Pedro B

Big weekend coming up and I am sick (super lame!)  So basically we have Super Bowl 43 with the Steelers and the Cardinals.  I have friends who are Pittsburgh fans but I gotta say I want to see the Cards pull it off.  And why not, I mean honestly, when are the Arizona Cardinals going to be in the Super Bowl again!  They may not make the playoffs again.  Sorry Cards fans, if it makes you feel any better I will not see a single live minute of the game as I will be on an airplane.

Before the Super Bowl, the UFC will be airing UFC 94: Penn vs. St. Pierre on Saturday.  That should be a great matchup between to of the top rated pound-for-pound mixed martial artists on the planet!  Super-Fight is a good description for this matchup.

And, exciting for me, I fly to California to visit my sisters for a week.  I plan on enjoying my time away form Minnesota and hope this head cold clears up before take-off.

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.

I guess you can use eBay to find anything really but any time I spend on it is usually to find domain names.  There is a ton of crap that one must sift through when searching for anything on eBay.  Learn to use the Advanced Search Options that eBay offers.  As far as searching for domain names goes, I usually use the “minimum bids” feature and set it to “2.”  This will make the search only display domian names that have at least two bids.  That takes all the hard work out of sifting for quality domain names!

I have a few Build a Niche Stores that I’ve setup around domain names I’ve found very cheap on eBay.  Here you can see an example of an advanced eBay search for domain names.

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…

Freakin Freezing

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.”

In the interest of transparency, I would let the readers of this article know that I have an interest in the topic of the following article. Other than being a regular user of Recommission’s system, I am related to the Owner/Operator of the Site. He’s my brother.

Every morning, before I head off to work, I check Recommission’s Expired Domain List to see what is on the chopping block for that day. Recommission updates its expiring dictionary list every morning so there are always interesting domain names to find and if I’m quick I can backorder one before anyone else does.

I wrote an article before on using different systems to backorder domain names.  In this post I will focus on why I use Recommission to find and acquire expiring domains.

Find Expired Domain Names

I’m a big believer in picking up dropping domain names because domain names always seem to rise in value.

Expiring Dictionary word .com’s are always winners and Recommission makes finding those easy. Even if I can’t backorder from that system at least I know it’s dropping and I can jump over to another backordering system, like Pool, and backorder it there. When I use Pool though, I always make sure the domain name is worth the $60 backorder price tag.

Recommission also features a list of expiring three character domain names. These include three letter, three number and CCC (character character character) combinations. I love grabbing three character domain names. Check out 3character.com to see why it is a good idea to own 3 character domain names. Three character domain names in the .com and .net extensions are long gone and increasing in value every year. Right now is a great time to pick them up as they have declined in market value because of the current economic situation.

Recommission also lists expiring 4 letter .com domain names. Four letter .com domain names have all been registered as of November of 2007. With the climb in value of three letter .com domain names, some companies have focused on acquiring and developing four letter .com domain names. If you do decide to collect a few of these, avoid combinations that include the letters Q, X, Y, Z. These letters most difficult to use as acronyms.

I have looked at other sites on the web for a place that will show you Dictionary lists of expiring domain names but I have not found one as of yet besides Recommission. Every site I find concerning ordered lists of dropping domain names always charge to see their lists. Recommissions system is free to use as of the time this article was written and should remain so for quite awhile.

I have transferred all of my files from my LEGO domain name to a new domain that I just registered that now includes the word “Bricks” instead of “LEGO” so as not to violate LEGO’s trademark rights.  I had a bit of help from Dave over at the Build a Niche Store Blog with this.  He recommended using the 301 redirects sitewide and letting LEGO wait a bit before I transfer the domain name so as to get the new domain indexed quickly.

I don’t think I have ever worked as quickly or efficiently as I did with this transfer.  I felt very motivated and even a little excited with the change.  I hope to use this momentum for future tasks, as in tonight, tomorrow and from now on.

Thanks again Dave!