Here’s the “official” announcement.

Together with their families

Danielle Gugeler
&
Cory Sessions

would like to announce their marriage on
Wednesday, the 8th of July in Nauvoo, Illinois.

There will be a reception on July 7, 2009 from 6pm to 8pm
at the LDS chapel in Mt. Vernon.
380 Lincoln Highway, Mt. Vernon, Iowa 52314

There will be an open house with the new couple July 31, 2009 from 6pm to 8pm
at the LDS chapel at 965 W 2000 N, Orem, UT 84057.
This will be a barbecue, so come hungry!

Now that I have a little group of growing sites, it’s been interesting to see the results.

Some sites seem to just take off. Getting rankings and traffic is pretty easy with them. Other sites take a while before they go anywhere, then they start moving at a moderate pace. Then there seems to be sites that for all you do they just won’t go anywhere and you’re stuck with just a couple hundred visitors a month.

Internet marketing and SEO is a rather interesting thing.  You can talk about it and read about it all day long, but staying at that academic level really won’t help you learn it.  When you dive in and start building sites and driving traffic to them then you really start learning how things work.  You start to see patterns emerging and you get those “A Ha!” moments.  You find out what works and what doesn’t.

So, time to go build another site.

Today you can see a pair of glowing eyes.

If you’re a code nerd, you can go look at the .css file.  If you do you’ll see several lines are commented out.  If you piece those images back together, you get a picture of … something.  No clue what that is supposed to be.

I have a strange feeling that the image from the css has nothing to do with whatever they plan on announcing…  most likely it’s a Blizzard joke.

Update:

Well, it turns out that all this was for Diablo 3! While I have no idea how the above images are related to the Diablo games in any way… It’s still cool! Time for some hack and slash!

There are 9 of us in our office.  7 of us would prefer to have the lights off.  2 people want them on and blindingly bright.  So in true democratic fashion, the lights stay on all day as the majority are forced to capitulate to the loudly voiced demands of the minority.

Apparently in a Democracy all you have to do is yell and complain louder than anyone else and you get your way.  And that is how minority rules.

Note: The election part of this rant has been removed because I am so tired of hearing about politics and feel that the other half of the message has a very important point to make.

Starting quote:

What do these stories all have in common?

• A woman who says she lost more $1 million gambling in Atlantic City sues some casinos for $20 million, claiming they should’ve stopped her compulsive gambling.
• People who bought houses they couldn’t afford with loans they didn’t understand want their lenders to change the terms.
• Congress authorizes a war and then tries everything it can think of to get out of it.
• Our country gets addicted to oil and then blames OPEC when it doesn’t like the price.

These stories prove how personal responsibility has all but vanished in America, and our government is leading the way.

Remember the kid from that interminable 1980s commercial whose father caught him using drugs? The father incredulously asked, “Who taught you how to do this stuff?” and the kid responded, “You, alright? I learned it by watching you.”

Well, we are that kid and our government is that drug-using father who doesn’t think that anyone notices his bad habits.

Our government is leading us by example, and I don’t mean that in a good way. For years, it has spent us into oblivion, mortgaging our future for programs we can’t afford, and Americans have happily followed suit, running up credit card bills and home equity loans for things they never should’ve bought.

Unfortunately, we’re also learning something else from our government: how to avoid taking responsibility for our actions.

From Eliot Spitzer’s alleged hooker craze to the revelation that Arnold Schwarzenegger commutes to work in a large private jet even as he preaches the dangers of carbon dioxide emissions, there’s never been a shortage of “do what I say, not what I do” hypocrites in politics.

…

If you want to talk about disenfranchised voters, then let’s talk about why just 17 percent of Americans have a positive view of Congress. Let’s talk about why we still have wide open borders despite most Americans wanting them sealed. Let’s talk about why we keep selling out our sovereignty and our security by borrowing billions of dollars from-less-than friendly countries, such as China.

Americans aren’t disenfranchised because our leaders won’t count votes in a couple of states. They’re disenfranchised because our leaders aren’t doing their jobs. They’re disenfranchised because after working hard to support their families and to raise kids who understand the difference between right and wrong, their leaders do exactly the opposite.

Source: CNN – Glenn Beck: Too bad, Michigan and Florida

Primary Display Resolution

Out of 87,4450 Users

Resolution | #Users | %

800 x 600 | 13,848 | 1.58 %

1024 x 768 | 275,816 | 31.54 %

1280 x 960 | 351,374 | 40.18 %

1600 x 1200 | 16,094 | 1.84 %

1680 x 1050 | 77,349 | 8.85 %

1920 x 1200 | 19,795 | 2.26 %

Ahhh! 70% of the user base is running at 1024 x 768 & 1280 x 960 resolution. I would still consider those “low” resolutions. Only around 10% of the users are running what I would consider “high” resolution monitors.

Also interesting to note, are the operating systems that people are running.

Windows Version

Windows XP | 727,772 | 83.23 %

Windows Vista | 112,279 | 12.84 %

As you can see, Windows Vista is the gamer’s operating system of choice…

Physical CPUs

1 cpu 540,791 61.84

2 cpus 305,658 34.95 %

4 cpus 27,922 3.19 %

It is nice to see, that multi-core cpus are spreading quite nicely too.

I believe you can see the results of the Valve Hardware Survey without needing to take it.

I kinda wish it had more information.  You know, random, non-important things like, usb ports, USB Hubs (and what they have plugged in), misc. devices, etc.   I would just love to compare how much random junk other people have plugged into their computer compared to what I have floating around on my desk. 

Oh yeah, Happy New Year!

October 1st I found myself in Seattle, sitting in rapt awe as Rand Fishkin explained SEO gospel.

SEOMoz’s SEO training was awesome. Now, I’m a newbie, so please remember that I see things from that perspective, but I was amazed. I think my head was going to explode. The “training” could better be termed “The State of Search 2007”. Rand pretty much started at the beginning and explained the what, how and why of SEO.

It was great!

More “expert” people might say that it was to basic, but it was exactly what I needed.

I came away with two key things:

1) A Filter. There is so much crap information online about SEO. It VERY difficult to decide what is and what isn’t: useful, accurate and unbiased SEO information.

Rand gave a exact view of where the industry came from and where it is now. Based on that information it is easy to see and filter out bad / outdated information.

2) I learned that I think to small. I had a bunch of little questions that I wanted to learn the answers to. What I learned instead what that I wasn’t even thinking in the right scale. The minutia that I was worried about was so irrelevant that it didn’t even matter. Real SEO’s are playing a much bigger game.

I think more than anything the training was a mindset changing experience. It took a couple days to let everything sink in and recalibrate my thinking.

The most exciting part… I found out that I am at least headed in the right direction with my own projects. That was encouraging.

Now on to bigger and better things!

PS: Thanks Rand! You rock!

Ok with that out of the way, let me explain why this site is here.

This blog / site is really here to help me. To give me an area to take notes about the stuff I am learning and trying. Without giving away the site / project involved, (ie: trying to avoid bad cross links and too much shameless self promotion), I want to experiment with various SEO techniques in a controlled manner. I have 10 small sites to experiment with (they get between 30-200 unique visitors/month). I want to see the effect various techniques can have on a site and on traffic.

By not mentioning the site or keywords involved, I think I can keep these little experiments free of outside influences. But at the same time have the numbers and results open to public debate. The possible side effect being, that people are welcome to give suggestions and comment.