Why do I maintain this blog? It certainly isn’t easy to keep up momentum. I have many other things I should be targeting and focusing my effort on. As I’ve lapsed off quite a bit lately I’ve had to ask myself if I still want to keep it up. Other than to make blatant SEO-related plugs for things like crown moldings, it doesn’t serve any real purpose in my life. Actually that’s not true.

Maintaining this site is like talking to a bartender whenever I need to without the downside of spending $80 and then not showing up for work the next morning. It’s similar to going to a confessional and talking to a priest for 30 minutes about niche pornography without then being told to convert. It could be considered a virtual shoulder to cry on that doesn’t then dump me because I’m ‘too nice’. It is many things, it is nothing. A drop in the blogosphere bucket.

But really, we’ve had a lot of fun here over the years.

I discovered Floodle today while reading one of my favorite marketing blogs. At first look, it is a handy dandy resource for eBooks, Top 10 lists, etc. Pop-advice, if you will. Some sample features include 101 recipes for the deep fryer, Caring for your Pet Hamster, The Big Book of Puppy Names, Credit repair, and my personal favorite (if you know me you’ll get this,) Miracle Vinegar. But I’m not mentioning the site because it’s just a great collection of free information.

What isn’t readily apparent when you visit the site for the first time, is that the owner is only posting things that he finds for sale on eBay. But he is posting them for free! He is like the Robin Hood of eBay – pointing to and providing for free information that unscrupulous hacks are charging the uninitiated a lot of money for. I wouldn’t mind this so much if the sellers were also the people who had written the material. But they’re usually not – they are finding content readily available for free online and then posting it for sale on eBay. Do you follow?

That’s not to say Mr. Floodle is a saint. Many of these articles he himself has purchased from eBay. His payoff is advertising revenue – you’ll see that the site has ads. But I really admire his model and concept, and have added the site to my favorites, as I suggest you do as well. There is some great reference material here that many schmucks are paying through the nose for. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have 65 Tried & Trusted Amish Recipes to get through before lunch.

The TV signal on my bedroom/office desktop is stuck on one channel. And this channel is A&E. Since I began working from home a month and a half ago, I have become an authority on CSI: Miami, college boxes, Forensic Files, Crossing Jordan and a host of other depressing modern cop shows in syndication. And about every 20 seconds there’s an advertisement for the Sopranos, whom the network has just purchased. I have seen it so many times, I may never be able to watch the Sopranos again. But I can watch this:

I work well with music or television on in the background. It’s comforting. Like when you leave the radio on for your dog if you’re going to be out all day. It can also lead you to discover CSI Miami and the many hilarious fan-made YouTube edits. It’s a time-tested formula: David Caruso puts on his glasses, utters a one-liner worthy of a school play, the opening scream from “Won’t Get Fooled Again” punctuates the gravity of said one-liner and then leads into the opening sequence. It’s almost like the Pythagorean Theorum in terms of reliability. I want to make up my own Horatio Caine one-liner for fun. Play along if you’d like.

Detective: “It looks like Angela’s killer was good at covering their tracks, Horatio“.
Horatio: “Maybe, but Angela here… isn’t good (glasses on) … at NOT being dead.”
Roger Daltrey: “Yeeeeeeoooooooooow!“