Pedro B

 

I like to refer to quotes from the movie “Boiler Room” from time to time.  Now that is a fun movie.  There are a few scenes where Affleck gives a speech in front of a group of people he’s training.  If you don’t want to hear any cursing DON’T click the play button!  I’m not a fun of using that much foul language myself but I do get fired up about working when I listen to Ben Affleck rip into this group.

Today I caught a whiff of perfume while at work and it reminded me of a time and place from about eight years ago.  This flash caught me way off guard and made me think of how different my life is from eight years ago.  It totally changed my state of mind and reminded me how something so small as a scent can totally interupt my emotional and physical state at any time of the day, under just about any circumstance.

I’ve read a few of Tony Robbins books and listened to his Personal Power cd’s (I still listen to those cd’s every once in a while.)  I would recommend Tony Robbins to anybody, he really helps you realize just how much control we have over our lives and our physical and mental states.  It’s one of the best lessons I’ve learned in my life about myself.  I try to use it every day at work and at home.

I can give a few quick examples of how we have control over our lives.  My sister was visiting last year and she was complaining that she had a headache.  We were at a cousins house visiting and she was displaying all the classic signs of a young girl being bored and wanting to be somewhere else.  Sitting low with her shoulders hunched, a frown on her face, just overall not enjoying herself.  I told her I could get rid of her headache.  She didn’t believe me but she did agree to do anything I asked her to do to get rid of her headache.  So I took her to an open area in the house and I told her to do ten jumping jacks.  You remember jumping jacks right?  You stand straight with your arms at your sides and jump straight up landing with your legs spread apart and your hands above your head.  Then you jump straight up again and land in your original position.  Repeat ten times.

Now, if you tell any adult to do ten jumping jacks out of the blue they are going to think you’re insane.  And it will immediately effect whatever emotional state they are in.  Telling someone to do anything silly will have that effect.  It works on just about anything.  What if you stood up wherever you are at right now and did ten jumping jacks?  The idea alone probably makes you feel silly.  There could be several factors in play for you.  Who would see you?  Do you even have room to do them?  I bet if you are in an emotional state of being depressed or stressed out, doing ten jumping jacks would totally change your mood.  So why don’t you just do them?  I bet if you were in a physical state of being tired, or just not having any energy, ten jumping jacks would change that to.  The rush of blood and adreniline from doing that physical activity would make it impossible to keep feeling that way.  You might be a bit winded from it if you’re out of shape but you would feel different.

I’m not saying the ten jumping jacks are important.  The important part of changing your physical or emotional state is deciding that you want to change it right now.  If you are feeling down about something, or depressed, or stressed, it’s because you want to feel those things!  Tony Robbins told me so.  And he was right.  He spends a lot of time in his books and cd’s basically trying to convince his readers of the same thing.  We have control of our states for the most part.  And we can change our physical and emotional states at whatever time we choose to.

So, back to my sisters headache.  I made her do the ten jumping jacks and her headache dissapeared.  Basically it went away because she didn’t have time for that stupid headache anymore, she was to busy feeling silly about doing ten jumping jacks, then she had a rush from the actual physical activity of doing them.  Of course, as soon as she sat down and went back to being bored, her headache came back.

Living in the United States of America, we have endless opportunities and anyone can become anything they want to.  Want to be jobless and live on welfare?  No problem, we have that.  Want to be a multi-millionare with 4 houses and big stinkin’ boat?  No problem, it’s there for the taking.  All you have to do is want it and take action.

It’s the playoffs today.  NFC Championship and AFC Championship games.  Already watched the Eagles lose to the Cardinals.  Who loses to the Cardinals?  Arizona will be in the Super Bowl this year.  Oh and I won’t be able to watch the Super Bowl this year coincidentally.  My amazing sister purchased my plane tickets for me right around Super Bowl start time.  Not her fault, I told her whenever.  Plus I really should have done it myself I just couldn’t stomach forking over the money for four plane tickets to Oceanside.  So I let her fork my money over.  But she did pay for half.

Where the hell was I going with this post…  Oh yeah.  Zero productivity today because the playoffs are on.  And the Cardinals are in the Super Bowl…

So, in case you missed it, it’s freakin’ freezing in Minnesota right now.  The picture here shows the current temperature my desktop is reading but don’t believe it.  It’s actually much colder.

This morning my S-10 wouldn’t start.  I killed the battery the night before when I left a light on.  Lame-O.  I go out to start it and nothing happens.  So my dad helps me get it going and I drive it to work but I notice it stuttering a bunch down the road.  While I’m driving down the road, one of my lenses from my glasses pops off.  Lame-O.  I put the lense back in and do my best to screw it down with my fingernail.  While I’m driving.

I stop at the shop and ask them to take a look at my truck for me.  I figure the stuttering is caused by dirty fuel injectors, so I ask them to clean them.  While I’m at work, the autoshop gives me a call and tells me my I have a bad fuel injector.  Parts and labor equals $750.00.  Lame-O.  I tell them not to fix it, I’ll get it done myself.

The issue of privacy is always coming up where the Internet is concerned.  Most times, if you interact on the world wide web at all, there is a good chance you can be found by someone looking for information on you.

I read an article that touches on how easy it is to find information on individuals on Robert Scoble’s blog yesterday where he talks about how to socially network if you are laid off.  Robert gives advice on how to present your online image effectively in order to get the job you want.  I find it interesting that his post only talks about cleaning up your image about and not trying to hide yourself online.  Basically he’s assuming you will be found and that you want to be found.

I know he’s a techy and using a geek mentality about this but honestly if I’m looking for a job I don’t want my employer to see me online.  The problem is we enter our name into everything.  I set up an account with LinkedIn sometime in the beggining of this year and have never logged in since but that is the first thing that shows up when I Google myself.  I know LinkedIn is geared towards networking but shouldn’t they warn you during registration that your name will be spidered and indexed by the search engines?  I don’t mean just the Terms of Service, I mean a big box I can check if I decide I don’t want my full name available.

Web users are becoming a bit to insensitive to online privacy.  If you use Google regularly (I do) then it pretty much knows everything about you.  What you buy, what you’re interests are, who you interact with.  It’s a sign of the times when a potential employer can go digging for dirt on you just by typing your name in to a Google field and hitting “Search.”

Apple has announced that it will now sell DRM (Digital Rights Management) free music soon.  This is the main reason why I would refuse to pay for music from iTunes as it would mean that I could not play the music on anything other than Apple’s hardware, namely my ipod.  The death of DRM was officially announced today at the Macworld conference.

DRM pretty much died everywhere else in the last year except for iTunes and not because Apple wanted to keep it.  Apple has been trying to lose DRM for a few years now but didn’t convince the industry until they agreed to use varied pricing.  This means that not every song will be .99 cents anymore.  Prices are going to range from .79 cents to $1.29.

The real kicker about this deal is that if you want to free music that you have already purchased from Apple of DRM lunacy you have to pay .30 cents a song.  Booya!!  Right to the nads.  This is why DRM music is so lame and why in the years I’ve owned an ipod I purchased 1 song from Apple.  Amazon has had DRM free music for a year now.

I have gone into the WordPress Content Management System before, but now I am going to elaborate a bit with tips for your first WordPress Blog installation. WordPress is very easy to setup and begin to use. Here I will offer some suggestions and recommendations for getting the most out of your first WordPress blog.

Here is a list of what I will be covering in this post. This may be a bit more comprehensive than what you need so feel free to jump forward to the place where you are at in your first WordPress blog.

WordPress Setup

Domain Name
Hosting
Installation

WordPress Settings

Discussion Settings
Permalinks
Changing Permalink Settings

WordPress Theme

Picking a theme

WordPress Plugins

Using WordPress Plugins
Installing WordPress Plugins
Must-Have WordPress Plugins

Your First WordPress Post

Categories
Tags
Meta

WordPress Setup

Picking a Domain Name

I go a bit deeper into picking your first domain name in a different post, but I will recap – Make sure you will love it forever and try to go with dot com!

Web hosting Service

I also touched on picking a web hosting service but this is much easier than picking your domain name. There are thousands of web hosting service out there so due some searching and make sure you know what you want out of your new web hosting service.

WordPress Installation

For your first WordPress install there are a few different ways to get setup. If you have chosen Hostgator as your web hosting service then setting up WordPress is just a few clicks away!

To install WordPress with Hostgator:

First login to your cpanel using the login information provided from Hostgator to your email address. Navigate to the bottom of your screen and look for the Fantastico Icon:

Your cpanel may look different but the Fantastico Icon should be the same. Click on it and you will be taken to Fantastico’s Navigation page where you can select different scripts to install:

Click on “WordPress” and you will see a new screen where you are given a brief description about WordPress and where you will see the option for a New Installation:

 

Clik on “New Installation” and you will be taken to a screen to enter basic settings for your new WordPress installation.

Fill in the basic settings for your first WordPress blog here. By default, the “Install In Domain” option will have your domain name in that field.

The next option is “Install In Directory.” Here you can decide if you would like to install in the root of your domain or if you would like to install in a sub directory. For example, if you want to have your blog show up in Http://www.yourdomain.com/blog instead of http://www.yourdomain.com than you would type “blog” in the “Install in Directory” field.

The other options are pretty self-explanatory. Fill in the login information you want to use to login to your blog and your user nickname and email. The “Base Configuration” options are not super important as you can change them later when you login to your blog.

Manual WordPress Installation

You can also setup WordPress manually. First Download the latest version of WordPress. Then follow the installation instructions included with the WordPress download. WordPress has one of the easiest installation processes available but if you are still having problems, visit the WordPress Website Troubleshooting guide.

WordPress Settings

WordPress makes this very easy but there are a few things out-of-the-box that you should change for your first WordPress Blog.

Permalinks

One of the first things to change will be your Permalink settings. Go to “Settings > Permalinks” and change to either “Day and Name” or “Month and Name.” It is very important to change your Permalink settings from the default for a few reasons. The first is that search engines will be able to read and understand what your posts are about. The other is that users will be able to tell what your post is about by glancing at the URL.

The other default Settings for WordPress depend on you. Check the Discussion settings to change any comment settings for your blog and then the General settings to personalize a bit.

WordPress Themes

The ability to easily extend the WordPress system is what separates WordPress from other Content Management Systems. The community of WordPress developers have created, and continue to create, thousands of WordPress themes that are easy to download and install. A theme allows for personalization of your first WordPress Blog and helps you stand out from the crowd. Download WordPress themes for free and try them out on your WordPress installation.

There are also many sites online that offer further customization for a fee. This is something to consider once your WordPress blog is more popular or making a steady income.

WordPress Plugins

Using WordPress Plugins

WordPress Plugins add to your blog and help you add almost anything you can think of. Extra sidebar widgets and many back-end plugins help you personalize your blog even more.

Installing WordPress Plugins

Downloading and installing WordPress plugins is very easy to do. Log into to your WordPress blog, navigate to your “Plugins > Add New” page and there you can search for plugins that are right for your Blog. WordPress even lets you install plugins right from your plugins panel! No downloading to your computer necessary.

Must-Have WordPress Plugins

Here I will list a few must-have WordPress plugins. Some, in my opinion, are essential to getting the most out of your blog, regardless of whether you are using it to make money. Others are only necessary if you are monetizing your blog.

Akismet – Akismet is a must for every WordPress installation. Akismet blocks “Spam” comments used by bots to automatically comment on hundreds of different WordPress blogs at the same time. I have spoken to a few new WordPress users who did not have the Akismet plugin turned on and were bombarded by comment spam. It is very discouraging to see porn and gambling links being posted in your comments section and may turn a first time blogger off from WordPress. It does require getting a WordPress account but it’s free and does not take much time.

All in One SEO Pack – I love this plugin. All in one SEO Pack gives you the ability to generate Titles, Descriptions and Keywords for each of your posts and let’s you block the search engines from crawling through potentially duplicate content. What I just described might be confusing to a new WordPress user but that’s what makes All in One SEO Pack so important. You don’t really have to understand those things to use it. It is ready out-of-the-box and is very easy to use.

Google XML Sitemaps – Another must-have WordPress plugin, Google XML Sitemaps generates a XML compliant Sitemap of your WordPress blog. It is very easy to install and setup and is another tool that helps you forget about the search engines and focus on writing unique content.

Here are a few more plugins for more advanced WordPress bloggers.

Share This

Wordtwit

cforms

WP Super Cache

There are many more plugins available that may help you personalize your blog even more but remember that the more plugins you have the slower your blog pages will load!

First WordPress Post

Your first WordPress post can be about anything you want it to be but here I will list a few tips for your first post and subsequent posts.

WordPress features an awesome WYSISYG (What You See is What You Get) editor that let’s you write great posts without knowing HTML. Play around with the icons in the editor and you can be writing posts with links, pictures and different types of text in no time!

The title of your first post should be a quick description of what your post is about. You should have your title in your post more than one time and you should write it in different ways in your post. So going by those rules you should probably decide on your title after you write your post. It is good to write your title in before hand, just go back to it and be sure it describes what your post is about.

Use the “Category” option that WordPress provides. Your WordPress blog will only have the “Uncategorized” category at first. You can add new ones to the right of your “Add New Post” panel. Categories should be pretty generalized. If your writing about George Bush, your category might be “Politics” or “News.”

Tags are another feature that you should use when writing your first WordPress post. The “Tag” is also to the right of your “Add New Post” panel, just above “Categories.” Tags should be much more specific to the topic you’re writing about. In the example above, if you were writing about George Bush your tags might be “George Bush” or “President.”

The most important thing to remember when starting your first WordPress blog is to have fun with it. Write about things you are interested in and that will keep you interested in your blog.

There are quite literally thousands of choices for Web Hosting available on the web. There are many great ones, many decent ones, and many that are unreliable crap that are just interested in receiving your monthly payment.

When choosing a Webhosting service the most important thing to consider is what exactly you are going to be using the Webhosting service for. What type of website are you going to have? How big will your audience be? How often will your pages be accessed?

My first Webhosting service was with Yahoo. I didn’t have any previous experience to go by so I really wasn’t missing anything as far as I knew but after I switched to to my new Hosting service I realized how bad Yahoo was. Yahoo’s ten dollar a month plan does not offer unlimited Email addresses, ulimited subdomains, unlimited databases or unlimited add-on domains. Five Email addresses. Five subdomains. Five databases. Zero add-on domains. That is what Yahoo offers besides a User Interface that is very confusing and not very “usable” at all.

Hostgator Webhosting Service

For my second website I did some research and decided to go with Hostgator Webhosting service. Hostgator offers all the things I just mentioned above and at the cost of ten bucks a month! And Hostgator’s service is top notch. Try calling Yahoo on a Sunday because you messed up a database. They will not answer! Hostgator does, and they will help you identify your problem and get you back up and running in no time.

The best experiences I have had with Hostgator is when I have had to upgrade. Sometimes you have to upgrade your service with your Webhosting service because you are getting much more traffice than you anticipated. Upgrading with Hostgator Webhosting service is easy. I just gave Hostgator a call, explained what I wanted and their rep walked me through upgrading on their website. When I need a dedicated server upgrade, Hostgator transferred all my websites for me! Databases, htaccess settings, files, all of it. No hassle on my end.

I have been using Hostgator for over a year now and I can’t say I have ever considered changing Webhosting services. I would recommend Hostgator as a hosting service to anyone.

I was only mildly hung over this morning.  Woke up at a friends house after staying up all night playing Con Quien, drinking Corona’s and eating ceviche.  All around a good time but next time I’m going to sleep before 5am.  I planned on getting a bunch of stuff done today, including setting up a BANS site that I’ve had an idea for, but I ended up doing squat.  I did help my youngest sister setup her own blog so the morning wasn’t a complete waste.

The year 2009 is here and it’s time to get things in gear again, so I’m going to make a list of things-to-do this year that I can reference and look back on at the end of the year.  This is going to be a rather broad list, easily attainable and should go towards producing long term residual income.

1. Master WordPress – Over the last year I’ve come to rely more on WordPress.  I’ve played around with other content management systems but I keep going back to it as it is best suited for what I’m trying to do and it’s just to easy and powerful to ignore.
2. Spend more time with Social Networking – I really need to get that aspect more involved in what I do.  Social Networking has exploded in the last two years and just dabbling in sites like Reddit and Stumbleupon make me think that Social Networking is going to be at least as important as SEO in the next year.  These sites bring traffic.  Period.
3. Block out distractions – I’ve learned I can’t watch Monday night Football and grow my income at the same time.  And, the same task takes about four times as long to boot.  I can do what I need to get done quickly, then watch Football, listen to music, eat or whatever it is that is causing me to take a long time.
4. Focus more on Content – This one is easy.  Just create content and the rest should fall into place.  Google keeps teaching me that thin affiliate sites with zero unique content will not be rewarded in the long run.  Time to roll out Plan B.
5. Break Down Tasks – I will make my tasks shorter and easier to accomplish this year.  Sometimes I can be a bit to ambitious with what I want to do.  Then when I figure out how long something will take, I tend to move on.  I think this blog is a good example of breaking down tasks.  One article a day, properly SEO’d, content driven without a ton of emphasis on immediate monetization and in a year I should have close to 400 quality articles.  Maybe Google will love me then?

That’s a broad plan for starters.  I think the key one is breaking this all down in to short tasks.  Make it easy.  Keep it simple.