HART-Empire

Every year I spend between $150-$200 CDN on a new office chair for my home office. Being self-employed and working out of my house, an accountant and income tax preparer, a blogger and just a general person who loves to be on the internet for 12-16 hours per day .. I go through a lot of chairs. Some years, I’m buying a new chair every 8 months and other years it’s one chair every 18 months. Time sure flies though, because everytime I need a new chair I can remember rushing out to my local Staples or Office Depot and search for a cheap replacement chair.

Last year, I thought I found a good chair … at Office Depot. It was a little more than $200 CDN ($229.99 I believe) and was the first chair I ever bought that actually had an “ergonomic rating“. It was rated for a maximum of between 3-5 hours a day. When I purchased this chair, I told the salesmen that this was the most stupid rating system that I’ve ever hear of, having office chairs not being able to at least average a regular 8hr business day sitting on the damn chair – not to mention me, who is on the chair for about 12 hours a day or longer! The salesman (who earned his commission that day) assured me that the chair does last a good working day .. and that it’s just common sense guidelines that this new “ergonomic rating” system is really meant that you shouldn’t be sitting in front of your computer for more than 3-5 hours anyway – and should go for a walk, stretch your legs, keep your eyeballs away from the computer screen, etc etc etc

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This is your chance to go to Mars!

Drop by Nasa and fill in your name and location and your name will be included with others on a microchip on the Mars Science Laboratory rover heading to Mars in 2011! You can get a certificate (like above) that you can print and cover with saran wrap and put it on your office wall or something

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I’ve decided to add TweetMeme’s “Retweet Button” to all my sites. I am a fan of twitter, and although I have added the Wp-To-Twitter wordpress plugin which, included with other social media buttons appears at the bottom of each of my posts, I think this is complimentary. I remember looking at this plugin early on, and didn’t want anything to do with it because I never saw the RT’s .. it was all going to @tweetmeme, but they changed that. Also, I was receiving a conflicting cron error message with my other twitter plugins (tweet this and wp-to-twitter) so I assumed having more than one twitter plugin will always conflict. This one doesn’t conflict!

The tweetmeme button shows the number of retweets of the post, so I can see how many people LUV the post .. plus I have configured it to mention @PetLvr (me!) so I know our posts have been retweeted. It’s easy to install – just like all wordpress plugins .. go into your dashboard, click Plugins, then click Add New .. and search for “Tweetmeme” .. and install, then activate. Simple

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Welcome to this week’s feature here at the HART-Empire.com blog!

While most of you may or may not already know .. on Friday July 10, 2009 my SU account was under review. On Monday July 13, 2009 it was reinstated. All the details may be searched in BlogCatalog under my username over there if you are curious, but I feel that is all I have to say about that. Of course, I would like to add that I am now caught up with all the great stumbles in my SU toolbar now .. and with my normal random stumbling .. I think you are in a treat this week with some real “sweet-HARTs”!!

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Okay .. maybe “sexy” is a little overdoing it – but, I’ve been blogging since May 2005 and have many blogs and I like to think that I have some experience in selecting the right wordpress plugins for my blogs. Plugins are like the backbbone of your blog, and just like your theme .. determines the functionality and look of your blog. I thought I would share all of the major plugins that I am using around my network of sites.

Here’s how I keep track of all my plugins .. On my local hard drive, I have a folder something like this:
c:\2009-Latest-Wordpress

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Welcome to a new weekly (and resurrected) feature here at the HART-Empire.com blog! Every day, all week, even when I sleep .. I am always trying to promote my sites and other people’s sites too. Some call this function “social marketing” and others refer this as part of the “social media”. Personally, I like to think of it as “helping my friends succeed”. I am a pessimist an optimist, and hope that karma will come back my way – and some of my friends will remember me when they become rich and/or famous

Here are some of “HART’s sweet-HARTs” that have been stumbled during the past week, ended Monday. I hope you feel compelled to go visit these great bloggers and see why I liked their post! Enjoy!

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HART Recommends THINKHOST For Shared Host Plans

ThinkHost offers green web hosting powered by renewable wind and solar energy, over a world-class outsourced network. Your carbon neutral account with ThinkHost offers you top-level technology, while at the same time supporting a more earth-friendly future .. who provide unlimited domains, unlimited databases and unlimited emails.

Click on the banner if you are looking to find hosting for your new wordpress blog. This is an affiliate link, and I may earn something from you signing up – but, you will also receive benefit. Check out their green web hosting plan!

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On July 1, 2009 I converted this blog to a “Do-Follow” blog .. well, that is a modified “do-follow” link to the author of anybody who comments at least 3 times! On short posts like this, it may seem that the sidebar just drags on and on but realistically .. I like to think that space is unlimited over there!

So – I have added the “Top Commentors Widget” plugin .. umm, yeah .. there’s a lot of options but it’s not that scary I currently have it set to show the people who comment the most THIS MONTH up to 20 people. It will automatically reset each month, so if you’re trying to be my favorite and get the title of “Top Commentor” .. keep ‘em comments coming!

You know something needs attention when ..

.. when google sends you an email letting you know that you ran out of room in your free google mail account!

(click to enlarge to a new window)

Today, July 6, 2009 I have literally run out of space in my secondary GMAIL account. I have used up 7,345 MB (7.345 GIGS) of space to freely store backups of all the blogs in the HART-Empire Network, dating back to April 2008 – when the last time I had run out of space. In April 2008, the same amount of space resulted in 5,300 MySql backups (and on 6,660 MBs of space!) however, it seems that some of the backups since then have been in ASCII format and not in MIME or sent as an attachment. I probably should be concerned, but I’m not going to cry over spilt milk.

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HART Recommends SINGLEHOP for Dedicated Servers

In the summer of 2007 my network of sites began to take a toll on the resources of my hosting plans, and I found the need to do something that would ensure that I was able to expand and grow online. I reorganized all my sites and consolidated 3 different hosting providers to one host. I did an interim report of how I felt with the decision to consolidate, back in November 2007 and I can’t say that my opinion of singlehop has changed since.

I like their service and support. If you are in the need of a dedicated server, consider SingleHop. By the way – that’s an affiliate link, and I might earn a little commission if you sign up with them. So, if you are seriously looking for a new host provider and dedicated server – feel free to ask me any questions .. maybe I can clear up some of the concerns you may have!