For those of you using Bloglines.com .. you already know that it was down yesterday March 29, 2007 between 8pm and 11pm PDT .. Although, it never came back up for almost an hour after that ..

Now – I’m getting feeds and updates from feeds that have stopped feeding long ago .. and feeds I forgot that even existed in my Bloglines account!

Some of the feeds (yesterday) never worked until I clicked on the feed in my Bloglines, and I received the search criteria feed filled of the latest news. These feeds (today) are suddenly filled up with news and stopped at the 200 count which, in some cases, are being dated in August 2006!

Well .. I’m glad Bloglines.com seems to be working now. I sure wish they would include a link to the NEWS page whenever that Plumber picture shows up .. it would have been easier than the way I found out – by searching for “Blogline News” at Google.

Since my MSN Messenger was upgraded to MSN Live Messenger and it kept crashing my system .. I stopped using it altogether. Instead, I’ve been using GOOGLE TALK.

If Anybody Is Interested, I Am On Google Talk at 1800hart (at) gmail.com

I have three Google accounts actually. I started back in 2005 where somehow I was able to create a Virtual GMAIL Drive on my Windows Explorer. It’s cool! All I have to do is drag and copy/paste and stuff from my local computer is automatically tossed onto my 1st Gmail account. I map this to be my G-Drive of my computer.

My second google account is used strictly for backups of the blogs of the HART-Empire Network. I have daily backups automated now, and each blog (except about 6 of them) backup MySQL database and emails it to my google account. Currently, I’ve got about 3200 backups and have reached 48% capacity at this moment.

My third google account is the one that I seem to be using more regularly .. the 1800hart (at) gmail.com. I do not backup anything in there – and, I never answer any emails – so, if you are sending me emails – I won’t read it. Send the emails using the contact form or to my main email .. hart (at) PetLvr (dot) com …

So, I’ve got GOOGLE TALK up all of the time now .. I’ve been playing with the shared documents and excel spreadsheets online .. and I’ve decided to create GOOGLE ALERTS.

Now – if you are NOT using Google Alerts at the moment – YOU SHOULD CONSIDER IT! It’s 100 times better to find information than say, via Technorati ..

HOW I USE GOOGLE ALERTS

Believe me – I’m not too sophisticated.

I started simple, like .. setting up the “HART-Empire Network” as a search criteria or names of my blogs – but, it became too much. I would get notices everytime HART came up .. or EMPIRE came up .. or NETWORK came up .. it was ridiculous. So, Instead – I’ve created 40 or so alert notices for the ROOT DOMAIN URL of each of my domains that I have .. Like .. HART-EMPIRE.COM would be one … PETLVR.COM would be another.

You might think it would cut down the alerts, but Google seems to be ignoring the “.COM” portion of the alert URL and still mixing up the content. For instance .. I have alert notices like .. “BATTLING-CANCER.COM” .. and I am getting notices of persons battling cancer .. people with cancer, battling something etc as if they are two separate words.

Here’s a screen shot of today – since I’ve last looked (31 new notices, 26 alerts just on the Battling-Cancer.com alert) .. I don’t bother to read them all , unless I missed the popup notice in my taskbar when the alert notice first was created. Usually I can tell if the alert notice is crap.

But, despite it all – I think these Google Alerts are a GOOD THING and when someone links your blog, you get the notice. That’s good!

Having almost 50 RSS feeds with Feedburner, I’m glad there is an option to be emailed whenever one of your feeds are not working well.

http://Feedburner.com >> My Feeds >> Scroll down to the bottom of Page

But, I’ve been getting more and more frequent email messages .. like this:

Subject: PetLvr FeedBurner Personalized Feed

PetLvr FeedBurner Personalized Feed

ALL CLEAR: FeedMedic Alert for feeds.feedburner.com/Battling-heartandstroke

Posted:
Your Source Feed, www.battling-heartandstroke.com/feed, is now working fine. Carry on! We will let you know if anything bad happens in the future.

PROBLEM: FeedMedic Alert for feeds.feedburner.com/Battling-heartandstroke
Posted:
FeedBurner had trouble retrieving your Source Feed: www.battling-heartandstroke.com/feed

The error message is:

Read timed out

Actions you can take:

Validate your Source Feed with Feed Validator. This service provides additional detail about the problem, and how to repair it.

Resync your FeedBurner feed once you have repaired the source feed.

Contact FeedBurner for help with your feed if all else fails.

Almost every time I receive these emails .. I go check the individual RSS Feed in question and, all seem to be working. While I am in Feedburner, I might like to go to the TroubleShoot tab and “ReSynch” and “RePing” the feed anyway, but .. often it’s not necessary.

Why? Because these emails that I receive are – AFTER THE FACT – AFTER THE RSS FEED HAS ALREADY REPAIRED ITSELF!!

It would be nice to receive the email when the feed WHEN THE FEED STOPS WORKING and needs repairing – not afterwards .. when it is fixed!

That’s just i.m.o.

But – at least it’s nice to know there is a problem or had been a problem. I have noticed that most of the time that my feed has problems .. and I receive these emails are … when the posting slows down to a standstill.

* I just noticed that all my time clocks on all my blogs are wrong

All my blogs are posting at 1 hour behind schedule. This is because of the new 2007 Daylight Savings Time last week .. instead of being UTC -6 hours here in Central Standard Time (CST) zone …. we are really UTC -5 hours now.

Doesn’t the UTC know that Canada moved back 3 weeks in the spring and forward an extra 3 weeks in the fall from the ‘regularly scheduled daylight Savings time?’

>> OH RIGHT .. We’re NOT following the World on this one – We’re following the U.S.A.

So! Did you change your blog’s time zone yet in your WordPress Options? I bet you probably did, last weekend when everybody was supposed to change all of our clocks. I still have one clock in my office that is the same time as my blogs .. an hour behind!

Milton Waddams: [talking on the phone] And I said, I don’t care if they lay me off either, because I told, I told Bill that if they move my desk one more time, then, then I’m, I’m quitting, I’m going to quit. And, and I told Don too, because they’ve moved my desk four times already this year, and I used to be over by the window, and I could see the squirrels, and they were married, but then, they switched from the Swingline to the Boston stapler, but I kept my Swingline stapler because it didn’t bind up as much, and I kept the staples for the Swingline stapler and it’s not okay because if they take my stapler then I’ll set the building on fire…

(later on ..)

Bill Lumbergh: Milt, we’re gonna need to go ahead and move you downstairs into storage B. We have some new people coming in, and we need all the space we can get. So if you could just go ahead and pack up your stuff and move it down there, that would be terrific, OK?
Milton Waddams: Excuse me, I believe you have my stapler…

I almost made it ..

I promised myself I wouldn’t even go to the “twitter” site or read anybody’s blog who has a twitter widget in the sidebar. Why? It’s just me .. let me explain.

* I have never seen the movie E.T.
* I did not see the original Star Wars (episode 4) until the weekend before Episode 1 was released.

Why? Because they were just too popular, and too many people were talking about it and that pissed me off. No, I did NOT miss anything, as I do not miss anything that I do not partake or participate in. For instance, if I start watching Survivor All-Stars but missed last week’s episode, then I would say . YES .. I missed Survivor that thursday. However, I did not start to watch Survivor Africa so, I can safely say that I never missed anything that season.

Anyway .. it’s been in my Bloglines, in my daily reads, in my weekly reads .. and everywhere, and everybody keeps mentioning Twitter this and Twitter that .. so I looked at it Sunday.

YEP .. IT’s everything that I figured it would be – another waste of time. “I’m going to the parkade to start my car now” … “I’m hungry and going for lunch” … “I have to pick up my laundry” … OMFG .. are you kidding me? Isn’t that what MYSPACE was all about in 2003 and 2004? Except, instead of teenage kids it’s like .. A-Lister bloggers now? Or, for people who just don’t want to blog but, want to blog. *shrugs*

Not to put down people who are actually USING Twitter for a benefit to their productivity – good for you actually! – but those who are just following the masses and getting thrills watching the comments of bloggers who (may) think they are better than you or I .. or, indeed ARE better than you or I (I’m not ashamed to admit that :D) … here’s something funny I saw today in my bloglines … and followed the link.

Click to expand the image .. but in case you can’t read that .. it says… notice these: TWITs(?)

* “Crushed by twitter bill… Ugh. Be careful people!
* “oh sh@#$%@#$%t… jsut checked my tmobile bill: 2,367 extra messages… $236.70 in extra charges!!! does tmobile have unlimited?!?!?!?!

And, if that doesn’t scare you .. I guess you can just go to TWITTER and read people’s thoughts.

I still say – I just don’t get it. Don’t want it. Sorry. Please leave your Twitters to your Twitter Widgets and not my Bloglines. Thank-You.

I’ve began to install the Firestats plugin at the end of February 2007 and occasionally have been looking at the type of statistics that it is providing. In particular, it has been providing:

* STATUS: Page views, page views in last 24 hours, visits, visits in last 24 hours
* RECENT REFERRERS: from other sites, from search engines, etc
* RECENT POPULAR PAGES: top 10 pages in each site plus visitor count on that page
* BROWSERS: percentages of the different browsers used by my readers
* OPERATING SYSTEMS: percentages of the different operating systems used by my readers
* COUNTRIES: percentages and flags of the location of the top 5 countries +plus everybody else
* HITS TABLE: detailed IP information, timestamp, URL, referrer, and ImageUserAgent

It’s interesting to see percentages of the Browsers that my readers are using and the different countries they are from.

The browser percentages are pretty much similar to what they have mostly indicated in other statistics packages that I am using .. that between 68% and 87% throughout my sites, most of the time … my readers are definately using Internet Explorer. I mentioned “most of the time” because 1-800-HART blog seems to be the exception, with 76.5% of my readers using Firefox.

I recall last year looking at these same two types of statistics .. that the above high percentage of firefox readers were mostly on this blog, the HART-Empire Network blog. I think it’s probably because I have been reading and/or commenting on more ‘tech’ type of blogs, or ‘making money’ type of blogs, and ‘web 2.0’ type of blogs in the times that I have been surfing (especially in March 2007) and curious blog owners or readers are clicking my URL and taking a peak. It is also true that readers using Firefox tend to NOT stick around my sites and are usually gone within 5 seconds after arriving.

Last year I would randomly switch links between all my blogs, including this one .. but in March I have just been using 1800HART as the URL. If I had been using my comments with the PetLvr URL or email, it seems that I am on akismet’s spam list or something and always end up in moderation, so I’ve just been using the 1800HART url and email as it works.

Another piece of information that is interesting in the last 18 days of March 2007 is the countries .. particularly on the 1800HART blog. On this blog – which, I would classify it (yes- I know I need to brand myself more on this part) .. as an accounting, bookeeping and income tax blog and for SOHO self-employed individuals working out of their home. As I’ve been quite busy this month, all I have really been posting is news releases from the Canada government about income tax … and the occasional posting of amusing pictures or powerpoints that I have been receiving in my email. In reality – I think I would be more comfortable if my readers were majority Canadian – because, I’ve been posting Canadian related Income Tax information! But .. this is what the statistics have shown me, by Firestats .. in the last 18 days only.

* 1-8-0-0-H-A-R-T

* PetLvr.com – [The Blog]

* HART-Empire Network

I find it amusing that this blog has the most Canadian Readers. I was going to post views of a few of my “Battling-Series” blogs .. but, the traffic is quite low and it’s not representative i.m.o. For instance, on one of the blogs I have been ‘contact spammed’ a lot and the countries are showing on one blog .. that 87% of my small readership are from Russian Federation! Go figure 🙂

It was on the blogs that I haven’t yet switched to the Mailform/Akismet type of contact form instead of the older wp-contact form plugin. And, based on the statistics – I removed the old contact form and replaced it with the newer contact forms. It should be different next month!

* Alternate Title: Don’t Mind Me .. I’m just Ranting.. Feel free to click NEXT

[Rant On] – in fact, I have no intention of even reading this after I type it, nor will I even spell check or be concerned about my grammar!

GrrRrrRrRRRrrrrrrr

It’s getting frustrating.

Am I a Spammer? Is someone out there using my email to comment spam?

Then – why are my comments in moderation?

Problogger .. 901am .. blogherald .. successful-blog just to name a few.

.. and about 15 others that I was actually testing to see if I’m being blocked by Akismet ..

It seems that my hart (at) PetLvr (dot) com is being blocked by everybody. Half of the time if I link the URL to PetLvr blog but use my other email, I may be blocked .. and I may not be blocked.

IF this keeps up – I might just stop commenting. It’s irritating.

I’ve sent queries and comments (2) using Akismet’s contact form – but, no one ever replies back to me. How the heck do I even know if they received it?

Now .. this brings a great question of interest to me … WHAT SHOULD I DO WHEN I AM IN MODERATION?

Basically, I’ve got over 40 blogs and receive tons of spam and moderated entries. I never unmoderate them actually. In fact, about 90% of the time the notice from my wordpress blogs don’t really tell me what was in moderation, and in fact just informs me that there might be about 20 in moderation since – yesterday. It is very infrequent that it will actually inform the contents of the comment in moderation.

When ever I do go into my blogs, if there is a notice of items in my Dashboard letting me know that there is comments in moderation, I usually go to Spam Killer and either decide whether the entries are truly spam or not and designate it – or leave it in moderation.

There are currently two people in moderation (if you know who you are – contact me!) who have been spamming about 10 different blogs of mine – and maybe 5% of the comments actually could be legitimate comments … the rest are obviously spam. The almost legitimate one are held in moderation and I never unmoderate it. If that person emails me, I would.

So – is that what I should be doing? Contacting the blog owner when my own posts are caught in moderation?

I don’t feel like I should do that. I will mention something, however, if there is a good reason for me to be in moderation. For instance, if I deliberately post 2 or more active links in a comment .. the wordpress default automatically thinks the comment could be spam. That’s different. I triggered the possibility of moderation.

I just don’t think that my email address should be the criteria for me to automatically be banned or put into moderation at my favorite blogs – and worse yet – if the reason is because I’m on a “hit-list” at Akismet.

[/rant off]

Ok. I feel better now.

Well .. I’ve upgraded 29 blogs to wordpress version 2.1 ..

There’s been two upgrades since I’ve started this process, with the latest version 2.1.2 really just a quick fix of a hacked upgrade 2.1.1 ..

But – if I don’t beef up my upgrades soon .. there might be a version 3 by the time I get around to things!

So, I’ve started to mass backup my data tonight and despite that will probably take about two more days full time backing the files and MySQL database .. I WILL FINISH the upgrades by Saturday morning!

So .. Here’s my plan ..

Here are the blogs I still have left to update and their current versions. I’m not going to bother to post any progress until they are all upgraded to version 2.1

* Version 1.5 blogs

30) http://CurlingBlog.com (1.5.1.2)
0) http://CurlingBlog.com/gushue/ (1.5.2)
0) http://CurlingBlog.com/kleibrink/ (1.5.2)

>> I will not be upgrading the Gushue & Kleibrink blogs, and will eventually just combine them with the root blog

* Version 2.0 blogs

31) Battling-Stress.com (done)
32) Battling-MS.com (done)
33) The-Singers.com

* Version 2.0.4 blogs

34) BirdLvr.com (done)
35) HorseLvr.com (done)
36) Medieval-Site.com
37) PlanetEarthPeaceParty.com
38) PlanetEarthResearchFoundation.com
39) CorydonClock.com/blog/

* Version 2.0.5 blogs

40) The-Lingerie-Site.com
41) Item-Site.com

* I have upgraded from wordpress version 2.0.2 to wordpress version 2.1

I have successfully upgraded callHART.com/crazy to the semi-latest version of wordpress 2.1

There were no real issues during the upgrade, but last night while I was upgrading .. my DSL connection kept dying out (maybe because of the wind?) but after a while I had to keep FTP’ing before it died out on me – I just went to bed. I forgot about finishing the upgrade until earlier this afternoon … whoooops!

Ugh .. sorry about that call HART crazy readers! (if you exist!)

Yes .. I have been adding my own posts to a few social bookmark sites ..

* Furl, Blogmarks, Spurl, Simpy, Del.ici.ous, Blinklist, Rawsugar, blogmemes, Linkagogo, feedmelinks, magnolia, google, backflip, looklater, and wink

I only post to a few random sites on each post and have a few accounts at a few of these sites.

* What I have not been doing is anything with REDDIT … so, I decided to open an account today, and about 2 hours ago I’ve added one post of mine ..

* Here are the results after 2 hours .. 69 referrals? Can this be true?

According to my other ‘real’ stats .. it appears to be the case and, it’s actually less than 2 hours .. it was at 69 referrals after 1-hr, 50-min.

PS: the post in question that I’ve added was today’s post ..
When Computer Geeks Get Bored…They Create Stuff Like This

This tip was suggested by Ryan (via link at Performancing site) from College-Startup and I definately have to take more interest in this REDDIT.com site .. I’ve got an account over there .. It’s hard to believe this much traffic in 2 hours .. I wonder what my refer statistics will look like after 24 hours?