Cody

What is up with everybody plotting for me?  I mean seriously, every time I turn my back there is someone new with plots and plans on helping me and making things so much more awesome for me… only thing is I’m so oblivious I didn’t even know it this last time.  Most of you know that I was greeted coming home from Jamaica with job offers and everything necessary for me to survive without scrambling to get another job.  Plus the freedom to go to St. Louis for a couple of weekends to have fun at the Ren. Faire.  Then while at the Ren. Faire I got accepted into the “family” and got the royal treatment the entire time with help from everyone, even if I never knew their names they were always coming up to offer help/advice of any kind that would be of service to me.   Truly was awesome, and there will never be a time that I miss the Ren. Faire again because those people truly are my family
Just today (well technically yesterday, but with the hours I sleep I never know what day is what) I learned that there have been more plotting in my favor as well!  And when I say this, I don’t mean they just had some opportunity for me that just kind of works and hey why not get Cody to come…. no, these people have gone out of their way SPECIFIED me and did everything they could to push me into the path of said opportunity [as a side note, I was stumbling and found some random article and there was an add on the side of the page with a guy and a blender at the top it was scrolling through messages that said “started drinking vegetables?” “you could be heading for a mid-life crisis.” so obviously I’m headed down that path to a mid-life crisis, next thing you know I’m going to be getting a loan to start my own business and wait… crap… I am having a mid-life crisis… guess I’m only gonna live to 42 ]

wait… where was I?  I got distracted by my stumbling… uh… so yeah, I wasn’t really ever planning on actually TELLING you what this new plot is, because I don’t usually do the whole telling people what is on my mind thing.  Doesn’t hurt that only 1.5 people actually visit this site a day… unlike Archmaille Designs which now, thanks to StumbleUpon has reached 300 people a day… let me say that again because I’m not sure if I believe it yet, but the second day of optimizing my stumble information I’ve reached 300 people for one day, not including yesterday where I had 150 people, so nearly 500 people in the last two days… not so bad.  Oh, and the moral of the story is that I win

Although cash donations are accepted that’s not what I’m talking about. As some of you know I’ve been working desperately to get search engine terms for my site ArchmailleDesigns.com (in hopes of sales). Unfortunately I can’t compete with the top people, it is just not possible on my own… even with help from Jordan it’s not possible.

Here’s the problem. The number one website that comes up for the term “sterling silver jewelry” is evesaddiction.com a site that has held that spot for quite some time. This company makes major bank… and I suspect they do most of their business online. Not only do they have the number one spot for both Yahoo and Google for the term “Sterling Silver Jewelry” they also pay $1 per click to be number one for googles AdWords. This website has 6,637 backlinks according to Yahoo… granted Yahoo keeps better track of backlinks than anyone else that’s not everything that links to them, some smaller unknown sites aren’t even registered. They also have 2,645 pages to their website… which does give them a lot of their backlinks but it is still only a small portion. My site ArchmailleDesigns.com has 326 backlinks registered with Yahoo and 88 pages… In order to make sales I need to compete, I need to get to having at least half of that, or something. One major difference as to why I am able to compete with them is that 100% of my incoming links are quality links and only about 1% of theirs are so my site has a PR4 as does theirs (hoping to push that up to a PR5 by the end of the month).

Which brings me to what I’m accepting donations for I need links to my site. Don’t bother with MySpace if you don’t already have one they have put msplinks into place and all MySpace links are 1,000% worthless… well all new ones are anyways, I have a link in my profile that is still a direct link but I can never update my profile again because it would then convert it to a msplinks link which would ruin whatever good it is doing. If you would be so kind as to help me out here are some suggestions of what is always welcomed and good practices for link building.

First off I need the links to go to http://www.archmailledesigns.com/ <– the trailing “/” is VERY important, Google gives a huge amount of weight to that little “/” for who knows what reason, but they do. The link should say either “handmade jewelry” “Sterling Silver Jewelry” or “Handmade Silver Jewelry” both Sterling silver jewelry and Handmade jewelry get about 20,000 searches a month on Yahoo possibly double that on Google so they’re going to be the big ones, Handmade Silver Jewelry only gets 500 searches a month on Yahoo and I’m very close to having it anyways so it is appreciated but not necessary, although having a variety is good too and even handmade silver jewelry does help for both of the other terms.

Places to link from:
Forums <– oh if you would be so kind as to put my link in your signature I would love you forever, it is easy to get up to 500 posts on a forum that you are active with and that would give me nearly 100 extra incoming links (by the end of the month I will have about 900 as I just added the link to the bottom of my site kclanparty.org with a little more push I’ll be hitting 1,000 links )

Blogs <– blogs are awesome! If you own the blog and put me in your blogroll that’s spectacular, once again blogroll = much loving forever!!! If you use other blogs such as Blogger.com, blurty.com, whatever Yahoo’s blogs are, a WordPress blog, xanga.com or any other that you don’t own a simple link will do and will help a good amount.

Social Bookmarking sites <– Backflip, Bibsonomy, Blinklist, Blogmemes, Blue Dot, de.lirio.us, del.icio.us, Diigo, Furl, Looklater, ma.gnolia, Rawsugar, Shadows, Simpy, Spurl, Wink  Any of them are good, and add links to the site!  If you use a program called “OnlyWire” which can be found at onlywire.com and sign up for all of these bookmarking sites and bookmark all the main pages of my site (or if you’re feeling really good all of the pages) I will have to come and find you to give you a great big huggles and what the heck I’ll probably kiss ya too (you probably couldn’t stop me from doing both if you truly use onlywire for me).

StumbleUpon <– most of the pages of my site have already been submitted by me, all you got to do is install the toolbar go to my site go around to the pages and hit “I like it”

Play4Traffic.com <– it’s a stupid game, but the links work out

Guest Books <– if you know of any sites that have guest books and allow links go for it, every little bit is a help.

any time you are asked to put in “your site” during registration of a site it is a good thing.

There are some times that you go to watch movies in order to escape reality, other times that the movies you go to watch only enhance reality.  This just so happened to be the latter.  I wasn’t really expecting anything when I went to watch the movie “Mozart and the Whale” but sure got a lot out of the movie.  It was just one of a few random movies my mom had rented and since I’ve been too sick to want to do anything but lay down and sleep watching movies has been good, and what I’ve been doing for the last couple of days.

I’ve always just considered myself Obsessive Compulsive because I know that I am… never been truly diagnosed but according to tests that I’ve found, and well my behavior it’s a pretty obvious thing for me.  It has never bothered me, and in fact makes me better at a lot of things that I do.  Watching Mozart and the Whale which is about a couple of people with Asperger’s syndrome (a kind of autism) I couldn’t help but sit laughing at myself.  The movie was a littler peculiar, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Probably a million times I’ve had different friends of mine tell me that they were going to clean my room when I was away, which I generally have no response for because what do you say to such treachery?   It’s kind of funny watching Mozart and the Whale one of the big scenes is when Isabelle cleans Donald’s apartment and he FREAKS!  It would be about the same for me… I might not live through the ordeal (coronary heart attack) or if I did you might not.  From watching the movie I kind of wonder if it could be Autism that plagues me instead of OCD… but then again I’m no expert and when you really look at things ADD, OCD, and Autism all are very near to one another in symptoms and not being any kind of expert really couldn’t tell you what the major differences are.  Funny thing is, one of the reasons I fell in love with Chainmaille so much is because of something that would seem very autistic.  I have a cousin who is Autistic his mom is a psychologist and was talking about how at her work they have a lead jacket for autistic people because they love the confinement… which is exactly why I love the way chainmaille feels… I like to describe it to people as being the opposite of claustrophobic, when I was in middle school I used to love going into storm drains and I would actually travel entire street blocks through the narrow concrete pipes that connected them… dark, stingy, and barely enough room for my body I loved being there in the quiet hole that was so far from where anyone would bother to find me.  Only problem is I’ve got all the bad things about Autism without any of the good side affects, usually autistic people are writers, mathematicians, composers, or in some other great artistic field of profession.  Oh well, for those of you who would like to see what would happen to Cody if you really did go through with your plans of secretly cleaning my room while I am away at some point in time watch the movie “Mozart and the Whale” and you’ll get a good idea of why I’ve never allowed anyone to come close to touching my room.

This is total crap! page viewed in Opera = Beautiful! Page viewed in Firefox = FREAKING BEAUTIFUL!!!! Page viewed in Safari = Gorgeous! Page viewed in Internet Explorer = smash keyboard over Bill Gates freaking face!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So I finally found a fix for the “problem” which really isn’t a problem because l;gskdjnd l;ghu weanopti rgowh hii;hjm;.xk,jm dckjm fdcjm cdcm x,czfdglhklgfkdjlkjmg45gf47509456lgfkdhjl;dhmv ;xxfk,cgjioyer;o;xdifghjb l;kcvj

Unfortunately the “fix” doesn’t do crap! You know why it doesn’t do crap? BECAUSE RETARDS ARE STILL USING INTERNET EXPLORER TO VIEW MY PAGES!!!!!!!!!! If you are using IE you are hereby bannished from EVER going to any of my websites again!! You make my life hell!!!!!

Another thing, if you’re using Internet Explorer to view this right now you had better get together with all of your other little “IE Buddies” and buy me a new keyboard because you’ve just about got this one broken (and no I will accept nothing less or other than another Logitech G15) Highly considering smashing my keyboard into my monitor for stress relief which means you’ll have to buy me another $400 monitor (might be a little less now it’s a Samsung SyncMaster 226bw the 22″ model with 2ms refresh rates and absolutely flawless color definition)

What is the problem? Huh you piece of crap excuse for an internet browser? How is it different? What did I do differently? NOTHING YOU JACKASS PIECE OF CRAP BROWSER!!!!!! NOTHING!!!!! NOTHING NOTHING NOTHING NOTHING!!! Did you get that? I did NOTHING differently!!!! The only difference is the name of the movie!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! What is your problem!?!?!?!?!?! Render the flash file like you should or I will murder your children!!!!!

So what I’ve found is that IE got sued a while ago for how they were rendering flash files… so they had to change the activex controls. I’ve seen this before, if a flash file has any sort of interaction such as hover overs or fun stuff like that you must first click the file before the HoverOver will actually work. That’s fine, I really could care less about that, I don’t mind making the retards who visit my website using IE click some stuff before it’s as cool as it should be. Thing is, IE isn’t showing my flash files at all!!!! Well some they are, some they aren’t. If you look at http://www.codysortore.com/blog/ the flash file for that shows up in all browser windows, it’s gorgeous, fun, and something that I spent a LOT of time on. Another flash file I created for http://www.codysortore.com however is not showing up. The difference? none, that’s right, none. Both are inserted onto the page using a >embeded< tag, both have the exact same tags and ID’s the only difference is the name on the sourced flash file. I later found this out after showing my cousin the new flash banner for ArchmailleDesigns.com because I’m trying to get some good SERP’s and found that Google can now read flash files (possibly the others can as well but I don’t know for sure) so why would I want an image on the page that only serves as being pretty when I could have a flash file that adds extra text to the page? Obviously when you’re pushing for every last inch that you can obtain the object that contains text is much more valuable than an image that has no text what so ever (or at least no text that is readable by the SE’s). I sent Jordan to The Site I was working on and he say’s “did you get everything uploaded?” my response “yup, and it’s actually working beautifully even though it took me forever to find the correct source file” (the source navigation for the PHP shopping cart that I used for that site is hellishly complex) “Well all I see is a white box” responds Jordan… “Dude I’m looking at it now, it works flawlessly, what do you mean white box?” “yeah dude there’s just a white box at the top of the page.” confused as could be I refreshed the page… still showed up perfectly fine. I then questioned again “did you refresh the page?” still confused because even if he did he shouldn’t be getting a white box since the image was there, which I removed for the flash file… no other changes were made, and there was a 0 downtime transition time. “yup still white” he says back. I finally remembered that the loser started using IE when he got his new computer because he liked IE7 just as much as FF. Low and behold when I opened the page in IE there was a white box showing, so I checked all my other pages that had flash, some worked, some didn’t even though they ALL use the same damn code. The flash files all use the same kinds of controls (HoverOvers if anything) and I’ve searched everywhere for a fix, tried everything, the only thing that seems semi promising is a javascript work around… which will NOT be going onto my pages because javascript is absolutely the most worthless code ever developed for the internet and I absolutely refuse to use it. I’m considering developing a PHP script like I’ve seen on some websites that will send you to a holding page if you try to view it in IE and all that it does is say that you cannot view the page until you visit it using a sensible browser with some sort of link to FF

This is one of those few times where I’m going to let the pictures do most of the talking… they say a lot.

^^ If you notice on the left side of the picture  my Trek 4900 sits maching the Honda… It likes to brag about the fact that it not only costs more than double what I paid for the Honda but also has lasted me 5 years, where as the Honda only survived 1.5 years, and cost much more in maintenance/fuel/insurance than the Trek could ever imagine costing me…

^^ Look at that, second most expensive part on the car the Flowmaster 40 series exhaust is left unscathed!  Luckily  because of this lil guy, and the Weber my dad is trading me the exhaust, and my carburetor for a new car (not saying that it’s not worth it, combined they’re worth more than the Honda itself, and without the two the old Honda wouldn’t still be running).

^^ Amazingly enough the most expensive part of the vehicle survived… The Weber 32/36 DGEV made it through the crash!!! And even got it’s own little cubby hole under the crinkled hood
The accident is explained a little more in depth in my previous entry, but nobody got hurt, and everything of value is recoverable.  Still can’t find my jewelry pliers which are somewhere in the wreckage… hoping that they’re not sitting on the side of the road off I-70, but I’m not finding them so once the insurance comes in the first thing I’m doing is getting a new set of pliers! Well, off to deal with the insurance company, and then a nice recreational bike ride

haha!!!!! So the theme for last week is “derailed” despite some minor hiccups and little things during the week that started this concept for me, the full realization that this was not a mere coincidence but rather a weekly theme came crashing in on Friday.  After the first week of the Ren. Faire I was pretty gun hoe for getting everything ready that I physically could.  I was to have more space, and be alone this time so I wouldn’t have the problem of being confused for the shotty craftsmanship of the others that I was sharing the booth with last time.   I spent most of the week frantically running around to get everything done that I possibly could, including placing orders for clasps and other things necessary to finish off some of the smaller pieces and get a full line of earrings ready.  About mid week I got thrown a curve ball that sort of got me off track with working, making it to where instead of loving the idea of getting everything ready possible and not sleeping to work (cux who needs sleep?) but instead staying up late and not really wanting to even go to Ren. Faire.  I was going anyways because it is a good opportunity and I wasn’t about to throw out anything for my business just because of a stupid notion or whim of mine.  Then Friday comes… I spent the morning going over my checklist of what I need, or might need for the faire as I packed clothing and other small items that I had waited to the last minute to have ready.  Then I waited around for my mom to come home from work since her car was ready from the body shop and every day she kept the rental car she was being charged for now that the car was ready the insurance company wasn’t paying for the rental any more (Brook had a little wreck with my mom’s car for those of you  who didn’t know).  She came home I went with her to drop off the renal, then pick up her car then going over to Tiana’s to head off to St. Louis.  Leaving early was nice, but it wasn’t fun leaving the city as I-70 over by the stadium the traffic was stop and go… mostly in stop mode.  Whatever was causing the backup, probably just rush hour traffic finally got the idea to move though, traffic picked up to about 30mph which was good, and I decided that it would be good to get rid of the sauce I was holding for the cheese sticks that were consumed.  I looked down at the dash to make sure it was clear, and looked up to see that the SUV in front of me was at a dead stop… It didn’t take any time for me to react, or consider if there was enough room to stop, I saw the vehicle and knew that there wasn’t enough room and nothing was going to get me out of harms way since there were cars on the other side.  The only thought that went through my head was that they were going to move, because this could not be happening… uh… they didn’t move, luckily because I did see it and tried to stop I only barely hit them… enough to mess up my hood a little and cause some slight troubles, but nothing too terrible, we’d still make it to St. Louis… that is until the guy behind me hit me at who knows what speed.  He hit fairly hard being that he wedged the front end of my car under the Ford Explorer in front of me, and put my rear bumper into the back seat… needless to say destroying the tent, and a variety of tools I had in the trunk… luckily no one was hurt, and we did make it to St. Louis with all of my jewelry stock.  We called ahead and told them that we had been in an accident and everything, also explaining that the tent was destroyed which posed a bit of a problem… but they said that we’d figure things out when we got there.  When we did get there however they had a gorgeous tent setup with some awesome hand painted backdrops and it was truly much better than I could of even done on my own.  I’m glad that I went, and glad I got to meet the people I did… truly awesome people, and it was great to have such a supportive group of people who could take care of us when we couldn’t do things ourselves.

Most of you know that I was working at the St. Louis Renaissance Faire this weekend selling my wares. I love Faire, it’s truly one of those things that so very few people get to experience. I tell people all the time about how great faire is, and their usual response is of “oh yeah, the Renaissance Festival is so much fun.” and most of the time I then have to explain to them that they’ve never been to faire… and they like to say “yeah I have, I go all the time.” no… that’s not what I mean, you’ve never BEEN to faire before: 12 hour days, dressing up, night parties, sleeping on site, BEEN to faire. This year we were staying with Tiana’s family in their booth Tiana and Chris slept upstairs and I was downstairs… which meant I got a new sleeping partner, that’s fine I don’t mind sleeping with someone else, but when there is limited room you’ve got to have some sort of bed manors.

Don’t get me wrong, when sleeping with Snickers she could be awfully rude, but she usually waited until I left before taking up the whole bed rarely did she steal my room if I were in bed with her… although on occasion she did, for a little kitten she knew how to work her way to owning the whole bed. The girl I was sleeping with this weekend was horrible though, never stayed still, always licking my cheeks, and at one point put her feet on the chest beside the bed and puuuussshed until I was nearly falling from the bed… being an air mattress and me being heavier than her I sunk in my side and hers raised up so then she gets no extra room anyways, she’s now basically on top of me. I love Taboo and all, but she’s a very rude bed partner… not to mention the whole getting up at 3am to walk her thing… which yes the first night would of been no matter what since she was too excited about the new places to go potty the whole trip, and the second night was more along the lines of “wow I’m an insomniac and even though I’ve been working all day I still can’t sleep a full 8 hours straight” kind of thing.

More to come next week when I have breathing time, and possibly pictures if I remember… but working the whole time most of the pictures I’ve had the opportunity to take would of been before/after hours since I can’t be pulling out my camera when in costume, else they may believe me to be a wizard of sorts.