Starting My Shed

Hey there. I am building a shed. I'm finally getting to building my shed, now that I have my cement foundation in place. I've had the shed just as long as I've had the cement bags (well over a year) so it's about time it's getting done. The clutter in our yard is finally getting to me. Will provide updates and pictures soon. Later!

Friday Drag

Hey there. Today has been one of those days... One of those days that just seem to drag on and on and on...

The day started with the computer acting stupid. It's always acted stupid and extremely slow. This morning, it refused to load up my Email and my applications for work were extremely slow. Slow to the point where I wanted to smash the damn thing. And to top it off, I was getting some "Sorry" message from Google each time I tried to display a Blogspot site. What the hell? I was getting frustrated since I wasn't able to log on and do some tweaking to my site. That's when I knew it was going to be one of those days. I tried to work around these short comings but the machine just got slower and slower and finally, my stupid Email froze. CRAP! I hate when it freezes. Outlook takes FOREVER to bring up my archived Emails and I'm literally sitting there for almost half an hour, staring at the stupid bar that claims that it will only take 4 more mins. I said hell with this. I started looking into fixing the damn thing. I cleaned out the registry, did a check disc and defrag, ran some virus scans, and deleted all kinds of crap. Hopefully, this will get it working. I let all that run while I was off to lunch.

When I got back, I see that it still wasn't done. Frustration was beginning to set in big time. Luckily, all the scans seemed to finish at the same time so once I restarted the machine, I was ready to go. Mind you, I didn't get the damn thing working to good capacity to close to 2 PM... Ugh! I spent most of my day "fixing" the computer at work. You can't rely on these IT guys. They swear they're gods and you'll be lucky if one responds to you within 2 weeks. I'm fortunate that I at least know what I'm doing when it comes to things like this.

So now... It's close to 3:30 PM with only an hour and half to go before I'm off of work and the damn day just seems to continue to drag on. After work, we need to stop by a store to pick up some stuff for our boy. Since he's off to camp tomorrow, he needs to make sure he has all he needs to for the week long trip. Then when we get home, we're going to help him pack. So it doesn't look like this day will be flying by anytime soon.

It's alright though. It's Friday and that means the weekend is upon us. It's almost as if I'm a kid, watching the clock tick by so that once school's out, I can enjoy the weekend. Something tells me, this is going to be a good weekend. Until then, later.

Final Fantasy Periodic Table of the Elements

Hey there. Where the hell where you during my time in AP Chemistry? I actually would have attended class more often if I knew this was going to be my "study buddy". lol It's great, no? And the best part is that the table does a good job of associating the element symbol to a name in Final Fantasy lore. Here are some examples:

Copper = Co = Chocobo
Silver = Ag = Aeris Gainsboro
Chlorine = Cl = Cloud
Caesium = Cs - Cait Sith
Titanium = Ti = Tidus
Magnesium = Mg = Moogle

I mean, C'mon! How bad ass is that?! Kudos to the creator of this table of the elements. That person must have taken forever to match a final fantasy term to each element. I'm going to look for a big one to get my kids. I'm sure they'll learn all these by the time they need to know them. Until then, later!

Metallman's Reverie Not Indexed on MSN (Bing)

Hey there. I'm fairly proud of this site. From my very first post, to what it is now. There is a sense of pride in building something from nothing and I'm definitely feeling proud. At first, I paid very close attention to this site's statistics: Page views, visitors, Alexa rank, Google PR, indexed pages, etc. etc. It got to a point where I would check it once a week to see if my trend was going up. I don't do that as much anymore. I occasionally check on the stats to see if there have been any improvements and I keep widgets on this site to tell me my Alexa rank and Real Rank. I gave up on Google PR. I'm finding it difficult to gain any love from Google in that aspect (or Google Adsense for that matter, since I was banned without warning).

Well, today was one of those days I decided to check up on Metallman's Reverie to see what's up. I like that Google decided to add me to their search engine. Typing in "Metallman" displays Metallman's Reverie in the top spot. Same deal with Yahoo. I like that I'm on there and it will display all or most of the places I'm mentioned. Not the case with MSN.

I logged on to the webmaster tools on MSN to see what it tells me. None of my pages are indexed. Not one. Hmmm.... So I go to Bing.com and enter Metallman and search. Metallman's Reverie does not come up. I see all my profiles, though. Every profile from Socialspark to NBA.com to Twitter. But absolutely no mention of Metallman's Reverie on Blogspot. What the hell???

I mean, I don't think it's a big deal, since I strongly believe that the majority of the world uses the Google search engine and I'm on that, but considering that I've been around for well over a year, I'd figure that MSN would acknowledge that I exist. I just find it a little odd that I'm not on there and am wondering if I'm the only one having that problem. For SEO reasons, you should be indexed in the "Big Three" of the online world but I'm curious as to why MSN refuses to index me. I'm going to need to look into that. I'm pretty comfortable at where I stand as a website. Pretty good Alexa rank, pretty good Real rank, I have 600+ feed subscribers, I get over 10K in page views a month, etc. It make me feel good that this is a moderate success, but this MSN thing bugs me. If I were to be indexed in MSN, would it bring more readers? Could it be possible for me to increase my visibility? Who knows... But I'm going to try and get to bottom of it and see why MSN is ashamed to index my site. lol Until I uncover the truth, later.

My Son is Off to Camp "Wannahonkaloogie" or "Chippawah" or Something Like That

Hey there. We've decided... Our son is going to camp. A friend of ours presented us with an opportunity for our boy to go off to camp and learn a few things. My wife and I briefly talked about it before deciding that he's going. I've never been to any kind of camp as a kid and my wife says that she went to a "fake" camp for a week. lol I think this will be a great experience for him to get out and do something while he's on vacation.

Our boy can be timid, but at the same time, he can be very outgoing. We feel that sometimes he's just not in the mood to play with others and would just rather stay in his room. Reminds me a lot of me when I was young. lmao The difference, though, is that while I was out, I was out playing with kids and doing stuff with friends. When our boy is out, he's either sitting by himself playing video games or sitting there looking bored as hell. Mind you, this is not all the time. There have been occasions where he's out and about playing with other kids and he practically disappears until it's time to go. We figured that maybe camp would be a good way to help make a dent, if not break, this shell that he hides in at times.

We spoke to my son during our lunch break to get his thoughts on the whole thing. I talked about camping and what not to see if they were activities that he would enjoy. He said that they were cool. So I mentioned a camp for a week, and he shot it down, saying he wouldn't want to go. I told him that he just said it sounded like fun so why would you not want to interact with other kids his age and do fun activities? (This is that shell I was talking about) He couldn't really answer me so I told him that that is the very reason he is going to camp. He should want to go out and have fun with kids his age instead of passing up these life experiences. I never got to go to camp and I would have loved to have gone. He didn't seem to receptive to the idea that he's going, but I have a feeling it's because he won't be able to play video games. I'm sure that once he's there, he'll have a blast and one day, many, many moons from now, he'll look back on that thank us for giving him that experience. Until then, later!

Get Ready for Back To School with Sears' Campus Ready

This post was sponsored by Sears. All the opinions are mine.

Hey there friends. We are now in August, which means that many retailers across the country and gearing up for "back to school" sales. While retailers generally target the elementary school kids, those of you that are getting ready for college can be left out in the cold. Going to college and living is a dorm room is a huge transition and our good friends at Sears are here to help with their CampusReady website. Sears makes it extremely easy to get your dorm room furnished with what you need. Below are some of the highlights of the site:

*You can shop by dorm room

You can view pre-furnished dorm rooms and pick and choose items from that dorm room that you like. Considering that Sears went all out and created more than a few dorm rooms, you should be able to find a style that suits your needs.

*You could shop by coordinating dorm room products and design ideas

If you select an item that you like, Sears will automatically display several other products that coordinate with the item that you chose. Making it extremely easy to have a well organized dorm room.

*You can shop using the interactive checklist

This handy tool organizes strongly suggested items that you will need to make college life that much easier. All items needed will be neatly categorized for easy check off.

*You can shop by necessary items

This is a god send for all parents that are about to see their child off to college. This interactive list will display all necessities for college life. The items are organized into the 5 categories of eating, sleeping, studying, playing, and cleaning.

*You can shop for clothes

Campus Ready not only offers furniture, but clothes as well. Keeping the clothes simple, young men and young women can shop by tops, pants, and t shirts, among other categories. It also provides tips on how to keep your clothes lasting the longest, offering advice such as this tip for jeans, "wash jeans in cold water and turn them inside out".

*Sears provides financial tips

The "Money Sense" tab is there to help students with tips on how to be money savvy. It emphases on the importance of a budget, but offers such money saving advice, such as "buying used books", and "search for free entertainment".

You can't go wrong with a site that goes of it's way to make things simple for a college transition. As an added bonus, you can check out CampusReady on Facebook and make things even easier with their facebook application.

College tuition is on the rise all over the country. Sears is doing it's part by offering a great site where a soon to be college student can get a grasp of what's going to be expected of a soon to be adult. For all us parents out there, be sure to sign up, for free, at Upromise.com to help pay for tuition costs. The program is extremely simple. You make purchases through Upromise.com to online retailers and a portion of the purchase will be returned to you in the form of an online account. And to sweeten the pot, Sears has teamed up with Upromise.com to give away up to $25,000 in cash for college tuition if you make a purchase through the Upromise.com website. Free money for college is not easy to come by so make sure you get your entry in for your chance to score money for college. Later.