A few days ago I posted about an online dating resource that I found rather interesting. Today, I came across a new one that was equally as interesting to me. This site is in full dedication to goth singles, located at gothscene.com. If you’re living the Goth lifestyle than it’s understandably going to be kind of hard to find someone who you’re compatible with. There are goth based clubs and groups all over the US but when you hang out with the same group of people for too long you’re naturally going to be looking somewhere else. This site is here for anyone in the goth dating scene looking to meet new and interesting people that share the same kind of interest as you. This site is completely free, you sign up and post your profile and from there begin meeting new people. You should check it out. gothscene.com.
Archive for the ‘PPP’ Category
New Resource: Goth Singles / Goth Dating
Saturday, July 21st, 2007New Resource: FitnessDating
Friday, July 20th, 2007I came across a fitness / health resource today that was out of the ordinary. It wasn’t telling you how to lose weight or how many laps around the track burn off 1,000 calories a day. It’s a site for people who already know this information and is entirely based around fitness, just adding it into the world of using the internet for serious or casual dating in the process.
It’s got the same setup as your typical dating website but it’s entirely based on fitness dating. The basis of the site is not to have people just meet up at the gym at work out together but naturally considering you are posting a fitness personals you may wind up doing that. This is for those who seriously care about fitness and are looking for someone with the same respect for fitness. It’s a completely free site to sign up for. Like every dating site you enter your name, age, location, upload a photo and list your preferences. Then you can float around the database for people who share the same preferences as you, get to talking to them and go from there.
If you’re interested in fitness and looking for that special someone for either casual or a serious dating relationship, maybe even just someone new to work out with, head on over to fitnessdates.com.
Resources: Celebrity Gossip
Friday, July 20th, 2007 I’m honestly not a huge fan of the whole media world but I have been known to surf around a few celebrity gossip based sites that house everything from celebrity news to celebrity pictures. I’ve been visiting celebritygossip.com for a while now and it never ceases to amaze me about the kind of information these people come across on a regular basis.
I will admit that it can be kind of annoying whenever you turn on the television and all you hear about is Lindsey Lohan and Paris Hilton, their site also offers the same thing but they actually talk about other people as well, because you know – Lindsey and Paris aren’t the only freaking celebrities in the world – contrary to popular belief.
If you’re interested in reading more about celebrities, information that you’re not going to see on your nightly dosage of E! News, then head on over to celebritygossip.com.
Resources: The Cover Guy
Friday, July 20th, 2007 When I buy my own house it’s important to me that the outside looks just as wonderful as the inside. Call it the interior designer in me but I do have many tricks up my sleeve, mixed with a budget, that will have me very happy with the way things turn out. One important thing for the outside of the house is landscaping, all aspects of it. The grass won’t be cut by the dorks who handle this community. I’ll gladly pay someone to come back once a week but I want to make sure that everything is done right. They leave approximately 4 inches of grass, meaning their blades don’t even touch the ground. That’s unacceptable to me so I’m going to pull out the white pages and ask around about the best people to go through.
A big thing for me, outdoors, is a porch. I’ve been used to having a rather large deck for the bulk of my life. I enjoy having a lot of room that isn’t on the grass to just relax in. Yes, grass is great and all but the last thing I want to do is sit on grass that’s wet from morning dew just so I can tan. Sean and I have drawn up a few plans here and there about how we’d like things to look and one thing we agreed upon was a built in gas grill and a spa, naturally we’d have to invest in Hot Tub Covers to avoid waking up with animals or children floating around in there. A beautiful deck doesn’t mean you have to skimp on safety, you know?
I did some surfing around the net and came across thecoverguy.com, they offer a five year warranty with their product and the covers can withstand harsh climates and it helps cut energy costs for running the spa because it keeps the heat in. They’re recognized as the number one hot tub cover or spa cover company in the industry and they deliver to all over the US and Canada.
They have some pretty nice looking covers too. They’re priced in the $300 range but that’s not half bad considering the spa would cost in the $3,000 range anyway. I’m not talking about purchasing some huge spa that can hold 10 people, granted it would be nice to have all of that room to relax in but I also do intend to have a pool if there’s enough room in the back yard for it. I’m just a picky person and know that I’m going to get everything I’m hoping for since I’m going to be working my butt off to get it. I’m not the type who’s going to sit back and spend my husbands money, I’m going to earn it myself, more than likely have a hand in building it and then going from there. But hey, that’s just me.
Staying above water.
Wednesday, July 18th, 2007For business I like to keep in touch with everything going on. A lot of people who run their own business have a business based credit card just so they can insure that they can get the supplies they need, as they need them. There are many options for business based cards but it’s hard to come across one that will actually give you everything you’re looking for. A big thing for me is cash back credit cards because I do spend a lot on servers, computers and other aspects of the internet and technology related world just so I can make sure that I never have any kind of downtime. I went through a time when I literally had no money for a computer and mine was on the verge of dying, I went on a search to pick up a card that would give me everything I needed and now I’m lucky enough to own an American Express business card where I’m given cash back and points towards the items that I buy most frequently. It’s just good to have things like that around.
Real Estate Newbies – Listen up!
Tuesday, July 17th, 2007 Are you in the real estate industry and wondering just how to go about making the absolute most money out of your investment? Did you know that rental properties, to some degree, make more money over time than someone purchasing a home from you directly? Using resources like Rentals.com to list your building can bring in quite a bit of cash for you. Most homes, especially in NY, can be rented for up to $5,000 per month. Yes, people would rather spend $5,000 a month on renting a house than $1,500 per month on a mortgage but hey, whatever floats their boat – right?
If you know exactly what resources to tap into then life naturally is going to be pretty sweet for you. Lots of people can flip a house but it takes a true business man to get a monthly cash-flow from that investment. They’ll double to even triple the price of the monthly mortgage just to make some cash and they’re making pretty good money in the process. Listing your rental on sites like rental.com can make it easy for you to find a renter who’s looking for a home, or even an apartment, to match YOUR price range.
Figure you have a 4 bedroom 2 bathroom home located in the middle of a gated community. Instead of selling it off for maybe $150,000, you can rent it out for $5,000 a month. Figure the person lives there for five years, if they’ve done well in maintaining their $5,000 a month, you’ve just made $300,000. (add up the numbers, I’ll wait.)
Bottom line, don’t flip the house – rent it out!
Resource: Newest Weather Site
Tuesday, July 17th, 2007
I spend quite a bit of time searching weather.com and even accuweather.com just to get the info on what’s heading my way. Unfortunately the sites are annoying to navigate and you never really can get any kind of up-to-date weather related statistics so today I came across a site named FastWx Weather Forecasts. It’s the newest way of checking the weather without having to go through excess pages in order to get to what you’re looking for. If you’re looking for something quick and painless than head on over to fastwx.com
Buying my first baby
Tuesday, July 17th, 2007 For quite some time now I’ve been looking into used cars because purchasing a brand new one is not only financially stupid but with my comfort level in regards to driving, I’d feel more comfortable in an older car because I’ll more than likely ding something up. Now, I’m typically very careful with everything I do, especially driving, but I also know it’s important to know your boundaries. Going out and purchasing a new car just because you think you need it is beyond absurd. I’ve seen people who just bought a new one maybe a year ago and now they’re already upgrading to something newer. If you’ve got the money for it, great, but don’t force it down peoples throats that you think you’re better than them either, you know?
I’ve been looking through quite a few used cars based websites and I’ve decided to take the route of a Honda – surprise, surprise – but everyone in my family has owned a Honda at some point in time and I know for sure that they can hold up for quite a long time. My aunt drove her 85 civic for 20 years and that thing never once died on her. And in 20 years she only managed to put about 120k miles on it, which is hard to believe but when you work in town it’s hard to put too many miles on something it’s still about 6,000 miles a year, when you think about it.
So considering I learned on a Baretta (original ‘template’ for what’s now known as the Cavalier) I know that I’d be more comfortable in a smaller car like a Civic. I have considered going a little larger with the CR-V but that’s only because I absolutely love the car. I found one for about $15,000 that’s a 2002 and it’s in Black which is fine for me considering that’s the color I was originally looking into for any car I get but it also didn’t matter much either as long as I had a car – you know? So yea, either way I’m shopping in the $10k to $15k range because that’s what savings will permit me to purchase at the moment.
If you were shopping around with up to $15k for a ‘used’ or older model, what would you get?
Travel Plans: Alaska
Friday, July 13th, 2007When you’ve spent the last week being sick as a dog and just wanting to get out of the house; a high fever will sometimes cause you to drift off into many different worlds without even leaving the bed. For the last three days I’ve dreamed of being handed a lifetime supply of vouchers for plane tickets and from there I’ve had to decide just where I’d like to go.
Sure, I could hop on a plane and fix my cold by sitting on the beaches in Aruba but it’s also summer and I don’t like heat enough to be down there for that. With a fever it would just double my discomfort. I could always look into one of the northern most tips of Alaska because I know it can be pretty cold there year round, based on things that I’ve read at least. Considering I’ve been hanging out in the air conditioning for the last few days, this really wouldn’t be much different to me.
I’ve been watching that show Men in Tree’s a lot recently. I’m not sure exactly what it is about the show, other than the actual setting itself, but I’m drawn to Alaska, I always have been. This is because of my love for all things cold. I look at it this way, honestly. You can’t prepare for heat because there’s no possible way to take your skin off when you’re just too uncomfortable for words. You CAN prepare for cold because it’s always going to be easier to get warm than it would be to get cold. Because of this, when I happen to come into my millions over time, my house will be climate controlled and it will be 50-55¬?F on a year round basis.
Boy, that would be nice.
Botox is hard to hide.
Saturday, July 7th, 2007Sean and I went to dinner tonight at Cracker Barrel and enjoyed a nice, some-what quiet, dinner after waiting in line for about 15 minutes or so to be seated. Up until about 4:30 this afternoon we didn’t actually realize that it was Friday so instead of driving over, we wound up just walking up knowing that we would more than likely not be able to find a spot anywhere in the entire lot that probably permits about 100 cars to park. It’s shares a parking lot with one of the hotels up the street as well, this was also packed thanks to the vast amount of vacationers that are currently in the area.
Our waiter was a pretty nice guy, more than likely from France considering that’s the only place that I could really place his accent from. He’d very obviously had some kind of plastic surgery because he had literally no lines in his face and I think botox was the factor there, lord knows it’s easy to find a plastic surgeon down here. He still had the little bit of swelling, I gave him a bit of an extra tip just so he could financially cover whatever he had injected into his face.
Karen is considering botox, and has been for a while now. Recently her sister went in to get botox and the guy she went to wound up messing her up pretty bad, she looked like someone had beaten the crap out of her and for some reason, that no one understands, she’s decided to go back to the same doctor in order to have him fix it. Karen said it best when she threw her hands up in the air and said “Why go back to the same person who messed you up the first time?”. I have to say I completely agree with her but her sister is known for being stubborn which is probably why we all love her. I assume she was in some ritzy office like the one shown above. I know she went to a doctor in New York and they all over-price the simplest procedures just to make a quick buck on an unsuspecting victom. I’d honestly rather head out to Rodeo Drive or something where you know it’s going to be done right because there is a reputation to uphold, you know?
Would you ever consider botox? What do you think of not being able to show any real facial expressions for a few days after the fact?
Still adjusting to living in an actual house…
Tuesday, July 3rd, 2007I’m still having trouble getting used to being in a larger home. I’ve grown up in a rather narrow apartment for nearly my entire life so finally being in an actual HOME is something that I’m still having trouble getting used to. When you walk into this house you’re greeted with a huge living room, open floor plan so you can basically see straight into the kitchen and down the rather long hallway you’re greeted by three gracious sized bedrooms that are all being under utilized, organizational wise.
The living room really doesn’t have much in it furniture wise, it’s just not setup in a way that I would personally do myself. If I owned this house, the first thing I’d drop money on is a sectional because there’s only one three seater and a lounge chair in the living room. It really does need some more seating and having huge sectional sofas in that room could easily seat 10 people very comfortably with plenty of room to spare. I’m also factoring in that we can have up to 4 house guests at a time here so having plenty of room for them to sleep without having to pull out large uncomfortable beds would be a rather productive way of spending some money.
Another room that is in dire need of an update is the new office. I know that I’ve recently purchased some new office furniture for myself but this room is kind of thrown around in a rather strange manor. Then again, this is coming from someone who sees the importance in everything being organized and matching. We’ve got two completely different desks, chairs, and even just setups in general and while it’s important to be unique it’s also smart to utilized the space you’re in properly or it’s just going to be complete chaos. Since Sean and I are in here on a 10+ hour daily basis, the clutter can be a bit overwhelming. In the future things will change around. I can tell you that for sure, I just need to get myself down to a furniture store.
Travel Plans: Las Vegas!
Tuesday, July 3rd, 2007Spending as much time as I have in Atlantic City I’m lucky enough to have numerous offers to head over to Las Vegas. The cool thing about the casino that I frequent is that I can literally book a flight for free that only holds 50 passengers at most and then the rooms for a 2-4 night stay at the casino in Vegas is completely free for me, you spend enough and you certainly get enough in return.
I’ve always kind of been interested in Las Vegas night clubs, honestly. You hear so much about them on TV and while I naturally wouldn’t want to go and deal with all of the trash that graces the precious television screen, I would love to see what these Vegas nightspots are like from the inside. Another cool thing about my comps is I’m able to get into these nightclubs for free as well, the ones affiliated with that casino chain at least.
I’m actually looking at one of the comps right now, flight for two out of a DE airport, limo service to and from air port in both DE and Vegas. King suites, food comps and much more. Gotta love having everything handed over to you when it comes to casinos, they really know how to treat their members – that’s for damn sure!
Satellite TV Deals
Monday, July 2nd, 2007I don’t remember a time when I didn’t have cable television. I was with Optimum/Cablevision for many years and then they decided to change their service around so I lost HBO, I know how the Soprano’s completely ended but I would like to know what happened up until that point, I guess I’ll have to wait until I can get every single season on DVD, yes – that’s a goal.
Moving down here I’ve stepped into the wonderful world of Comcast. I still don’t have HBO but I also have a few more channels like Discovery Health and Style Network – two channels that are basically programmed into my brain considering how frequently I watch them. I’m still on Long Island time so naturally I confuse my channels quite a bit. FX has always been channel 40 for me, now it’s 37 and while that’s not a major difference, I also like my TNT and that’s been changed around to a completely different channel than the 37 I’m used to it being.
The one thing I keep seeing on television are commercials for DirectTVHD. I’m confused as far as commercials go though, do the networks pay for the commercials or does the cable provider? And if that’s the case – why is Comcast advertising Satellite TV Deals, wouldn’t that mean getting rid of a customer? Seems kind of strange to me.
The one commercial that I’ve been seeing the most of is Pam Anderson oiling herself up on the towers of Baywatch. I never really liked the show. I have noticed Sean start to drool when she takes of running though, most men typically do. It’s not like there was any actual storyline behind the show. Beach babes running around in uniforms that are no where near the standard issue lifeguard gear and if they aren’t even remotely attractive they more than likely wouldn’t be cast on the show. Granted, this sounds like every other show you could ever watch on TV but since it’s based on the beach with the infamous too much of a hassle “hoff”, I guess it was worth the watch for some…certainly wasn’t for me!
Review: inasra.com
Monday, July 2nd, 2007Important Note: When being asked to review a website, paid or not, I treat it as though I’ve just come across the site on Google and then give my opinion from there. Price tags do not, by any means, sway my opinion on a sponsored entry. This is something I would like for the sponsor to keep in mind. Through me, you will receive my 100% honest opinion on your product and I remind you that this is what you’ve asked for.
This review is for inasra.com. They are a provider of information in regards to hotels in India.
When I think of a site that I can use to learn about hotels, I’d typically travel to the more well known ones because they tend to cover everything. It IS nice to come across a site that will give you nothing more than hotels in the country you specify. I do believe, however, that those traveling around that area aren’t going to be able to come across this site very easily from Google. I ran a search for it with simple keywords looking exactly for hotels in India. and the site didn’t even show up in the search results. I understand that by having bloggers write about it you may be able to get your name out there a bit more but I do suggest doing a serious SEO overhaul of your template so it’s keyword heavy for search engines. I easily found over 100 other sites in dedication to India based hotels but this won’t help your cause later on down the road if you want to be as easily remembered as sites like hotels.com, travelocity.com, and even asiahotels.com as well.
The template itself is a little bland, this is coming from a design stand point, simplicity is great but if you wish to stand out amongst the rest, you need to make the needle stand out from the haystack, so to speak. While you offer India specific hotels for users to search through, you don’t give me anything different than sites that cover hotels all over the world. You need to visually hold someone’s attention there for more than just the search. The more return visits you have to your site obviously means better business, better business is more money/fame and it builds up from there.
I did a quick search with the default queries that you provide on the site, I personally know nothing about India so I wouldn’t even know where to begin looking for a hotel room. I will say that I find it rather interesting that room rates start in the US$9.00 range per night. I live in a heavy tourist area and even during off season a lot of the rooms are in the US$50.00 range, which is relatively cheap but these same hotels are in the US$150.00 per night range now. I do like the display you have for the database itself, this is the color I was looking for on what I consider to be a somewhat bland site. I also like how you note if you’re affiliated with the hotel or not through red or green icons. I’m on a 1024×768 browser, however, and I have a scroll bar along the bottom of the page. I would personally say you should change the size of the frame everything is loading in to not be as wide as it is, but again this is strictly from a designers stand point.
As far as working with newer web technology is concerned, the ajax features on the site are very interesting to see on a hotel based website, note that this isn’t a bad thing it’s just something I haven’t seen before. Naturally this would be one thing closer to you standing out amongst the rest, I just think having something that advanced throughout the rest of the site would benefit your site.
I do have a question for you, if you’d like to email girl@krissy.nu to answer it for me that would be great. You note that you have 35,000 hotel rooms at amazing rates ranging from US$5 to US$10,000. Should I assume that the $5 per night rooms are in a relatively, bad, area? Again, I know little to nothing about India, but I do know there is quite a bit of poverty there. The US$5.00 per night rooms, wouldn’t it be kind of “bad business” to book a penny-pincher (so to speak) in a run-down, potentially dangerous, area?
All in all, you’ve got a good thing going here, I just think little improvements here and there could really help your site go the extra mile it needs to get into the main stream of hotel related websites. I hope this review did not offend, hurt or bother you in any way because again, you requested honesty. I hope these suggestions can help you to improve. I will say this though, if more than one person has given any of the suggestions I’ve listed above, regular visitors who aren’t being asked to review your website will more than likely have the same opinion.
Client Control
Saturday, June 30th, 2007For quite some time now I’ve been interested in making my business a bit more interactive. I’ve worked with a company before that offers a web based survey solution for their clients. The clients can answer questions and the answers would then be polled through the survey for me to get some more input on where I’m going wrong, and what I’m doing right. A company named ISalient allows you to collect data from custom forms for information gathering, research and quantitative analysis.
I’ve worked with a free program named PHPSurveyor which can be found through cPanel’s Fantastico auto-install system and it really didn’t give me what I needed as far as connecting boss to employee with surveys. After poking around through the FAQ for ISalient, I’m confident that in the future, they’ll more than likely be the service to go through. It also doesn’t require me to install anything that I wouldn’t need on my server just for something that seems to be so small.
I currently have over 4,000 clients under my belt. This is a merge of domain and design based clients and I would personally like to create two separate databases for each of them. This way I can change the wording around on both to work for their respective categories. I thought of doing this for many years but never actually got around to it. Sure, I have the ability to submit a testimonial on both my design and hosting sites but since they aren’t a continuing database, it’d be nice to have something that kind of connects everything.
What I really think would be cool is if I had the ability to take both surveys and kind of merge them together with some kind of an overall rating of services. I know that I still have a lot to learn and I feel the best way to learn is through trial and error. I try to get myself on a schedule where I’m doing things in a timely manor but at the same time I’d like the ability to learn more about what I’m doing wrong, and especially on what I’m doing right so that profit margins can exceed the levels they’ve exceeded over the last few months. I’m sure over time I’ll be able to get everything accomplished, for now it’d just be a great idea to work with what I’ve got.
I thought having a bigger office meant more room?
Tuesday, June 26th, 2007Getting the office organized is proving to be a lot more difficult than we’d originally thought. I don’t quite know how we managed it but for some reason after moving to the larger room, we’ve managed to get MORE things without having any kind of a place for them. I’ve been looking into some office supplies in hopes that I’ll be able to come across some kind of inspiration on how to go about placing things in the room so they aren’t kind of just – thrown in there.
We have two tables between us, I’d like there to be some kind of a book case but he insists on saving computers so he can scrap them for parts and on top of that – the shelving we setup above us is a little too low for a book case to actually stand between us the way I’d like one to. I think while I’m cleaning this room up tomorrow I’m going to spend quite a bit of time reorganizing everything. Thankfully since I have an LCD monitor, having things on the desk isn’t such a big deal. What I’d like to do is pick up a monitor stand so that I can put my keyboard underneath it when I’m not using my desk – or when I’m using my laptop and my mouse/keyboard are just getting in the way. It will also give my external hard drive a permanent home instead of just having it kind of floating around the desk.
I could also do away with all of my stuffed animals and toys that are on the desk. I’d also like to get the dry-erase wallpaper so that instead of having the board standing up next to me, I can just put a big strip across the back of the desk and call it a day.
The only thing I don’t have a complaint about is the desk itself. I think this was an amazing find for $60, it’s exactly the desk I’ve wanted for many years now. A few modifications will make it absolutely perfect for me. I’m also considering getting some roll-away shelving underneath the desk itself because the space, as of right now, is only being utilized by my computer case and well…Bella. It’s shallow though, unfortunately there’s a bar underneath that could have the potential of making this a two person desk. I just don’t understand how two people could sit comfortably at this desk considering the limited space with just one person using it, let alone two.
