The Poddyland News

It’s been almost a month since I last posted to The Poddyland News, and although in theory since I lost my job four weeks ago today you would think that I have had plenty of time to post left right and centre, I have actually been incredibly busy this past month.

My first priority was to get my medical affairs put in order, since I only had two weeks before my insurance ran out, and there was no way that I could justify paying COBRA (the insurance payments to stay on the same plan after you lose your job), as this would cost close to $400 a month.  Since I moved to Florida three years ago I hadn’t registered with any medical services, and so first I went and got my vision tested.

I know that my eyesight has been getting worse in the last five years, but I have kept putting off getting my eyes checked year after year.  Now with no insurance on the horizon it was time to get this checked.   Well fortunately the specialist said that my eyes are very good, but I do need glasses for reading.   I don’t think they look bad, considering I have never looked good in any headgear, whether it’s glasses or a hat.  Personally I think I look a bit like Dr. Gil Grissom from CSI, although the picture here doesn’t look so much like that to my – hard to take a side view myself.  One good thing is that the exam tested for things like diabetes, and I seem to be ok there.  Phew!  Although the vision test was included with my insurance, only part of the cost of the frames was covered, so there I am out of work and already just over $100 out of pocket.

Next it was time to visit the Doctor to get a checkup.  The last I had was a good five years previous, and although I don’t feel ill, once you get to 50 you never know what might be lurking.  I guess because he knew I wouldn’t be going back too much if I could help it, the doctor just did the essentials.  I got a set of X-Rays, my ears and chest checked, but he didn’t comment on my hernia, which was repaired 10 years ago and has been bulging lately.  Guess I can’t afford to get this looked at anyhow unless it gets serious.  Having lost some weight in the last two years this has been a lot better than it was, so I am not too concerned right now.

And then we come to the dentist.  The checkup included 14 x-rays, and although I was sure I would need 2 or 3 fillings, the dentist didn’t see I needed any.  I did however need a crown fitted on one tooth, broken when I bit down on a Tootsie Roll that I stole from my daughter’s Halloween candy bag two years ago.  Alas crime doesn’t pay in my case!   Well of course the insurance only covers 50% of a crown, and there is a $50 deductible, so there I am $550 more out of pocket.  I then had a cleaning, where they found several pockets of decay and recommended a treatment for this.  Csan I just say that it was a bit like being pressurized into buying double glazing, and I ended up opting for the anti-biotic injections that they recommended, which of course are not covered – another $160 out of pocket.  They give me a leaflet to read, which I take home, and when I go to read it find is in Spanish – hmmm!  So I look the product up online and find lots of reports of dentists recommending this treatment just to get extra money.  Oh great – taken for a ride again.  I figure it’s not worth trying to argue about it, so I just put it down to experience.  At least the temporary crown fits really well, I have the finshed item fitted next week.

It took several weeks to get my glasses, and of course being out of work I haven’t had to use them much, however it’s been wonderful being able to see the occasional hair to pluck out of my ears (just the occasional one I can feel and it annoys me that I have to try and pluck it blind), and I can now see to cut my toe nails too   Woo-hoo…

I attended a two day class last week on updating your resume and marketing yourself.  Although I didn’t think that this would be much use to me, since I already have a resume and know where to look for jobs, there was a lot of advice which has prompted me to work on updating my resume.  I am not sure how much benefit this will be, but if an opening comes down to the quality and look of a resume, it pays to have mine looking as good as it can.

I have a possible contract opening in Miami, but have been waiting, and waiting, and having not seen Debbie since the beginning of the year, we want to try and get together for Easter, when she has two weeks off work during the school holidays.  We already waiting until the prices for flights started to increase, and so at the weekend I decided that I would go to England for Easter, since the flights from here to there are hundreds of dollars cheaper than the other way around.  It seems crazy really, since you are taking the same flights.  I managed to get good connections, flying out of Fort Lauderdale which is my closest airport instead of Miami, and the flights were only $500, almost the cheapest I have paid in the last three years to travel to London.  With money being tight I could not afford to miss this opportunity.

Should a job open up in the next few weeks, with luck they will allow me to work from home part of the time, in which case I can do some work from England.  The most important thing is for Debbie and I to be together.  If I have to work some of the time, at least we will both be in the same place and not 4,500 miles apart.

HAVE YOU SEEN OUR NEW BLOG

If you haven’t had time to see our new blog yet, I invite you to drop in to see us at Off The Record.  Be sure to leave us a comment to let us know you were there.  You can also subscribe to our feed or to get emails when we post new entries.  Just click on the Subscribe button.

My SQUIDOO LENSES

Being off work I have been able to spend a bit more time working on my lenses, and subsequently the rankings have increased somewhat.   I still lack many in the Top Tier, and I still lack affiliate sales, but things are looking up.

My lens status as of today is as below:

LENS STATUS

Top 100: 0
Top 2,000: 3
Top 10,000: 14
Lenses: 75

NEW LENSES

Tropical Zazzle

MY TOP 5 LENSES

1. My Pet Peeves
2. Religious Jokes
3. Bournemouth
4. Zecharia Sitchin
5. Baby Boomer Jokes

LENSES IN NEED OF LOVE – I AM LONELY – PLEASE VISIT ME

• Song Lyrics Baggy Trousers by Madness
• Song Lyrics – Up The Junction by Squeeze
• Song Lyrics – Eton Rifles by The Jam

I was all set to write my next post on The Poddyland News Wednesday morning when I got called into the boss’s office, and here I am unemployed again.

The company had been trying to cut costs, since sales have slowed down, and the biggest customer, Walmart, had been squeezing profit margins.

So here I am, one of 60 people who lost their jobs in Boca Raton on Wednesday, not a lot of hope to get another one in the field I have worked in for the last 20 years, since nobody is hiring.  In fact it doesn’t look like there is a single job advertised for what I do in the swole state of Florida.

Well I wrote a post about this on my blog and hope that you will pay a visit if you haven’t already to read more.

I think my only hope for now lies in trying to boost my earnings online, so any visits to my blog, shares, Thumbs Up, Diggs etc would be much appreciated.  Hopefully if I can get some increased traffic and exposure to more visitors, I might get some more Adsense Clicks or Affiliate Sales, and that could help to bring in some more revenue in the coming months.

I know that most of you reading this post are my friends on here, although I hope that word about Squidtop manages to spread to a wider audience.  I truly appreciate all the help you have given and can give.   People from Squidoo have proven to be very generous with advice and help, and I feel like we have some groups of people who are becoming really good friends.

I spent almost 2 hours on the phone with a lensmaster in California on Friday for example, who gave me lots of ideas about ways to potentially earn some good money, and having chatted with people on the forums over the last year, you already feel that you are like old friends, even before you chat on the phone or meet.

Well wish me luck in my endeavours.  I will be working on my lenses, but firstly I have to get my paperwork in order, tax return done while I have the time, medical work done while I still have insurance, and a couple of new internet projects off the ground.

I was wondering about our blogs at Squidtop lately.  Just how many people actually visit and look at our postings?  Is it just the small group of us that have blogs, or do other people actually visit at all?

There are often very few comments on not only my postings, but others here too, and they are usually by the same people – US!

I wondered what you do to promote your Squidtop blog, and does it seem to do any good?

South Florida has cooled off again this week, and the temperatures for the last 3 nights were down in the low 30’s, which is decidedly cool for here.   It’s funny to see people in thick winter coats, but I have to admit that although I have a good tolerance for cold, and I can stand being outside when it’s cold as long as the sun is shining and it’s not windy, once the sun goes in and that icy wind gets up, it starts to cut right through me.

This week has seen me making a few tweaks to our Off The Record blog, mostly tidying up the code on the Wordpress Theme.  Debbie also put out a wonderfully funny post about the shopping trip she took last weekend with her daughter.  If you haven’t seen it yet, you could be missing out on a good laugh.

I also worked on another site that I have been desperate to get off the ground this past week, The Laughline.  This is the place where I will be copying all the jokes and funny pictures from my original web site The Poddys Directory, plus I will be using it as the archive repository for all my postings from my Yahoo Group.  So if you get a chance and are in the mood for something funny, please drop by The Laughline.

Well the deadline has now passed for Debbie to get her visa approved, so there is not enough time now before Valentines Day to get her passport sent off the the US Embassy in London and returned before she was due to fly, even if she heard today.  So, our hopes of spending half term together for Valentines Day and Presidents Day have been dashed.  I have Presidents Day off and she has the whole week off, but now we have to spend them alone, 4,500 miles apart.  The next opportunity for her to come over is Easter, which is another 2 months away.  Of course we still have to wait for her visa to be approved to know if she can come over.  The waiting, since the end of October is so frustrating.  Please keep your fingers crossed for us.

Well have a good weekend everybody, stay warm, or cool if you are in the Southern Hemisphere, and if you get a chance, I have 3 lenses listed below that are in need of some love.  Please visit if you can and leave a comment to let me know that you were there.

HAVE YOU SEEN OUR NEW BLOG

Debbie (better know to some of you as Debnet) have a new blog, and we both invite you to join in the conversations there and to see what we are up to.   We plan to cover just about anything, from what each of us is doing while we are stuck 4,500 miles apart, to news, updates and information on trendy new items or web sites / software that we like.  So please if you have time drop in to see us at Off The Record.  Be sure to leave us a comment to let us know you were there. 

My SQUIDOO LENSES

My lens status as of today is as below:

LENS STATUS

Top 100: 0
Top 2,000: 3
Top 10,000: 8
Lenses: 74

NEW LENSES

The Best Breakfast Food
The Daily Joke January 2009

MY TOP 5 LENSES

1. My Pet Peeves
2. The Best Breakfast Food
3. Bournemouth
4. The Daily Joke Index
5. Religious Jokes

LENSES IN NEED OF LOVE – I AM LONELY – PLEASE VISIT ME

• Song Lyrics Baggy Trousers by Madness
• Song Lyrics Walking On The Moon by The Police
• Song Lyrics Hungry Heart by Bruce Springsteen

South Florida has warmed up nicely, thankfully, and it’s back to being a very pleasant time of year again.  It’s nice and cool at night, not cold, and during the day the temperatures are rising to the mid 70’s with plenty of sunshine and a light breeze.  No need to put the air conditioning on, open the windows to let the fresh air in, it’s practically perfect.

The weekend was fairly uneventful, with my seeing my daughters on Sunday morning for breakfast and to take them to the park, but most of the rest of the weekend I sat in and tried to work on updating lenses on Squidoo and catching up with correspondence.  

I didn’t create any new lenses this week, however I finally got around to completing my final Song Lyrics lens, YMCA by The Village People.   I created this in July 2008 but never had time to complete it, and although it had a number of blank modules, the song has done well with the search engines and I get enough traffic so that without any promotion it’s actually the best performing of my Song Lyrics lenses.  Well now I have finished it, and think I did a pretty good job, but what is the probability that Google now drops it’s position so the traffic disappears?    As well as completing the lens, I added it to more groups, lensrolled it, Stumbled it, Tagfooted it too, so you would think things would improve…   Got any lenses related to the 70’s or Party Songs?  I would be happy to add them as Featured Lenses here.   One thing I was disappointed in, is that I had wanted to add a Featured Lens Module to highlight other lenses about Greenwich Village in New York or artists that had come from there.  Could I really find anything?  Nope!  A few lenses that mentioned it, and a few really awful lenses that I didn’t feel happy with linking to.  Maybe something good will come along in the future.

Debbie and I have also been busy working on our blog (see below), and the traffic is increasing nicely, with lots of our friends from Squidoo and Tagfoot visiting.  We haven’t added many postings to the blog in the last week, but I have lots of ideas for posts and pages – just need the time to focus on them.   

One thing I have been thinking about is Google Adsense.  Sometimes a click is worth only 1 cent or fewer than 10 cents, but at other times it can be worth a dollar or even more.   I need to do some research on the keywords that pay best on Adsense, and to try to steer some postings towards those topics, hoping to target visitors who will click on the more profitable ads.   This way we might be able to go from one to five dollars a day to fifty to one hundred dollars a day.   Here’s hoping I can find the secret sometime soon and put some new ideas to work.

HAVE YOU SEEN OUR NEW BLOG

Debbie (better know to some of you as Debnet) have a new blog, and we both invite you to join in the conversations there and to see what we are up to.   We plan to cover just about anything, from what each of us is doing while we are stuck 4,500 miles apart, to news, updates and information on trendy new items or web sites / software that we like.  So please if you have time drop in to see us at Off The Record.  Be sure to leave us a comment to let us know you were there. 

My SQUIDOO LENSES

My lens status as of today is as below:

LENS STATUS

Top 100: 0
Top 2,000: 4
Top 10,000: 9
Lenses: 74

NEW LENSES

The Best Breakfast Food
The Daily Joke January 2009

MY TOP 5 LENSES

1. The Best Breakfast Food
2. My Pet Peeves
3. Bournemouth
4. Zecharia Sitchin
5. The Daily Joke – February 2008

LENSES IN NEED OF LOVE – I AM LONELY – PLEASE VISIT ME

• Song Lyrics – The Jam Town Called Malice
• Song Lyrics – Squeeze – Up The Junction
• Song Lyrics – Madness – My Girl

FROM ONE COLD TO ANOTHER

I managed to escape catching a cold before I went to England for Christmas, dodged catching one while I was there, but lo and behold as soon as I get back to Florida, here we go – aah-choo!

You can read all about my pain and suffering on the latest post from Off The Record.  Please drop by and let me know you were here - comments always make me feel better

COME VISIT OUR NEW BLOG

I spent a lot of time over the Christmas break putting together a new blog for Debbie and I, and intend to use The Poddyland News here mostly for updates on our Squidoo lenses, however we will be covering a whole boatload of other topics on the new blog, and I hope you will come visit us.

OFF THE RECORD WITH DEBBIE AND TONY

My Squidoo Lenses

My lens status as of today is as below:

LENS STATUS

Top 100: 0
Top 2,000: 2
Top 10,000: 5
Lenses: 73

NEW LENSES

The Daily Joke December 2008

MY TOP 5 LENSES

The Daily Joke December 2008
Bournemouth
My Pet Peeves
My Claim To Fame
Religious Jokes

LENSES IN NEED OF LOVE – I AM LONELY – PLEASE VISIT ME

Song Lyrics – Dire Straits – Sultans Of Swing
Song Lyrics – Rod Stewart – Maggie May
Song Lyrics – Peter Gabriel – Sledgehammer

This post is me signing off for the holiday season as I attempt to gather all my things together ready for my flight to London on Friday night. I will be away until the beginning of January and will attempt to post while away, but my focus will be on enjoying the all too brief two weeks with my girlfriend, especially since we don’t know when we will be seeing each other again. February we hope, provided she gets her visa approved, but if not…. we are still waiting six weeks after she went to the US Embassy in London for a response.

It’s going to be cold, damp, and gloomy skies no doubt much of the time in the UK, as compared with Sunny Florida, but hopefully there will be some nice days when we can go out for walks. The countryside is so nice there, the woods and especially the New Forest, even the beaches. I am really looking forward to it, and this will be the first Christmas I have spent in England since 1993 too.

I have spent the last week fighting off a horrible cold. The last thing I want is to fly for 9 hours with a streaming nose and a sore throat and spinny head. So for days now I have dosed up on Airborne, extra glasses of Orange Juice, Tylenol, and even Night Nurse the last 3 nights. I also took a steam two nights running, and that has helped clear my head and so far (touch wood) I might have this cold licked before it had a chance to catch hold of me. Keep your fingers crossed

I am going to sign off by wishing you all a VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS and a HAPPY AND PROSPEROUS NEW YEAR. I hope Santa brings you lots of nice things – however old you are, and that you have time to spend with family and friends.

Until 2009, this is me signing off…..

PS: Please feel free to share this blog with your friends, and to visit my lenses if you have a chance.

Oops – nearly forgot – I updated my Song Lyrics – Walking On The Moon by The Police lens to change the way that the lyrics are displayed. I would be interested in your comments. I got the idea from one of the lenses by Jaguar Julie and I hope you like it. I think there is still room for improvement, and then I will probably clone out the new format to all my other Song Lyric lenses.

If you are in need of some Christmas laughter, I sincerely recommend my Christmas Jokes pages which have been getting lots of traffic since I updated them to add new pictures and also put Adsense on them. Also my Funny Christmas Pictures lens, which I updated to add several videos of amusing Christmas songs that I thought were cute.

If you have any family or friends that you plan to call over the holidays, or if you are travelling abroad, this is the company that I use for my calling cards – Almost Free Phone Calls. There are no hidden charges, the calls to the UK and anywhere in Europe, South America, Asia or Australia are really cheap, and I have saved myself hundreds of dollars in the last year by using their cards, as against paying the high rates charged by my long distance company or cell phone company. It’s not even half the price – it’s far lower than that! Serious Savings… So take my advice, plan ahead and save yourself some money on those phone calls. The cards don’t expire either, and you can use them with your mobile too.

My lens status as of today is as below:

LENS STATUS
Top 100: 0
Top 2,000: 3
Top 10,000: 10
Lenses: 73

NEW LENSES
The Daily Joke December 2008

MY TOP 5 LENSES
The Daily Joke December 2008
Bournemouth
My Pet Peeves
Golf Jokes
The Daily Joke October 2008

LENSES IN NEED OF LOVE – I AM LONELY – PLEASE VISIT ME
Premiata Forneria Marconi
Song Lyrics – Madness – Baggy Trousers
Song Lyrics – Peter Gabriel – Spedgehammer

I haven’t posted for several weeks because I have been too busy catching up on things since Debbie went back home to England after her 9 1/2 week stay with me, and although I had made several postings in the last month, when I came to clone the format for this post I realized that it’s a month today since my last Daily entry. WOW!

As expected with the closing of October the nights started to get darker ealier here in South Florida, and of course the clocks changed last weekend, so now it’s REALLY dark soon after I get home from work.

The weather has also cooled off somewhat, and we had a few days in the last 2 weeks where the temperature dropped to below 50 degrees overnight, reducing the temptation to take a dip in the pool after work even more. I’m not that fond of taking a dip in the pool at night – well not on my own at least, but if I don’t have the sun shining down on me to counter the cold water, I really have to be in the mood.

However with it being cooler and me living on the 7th floor of a condo block, it’s been possible to turn the air conditioning off and to leave the balcony door open all day and night, which lets a nice cool breeze blow through, so much nicer than having the air artificially cooled. Although you never know what’s going to happen overnight! You might wake up to find the temperature plummeted and you are freezing, then again you might find the breeze has dropped and you wake up in a sweat.

Football season here is winding down, and although my team Notre Dame has done better than last season, last Saturday saw them lose narrowly to Pittsburgh after 4 overtimes. All 3 games they have lost, they should not have done, such a shame. There is always next year though…

Well my earnings with Squidoo are expected to be down for September and even worse for November, but my Adsense revenue shot up to over $80 in October which is a new record. This was partly due to the seasonal traffic on my Halloween Jokes pages, and as a result so far in November my earnings are down. All more incentive to work on completing the revamps to my Christmas Jokes pages to update the format and to include Adsense links.

Thanks very much to AJ2008 for giving sending me some excellent funny dog pictures that I was able to use in my Daily Jokes For October lens, and thanks also to Just Bon for cross linking with my Song Lyric lenses and my Music And The Arts page on The Poddys Directory. As a result I have a great new jokes lens for october, and my Song Lyrics lenses are showing increased traffic.

My lens status as of today is as below:

LENS STATUS
Top 100: 0
Top 2,000: 3
Top 10,000: 8
Lenses: 69

NEW LENSES
The Daily Joke October 2008
New York City Break

MY TOP 5 LENSES
My Pet Peeves
The Daily Joke October 2008
The Daily Joke Lensography
Bournemouth
My Claim To Fame

Well things have been busy here in Poddyland, with work being hectic, lots of things to do, and writing to my blog has been given a lower priority, so it’s almost a week since my last entry.

Today doesn’t look much better, so I’m taking 10 minutes to just get a quick posting out…

I was hoping to get home for lunch so I could take Debbie to the beach and pick her up after work, since she is stuck indoors all day apart from going to the pool. She can’t go out if it’s raining, or if it gets too hot (which being South Florida…), so the beach is a good option. But I got stuck at work, so she has had to make do with the pool today, and I am hoping to get off work early today so we can head down to catch the sun for a couple of hours.

We are both enjoying Tagfoot, since as well as having another means to promote our lenses etc, there are some good people on there and some funny threads. They just added a feature for creating notes last night, and that has generated some really good and funny feedback.

Hoping you all have a great weekend.

As long as it doesn’t rain, our plans are to drive to the West coast of Florida on Sunday to Sanibel and Captiva Islands, where apparently the beaches are loaded with some of the best shells in the world. It will be good to see – as long as it’s not a wet day! Still, it will be a day out… We might even get some great photos and be able to create a lens out of it. Even better if we can take some good photos for use on Zazzle designs…

My lens status as of today is as below:

LENS STATUS
Top 100: 0
Top 2,000: 5
Top 10,000: 6
Lenses: 67

NEW LENSES
The Daily Joke September 2008
New York City Break

MY TOP 5 LENSES
My Pet Peeves
The Daily Joke September 2008
Religious Jokes
The Daily Joke Lensography
Bournemouth

Well I wouldn’t call this weekend a really exciting one, but it was a good one.

Friday evening after a frustrating day at work, we went out to a local Greek run American restaurant that does good breakfasts, just to see what their evening meals were like. Both of us had had a frustrating day, with my brain about to explode because of work and not having been able to get home for lunch either. We had a good meal, and then went out for a walk along the beach.

It was still fairly crowded down there, it being a nice evening, and we hadn’t gone far when a crowd were gathering on the shore to see something. It was a baby octopus that had been washed up, only about 6-8 inches across, and it looked like it was attached to a clam shaped shell that was about 6 inches across. At least it appeared to be attached to it somehow. Still need to look that up on the internet. The ONE time we go down and don’t take the camera with us!

We walked for a good mile along the waters edge, dodging the odd jellyfish that had also been washed up, and watching surfers try out their skills as there were some good waves coming in. It was fairly dark when we got back, and the city of Deerfield Beach was giving a free concert down where we park, a Blues band, who were ok. There was a good sized crowd, and we just got out chairs out of the car and listened to the music while people watching, one of our favorite pastimes. There were a few small children dancing along to the music, and a few old folks too, plus couples walking along to the rhythm – all good fun.

Saturday I took my youngest daughter roller skating as a treat for her 4th birthday which was last week. She wanted her sister to go along, which was nice, so I had an 8 year old and 4 year old in tow. We went out to breakfast first, then to the roller rink, which fortunately wasn’t crowded at all – only a dozen people there. Well, by the time I got the skates on for the three of us my back was out! Trying to do all those laces while bending over pretty much did me in! Then of course my youngest couldn’t hardly stand on the carpet in her skates, let alone on the rink, and I haven’t skated since I was about 8, and I couldn’t then either, so it was tough trying to get her around the floor. Since she couldn’t stay upright, I had to hold her all the time, with my hand up high, which killed my back and had me straining a lot. It took about 30 minutes to complete a lap of the arena, by which time I was soaked in sweat and sore. She did improve a bit by the end though, and her older sister did pretty good too. Then I took them out for a snowball (shaved ice cone) and home to their Mom, before heading back home and down to the beach with my Princess.

The ocean was quite rough on Saturday, and whereas the water is quite shallow with a sandbar normally, this time the water was deeper. It was still fun in the ocean, but by the end of the day my back was really stiff. We went home, cooked a meal, then went and did some grocery shopping, home and to play catch up on lens maintenance.

Sunday we got up, made some breakfast, then wandered down to the beach late morning. I have neved seen the surge like it there, with the waves crashing in and water piling up the beach. Of course we like most people expected the tide to start going out, but instead the waves surged stronger at times, catching people unawares and they had to scramble as water poured all over where they were sitting.

The lifeguards were kept constantly busy with so many people letting their children play near the rocks, and even adults were being swept off their feet as the waves surged in. It was a wonder that nobody got hurt! Luckily we picked a patch of beach behind some low rocks, and although we caught a few sprays of water from time to time, the sand was higher on our part and we never once had water come where we were sitting. Once it was a near miss, but I ended up making a small wall of sand to stop any others hitting us, and the ocean took the hint and didn’t even bother. I felt a bit like King Canute, with most of the people on the beach sitting much further back than we were. We just picked the right spot! I had a great time in the water being washed around by the waves, while my Princess worked on her tan.

After the beach, we headed home, cleaned up, then I fixed us some chicken and salad which was yummy. We wandered out for the evening to Delray Beach, about 15 miles to the north of us, which looked like it had a street with some fancy shops and restaurants. I had only driven down it once before, and unfortunately last night there wasn’t too much going on, but we did look in some shop windows at some curios, and pass some good cooking smells, and best of all there was a Kilwins there. This is an ice-creamery and fudgery chain from Michigan, which now has quite a few stores in Florida as well. So we naturally of course stopped for an ice cream, had a nice walk, then home to the lenses…

My Princess did a bit more work on our joint New York lens, which is now published, but still needs some finishing touches to it. I finally got around to creating my Daily Jokes for September lens (which gives you an idea of how far behind I am). It’s almost complete, and I will give you a run down of that, plus the New York lens very soon. The Lensrank took so long to update yesterday that I’m only now publishing this, and the Daily Jokes lens is complete.

It’s funny watching us working on our lenses, 2 pillows propped up behind us, both lying on the bed, computers on our laps. It’s very productive though at times.

If you haven’t registered with Tagfoot yet, it’s a great place to make new friends and to promote your lenses. You can also earn money with Adsense on Tagfoot which is great.

My lens status as of today is as below:

LENS STATUS
Top 100: 0
Top 2,000: 7
Top 10,000: 6
Lenses: 67

NEW LENSES
The Daily Joke September 2008

MY TOP 5 LENSES
My Pet Peeves
Bournemouth
Religious Jokes
My Claim To Fame
The Daily Joke April 2008

September 11th is an odd day for me these days. It’s often a quiet one, reflecting back on the events of 7 years ago, for not only was this a very emotional day for the whole world, it was my son’s 21st birthday. So now every year the opportunity for him to celebrate his special day gets dampened by the remembrance of that awful day.

I was lucky this morning and managed to find him at home in England when I called on the way to work here in Florida. We had a long chat which was nice. He is usually impossible to get hold of, since he works shifts and when he is not working he is usually either out or sleeping.

My girlfriend started on our new venture yesterday, a joint lens on New York, and I am looking forward to adding my sections to this. We had such a wonderful time there, I can’t wait to see our commentary together in the same lens. Since she has the same crazy sense of humour that I do, I hope it will be a really popular lens. For a change it should be a popular subject compared with some of the lenses that we have both created.

My lens status as of today is as below:

LENS STATUS
Top 100: 0
Top 2,000: 7
Top 10,000: 7
Lenses: 66

MY TOP 5 LENSES

My Pet Peeves had some more modules added to it yesterday, plus a Squdcast, and although this was late yesterday evening I guess it did the trick, moving the lens from 6th place to #1 as far as my lenses. Bournemouth also rose slightly due to imoroved traffic and more backlinks. I’m waiting for other changes to kick in still and have more lenses to update and promote on Stumbleupon.

My Pet Peeves
Poddys Lensography
Bournemouth
My Claim To Fame
The Daily Joke – April 2008