By admin
A few disclaimers:
These are all things that involve issues I’ve dealt with, come to terms with and are working or have worked on resolving and I wouldn’t be the person I am today if I didn’t have the life I’ve had – you couldn’t buy the life education I’ve gotten for free. I’m not writing so you’ll feel sorry for me. I’m sharing personal details so you understand where I’m coming from and I’d love for this blog to be a place where my son learns about my life before he became my life. I embrace who I am along with all the things I’ve been through and I’ve always made things happen for myself. While most things I’ve brought on myself I still haven’t regretted anything because of what I learned or experienced during the process.
Some people are going to be mad that I’m posting details for the whole world to see but this is about me and what I’ve learned more so than what actually happened. I’m not placing blame or trying to ‘out’ people and will try to be as brief as possible with certain situations’ details – sticking to the facts. As they say it’s better to ask forgiveness then ask permission so while I’ve asked for permission or advice from a few key people, there are some people that will probably never read my blog but might not like what I write on it. I have loved and still love many of the people I write about; my family of course (dysfunctional or otherwise) and even though they are ex husbands there is still a place in my heart for them.
Some of this is rather heavy stuff but please keep in mind that I’ve always been a very happy, outgoing, enthusiastic person. I’m a very social creature and have talked about my experiences a lot as a young adult which I think was important for me at the time. I’m now 33 and tend to not talk about it as much but will not shy away if someone asks.
I’m going to go in chronological order as best I can – I move alot – always have, at least once a year sometimes more so sometimes I have a hard time remembering what came first.
*~*~*~*
Some background info:
My Grandmother on my Mom’s side raised 22 kids – 5 from her husbands first marriage and birthing 17 of her own with my Grandfather. From what I can tell or remember I think that side is mostly English and Irish (Canadian).
My Grandparents on my Dad’s side had 9 kids – 8 boys, 1 girl. French Canadian all the way back to France in the 1700’s or so I’ve been told.
My sister and I were born in Prince George, BC Canada – my sister (or seester as we call each other now) is 5 years younger than me (Hi, April!). She has three awesome kids, a fantastic man and lives in a small town in Saskatchewan.
Mom and Dad divorced when I was 7 years old so between moving back and forth between them with both of them moving around a lot (Dad was in construction, Mom in the restaurant industry) I ended up going to 18 different schools in 14 years of schooling. Because of all the moving I ended up going to 3 different schools in Grade 5 causing me to repeat Grade 5. My sister has me beat though, she went to more schools than I did in 13 years of schooling.
Around grade 6 my Mom’s birthday present to my Grandfather was to move to where my Grandparents lived in Saskatchewan. During that year, I was sexually abused by my Mom’s Dad – he touched the wrong areas on the outside of my clothes and I ran – it happened once and that’s all the detail I’ll get into about the experience itself. I will say that was the year I started gaining weight. He’s been gone for 16 years now.
I figured out that as a result I was unconsciously making myself unattractive to men by gaining weight. I think as I’ve come to terms with this issue I’ve worked thing out in my head and by the time I realized what I was doing I was addicted to food and it was/is a comfort to me. I’m working on it!
This is a work in progress… more soon! Stay tuned!
By admin
There are many differences between having a blog/site on a free blog service and having it self-hosted – the best and easiest platform for a self-hosted blog is Wordpress. I’m going to explain the basic differences between the two and what you need in order to self-host your blog/site.
Free Blog
Free blog services create a blog for you that lives on their website/server – basically they give you a bit of their real estate to have your own little area where you can happily blog away.
Free blog services include places like:
blogspot.com
blogger.com
wordpress.com
(not to be mistaken for wordpress.org which we’ll get into in a little more detail below)
myblogsite.com
livejournal.com
The Good: It’s free – and we ALL love free and they are easy to use.
The Bad: They can’t be customized.
For example: Most sites created on free blog services don’t have a RSS feed (a way to subscribe) or a way to sign up for updates via email – how are you supposed to keep in touch with your peeps! Honestly, if a blog doesn’t have a way that your readers can receive updates why bother writing posts? No one’s going to know when you add some awesome and interesting content even if they wanted to.
Have a sign up for a newsletter/free report, a button for a product or promotion, or some other tidbit that you want in a prominent position on your blog/site? Sorry you can’t add things like that to a free blog service based blog.
Exactly how many blogs on that same free blog service have the same theme/template as your blog – we don’t want to look just like everyone else!
The Ugly: The traffic and visitors that come and read your awesome blog posts don’t belong to you, it’s theirs… and that’s just not fair!
They have hard to remember domain names – it’s long and convoluted because they have to fit in your blog name and theirs – too much!
Wordpress
Wordpress is a very powerful and popular blogging platform. It’s popular because it’s easy to use and the blog platform script itself is free. The charges associated with having a self-hosted blog/site are minimal.
Minimal Costs = Credibility for you and/or your business
So while you don’t pay for Wordpress (the blog application) you do pay for two things in order to self-host your Wordpress blog/site:
1. Your domain name or website address ($8.88 and up – per year)
Buy a domain name – instead of having a domain name of http://www.ReallyCoolStuff.myblogsite.com you can have a domain name like http://www.ReallyCoolStuff.com and THEN (within your website hosting, my next point) you can have an email address of admin@ReallyCoolStuff.com – how’s that for credibility?! Honestly, I don’t take people too seriously when their main site is hosted with a free service and you can tell just by the domain name if it’s a free service based blog/site or a self-hosted one. People want to take you seriously – help them do that by investing in a domain name.
Domain names cost anywhere from $9 and up (per year) depending on your website address (i.e., .ca domains are more expensive then .com ones). A couple reputable places to purchase a domain name, I recommend (and receive no monetary compensation for mentioning):
http://www.domainsite.com
http://www.godaddy.com
Owning your own domain name is just that… you own the web address. Now you need a place to PUT your site…
2. Website Hosting ($5 and up – per month)
It’s a place to host the files that create your website. You know how the files on your computer take up space on your hard drive? Well your website is basically made up of a bunch of files so we need a public place to put those so that it shows up on the world wide web. Website hosting companies give you a little spot on their server and you manage your site via a link and login that your web host provides once your account is set up. This is where you set up your email addresses and manage the files for your website.
Website hosting costs anywhere from $5 a month and up (per month).
I provide hosting at $5 a month – I’m a reseller and affiliate of HostGator – you can get hosting directly from them by clicking the HostGator image above.
Once you have a domain name and website hosting – you’re on your way to having a self-hosted Wordpress blog/site.
After you’ve secured both a domain name and hosting you have two options:
1. Install Wordpress yourself – if you’re not afraid of techy stuff and can follow step by step instructions you can download and get instructions on how to install Wordpress by visiting http://www.wordpress.org – keeping in mind that you’ll then have to learn how to install themes/templates and plugins. If you can master installing Wordpress then installing themes/templates and plugins will be a piece of cake!
2. Find someone that can install Wordpress for you - there are a ton of people that do this type of service, including me – contact me for more information.
You also might want to customize your theme/template. In order to fully customize your header, sidebar, footer and the site’s look and feel you’ll need to know what you’re doing as it involves some scripting (html, php, etc.) and some image editing. This is an initial set up type thing… you only do it once so it might be best to hire someone to make over your theme.
I know people offering Wordpress theme/template customization! Let me know you’re looking for Wordpress theme/template customizations and I’ll refer you to the BEST of the BEST!
Happy blogging!
PS: Stay tuned for my article about how to choose a Wordpress theme/template!
By admin
IF you have a blog.
IF you want people to read your blog.
PLEASE make sure that you have an RSS feed and that it’s working (checking and testing it every so often never hurts).
That was going to be the full content of this blog post but I’m feeling somewhat… well… frankly… I’m tired of it. I know sometimes people don’t know better but… if you start a blog and you’ve researched how to have a blog then you shoud know that most web savvy people read blogs using a feed reader. Find someone that knows how and pay them to do it – it could take MAYBE 10 minutes of their time!
I’m not usually so blatant/controversial but I’m going to list a few people who’s blogs I’d like to read but won’t because I can’t get them in my Google RSS Feed Reader. I love you all and I’m not doing this to be mean. These are JUST the ones I found in my travels on the net very recently so you can imagine how many blogs I don’t read because of this issue. Don’t hate me! It’s the principle of the matter people!
I want to read your blog/site but can’t subscribe:
http://www.theproblemismen.com
http://survivingelementaryschool.com - Christina – I love you!
http://www.hollyconway.blogspot.com – I love our local radio station The Beat 94.5!
Which reminds me http://www.kidcarson.com – Your site isn’t a blog but it should be!
Oh! and an email notification of an update to the blog isn’t the same thing! I get enough email – I just want to read you in my feed reader please!
SO many GREAT blogs go unread because there’s no way to subscribe! Don’t let that happen to YOU and lose readers (aka potential clients!?) in the process.
Some would argue that internet marketing is all about niche list building and those of us that use a blog as our website have the awesome advantage of using our RSS feed subscriptions as our list.
Somewhat related informational tidbit:
Did you know… that blogspot blogs don’t come with an automatic RSS feed… IF you have a blogspot blog (I won’t even go into why you shouldn’t – I have articles coming up that go into all the reasons to have a self hosted blog) but… IF you do have a blogspot blog, I’ve seen a few with RSS subscription options but it isn’t on there by default – so head on over to Feedburner and get one and stick the code in your column (if they’ll let you) or figure out how to do it. If you ask nicely I could probably even figure it out for you.
Oh! and a note about Feedburner – they are now owned by Google. SO, if you use Feedburner and haven’t logged in lately – it will tell you to move your feed once you login to your account.
Old Feedburner – New Feedburner
I may very well be back to add – non-working RSS feed subscriptions or sites that don’t have a feed but should – to this post as as I come across them. But really if these people I’m listing on here don’t have subscribable feeds (yes subscribable is a word – I looked it up!) are they really going to know who’s linking to them? I doubt it, hence me calling this a rant – I don’t really expect anything to be done about it – it’s just me blowing steam and trying to be somewhat humorous about it.
On the plus side, The Daily Bumble – a canadian webcomic that premiered on Facebook in early 2008 – used to have a non-working RSS feed but has recently fixed it and now I’m getting my daily bit of funny from Clayton Flagg! Big thanks and shout out to Catherine (my best friend) for introducing me to Clayton’s work! HUGE thank you from a new fan to Clayton for fixing his various RSS feed links – keep it up and save me a button!
Enjoy!
Image Credit: Wizard-Creek
By admin
I was browsing my google reader the other day and found this awesome post on Dad-O-Matic:
Why Your Infant Needs Gmail – where it’s suggested that you create an email address for your child and send them messages on a regular basis.
I instantly obtained kaiuscooper@gmail.com and suggested that his dad create one for him as well.
Working outside the house has honestly, so far, created a very bad strain on Kaius and I and our relationship… I hate it. I feel like this will be a way for me to stay connected with him while I’m at work. They don’t have to be huge long story emails and I know he won’t read them any time soon. Just snippets, things he says or does that I don’t want to forget – I’m much better at digital versions of stuff like that than paper and pen versions.
Heather over at Dooce.com (one of my favorite blogs) writes a monthly letter to her daughter on her blog – not sure I can do that – I mean Heather how much do you bawl and laugh when you write those – I don’t even know you or your daughter besides via your blog and they turn me into a laughing human water fountain.
Awhile back I also purchased his domain name: KaiusCooper.com – I plan on putting a blog up there eventually and soon he’ll be either audio or video blogging about things he’s interested in. This is going to be the way our kids connect with each other.
We live in a digital world and posting videos, sending emails and the like are SO easy to do compared to when we were kids, I can’t imagine not using these things (even if you don’t publish them to a website). I have tons of video and pics that aren’t online (tons that are too!).
So two suggestions… go get your kid an email address (and send them emails) and get their domain name (I use DomainSite.com for about $8 USD and receive no monetary reward for suggesting them).
Enjoy!
PS… stay tuned for some Wordpress articles – I have a bunch written, just have to fine tune and post them 
By admin
A lot of you know that I’m ‘into Natural Health’. Even though I don’t really ‘believe’ in all things involving traditional medicine – I’m still skeptical about some natural remedies. When I saw the title of this interview and read the synopsis that came in my email – I thought “Yeah, right!” (dripping in sarcasm of course). I thought even this was a bit too simple.
I decided I ought to give it a read.
I’m not even done reading it and I HAVE to share it with you.
The Water Cure: An interview with Dr. Batmanghelidj
It makes SO much sense – simple simple sense that there’s no denying it – we are a thirsty thirsty world. The pharma industry doesn’t want us to know because it’s a multi-multi-billion dollar industry.
Then I really thought about how this applies to me. I really struggle with drinking enough water and if I’m honest with myself, the days I do better with getting that stuff into me, the better I feel physically. When I drink a glass of water before bed, waking up the next morning I feel better – I gotta run to the bathroom but I really do feel better than when I don’t.
A final quote from the Interview transcript:
“Bernard Shaw says that normal people try to conform, and reasonable people do not conform, and look for alternatives. Therefore all progress belongs to unreasonable people.”
Edited to add a link to his book:
Your Body’s many Cries for Water - Your Not Sick, You’re Thirsty Don’t Treat Thirst with Medication
Image Credit: FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Administrative and Internet Marketing Assistant. Canadian work at home single mom to Kaius (born 2003).
