N.E.E.T. Magazine

I love this online magazine and I am speechless with admiration for the gal that puts it all together - very well done!

No Bailout! - with Links

Read an economist (NOT politician's!) view here. Google your senator and congressional represenatative's name and send him/her an emal - NO BAILOUT!

Here's the CEO of BB&T: “This is a housing value crisis,” Allison wrote. “It does not make economic sense to purchase credit card loans, automobile loans, etc. The government should directly purchase housing assets, not real estate bonds. ...

He adds the primary beneficiaries of the proposed rescue are Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE:GS) and Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS). The U.S. Treasury, he says, is “totally dominated by Wall Street investment bankers,” and “cannot be relied on to objectively assess all the implications of government policy on all financial intermediaries.”

Allison also said it is “inappropriate that the debate is largely being shaped by the financial institutions who made very poor decisions.”

From a professor at Columbia, an economist: "The administration is once again holding a gun at our head, saying, "My way or the highway." We have been bamboozled before by this tactic. We should not let it happen to us again. There are alternatives."

Guess who is paying all the Representatives and Senators that are voting FOR the bailout....you guessed right!! Wall street bankers who created this phoney crisis!

I am guessing that these same banks own a few newspapers...... Remember Chicken Little - - just because they say the sky is falling doesn't mean that it is - it only means that their sky and their golden parachutes are falling.....boo hoo for them.

Did you notice that the day after the bailout vote of NO that stocks rose half again!! What part of the sky is falling is that? How much media coverage did THAT get???

And speaking of stupid ideas that are all out insane for America......

I cry every night for what a joke this nation has become, in my lifetime. I am ashamed of us.

Sound Advice from a Sane Individual

I was quite impressed...a few choice quotes:

....most likely you’ll need to try something you’ve never done before. If you aren’t willing to do that, you’re doomed....

... it’s almost a rule that waking up groggy and eating a crappy diet go hand in hand. Keep in mind that in the USA, the average diet is an extremely crappy diet....

As you experiment, seek improvement, not perfection....

Ringsurf's tutorial on how to lose business

It's good. Start by offering a great service, free. Lots of people jump in and are happy. Now, instead of asking them "Hey, we see that you like this....wouldja wanna pay a little for it?" I would have said "Sure". It's worth it to me to have this service. AS IT WAS.

Flickr did that. They let me upload a ton of pictures for free. I got to see pics of my granddaughter (who lives TOO far away) immediately when my daughter uploaded them. But the whole time we used the service, Flickr kept me up to date like this "We see that you are up to 25% capacity on your photos. You can keep uploading and maybe max out, but that's ok, we will still show you your newest pics.....(you get the idea) or (they said) you can upgrade to PRO and unlimited space for $$$. So, we just kept uploading, even when we maxed out our limit. And we liked it so much that I am now paying an annual fee to use it and I am happy to pay!

Hello Ringsurf!! Listen up! This is how you get money!

Here's Ringsurfs business plan: Without telling your users - re-direct all the internet traffic that you allowed them to use for free, and stick godawful ads on top of it and make it impossible to figure out how to get back off their site (I call that hijacking my computer!)

No, I won't let anyone do that to me. It took me days to find a new host (thank you Alt-webring.com), learn enough html to make things work the way I want them to, contact all my ringmembers and help them through the sign up process and keep at it for weeks - just to dump ringsurf and keep the service I've learned to love (BlogRings). It was worth it. I now know 2 things: more html (and I've been using it everywhere!) and Ringsurf isn't worth a dime.

Here's something you might want to know: I have a full tutorial HERE on how to create your own blog ring on alt-webring. Step by step, easy to follow, with screen shots and all. Join me, dump ringsurf, BE FREE!!!

Getting Published

Wanna be writers don't always know the 3 different types of publishing. Here they are:

• by a national (or international) publishing house
• by a Print On Demand (POD) company
  
• self publish

I am not going to get into the fine details of each nor the pro's and cons of each. If you really want to be published, do your own research and decide which process suits you best. If you are considering POD here's a blog that I thought was worthwhile reading: PODDY Mouth

Lemonade

I am reading Seth Godin's book called "The Dip". It's about quitting when you're accomplishing nothing (you find that you're traveling a road that ends in a cul-de-sac) and pushing through the dip (you have to read the book to get it) to attain your highest goals, and knowing when to either quit or push.

I read Seth daily and bought 2 of his books. His thoughts on the changing marketplace are fascinating to me, especially his view of the impact free technology is having on traditional business structure. He vilifies the record industry, but when I read his posts on the subject (try here and here) I substitute the words record/music with publisher/book. It's a dying dinosaur who's days of control are over.

Just like the artists who now sell their own MP3 downloads from their own websites, produced in their own homes with their own equipment (tolling the death knell for big corporate controlled music studios), quilt writers & designers go straight to their fans with downloadable patterns, YouTube video instructions, DVD's they made themselves and bypass the overcontrolling corporate publishing world. Cool.

My co-author wants to pursue organic fabrics and printing on recycled paper. I want to pursue downloadable patterns and instructional DVD's. Together I think we'll bypass the traditional structure and go straight to the quilters who want to see and hear what we have to offer. I'm looking forward to making some lemonade.

Time, the Internet and Music

I've already posted about how much I love blog surfing, and just a few months ago I couldn't even understand what purpose in life a blog could possibly have. I just didn't get it and I can say, quite honestly right now, that I still don't. But. I don't have to understand something to like it! Lucky me!

I like You Tube. I *love* music, but I hate the idea of stealing songs and music from an artist. I like to buy my music. But YouTube gives you a little tantalizing taste of what you're going to get when you buy (kind of like radio, with pictures) and I have to admit that it just makes me buy more, or find artists that I never knew about, and now I want to buy their music. Like "Straight No Chaser" (an a cappella group) and their rendition of "This is How We Do It" a song I love. They have 7 and a half MILLION hits to this video on YouTube, and they loaded it up to YouTube so that I could find it, hear it, love it and buy it. Smart.

I found them because I didn't know the artist's name that sings the famous version of "This is How We Do It" and I figured I could find it on YouTube.....well I still don't know it because I found Straight No Chaser. Hehehehe. Now you know how I waste my time.