The Poddyland News

There is always so much going on this time of year isn’t there!

It seems here in the USA that everyone looks forward to Thanksgiving at the end of November, which is of course a 4 day holiday for most people, something that overworked American really needs, but it’s no time to relax… There is the great meal of course, time with the family and friends, football games, and then the following day the biggest baddest craziest shopping day of them all.

Well that is all behind us now, but once Thanksgiving is over, there is the mad rush to get the house decorated for Christmas, to buy presents and wrap them, and then all the Christmas Parties to attend. By the time Christmas Day arrives, I think most people are just plain exhausted.

Despite having lived in the USA for 14 years, most of it in Indiana and more recently in Florida, it seems odd to me that the stores all have huge sales before Christmas and not afterwards. In the UK, the sales start on Boxing Day, the day after Christmas, at which point everyone has been forced to buy gifts at full price, and so the sales are to allow the stores to sell off what is left, to make room for the Springtime items. It doesn’t seem logical to me that everywhere would want to drop the price oif products before Christmas. Who in their right mind would want to buy anything at full price when they know everything is going to be on sale? You would think that it would be in the interest of stores to hold off on the sales as they do in the UK – but hey – I am not complaining one bit – I like to save money the same as everyone else, but it just doesn’t make good business sense to me.

And so with it being the season for Christmas parties etc, yesterday saw our IT Department Grab Bag event at work.

The idea of this is that everyone brings in a gift, worth around $20. Everyone draws numbers to see the order that gifts are going to be selected in, and then one at a time the people go up and select a gift from the table. You can either select a new gift, or “steal” one that has already been taken from someone else. you can’t steal back anything you already had, and each gift can only be stolen 3 times.

Well, moreso than usual, the majority of the gifts were of course booze! Lots of Baileys, various Vodkas, Rums, one Single Malt Scotch, cocktail kits etc…

Since I am off to the UK for Christmas and you can’t take liquid in your hand luggage any more, I decided to not go for alcohol, and instead try to get a gift voucher. Last year I ended up with one for a local restaurant, which was good and saved me money – far more useful than something that I don’t need, especially as money is tight.

And so up I went, picked a small package, and it turned out to be a voucher for Barnes & Noble (a large bookstore chain if you are not familiar with them). I thought “ok, I don’t read much, but I can at least make use of this”.

Well that got stolen eventually, and I went up again, since most other people had selected bottles of booze by now, and these were getting “stolen” like crazy. I ended up with a 4gb Flash Drive. “Ok I thought, I already have 5 of these, but another might come in handy, or I can always re-gift it. A 16gb Flash Drive would be nice, since I can get 4gb ones for under $10 these days”.

And so the drawings went on, until that too got stolen. No great loss I thought to myself. With nothing that I really wanted from the already opened gifts, except a Bluetooth Headset that my friend had picked, and I wasn’t going to take that from him as he wanted it, so I went up and opened a 3rd parcel.

“Wow” my boss said, “that’s great, it’s a Sushi Board!”. “Wow” I thought to myself. “What the heck do I want with a Sushi Board?” Ok I will eat sushi if it’s on a buffet somewhere, but I never buy it, and I have no idea how to prepare it and would never dream of doing that. Besides, my girlfriend doesn’t even eat fish, let alone raw fish… It’s a nice wooden board, so I checked the web site it came from (which was on a sticker) in case I could somehow return it to a local store. Nope – it’s a small wood-working company, and would you believe they only sell these in pairs! So I don’t even have a complete set, only half of one! Oh joy…

Well my friend eventually lost his Bluetooth headset and ended up with 3 silver photo frames. He was not too pleased, but hey it’s more use than a damn sushi board! You can at least re-gift that… Another colleague had several gifts that he wanted, but both got stolen and he ended up with a box of chocolates. He grumbled for ages, so I thought “I can at least take the chocolates to England and my girlfriend and I can share them”. So I offered to swap with him. Would you believe I couldn’t even entice him to do that. Bloody sushi board…

So here I am with a sushi board stuck in the bottom drawer of my desk at work. You couldn’t even use it as a cutting board as the bottom is tapered in and it would probably tip over. So much for my hopes of finding a voucher to a restaurant and saving myself some money. I think I am just going to stick it in the kitchen at work with a sign that says “any takers”. What’s the betting nobody wants it even if it’s free?

I just thought that this would be an ideal topic to add to The Worst Gifts I Ever Received which is a very funny lens about personal experiences of having received the most awful gifts. If you haven’t seen this lens yet, I think you will enjoy it.

My Christmas Jokes pages have been getting lots of traffic since I updated them to add new pictures and also put Adsense on them. Last week I had been getting up to 12,000 page views daily, but for a couple of days they seemed to lose traffic and didn’t appear on the first page of Google, but now we are back at the number 3 spot if you search for Funny Christmas Pictures and yesterday I had just under 8,000 page views. Please drop by and take a look, I hope to raise some good laughs around the world.

If you haven’t seen it yet, Debnet has created a great lens about Christmas Crackers which are a great British Tradition, one which hasn’t really caught on yet in the USA, but everyone I know over here who has seen Christmas Crackers thinks that they are great. The lens also shows where you can order them, and there is just enough time to shop before Christmas arrives…

Right now time for me is going by fast, and it’s only NINE DAYS until I fly to England for Christmas and New Year. I am really looking forward to this, especially as I haven’t spent Christmas back home in England since 1993.

I could use the break. I took almost half of my 10 days vacation in February to go to England, and I am using the last 5 now, so the rest of the year I took practically nothing off. I am ready for a nice break, and also to see my princess…

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.

Oh yes – before I forget, A NEW LENS on Squidoo…

Having got November out of the way, I managed to work on my December lens over the weekend. This has a great collection of Funny Christmas Pictures, and so far it’s been climbing up in the Squidoo rankings nicely.

There is a module in there that allows you to add a link to any Christmas lenses that you may have and to vote on them, and you are very welcome to come and add your yours, as well as to grab the module to use on your own lens. I would just ask that if you do, please can you lensroll me back, and of course I will return the favor by lensrolling you.

Have A Wonderful Week One And All, and don’t overdo it on the Egg Nog!

My lens status as of today is as below:

LENS STATUS
Top 100: 0
Top 2,000: 4
Top 10,000: 9
Lenses: 73

NEW LENSES
The Daily Joke December 2008

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

LENSES IN NEED OF LOVE – I AM LONELY – PLEASE VISIT ME
Song Lyrics – Robert Palmer – Addicted To Love
Song Lyrics – Peter Gabriel – Spedgehammer
Song Lyrics – Rod Stewart – Maggie May

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

I couldn’t believe it when I saw the rankings just now. 2 days ago after I first published it, The Daily Joke September 2008 was ranked 119,461. Yesterday it was 6,509, and today it’s 1,137! It’s now my 3rd place lens in just 3 days!

I hope you will pay a visit to this lens, if you haven’t already, and if you have any lenses related to dogs, please feel free to add them to the lens. Why dogs you ask? Well the lens is full of funny dog pictures, some of which have never been published before. So drop by please and take a peek (no not a “peke” dear – we aren’t giving away free dogs…).

This lens has had almost 200 visitors since it was published, partly due to my friends at Tagfoot, partly due to more at Stumbleupon, but largely to the members of my Laughline mailing list at Yahoo, which I have had for the last 8 years. There are some great people on this list, who would probably enjoy Squidoo a lot, since they enjoy reading about people’s lives and writing back. The Squidoo forums would suite them just fine.

It just goes to prove that blogging really does help your traffic, but it’s not just writing about your lenses or other promotions, I find that people enjoy reading about the things that are going on around you, even if it’s nothing important, just the silly daily things. That I believe is what makes a blog popular.

Well last night was one of those silly not much happening evenings, and yet it was eventful for the two of us. I came home, dinner was all ready (I have her well trained – well no not really – my girlfriend had the meal ready so that we could go out straight after), so we ate and then went out for a walk. As it common in many parts of the USA, roads are not designed to facilitate walking from one place to another, either there are no sidewalks, or like the community we live in, the buildings are surrounded by a golf course and beyond that a solid wall with no gates through it.

We decided last night to walk down the road to the local strip mall to see what was there. It’s only a small strip mall (row of shops set back from the main road for those of you not familiar with the USA), and hard to see exactly what is there by driving along. The only path through the gold course is for the golf carts to take, so we had to walk the long way around the buildings and down the main driveway. Then we walked along the shops and several medical offices, a deli and a local bar, past a run down movie theater, then stopped at a Checkers (drive-thru fast food place) and got banana milk shakes. I don’t know what it is, but in England banana shakes are very popular, but you hardly see them over here. Anyhow, we then walked through another mall section, and you couldn’t help but notice that half the shops were either closed down or had obviously very little business. There was a Thai restaurant and also a Chinese, both set back, hard to see. There was one couple in the Thai one, and nobody in the Chinese. Rather sad really. So we walked back, sneakily cut across a fairway to the buildings, half expecting the sprinklers to start up, got home and then watched tv while working on lenses and catching up on email.

Well there you are, not a particularly exciting evening in the scheme of things, but it’s often fun walking through somewhere that you haven’t been before. You see so much more when you walk, whether it’s shops or a park. We both really enjoy it.

My lens status as of today is as below:

LENS STATUS
Top 100: 0
Top 2,000: 9
Top 10,000: 5
Lenses: 67

NEW LENSES
The Daily Joke September 2008

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

Even though some traffic might not result in sales or referrals etc, it’s “bad” traffic, it can still serve a purpose, if you can somehow channel it correctly. 

I have a directory (The Poddys Directory) that I created 9 years 10 months ago.  It’s really out of date, needs a complete rewrite and splitting into multiple domains, but it does get alot of traffic and has over 10,000 backlinks to it.

Well, in the past month or so I noticed that certain pages, mostly Jokes (I have almost 2,000 pages of jokes on the site) were getting a lot of traffic according to my site stats.  I have also been getting a lot of traffic in from Stumbleupon, but until this week I never put 2 + 2 together.    Well I finally figured it out last night – I looked in Stumbleupon, and found at least 10 pages of jokes that had over 40 people who liked them on Stumbleupon.   Someone must have added them a few months ago, and other people have also given them a Thumbs Up.    Now there is nothing special about these jokes, they aren’t the greatest jokes, but for some reason they got reviewed on Stumbleupon.  Just yesterday (1st July) alone, one page received 2,789 views!

The bad news is that despite my having updated the page a few weeks ago, practically nobody who visits clicks on the Adsense or CJ ads.  But it’s traffic nevertheless.

So how does this relate to Squidoo?

Well, if I add a link to my Jokes Index lens on Squidoo, and I can encourage 10% of the visitors to my lens, that’s maybe 200 visitors per day.  Then, they might also visit multiple lenses, get hooked, and might even sign up on Squidoo, or give my lenses a Thumbs Up on Stumbleupon too.

It just goes to show that even bad traffic does have it’s uses.  All traffic helps drive the ratings up, in this case Poddys.com is a PR3 rated site, and it’s just a matter of taking that worthless traffic and converting it into something more worthwhile.

I hope to add the links back to Squidoo tonight, and will hopefully see some changes in my lens views tomorrow.

Will keep you posted…

Meantime….  1 lens in the Top 100, and 9 more in the Top 2,000.

Religious Jokes is my best performing lens on Squidoo right now.

This is a growing collection of family friendly jokes that see the funny side of religion, be it Christian, Jewish, Buddhist or any other religion.  I have taken a lot of time to make sure that only the best jokes are posted here, and so far I think the lens is proving to be very popular.

So, if you haven’t seen this lens yet, I hope you have time to pay a visit.