Have you ever wished you could become more successful at internet marketing? Do you have a product/service/website that you wish you could promote more effectively and efficiently? That's exactly what the 30 Day Challenge aims to help you accomplish.

The "challenge" kicks off on August 1.. 30 minutes from when I started typing this.. and continues for – get this – 30 days. The goal is to make your first $10, somehow, on the internet without spending a single cent of your own money. There's a lot of hype surrounding this project, but from the excitement of the community that's been built, I think that it has a lot of potential.

Personally, I have no idea what to try to market, and don't know what I'd work towards to make even that first $10.. but I think if the knowledge presented over the next month is as useful as it's being made out to be, that I'll walk away with a much better idea of how to effectively market on the internet. And that skill alone seems worth the effort to follow along.

So, if the idea of making a bit of money, learning how to promote your (*whatever it is you want to promote*), and just joining part of an incredible community sound appealing – give the 30 day challenge a try.

Do you ever feel like you need to completely turn your life upside down? Make some huge changes that are completely uncharacteristic and maybe continue to seem like a bad idea no matter how much you try to rationalize them?

I've been toying around for the past few days with the idea of "jumping ship".. leaving the life that I know for an extended period of time (3-6-12 months) and trying something different. And for some reason that "something different" seems to be heading across the country and bumming around California for awhile.

Why would I want to do this? First, I feel stuck, and I feel like I need to make a change.. a big change. Maybe that would help me appreciate what it is that I have right now, maybe it'll show me something that I want more and would rather have, and maybe it would lead to a horrible mess that I spend years trying to get myself out of. I think that risk is part of the appeal. Second, right now I have very little responsibility, few things holding me back. I'm afraid if I don't try something now, that when I start thinking about it again, it won't be feasible.

Am I going to do it? Maybe. Probably not. As much as I want to think that I could face my fears and start something completely new like that, I don't think I can pull it off. Unless I ended up with a great job offer, and could find an affordable place to live, it just doesn't seem realistic, and almost self-defeating to try to go through with it.

So what's the point? I came into this post ready to list off a bunch of reasons why it was a great idea, but trying to articulate those ideas made me realize that escaping isn't what I need to do. I think we all get to this point at least once, some of us can work it out on our own, some of us turn to others, and some get tired of trying to handle it. This idea of "escaping" what ails us, our difficulties, is often more appealing than trying to face the things that need to be faced and to work through them. I guess that's the road that I have to go down.. I have to face what I don't want to face, and change what I'm resistant to change. A vacation is good, escaping.. not so much.

If anyone has any good techniques for dealing with stress/life changes – leave a comment.

I'm reading through a book right now, it seems good, but I'm reluctant to start dropping titles of books until I get to the end and can fully judge the quality. It sounds like a lot of good ideas for dealing with just this sort of thing, but I'm yet to get to anything practical and usable rather than just theory. I'd settle even for usable theory. We'll see.

I can't sleep.. check this out if you like puzzle games and need to kill some time

Bloxorz

[Edit: and this one - Jelly Blocks]

So last Saturday I posted up the red panda links, and I think maybe I should turn it into a regular thing.. mostly to prevent myself from tossing up lolcat pictures every single day.

So here, my friends, is your Saturday distraction:

These first two.. these are for you.. you know who you are. loveyourguts

[via I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER?]

[via I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER?]

[via I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER?]

This video proves that cats and technology don't always get along.

And I'll finish this post off with – Puppy vs Kitty.

Have a great Saturday!

June 22nd, I moved into my first apartment. For the last few years I've been renting rooms, and there was a 6 month period where I was "renting" a house from a friend while it was for sale and unoccupied. This is the first time in my life when I've really had to be "responsible" and act more like an "adult." (I'm in a quotation mark mood right now)

This apartment is costing me about twice what I was paying for the last room that I was staying in, and I'm thinking about picking up a second job to help offset that cost, and pay down some other bills (car) a lot faster. I'm reluctant though, because I think right now a second job would probably kill me.. but we'll see how things turn out. One of the biggest benefits, and this offsets the cost quite a bit (but not nearly enough), is that I'm now less than 2 miles from work, and closer to my family, whereas before I was about 30 miles away. 4 miles vs. 60 miles saves a lot of gas driving to and from work, and then there's the bike, that saves even more when I can manage to wake up before the last minute.

The first thing I did when I moved in here was try to reduce the energy usage as much as possible. The first step was compact fluorescent bulbs. Here's a breakdown of what has been replaced:

• Bedrooms (x2) – 2 60watt bulbs (each) replaced with 20watt CF [240watts to 80]
• Bathroom – 6(!) 60watt bulbs replaced with 4 13watt CF [360watts to 52]
• Kitchen (just replaced this morning) – 5 60watt replaced with 3 20watt and 2 13watt [300watts to 86]
• Dining room – these are on a dimmer, but i'm thinking of replacing the 3 60watt bulbs with 2 40watt incandescents.. unless I can find some decent (and cheap) dimmable fluorescents
• Living room – no lights in room, added 2 20watt lights
• Hallway – 1 60watt bulb, unchanged
• Water heater – reduced the temperature considerably, done by maintenance so I don't know the actual temperature change

My first utility bill was for $65.. but both of the meter readings were estimates, and pretty far off. There was a charge for 11 therms of gas (the meter shows no change,) and 399kWh (the meter puts me at about 198kWh.) After re-figuring my usage, when an actual reading is done, my bill for last month should end up being around $33. Not bad, but I think I can do even better this month.

Any good energy saving tips that you think I could try out? That's what the comments are for.

This page seems to have become pretty popular for people searching for information about the Hibernation option on their computer. Unfortunately this post has very little information other than my experience with it. I have created another page: Using The Hibernate Feature In Windows XP in an attempt to provide you with some information that you may find useful. If you have any questions, comment on that post and I'll try to expand upon it.

I've basically retired my desktop computer in favor of my (slightly) older laptop. It's going on about two years now, and while not the fastest or most powerful, for the most part it gets the job done. The mobility is what sealed the deal and has left my desktop unhooked since my last move.

My main beef with this thing is the startup time.

A few nights ago I needed to pull up some photos on flickr quickly.. I got home, hit the power button, and then kept complaining into my phone about how long it was taking to startup. It must have taken 3 minutes or so, or maybe it just felt like that because I was in a hurry. I won't go into the part about how my (attempted humorous) reaction to those pictures has probably done irreversible damage to an already delicate situation.. I'll just mention that it's one of the big things in my life that I'm trying to improve on, and hopefully as I make progress I'll be able to post some helpful/insightful articles that someone out there may find useful.

Anyway, I'm far from computer illiterate. I have a degree in computer science, I'm a programmer by nature and training, so I know my way around these magical boxes. I've de-crufted, disabled unnecessary services, killed unused startup programs, etc.. it's helped, but it's still too slow for my taste. The solution? Hibernate. Rather than waiting seemingly forever for my computer to startup, I can now get to a usable desktop with my wireless connection all ready to go in probably under 20 seconds. Not impressive, but it's a definite and noticeable improvement.

What does hibernating do? Instead of just terminating all the processes and getting the system into a "safe" state to power off like shutting down does, hibernating writes the contents of your computer's memory onto the disk and then powers off. When the computer is turned back on, windows loads this file back into the memory, loading any programs you had open at the time of shutdown. It's like creating a snapshot of where your computer was before it turned off.

The problem? Some programs may not like it, and may hiccup. I had a problem with this on my desktop way back, and can't remember what program was causing the problem.. I just make sure I close everything before I hibernate, I never liked shutting down with running programs, I prefer to close them rather than having the OS go at it. Also, you know how the longer you run your computer, the more likely it is to slow down and get sluggish? You'll get that too after awhile since you're not actually shutting down with hibernate. My solution is to just restart every few days.

So there you go. If you're in a similar situation, next time you go to shutdown try changing the drop-down from "Shut down" to "Hibernate" and see how it works out for you.

How often do you find yourself using the word "honestly" in conversation? I've noticed myself using it more often lately, and now I'm beginning to pick it out more in conversations that I've had, and ones that I've just overheard.

It seems innocent enough. In most cases it seems to be used as a form of apology as in "Honestly, I don't know where it is." or to put emphasis on a something. The more I think about its use, the more bothersome it seems that it's being used in such a way. To have to preface a statement with "honestly" sets off an alarm that says "Wait.. you weren't being honest about the rest of that? .. or you're being MORE honest about this somehow?"

I know that this isn't the normal reaction people have when something is "honestly" said to them, but I've been trying to focus a lot on the thoughts that are going on behind the scenes, the subconscious stuff that I can actually dig at, and that was one reaction I found that caught me off guard. I wonder if other people internally react to it the same way, and maybe don't realize it?

Anyway, I was just thinking how great and how much better off things would be if people didn't have to feel the need to stress that the next thing that they're about to say is true. Anyone else?