Random Thoughts about life in general, living in the big city of Toronto
Wordless Wednesday
Poppy
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This beautiful red poppy is growing in a garden near my home. Isn’t it lovely? Oh and it’s huge! It must be 3 inches across.
The first few years that I had my garden I used to grow a few different poppy varieties but I keep forgetting to plant new seeds in the spring so I haven’t had any poppies growing in my garden for a while now. Oh well … Sigh …
Do you remember that contest that I started a week and a half ago? The New Domain – Cheap? contest?
Well, I don’t have any winners as of yet. I had a number of great ideas given to me and several people participated but no winners have been chosen.
One of the reasons why I don’t have any winners yet is:
1. Some great domain name ideas were given, but ultimately I decided to go with one that I thought up on my own. Sorry!
2. A number of people suggested various hosting sites, but I don’t need a new host as I’m very happy with the one I’m using. I have some huge sites running with this host and I need a host that offers a lot of transfer bytes – and that I have.
3. What I did want was a place to purchase a cheap domain name, but when I looked at several of the suggested sites the domain prices were only inexpensive if you also purchased another product from said sites – often in the form of hosting.
4. The final reason why I don’t have any winners for my contest – yet – is that I haven’t chosen a designer, or whether I’ll even go with a designer at all. If I do go with one of the suggested designers I assure you that the first person that suggested the one whom I choose will receive the promised 500 credits.
I’m really sorry that I wasn’t able to award any prizes to anyone by now. I was hoping that I could have made a few people happy.
I did however choose my new domain name! I came up with it on Saturday when I happened to have had a very high fever all day. I decided to call the new site Feverish Thoughts. Do you like?
It totally suites what’s been going on with me these days, and by that I mean my being sick. A day doesn’t go by without me having a fever so I might as well have a domain named after my affliction.
I don’t know if it was a good or bad idea to have created the new domain on a day with the ominous numbers 6.6.6 as it’s date. But it’s a done deal! Hey my birthday has three 6’s in it. Well, it doesn’t really, one of the numbers is an upside down 6, but that’s close enough isn’t it?
The two new sites that I’m creating are going to be:
1. A gardening site – Yes I know it might not be a huge hit, but I don’t care. I want to talk about my garden and what grows in it. I’m sure there are a few other people out there that might be interested in a site devoted to all things gardening.
2. A photo site – I love photography and enjoy taking interesting photos.
Now here’s where you guys come in again. What should I name these sites?
I’m really stumped on the photo site. Tricia’s Photo’s just doesn’t do it for me. Right now the photo’s I have to put up are, well, mostly flower pictures, beach picture and a few from around my lovely city of Toronto. Do you have any creative ideas for a name for my photo site?
The garden site needs a name too and if you want to try your hand at coming up with a name I’d appreciate hearing your ideas. So far I’ve thought of:
1. I never promised you a rose garden (uh my garden has 65 or so rose plants in it!)
2. Petals and Blooms (some companies use that one, so maybe not)
3. As the Garden Grows
Any other ideas?
Mr. Fab has been typing away furiously in his room and I just went over to read the post he’s been working on and I really think you should go visit him. He has a serious post up today – yes very rare for this boy! I don’t want to tell you what it’s about because I want you to go there and read it for yourself and see how it affects you. go, go now … oh wait, leave me a site name idea first, then go.
Isn’t that the title of a song? I’m thinking Beatles but I could be wrong. OMG I’m starting to rhyme! Stop it, stop it now!
Now back to my sites sucking. Please see the previous post for more about site suckage.
I really think they must, ’cause I can’t even win a battle of the BL0Gs battle over at BL0GEXPLOSION anymore. Nope total loses all the way around. I haven’t won a battle for close to a week. I don’t mind losing, well not if it’s only about half the time, and it’s a fair fight, but to lose all the time? No, it’s no fun anymore, and that’s sad because I really do like battling.
I don’t understand why I’ve lost some of the battles either. I mean I don’t think my site is the be all and end all of all sites by any means, but I’m losing to sites that haven’t put up a new post for days, or who’s post is perhaps only two lines long. So I have to ask why am I losing to some of these sites when I try to put up a new post almost daily, well, certainly if I plan to battle. It does get boring to see the same post for more than 24 hours if a site is battling a lot.
How are you guys voting in the BOTB’s anyway?
I see people writing that they vote by a sites design. Why? Isn’t it the content that should count the most?
Do you actually spend any time at all reading what the person has written?
If a friend is battling do you always vote for them? No, I’m not getting into any of the past controversies here about people apparently voting in groups. That’s not what I’m asking. I’m asking if you vote for your friend 100% of the time – no matter how good the other site might be?
I’l admit that I will vote for my friends now and then. Sure. But if the site they are battling has a better post, well, the other site will often get my vote. I really try to be fair about things and I hope that others are when my site is battling, but I have to admit that sometimes it just doesn’t feel that way.
When I vote, I vote by content first. If I can’t read the post because the design has problems such as header overlapping part of the post, or text style or colour that is simply too difficult to read, well they’ve likely already lost because I can’t judge the content if I can’t read the post. That’s the only time that a persons choice of template or layout comes into play when i’m voting. Content is king every time.
If the content is old I’m more likely to vote for the person with the newer post unless their content doesn’t interest me. The posts that interest me most are the ones that make me smile, and even better if they make me laugh. I like funny, humorous, and even lightly sarcastic sites.
How do you vote in the BOTB’s?
Or maybe just my two sites do?
Rant about BL0GEXPLOSIONS Rent my BL0G to follow. You’ve been warned.
I think it’s become almost a full time job between deciding on who gets to be my renter of the week on each of my sites, and trying to find a rental space for myself.
Over the weekend both of my sites came up for rent and I ended up having to pick just two new roomies out of the 23 hopefuls who bid on my sites. I hate having to deny people, but all I can say is keep trying and keep working at putting in bids on all the sites that you’d like to rent from, eventually someone will give you a spot.
Now, getting back to putting in bids on sites. I’ve been working hard to get spots for both this site and Odd Planet. I put in bids for each site every single day.
Just for the heck of it I decided to see just how many bids I put in during the month of May. Here’s the breakdown:
denied – 59
expired – 8
deleted – 1
accepted -14
total = 82
52 of those bids were for this site, and 30 of those bids were for Odd Planet. Odd Planet is a harder sell – not as many sites pick up humor sites I guess.
So far this month I’ve already put in 31 bids with only two being accepted.
Now since I put in multiple bids I sometimes get accepted by more than one site in a week. Well this site does, Odd Planet rarely finds a home. I don’t mean to take up multiple spots, it’s just that as you can see from the bidding history that I’ve listed above I’m denied more often than I am accepted so it’s better to place a bid with more than one site at a time to increase your chances of being accepted.
What we really need is more renters so that there would be more spaces for all of us trying to promote our sites.
Actually we need more good renters.
I could have bid on a lot more sites than I’ve listed but I didn’t. If your site is only going to bring me one or two visitors yet take 20 to 200 credits from me why should I rent from you? To give my credits away for nothing? Nope, I’m not even going to bother with placing a bid.
There are a lot of sites out there that don’t end up sending a lot of visitors to their renters site. Sometimes it’s not for lack of trying because they do have the rental space showing prominently on their site, and they do make at least one welcoming post to their new renter. No, sometimes they just don’t get all that much traffic to their own site so their stats aren’t that great. I don’t mind so much if I only get 20 clicks or unique visitors when I paid 40 credits. At least I don’t mind if the renter tried to get some of their visitors to visit me.
But this post really isn’t about what happens when you rent, it really about the sheer work it is to try to secure a rental spot. Never mind how good or bad that promotion goes when you’ve been accepted. That’s yet another rant.
I really think that if more people started creating a rental space this would be easier. I’d also end up denying fewer people because they’d be able to secure a space much much more quickly.
I think I’m going to make my own job of selecting renters a tiny bit easier. If the people that bid on my site have a rental space on their own site then they will be considered eligible for a spot on one of my sites. If you don’t rent to others why should I let you take a spot away from someone who’s going through the same dilemma that I am by having to deny far too many people a spot each week as well.
How do you feel about the “rent my BL0G” business?
Do you have to put a lot of effort into finding sites to bid for, only to be denied repeatedly?
I’m curious. Leave me a comment and tell me what you think of this.
My friend, from Pointless Drivel, the famous and most fabulous Mr. Fab himself has been going through his own renting dilemma. If you think I’ve had a hard time choosing go read what he had to say about his own problems.
Oh yes, it’s click and comment Monday isn’t it? If you are a participant please feel free to leave a link to your site below .. but if you leave a link you need to leave me a comment too, and then I politely request that you visit my renter! A great way to participate in click and comment Monday is to visit each sites renter or a site on a persons bl0groll. Leave a comment at each site that you visit. Try to visit at least 5 sites if you are participating.
Thanks!
I truly believe you guys are trying to drive me mad. Do you know how much I stress over choosing a renter? Every time I put my site up for rent I wait until the middle of the night before I torture myself with making a decision. Of course, since I usually wait until at least 12 hours have passed from the time I started the rental offer I seem to end up with 10 + bidders each time. That makes it even harder. What makes it really bad is that I currently have two sites that I put up for rent so I put myself through this twice a week! Arggh.
15 bidder this time round!
I took my time rating each site that had made a bid, but when I saw Pointless Drivel I think I knew that I would ultimately pick the fabulous Mr. Fab to be my roomie this week. Now lately, when faced with an overwhelming amount of bidders I’ve either chosen the site that bid first or whichever site appeared to be younger than the rest or in need of some promotion. If I had done that this time round I certainly would have picked Evolution of Gina as it is the youngest site. Gina and all the rest, please forgive me and bid again. I just had to go with one of my fav’s this week. Sorry!
Pointless Drivel has quickly become one of my favorite sites to visit daily. Why? Well because you just never know what the heck Mr. Fab might be talking about that day and you just have to know, that’s why.
His audio posts reading out his dramatic versions of popular songs are hilarious. As are his posts about his fascination with lemurs and by-products of lemurs, virtual sisters, co-workers, outings with his wife. You name it, whatever is happening Mr. Fab has something interesting to say. I won’t even go into his posts about his body parts (nipples for one!) or the ones about being a metro-sexual. You’ll just have to find them and have a good laugh when you do.
Now to spread some love, if you have the time, after you’ve visited my newly chosen renter of course, why don’t you take some time and visit these wonderful sites:
Luka’s Incogbl0go – A personal site about the owners day to day life. One of the things that I like best about this site- other than the owner herself who seems to be a very nice person – is that she opens up her site to others on the last Friday of every month so that people can come on and write guest posts. It’s a fantastic idea.
Modern Princess – A well written site that contains stories about the owners family life, kids, general observations and some absolutely fantastic sounding recipes. Her latest post is a recipe for stuffed and roasted strawberries that sounds wonderful. Oh they have chocolate in them, even better. Yum!
Adventures in Cyberia – Interesting site! The creator has built this site by creating alter egos of real life bl0ggers using sims2. It’s like a soap opera or day time drama. Check it out.
Scooter McGavin’s 9th Green – Scooters currently renting on my other site Odd Planet right now. If I didn’t choose him for that site this week I probably would have picked him to rent here this time around. He’s a persistent guy! Bids just about every time I tell ya. He does discuss popular television shows, Movies and new music on his site. He’s currently rating the best of Prince. I must admit that I think Prince is a talented artist so this was an interesting read for me.
Backyardigans Fan – Well, I have to admit, as a person without children, I had no idea what the backyardigans were until I looked at this site. If you are a parent with young children who enjoy the backyardigans or if you are a fan yourself then this site is for you as it’s everything backyardigan.
Utenzi – This popular site has great writing. Utenzi talks about life, day to day goings on, discusses products, software, movies – well a whole variety of things! It also appears that he’s a kayaker, which is something I’ve never tried, but since I love canoeing and whitewater rafting too he must be a good guy. He does wonderful write ups on his renters and some of his bidders too. Seems like an all round great person and his site is a worthy read.
Green – Great site. I’m still trying to figure out why it’s called green? She also has one called Purple. I enjoyed her recent rant post about people rubbernecking and gawping. Yes that’s a word. Go see!
Meltwater. Torrents. Meanderings. Delta. – For a guy who’s just injured himself badly and ended up separating his shoulder he’s sure pumping out the posts this week. Must take him forever, but he’s doing it. Matt’s latest post is a beautiful photograph that you just have to see. It’s breath taking. Matt’s site is another one that I read regularly. He writes on a wide range of topics from humor to nature, to observations about society. Always a good read.
Useless Advice from Useless Men – The useless men are at it again. You have to visit this site. People write to them, asking them a question that they long for an answer to and the useless men give their advice, often with hilarious results. I love visiting this site as it always makes me laugh.
Just Jill – This site is new to me, although it appears to have been around for a while. I really enjoyed one of her recent posts where she talked about who she was 10 years ago and the changes that have taken place in life since that time. This site is worth keeping an eye on.
Long, Slow, Beautiful Dance – I like this site. The posts are fresh and interesting. Laci was in a car accident earlier this week and now she’s lamenting about the joys of living without a car while hers is in the shop being fixed. Take a peek.
Evolution of Gina – This appears to be a brand new site started near the end of May. I’ve never seen Gina’s site before but I’m pretty sure that I’ll be going back for a visit now and then. She’s living in a small town and making her way in life. She’s written a few poems and talks about her life and the people in it and of course discusses some of the joys of living in a small town. Check it out.
The Invisible Bl0gger – This site is fairly new to me but it’s quickly gaining my attention. I enjoy the writing style. This southern lady seems honest and puts herself out there for others to see who she really is. She has a wonderful post about being from the south and it made me laugh. I think you’ll enjoy it too.
Dr. Wickidy – An entertaining site about the adventures of Dr. Wickidy in his wacky world. Each post is another adventure in the on going story of Dr. Wickidy. Readers get to participate by voting on what might happen next. It’s a fun site that should make you laugh.