Expect to see a little less from me over the next week. I am going on a trip and we will only have one laptop between us. Add to that the fact that the point of a vacation is to relax and get away from the things that you do everyday. Add to that the fact that I don’t think we will be staying anywhere with free internet access. Maybe I should keep my destination a secret and just post a few pictures while I am there.

In most IRL altercations of this type the cars always win. It’s sad but true. I have decided that my blog can be a level playing field. I am going to evenly distribute cat posts and car posts and see what generates more interest. This is going to be random and unscientific. I may develop some bias as it progresses. I do not have any strong bias at this time.

I honestly thought that putting a cute kitty on my blog would cause an explosive increase in traffic. While it did generate some interest from the people who happened to see it, the results weren’t quite what I expected.

I am going to continue with my cat related postings. We have made a plan to capture some feral cats and take them to a vet to be spayed. That should make for an interesting blog post or two.

I borrowed a cage from the SPCA last week because a new cat had shown up with a nasty swelling on her chin. As it turned out, she was uncatchable and when I conferred with the vet he gave me some broad spectrum antibiotics to put in food. A few days after we started with the crushed pills and tuna, her abscess drained and she seemed to be healthier and able to use her mouth more effectively. A few days after that, she stopped showing up. I suspect that she found a daily handout that didn’t taste like medicine. It probably was making her quite paranoid when we had special food for her and would chase her away from the good stuff that we fed the other cats. I have never photographed her. She was quite unattractive when we first saw her and only slightly better when last we saw her.

I think it’s safe to assume that the vast majority of people who read my blog are bloggers themselves. That’s just the way it is.

How many you have given up the practice of thinking the words “that’s a blog post” while having a real life conversation and you now just say them right out loud?

I said that about something that I was discussing while sitting at the kitchen table with Catherine about a half an hour ago. Now that I am blogging, I can’t remember what it was and Catherine can’t either. This post is to take the place of that really good idea.

I think the idea was about something that people do sometimes.

I think it might be in some people’s best interests to install a device that prevents them from using a computer when they are intoxicated. This doesn’t only apply to blogging. Activities like participating in forum discussions and online dating are also best done sober. If you managed to capture someone’s romantic interest online while you were drunk, you might have quite a catch22 on your hands. She might think you have a real problem if you show up drunk for your first IRL, but she might find you really boring if you show up sober.

I am sober, but very sleepy.

Creating a blog competition is a bit pointless in my opinion. Many of the statistics that I and my fellow bloggers use to measure our self-worth have the word Rank in them.

Nevertheless, I am part of a competition. Feel free to check out all the competing posts…

1. ask.com: new and improved!

2. Search Engine Showdown
3. From AskJeeves.com to Ask.com
4. Answer Me a Question
5. Who do I ask?

6. Ask.com: We’re on TV!

7. Ask About The Best Online Search Engine
8. Ask Yourself?
9. ASK.com
10. As Good As Google

11. Apostolos Gerasoulis and Ask.com

12. Ask?and you shall receive
13. Where has Jeeves Gone?

Special thanks to contestant number two for building the list of links and saving me lots of time

Ask.com is a fundamentally different search engine. I would try to go into detail about how it is different from Google, except for one thing. Nobody except Google really knows how Google works.

Ask.com claims to put the best items first. The quality of being the best is calculated using a complex algorithm that certainly has the potential of more accurately measuring relevance.

I have Googled myself far too many times, but I have never Asked myself. It’s about time I did…

When I use my full name as a search query on Ask.com I cannot seem to find anything that I have ever done on the first 15 pages. I gave up after that. When I Google my full name, this blog is the fifth item on the first page. The about page for my business blog is number nine.

Clearly, Ask.com and Google are very different. If I accept the claim by Ask.com that they provide a more accurate ranking of relevance, I have to conclude that I myself am irrelevant. I think there was a computer on StarTrek (It was made out of a lava lamp and some construction paper) that exploded after considering a situation like this. I couldn’t find any support for my sense of self importance in the image or news search either.

I actually spent the better part of an evening this week reading what the fancy shmancy A-list bloggers have to say about making money from blogging. One thing that they all tend to say is that you have to work on design and content and traffic before you even think about how to monetize a blog. That would seem like good advice except for one thing, ten of thousands of bloggers are not following this advice. If you were to keep your blog in an ivory tower of commercial free contentiness you are being left behind.

AndrewTalk.com is a blog that is focussed on sharing ideas about making money from blogging. This is a great niche blogging technique. One really cool thing about this topic is that Andrew can load up on all the different types of advertising and it doubles as an example of ‘how it’s done.’ It also makes him money. I am going to check back often to see what kind of information he is giving out with regard to monetizing Second Life. My teenage son is a gamer and he has developed some strategies with Runescape and other RPG’s. There is often some real currency sidelines in RPG’s some sites prohibit this in their terms of service, but it still goes on. I don’t know if there are legitimate revenue opportunities with Second Life, but I am intrigued.

AndrewTalk.com isn’t loading today, possibly because of traffic overload due to his recent push to drive traffic. I read his posts from a Google cached page. Edit: Andrew’s site is up and now I can talk about design. His site has a really simple, uncluttered design, with most of the space being comprised of content. That is starting to be an exception these days, sadly.

No, the title of my blog is not the cute mispronunciation of spaghetti by some toddler, pagefetti is a design embellishment that you can use to bedazzle people who come to your web page or blog.

Webfetti is a customization tool that can makes things like Layouts, Generators, Glitter Graphics and Music Skins easy to accomplish by almost anyone.

I commented recently about how teenage girls were tricking out their Blogger blogs to have an appearance and function similar to that of a MySpace page. With a bit of critical thinking, I realized that they probably all attended schools that had blocked MySpace. Some of them may be living in countries that block MySpace. Pagefetti is compatible with Myspace, Hi5, Blogger and Zwinky pages.

You can get glittery graphics like this to place wherever you think it will make the most impact.

I recently drew some criticism from a fellow blogger for not doing anything to customize the boring template that I use for this blog. I have to admit that it is true that some readers do not stay long if they don’t see a custom template that reflects the writer’s personality.

Plain default IS my personality. Right at this moment, I am wearing a plain black tee shirt with nothing printed on it whatsoever. I do not have any glitter or confetti strewn around my work station. I don’t even have a single bobble-head.

But everyone is unique and the millions of teenage girls that use Myspace, Hi5, Blogger and Zwinky all need to be able to put every one of these flashy, cute decorative elements on their pages. Imagine how embarrassing it would be to be the only kid in your class that wasn’t unique.

I got some buzz for my odd blog contest today.

The dude who runs ContestBlogger.com had an awesome idea and he is totally pulling it off. I reviewed him in another blog and I got a comment thanking me for pointing him out. I have entered a couple of the contests that he has featured on his blog. I don’t know if Contest Blogger is in the running for any awards for niche blogging, but if it is it should be a shoe in.