All Hallow’s Eve is upon us once again
October 31, 2008 by Nicki
Happy Halloween darklings! 
I’m on Round 2 of antibiotics and cough meds and am FINALLY feeling human again. Just in time for one of my favorite holidays!
Because you know we gothly types just can’t turn down an opportunity to dress up! 
I hope everyone has a very safe holiday weekend. We will be in T-town tomorrow for Alabama’s Homecoming game against Arkansas State.
If anyone who’s looking for some local spooktacular flavor, AL.com has a list of area Halloween events, attractions, and haunted houses.
Time wasters
Funny bone ticklers
Anything for metal
October 30, 2008 by Nicki
Heavy metal is what I consider my “first love” when it comes to music. Although I have branched out into other genres over the years and have lots of favorites from 20s and 30s jazz and blues, to bluegrass and cajun banjo-picking, to opera and classical, I still always come back to heavy metal. When I’m in good mood and want something to match, or feeling nostalgic and craving a particular sound, or simply need a “pick me up”, I pop some heavy metal in my CD player or MP3 queue, and am instantly in love all over again.
Hell, I “earned” my online moniker because of heavy metal. I was dubbed ‘Nitallica’ by a friend in high school because at the time bands like Metallica were, for years, the staple of my proverbial musical diet. I happily credit heavy metal as a constant source of inspiration for many of my digital and other artrial emissions over the years, as well as a positive focal point from which I drew strength during darker periods in my life. While I appreciate many different forms of music, what really quickens my pulse are the primal sounds of lightning quick guitar riffs, thundering percussions, screaming/thrashing vocals — simply put: metal makes my heart smile.
One of my co-workers just sent me the link to an article posted yesterday on USA Today’s website:
Nothing else matters: Iraqi heavy metal returns
BAGHDAD — At a private dinner club on the banks of the Tigris River in Baghdad, Muthana Mani screamed threats at a wild-eyed crowd of young Iraqis.
“I’ll see you die at my feet! Eternally I smash your face! Facial bones collapse as I crack your skull in half!” he roared.
Two years ago, these kinds of threats in Iraq typically came from members of al-Qaeda, or violent sectarian militias. Saturday night, they were directed at 250 Iraqi fans of heavy metal music who fearlessly donned eye shadow, anarchist pendants and black T-shirts and came out of hiding to attend Iraq’s first metal concert in five years. Throughout the two-hour show, the crowd thrashed about, a sea of sweating bodies and banging heads. They screamed obscenities and broke tables. It was a scene that would have made any American metal fan proud.
It was also another indication of just how much security has improved here. When religious extremists controlled Baghdad’s neighborhoods, being a member of heavy metal’s unique subculture could amount to a death sentence, says Mani, 21, the lead singer of Brutal Impact, one of the two bands that played the concert.
“If I wore a T-shirt like this one,” Mani said in an interview after the show, pointing to a logo of a bleeding skull, “they’d have killed me.”
That is just freakin’ awesome. Freedom … and Metal. Two of my favorite things — and those Iraqi youths now have both.
Just one more reason to thank our troops!
The things we realize once we’re grown
October 29, 2008 by Nicki
How many times have I said, “If I only knew then what I know now … ”
Jessie and I had a long talk yesterday afternoon about some of the kids in her class. She’s like any kid and gets the normal bit of teasing from the class clown who likes to poke at anyone and everyone within yelling distance, and outside of the bullying incidents, they’ve been nothing big. However, apparently one of her classmates lately has been picking on her because she spends her time divided between two families: her mother’s and her father’s. She told me that she tried explaining to this kid that she can’t help that she has to live this way, and told me, “She just doesn’t understand what it’s like for me. I’m different because of this, and nobody likes you when you’re different.”
Oh boy, how I can relate!
Luckily my folks divorced when I was very young, so I don’t remember my biological father at all and never had to deal with having to shuffle back and forth between homes. Unfortunately, Jessie doesn’t have that luxury. And while I have no doubt in my mind that she loves us all very dearly, I think she wishes sometimes for a “normal” family setting — e.g., one family, one home.
Of all the things I can help her handle — math homework, studying for tests, learning her way around the kitchen — this is one of those things where I feel powerless to help. I’ve always tried to show Jessie how much I sympathize with her by sharing my own experiences, and I hope that she understands that she’s not alone. It tears me up to think that for even one moment she may feel as worthless as I once did. I can’t feel the pain for her. All I can do is advise her as best I know how, offer lots of hugs and support, encourage her to share her experiences with me and her mother and father, and hope that she’ll see that one day that she CAN get past this and move on to better things.
And maybe, just maybe, those who have done wrong to her will look back and realize the harm that causes.
I’ve spent a little time the past few days catching up on my feeds, and PostSecret had an entry that really hit home when I was reading over it just now …
I think I’ll print that out and save for Jessie to see when she gets back to our house tomorrow.
WordPress dupe content workaround
October 29, 2008 by Nicki
Recently I’ve started paying more attention to Google’s Webmaster Tools. As much as I hate to admit it, they’ve been really useful in helping me track down outdated content and bad links, and really clean up search results for my site. One of the many things I had kept putting off for this site was removing duplicate content — in my case, posts with duplicate titles and descriptions.
Google is known for ‘punishing‘ websites with lower rank for this. Donna Fontenot touched on this in her “SEO For WordPress” presentation at WordCamp Birmingham earlier this month. She had displayed some examples for nuking duplicate content search results by modifying your header’s meta robots, title, and description tags.
As you can see, my weekly “Humpday Hilarities” posts, although not yet completely indexed by Google’s bots, definitely fall into this category.
As it stood, my site loomed perilously on the edge of getting one of those infamous “Duplicate Content Penalty” from Google (assuming it hadn’t already!). So to get around this, I made a few changes to my template’s headers.php file. In addition to Donna’s robots suggestion, I modified my description based loosely from the code in her presentation:
I also modified my title a bit based on her coding as well:
Basically in both of these snippets, I am checking the post title to see if it’s “Humpday Hilarities” and if it is, add the date into the code to make both the meta title and description tags unique. While most users would never need anything like this, anyone who posts a specific topic with repeating titles might find this handy.
What do you think?
Feedback, questions, constructive criticism is (as always) welcome. Feel free to use the comment form below! 
Humpday Hilarities
October 29, 2008 by Nicki
This funny bit came from my mother:
How To Install A Home Security System In The South
1. Go to a second-hand store and buy a pair of men’s used size 14 - 16 work boots.
2. Place them on your front porch, along with a copy of Guns and Ammo Magazine.
3. Put a few giant dog dishes next to the boots and magazines.
4. Leave a note on your door that reads:
Hey Bubba,
Me, Big Jim, Duke and Slim went for more ammunition. Back in an hour. Don’t mess with the pit bulls — they attacked the mailman this morning and messed him up real bad. I don’t think Killer took part in it but it was hard to tell from all the blood. Anyway, I locked all four of ‘em in the house. Better wait outside.”
Cooter
Bama vs Tennessee Wallpaper
October 27, 2008 by Nicki
Here’s this week’s wallpaper:
Click image to preview
Download: 1024×768 / 1152×864 / 1280×1024
This was a GOOD game. Bama looked better than they have in the past few weeks and hopefully “Mt. Cody” will be good to go for Homecoming this weekend!
Of course, being hoarse and hacking up a lung every 5 minutes didn’t stop me from yelling at the TV!
Belated: Bama vs Ole Miss Wallpaper
October 27, 2008 by Nicki
In all the rigmarole of packing and the excitement of vacation, I forgot to post these a couple of weeks ago! 
I know, what’s wrong with me, right?
So here’s the wallpaper for the Ole Miss game. This week’s wallpaper will be coming up soon.
The vacation was great. I came home sick and spent most of the weekend in bed. 
Pics are still on various phones and the new camera — will post as soon as I feel human again.
Click image to preview
Download: 1024×768 / 1152×864 / 1280×1024
Humpday Hilarities
October 22, 2008 by Nicki
Note: I spazzed and forgot about future posts in WordPress … so yay, funnies posted while I’m gone! 
This football funny was sent to me by one of my co-workers:
Weather Advisory From The National Weather Service:
In the event of a tornado warning, the National Weather Service advises all Auburn residents to take immediate shelter in Jordan-Hare Stadium. A touchdown is highly unlikely to occur there.
Thank you for your cooperation.
And this one is from Jerri:
The Good Husband
Jack wakes up with a huge hangover after attending his company’s Christmas Party. Jack is not normally a drinker, but the drinks went down easy. He didn’t even remember how he got home from the party.
Jack had to force himself to open his eyes … the first thing he sees is a couple of aspirins next to a glass of water on the side table with a single rose.
Jack sits up and sees his clothing in front of him, all clean and pressed. He looks around the room and sees that it is in perfect order. So is the rest of the house.
He takes the aspirins, cringes when he sees a huge black eye staring back at him in the bathroom mirror. Then he notices a note hanging on the corner of the mirror written in red with little hearts on it and a kiss mark from his wife in lipstick:
‘Honey, breakfast is on the stove, I left early to get groceries to make you your favorite dinner tonight. I love you, darling! Love, Jillian’
He stumbles to the kitchen and sure enough, there is a hot breakfast, hot coffee and the morning newspaper. His son is also at the table, eating. Jack asks, ‘What happened last night?’
‘Well, you came home after 3 a.m., drunk and out of your mind. You fell over the coffee table and broke it, and then you puked in the hallway, and got that black eye when you ran into the door.’
Confused, he asked his son, ‘So, why is everything in such perfect order and so clean? I have a rose, and breakfast is on the table?’
His son replies, ‘Oh THAT! Mom dragged you to the bedroom, and when she tried to take your pants off, you screamed, ‘Leave me alone, I’m married!”
Broken Coffee Table $239.99
Hot Breakfast $4.20
Two Aspirins $.38
Saying the right thing, at the right time … PRICELESS!
And last but certainly not least, this one from Cookie:
Saturday morning I got up early, dressed quietly, made my lunch, grabbed the dog, slipped quietly into the garage to hook the boat up to the truck, and proceeded to back out into a torrential down pour.
The wind was blowing 50 mph. I pulled back into the garage, turned on the radio, and discovered that the weather would be bad throughout the day.
I went back into the house, quietly undressed, and slipped back into bed. There I cuddled up to my wife’s back, now with a different anticipation, and whispered,
‘The weather out there is terrible.’
My loving wife of 20 yrs replied, ‘Can you believe my stupid husband is out fishing in that??”
I still don’t know to this day if she was joking, but I have stopped fishing.
links for 2008-10-17
October 17, 2008 by Nicki
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Proof of Microsoft doing something magnanimous … is this the end of days?
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This is why I love her blog.
I have a blog, now what?
October 15, 2008 by Nicki
I am by no means an expert on site promotion, but I am asked this question pretty often:
“I have a blog. Now what do I do?”
The basics of blog promotion aren’t difficult concepts, but the process requires time, attention to detail, and focus. Most of the things I’ll cover here are pretty common sense stuff about which many of us probably would never think twice.
Is your blog REALLY done?
Once you decide, “I’m finished! Now to promote my blog!” Take a step back for a moment and look closely at your blog. Are you sure that you’re really done? Before you can start any heavy-duty blog pimping, it always helps to make sure your blog is optimized.
What does this mean?
Optimization is pretty much any little enhancements that make your blog “friendlier” — whether for your readers, or search engines, or marketing, etc.
Things to consider:
Are you using the default template?
Every blogging software or service comes with one or more default templates. Most of them are nice enough to get you started, but using one would hardly set your blog apart from the others — especially if all the blogs look the same! With the number of free blog templates growing exponentially every day, there really is no excuse for using the default template on your blog.
This one is more of a personal preference issue, but I always advise blog owners to make links stand out in their posts. Whether you prefer underlined blue links or bolded green, it doesn’t really matter as long as your reader can see that it is a link. It should be notably different from the rest of the text.
Have you ever noticed a little image by the web address in your browser’s address bar when you visit certain websites or bookmark a site? That’s a favicon. You can get one made very easily with the many free services available out there. I highly recommend adding one to your blog. When a user visits or bookmarks your site, that little image can help them associate and remember your site.
A personal web pet-peeve of mine is not being able to contact a website’s owner. Make sure you have a contact form, email address, or something available so that your visitors can reach you. Feedback is always a good thing, so make it easier to receive it!
Every blogging software and service under the sun nowadays have any number of formats available for feeds (RSS, Atom, etc.). Make sure that your feed information is located in a prominent position on your blog! This is usually in the form of a link or button. If it is not immediately noticeable, some visitors won’t bother searching for it (and therefore, won’t subscribe)!
Try to keep in mind that your visitors may not be as familiar with your site’s layout as you are. Pass your link on to loved ones and friends, ask for feedback. Discuss any problems they ran into, such as problems finding specific content, getting lost / navigation issues, etc.
A friend of mine used to say, “Make your site navigation so easy a child could use it” — if needed, borrow a child!
Ok, just kidding, but you see where I’m going with this, right?
Ok, done. Can I start linking now?
Yes, I think at this point you are ready to start promoting your blog. Take careful consideration though. You do not want to go crazy adding links to “every Tom, Dick, and Harry”, nor do you want to ignore the whole blogosphere. Let’s start small — build your blogroll.
What’s a blogroll?
A blogroll is a list of links to other blogs that you like. Having a blogroll allows you to feature a list of favorite blogs, usually in your blog’s sidebar. One might consider blogrolls to be a sort of new “link exchange” programs. The biggest difference is that all sites who participate benefit from the added exposure of being displayed on another member’s site. It’s a good way to gain new readers and repeat visitors for your blog.
It’s an unwritten rule that if a blogger adds your blog’s link to his/her blogroll, you should reciprocate with the same. Of course, everyone approaches this with their own blogging goals in mind. Sometimes it may simply be that you may not like a blog that links to you through its blogroll, and therefore choose not to link back. Whatever the reason may be, it is considered “proper” blogging etiquette to at least review each blog that links to you through its blogroll to decide if you’ll want to add that blog or not.
Blogrolls are often used to express connections between blogs. By having a blogroll on your site, you are telling your visitors:
If you are new to the blogosphere, a quick way to get your bearings and branch out is by joining open blogrolls. An “open” blogroll is simply a blogroll that is open to new members. Some blogrolls are general, others are specific. Most will have a set of guidelines or criteria posted to allow you to judge for yourself whether or not you belong, or would want to join.
How do you find open blogrolls?
I enjoy adding blogrolls to many of my own sites. However, I found it increasingly hard to find blogrolls pertaining to certain topics and had yet to see a directory or index of blogrolls that are out there, available to everyone … so I decided to make my own: BlogrollDirectory.org
There you will find blogrolls grouped by topic or interest. Simply click the Location link posted and follow the directions posted on its website.
Now, on to Blog Directories!
Submitting your blog to blog directories is perhaps one of the easiest ways to gain exposure to your blog. Blog directories can often drive a good bit of “new” traffic to your site that you wouldn’t have found otherwise.
In the vast and infinite sea of the Internet, there are literally thousands of repositories and directories of links. Rather than try to list them all, I’m going to give you a few to get you started:
- The Basics: DMOZ (which fuels the Google Directory), Yahoo!, and LII
- A list of blog directories by topic
- Top 20 Essential Blog Directories to Submit Your Blog To
- Best Blog Directory And RSS Submission Sites
- Best Blog Directories: Free & Paid
Start with those and branch outward. The goal isn’t to spread your link around to anyone and everyone as fast as possible, it’s to garner quality repeat traffic.
Note: Keep in mind that some directories may require registration and/or a reciprocal link!
To be continued …
I’ll be posting Part 2 of this article next month, so keep an eye out! I’ll most likely cover topics such as SEO and social media, as well as any topics requested here.
As always, feedback and constructive criticism are welcome. Simply leave your remarks via the comments form below!
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