I have never had smokers cough while smoking so I guess it's only fitting I get it now. The last few days I have been coughing up the nastiest junk. My throat is so raw. But at least the headaches are finally gone.

Man this is a short post, maybe I should add some photos.

So in the end I just laid in bed and finally fell asleep around 5:30am or so. You would think that waking up at 8 would be brutal, but I felt really good.

I have been very productive too. I have finished 2 more chapters in my e-book and read 2 others. I've finished my email and have made 6 blog post. Too bad I know I'm gonna crash early today, there is alwasy so much more to do.

I'm still having the cravings like mad, but I'm learning new ways to deal with them. I talked to someone who gave me a hint that seems to work for me. He said hold a small pencil in your had to replace the cancer stick. seems to help.

I also read a suggestion to grab your lighter and light it up followed by a deep breath. This one only makes me think of my cravings more.

I only hope I can keep it up.

Emily is really starting to fly with her reading now. Teaching a ADD child to read is one of the hardest things I've ever done in my life. For what seemed like forever she made no progress, then she would just leap ahead.

I'm not sure why this happens but it seems to happen suddenly over night. It's like it just clicks all of a sudden, and it almost seems as if she hadn't even notice. I'm so proud of her; she has worked really hard.

I plan to take a walk here real soon for some fresh air. I have been chewing gum all day, something I've never really liked, but it seems to be helping take the edge off a bit.

Today I am just doing everything I can thank of to keep my mind busy with other things.

I've never liked that word, cause it's the one thing that I am not. I am the type that doesn't give up easily. and the word quit to me is a dirty word.

Why stop?

The first time I really tried was years ago when I was diagnose with diabetes. My doctor suggested that I really should give it up. I really didn't want to at that point but I tried. Well not really but everyone around me wanted to so I just played along and the of course I failed.

Now things are different. I no longer like the person I am. The guy that smokes. The smell that it's me with a rush every time I open my office door. The ash that's always on my desk, the floor, the car. I really hate it! Everytime I see it it reminds me of my failed attempts.

What's even worse than all the above; My daughter Emily asked me the other day "Daddy, why do you like smoking?" If I hadn't given thought before answering I would have really hated what I said to her. My very first thought was to say it relaxes me.

It was just another reminder that I really need and want to stop.

Right now

Ok so right now I have an almost empty pack, so guess what It's time. I've tried all sorts of aids in the past. They have all failed me so this time It's all on me, my will power and the love of myself and my family. I know I can do it! Just look at all the things in my life I've done that I've been told I couldn't do.

Today I liberate myself from this vile, disgusting & cruel habit.

My smoking challenge

I have had a few of you ask how is my quitting going. Well in one of my post I said:

First the bad news; I failed again. I'm back to smoking. I am very unhappy with myself for this. It's not the first time I tried and failed. I plan to try again in a few weeks with one or two small changes. gum, patch,...

I'm going to do it again as soon as I set a date. I just can't seem to decide when would be a good time. It's hard to find a time in the future that will have little stress. Or maybe it's just that I to weak.....

Joe's move out date

You might have remembered be saying Joe would be moving out and going to school. Well he never moved out. We were able to talk him out of it till he was done with school. Well His class ends on Monday... So I guess we'll be looking for apartments again very soon. Then guess who gets a private office. Hurry up Joe! No just kidding..

Peter's schooling

Yes you read that right Peter is following in his little brothers example. He is going to a trade school program. He started this week. Fixing air conditioning systems would not have been my first choice but he likes to work with his hands.

Emily

We have all been working hard with her. Her reading is improving... We homeschooling her because she really needs the one-on-one help. We did the same with Peter and Joe, but for theme there was very different reasons.

Emily has ADD just like Peter, but in her case it's really bad... or maybe me and Janice are just getting too old to keep up... Wait no the doctors have confirmed it. So I spend a good part of my day helping her to read. The funny part is that she is a wiz at math. I can show her something one time and she'll get it and keep it.

A note about this site

There was really only one reason why I kept this blog up; my Mother-in-law, mainly for the pictures. It was really meant for her to easily find the kids photos. She never really understood Flicker...

Unfortunately in recent months she has had a number of strokes. I had thought of just dropping the site but I have decided to keep it up and maybe add updates on my online projects.

We have been praying for her but the truth is it dosn't look very promising.

Janice and I are so proud of him. He has been working so hard to get an education. I had forgotten how many prep test there are.

His plan is to get 12 credit hours so he can join the Air Force. So he is taking a trade class called Advanced Aerostructures Technician at WATC

When he is done with the Air Force he plans to continue his education with college.

It's going to be so strange with only Emily and Janice here.

Good Luck Joe! We gonna miss you so much.

Last week I built a fun new project using an old domain I've had for a long while. Basicly it's a barter program that is powered by Twitter.

It's very simple to use, simply write a post to Twitter that contains @barter and include your barter proposal. You can view and search the archives by visiting OnlineBarterClub

Also you can follow barter for updates on this site, not to be confused with my personal Twitter

At this point no one has tried it yet so you could be the first.

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There are a few open source option you can use like Smarty that come with a lot of features. However the learning curve can be very long. So I will show you how to build a quick and easy template engine.

First I want you to create 4 files: index.php, header.php, footer.php, and nav.php. The first file "index.php" will serve as your main file; it will also be a template for all the other pages on your site.

Files header.php, and footer.php will serve as the top and bottom of your web pages respectively. The nav.php file will be used for your navigation section on your web site.

Now open the first file (index.php) in a text editor and add the following:

<?
// This will add meta info so every page can have it's on meta tags
$PageTitle = "my page name";
$PageDescription = "my page description";
$PageKeywords = "my page keywords";
?>

<?php include("header.php"); ?>

<?php include("nav.php"); ?>

Your main website contents would go here, of course you can use html tags anywhere in these files, just don't use the within the PHP tags.

<?php include("footer.php"); ?>

Next open the header.php file and add the following:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE> <?php $PageTitle ?> </TITLE>
<META NAME="Keywords" CONTENT="<?php $PageKeywords ?> ">
<META NAME="Description" CONTENT="="<?php $PageDescription ?> ">
</HEAD>

<BODY>

Now open the nav.php file and place this code into it:

<A xhref="index.php" mce_href="index.php">Home</A> <A xhref="page2.php" mce_href="page2.php">Page2</A> <A xhref="page3.php" mce_href="page3.php">Page3</A>

Now open the footer.php file and place this code in it:

</BODY>
</HTML>

Now save all these files and make 2 more copies of the index.php file. Name them page2.php, and page3.php. Add some contain to these pages so you can see the differences between the pages.

Upload them all to one directory on your server, and view the index.php file with your browser. If it works you should see a very simple page with links, and some text.

You can add more pages by updating the nav.php file, and adding another file based on the index.php file.

Another tip I should include is to use cascading style sheets (CSS).

If this all seem too much for you, consider a content management system (CMS). There is a large selection of them to choose from. My favorite is Website Baker.

One last word of warning, never include a file as a variable like this:
<?php include($MyFile); ?>

This will open a serious security hole that will allow users to include their own PHP files.

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So this last week I got a cheap paint set. The set include 6 tubes of paint a couple of brushes and a few other assorted tools. I did a couple of very small landscapes. I am not too proud of them... but I'm getting better with every stroke.

Here are a few of the resources I found helpful.

How to Paint Landscapes A short video series by Matt Cail that shows how to do a landscape with oil.

Yarnell Studio and School of Fine Art has some good Q&As worth a peek through.

All the Strange Hours A blog by David Rourke about visual arts.

So am I going to share my paintings online? I'm sure at some point soon I will but not just yet. I need more practice.

What are some of your favorite oil painting resources?

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What did I miss?

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Research

I have been researching a new ideal for a few months now. When I started my online career many years ago with the hosting I put a large amount of time and energies into the research first. It paid of very well.

Now that I'm doing research for this new project I'm getting more excited everyday, because I am seeing the same result for the new project. In the next week I will be putting more of my time into developing this new project.

Consulting

Okay here is the big surprise for some of my friends out there that thought I was just researching. I am still doing the hosting consultation. The strange think about this is I have never said on any site, interview, or chat room that I'm offering this service.

It's just one of those things that I feel into. I do love it though! I was approached by someone. At first I had no interest at all, and then he explained he just wanted to get a head start into the business. So I helped him out.

Next thing I knew, I had 3 more clients. I do enjoy consulting; there is something exciting to see someone avoiding the same mistakes you made as a result of your guidance.

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It's been interesting to say the least. Oreo does not fit the norm of other cats we've had in the past. She is fearless to say the least and can't seem to get enough attention. The biggest plus is that she is driving our son Joe absolutely batty.

You see Joe can't handle something he can't control, and this cat just wouldn't leave him be. Where ever he goes, she follows.

We adopted a cat for a few reasons. First the city that we live in is having a hard time funding their animal shelters. So when we adopted Oreo we also made a donation. We would have liked a dog but the subdivision we live in doesn't really allow them. Last but not least it's what Emily wanted with a passion.

To be honest this cat is very strange, it has no fear of water. and there are a few other strange behaviors. We have all fallen for her and she is a very nice addition to our family. And the strange part... all the better! she's feeling right at home.

One last note you don't have to go as far as we did, donate to your local shelter they need your support.

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He was as dumbfounded as I was at first. All the normal solutions I had already tried. Well after checking my attempts at fixing he found an oil leak from one of the engine seals... it was leaking into the distributor. not a lot but just enough to cause it to idle fast... go figure! He cleaned it up and sealed the leak.

Janice, Peter and his girlfriend Alex started a new job this last week. The company is sponsoring their insurance exam for the state. The only problem is they only studied for 5 days, start to finish. Though a few in their class passed all three of them failed. I guess the are getting another chance at it, but I'm not sure when.

Peter and Alex came over for some spaghetti on Saturday, so we pulled out the camera. I uploaded all of them to flicker. I also found some other photos on the camera that I had forgotten about.

So that's it for now.....

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So Monday when I open Bloglines to catch up on my reading I was so shocked to see everyone pushing BlogRush. Almost every blog I read had something good to say about it. I thought cool, I ought-a check it out. But something was nagging me in the back of my head.

The little thought that was bouncing round was... LinkExchange! If your new to internet marketing you may not remember this little gem of a website. It was; as I recall the very first successful banner exchange. Time to go back in time!

The reason these exchanges were so successful was simply because there were no realy good traffic analyzers at the time. Today with the advent of tools like Google Analytic, most should be wise to this kind of hype.

Ok, so not one to be left behind I took a deeper look see. I watched the intro video an was really impressed. The main reason I thought it might work was I could direct traffic to any of my sites I wanted. (A feature not yet implemented... of course they forgot to tell us that.) So I thought it maybe worth my time after all..

So I signed up my first blog, and I was presented with, what should have been the first red flag; a very flimsy list of categories. But then I remembered that there was to be this grand algorithm sorting and match post... But if that was the case what was the need for categories. Oh well hide sight is 20, 20 right.

I finished signing up and I placed it on 2 of my blogs. In 24 hours I earn 8000 views, and not one single click!

Now after thinking on it a bit, I thank this concept could work. But not in the way it is currently implemented. If that big awful widget was replaced by a simple text link widget... just maybe it might work.

In short my advice to anyone using this extremely hyped tool, just drop it off your blog.]]> Thu, 20 Sep 2007 22:07:35 -0700 http://virb.com/david_/posts/text/233952 http://virb.com/david_/posts/text/221087

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New project: Blog Directory
Yesterday I went to work on my new blog directory, I need a use for my old domain name YgetUp.com. It had been setting around collecting dust for a while. I used to offer some of my old software on this domain.... it was old and not really used by anyone any longer. So as sad as I am to let it go I did.

Now, you can find a brand new Blog Directory in it's place. I have also set up a blog to help support traffic. If you own a blog please take a momment to add it to the blog directory.

I would also like to say thanks to a few BlogCatalog members for helping me with the launch. Especially Brian form Apathetic Lemming of the North who was nice enough to write a post on his blog about the launch! Thanks again Brian!

In the next few weeks I'll be launching another project. This one will hopeful become very popular. I tell you more about it in the coming weeks.

I also been very busy with my favorite blog, MyBlogIt.net. It has become apparent that I will see very little income from it, but I really do enjoy my time with it. I don't see myself losing my passion for it any time soon.

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