist publishing game cheat codes using pay-per-click advertisers to generate revenue. And it wasn't difficult... most of the cheat content was free to grab from other sites and newsgroup postings. Back then, I was still an internet neophyte, so I hardly knew what I was doing. But, I was a fast learner. In just a few months, I was hitting $1000/month in advertising revenue! I was doing everything possible to keep my traffic up, including posting new game cheats as games came out, as well as trying to optimize the meta tag keywords, descriptions, and any other html component that would raise my site above the rest in natural search listings. It was an obsession. I used every tool to make sure my site remained on the first page of a game cheat search. The obsession faded, as did the $1000/month haydays, and revenue started dropping. Life got in the way like it usually does, and my obsession was ultimately forgotten. I was still pulling in monthy revenue at a minimum of $100/month until around 2002. When the revenue fell to double digits, I decided to redo the site to see if it bumped my traffic and revenue. Still, free time was pretty rare, and I had bigger fish to fry. The redo did help traffic, and it spiked back up to reasonable levels. I switched over to Commission Junction for advertising, but that didn't fare very well. I don't think I ever received a check from them because I never gave them my social security number for tax purposes. They ended up cancelling my account, and their ads actually remained on the site doing nothing. The site still generated sick traffic. It was the number one bandwidth hog of our server. Peter kept on telling me that my site generated so much traffic, it was crazy not to throw Google ads on it. Working on cheatcodes.net was the last thing on my mind for the last three years. Finally, I took his advice... and that's what I did... last Friday evening. I cleaned up the site, registered with Google Adsense, and on Saturday morning, I was approved. So by Saturday afternoon, Google ads now littered (very fashionably) cheatcodes.net. Revenue started piping in very quickly. Saturday through Tuesday, I was making a mighty $5/day, which is remarkable, knowing that I haven't updated my site since with any new content since 2003. And that trend started going up as I added a few more of the newer game cheats like GTA San Andreas and Battlefield 2. Life was good! A montly residual income of $150 is nice! A little work and updating, and I could probably double or triple that! Then I decided to check my cheatcodes.com public email, just to see if I missed anything. I haven't checked that email since 2003. Wow. Most of it was junk and "submit-a-cheat" user-submitted cheats... but a few of them were inquiries into buying the site. Wow! Some of the emails were pretty old... going back to 2003... and some were very new. I responded to all of them, asking the requesters what they had in mind. Most of them were in the $500 - $3,000 range. No way I'd sell it for that. But... a few of the offers were much higher! So, to make a long story short, the early years of getting the site saturated on search engines finally paid off! I ended up selling the domain name to someone that was looking for a high-traffic site, that could recreate a new game cheat site, and pull in revenue from Google ads. The beauty of the deal was that I was able to keep my site and source code. As of right now, my proceeds for the sale are still tied up in escrow. I worked pretty swifty to close the deal with the buyer. Hopefully he'll return the favor and release those funds without much of a delay. So what's next for me? I'll probably put my old site up on an obscure domain name like game-cheat-codes411.biz and see if I can raise the site's popularity in natural search listings. That's going to be extremely tough, since that's usually an eight year process. Needless to say, Danielle and I have a baby coming, so time will be a little limiting for me to be a game cheat site webmaster. I can say that the sale of the domain will be put to great use. Some of it will go toward our kitchen redo, and the rest will probably go into our soon-to-be baby's college fund. Oh yeah... I can now justify buying a Nikon D70s with two lenses! Life is good! posted by Dino at 10:21 AM (permanent link) (0) comments |
