On the right hand side of this page you can see the feed for my other blog. Please pop over and visit me. I have moved my domain name over and can be found on my own domain www.caribooponderer.com
There are some interesting posts on this site you might enjoy, check the tags on the bottom right or the catergories on the left.
If your feed is still caribooponderer.wordpress.com you will need to update it. I can be found at www.caribooponderer.com or caribooponderer.blogspot.com both those addresses will take you to the same place.
This blogs address has changed back to caribooponderer.wordpress.com that is because I have had the domain name pointed at the blogspot address. So regardless I will be found at www.caribooponderer.com or caribooponderer.com and at caribooponderer.blogspot.com. I will still write the occasional post here but it will usually be on something that will give me a reason to link back to the Blogger blog,
I hope that is going to improve the ranking of the blog. Anyway I think everyone should be able to find me.
You will see a link on the top right side of this page to the blog where I am writing most of the time. Originally I was going to keep them separate but it is hard coming up with something for two blogs and there was no point really. Yes there will be some paid posts on the blog but I usually try and write something from my life experience anyway with a link to an ad or two hidden in there. I don’t want to write ads just for the sake of it.
So if you have found your way here just click on the first post topic under “My other blog” and you will be there in a jiffy or on either of the two links above.
I am getting a bit behind with blogging, with running two now and having a host of lovely people to respond to, plus writing advertisements I have got a long to do list. Right now I am starting to put plants out and we are meant to have a lovely few days of weather so I have got to get to it. I will get around to everyone who has left a comment plus visiting as soon as I can. That is on both blogs.
Slowly I am moving back to Blogger as one can do so much more on it that you can’t on WordPress. I had a company contact me yesterday wanting to pay me $40 if I would put a text link on my blog so that is easy money and I can’t do that sort of thing on WordPress.com unless I host my own blog and I have decided I don’t want the bother, or at least not at this time. So far I have found Blogvertize the most lucrative of the pay for blogging companies. I have earned about $120 in three weeks. Over a year that adds up to $1440 if it keeps up, that is a lot towards a holiday. If my PR goes up maybe they will offer me more per post. I don’t seem to get much elsewhere, but I am working hard on raising the PR on my blogger blog. I am mostly visiting from there now so I hope people will start moving their links for me over to that address. http://caribooponderer.blogspot.com. I have called it Cariboo Ponderer’s Mexican Pot of Gold however the name might have to change as Mexico seems to have fallen by the wayside. I am currently trying to find somewhere we can afford that is warm in winter. It is not as easy as it sounds.
The only thing about WordPress I prefer really to Blogger is the easiness of responding to folk. Blogger is a bit clumsy I think, unless I am doing it wrong. I have comments sent to my gmail and respond from there, which takes me to their profile and then if they have more than one blog I have to hunt around for the right place to leave a comment. WordPress had a person’s email and blog link together with the comment so it was much easier and quicker.
Anyway the sun is out and it is a balmy 12C or about 53F and that is Spring here so I have to go outside and enjoy it.
I have spent days looking for a place in Mexico with two bedrooms and baths so hubby and I, plus our friend, can go to Mexico next winter, and so has our friend S. My husband has left it up to us as he does not use computers and during this search our personality differences started to show.
I was trying to fit everything to the budget I had put on it and checking every detail and S. was saying “Let’s just go and don’t worry about the cost”, which I find irresponsible . I wanted to find out about medical insurance, visas etc. I am a detail person and like to hash everything out, I worry anything like a pit bull until I am satisfied. S. on the other hand is devil may care, let the chips fall as they may, which may be fine if we were 21 but I am 61 and they are both 70, I think the time has come when we need to show a little caution. Fine thing to have a heart attack in Mexico with no medical insurance.
Last night we eventually ticked each other off enough that he said he wouldn’t go with anyone so nit picky about money as I am and I don’t want to go with someone who has no regard for finances at all. So my poor hubby said he did not want to be in the middle keeping the peace. So we are going to make our own plans. Whether hubby and I will end up in Mexico next winter I don’t know, I am still looking, but I am also entertaining renting something in the southern states, like Arizona, Texas or New Mexico. Anywhere warm in winter can still be my Mexican Pot of Gold even if it isn’t in Mexico.
So currently the relationship between me and S. are strained, fortunately he lives in the village and I do not have to see him until this has blown over. Hubby is handling it well, he is very diplomatic. He says he has to be, around two strong personalities like we are. I am not sure if I should consider that as a complement or not.
Ottawa, Canada is the second coldest capital city in the world, after Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. Not the kind of place that you would expect people to be building home offices in the back yard, but architect Kevin Deevey did. It is a simple, modern design with commercial aluminum window frames, dark exterior plywood and a big of corrugated metal….
I don’t think our kids know what an apron is. I remember my grandmother always insisting I wore one when I visited her. She would say that it was always easier to wash an apron than a dress. I had several full pinafores which were an apron with a bib attached. I still wear one when I am cooking but it is a plasticized fabric so I sponge it off rather than wash it and when I forget to put it on, I nearly always make a mess of myself.
The principal use of Grandma’s apron was to protect the dress underneath, but along with that, it served as a potholder for removing hot pans from the oven.
It was wonderful for drying children’s tears, and on occasion was even used for cleaning out dirty ears.
From the chicken coop, the apron was used for carrying eggs, fussy chicks, and sometimes half-hatched eggs to be finished in the warming oven.
When company came, those aprons were ideal hiding places for shy kids. And when the weather was cold, grandma wrapped it around her arms. Those big old aprons wiped many a perspiring brow, bent over the hot wood stove.
Chips and kindling wood were brought into the kitchen in that apron. From the garden, it carried all sorts of vegetables. After the peas had been shelled, it carried out the hulls. In the fall, the apron was used to bring in apples that had fallen from the trees.
When unexpected company drove up the road, it was surprising how much furniture that old apron could dust in a matter of seconds. When dinner was ready, Grandma walked out onto the porch, waved her apron, and the men knew it was time to come in from the fields to dinner.
It will be a long time before someone invents something that will replace that ‘old-time apron’ that served so many purposes.
Grandma used to set her hot baked apple pies on the window sill to cool. Her granddaughters set theirs on the kitchen counter to thaw.
The temperature was quite warm today and the wind had finally dropped and I was able to go out without a coat. You can just make out from the picture it is 15C (60F).
I bought a bear banger yesterday, it makes a terrific bang and the bears clear out fast so I am told. I don’t know who is going to be more afraid of it, them or I.
This one is ready and loaded. I took it outside with me today while I inspected my rapidly appearing garden. I also had my radio blasting out of the window.
I thought Country and Western was a good choice at first but on reflection thought that maybe Canadian bears might like that type of music so I put on a CD, Beethoven’s 5th. I thought that might be more intimidating.LOL
It was amazing to see the crocus that had pushed up, almost as if they nudged the snow aside to get to the sun. So lovely to see.
I have been growing a lot of plants to put out at the end of May. They have been doing really well. In fact I think they may take over before May 24 or Victoria Day weekend, which is the usual day up here to put plants out.
Want to check your Google Page Rank just visit this site and type in your blog address.
I guess the Page Rank (PR) is not important if you are getting visitors and you are not interested in making some money on your blog but if you do wish to make a little extra than page rank unfortunately is all important. The advertisers generally do not want to have anything to do with a blog that is under a PR3. A blog that has a PR5 if they wished to make some money with it probably could be earning $20 for every advertising post they did. I have a PR3 on both blogs so earn about $10 per advertisement on the Blogger (Mexico) blog but WordPress.com, that is this one, does not allow me to write advertisements.
Why did so many blogs including my Blogger blog get put back to 0 in October last year. I don’t think there is a straight answer to that. One reason is that Google was working out a new algorithm which determines where your blog or website will appear in the search results. The other reason seems to be that Google decided to penalize PayPerPost and all those associated with it.
Smorty, another advertising company, put this advice on their site.
There have been some recent changes that search engines have made with regard to sponsored postings.
Smorty would like to offer you some advice on this issue. search engines have primarily targeted member blogs and reduced their Page ranks across the board. Although this WILL NOT REDUCE your rankings or readership, your blog will receive more campaign offers if it has a higher page rank. To prevent any future loss of page rank due to this issue you can take the following steps:
1. Remove all sponsored post tags on each of your posts. Search engines can follow these tags to determine if you are being paid for posts.
2. Remove any other tags like “hire me” and “review me”. Any general affiliate banners are fine to keep.
Since you are only obligated to keep an advertisement on you blog between 14 days to 1 month depending on the company you are writing for it would be OK to remove posts older than that.
There seems to be ambiguous advice about using ‘do follow’ or ‘no follow’ code in the html of your blog. I can’t figure out if Google penalized for that or not. Occasionally you will come across a blog that states it uses ‘do follow’ but I can’t answer any questions on that because I don’t know.
I know my old blogger template had ‘do follow’ on it as I put it there, and now I have a new template it is not on there.
Another thing Google doesn’t like is duplicate content. Which is irritating as if one has two or more blogs, with different folk visiting, and one has written what they think is a good post you could be penalized by posting it twice. Something I recently found out and have been guilty of. So the best thing to do is link to it from the other blog. Which I will do from My Mexican Pot of Gold to here as I think this post may be of interest to someone who checks in there. Plus I just got a sneaky link to that blog.
I am trying to build up the other blog as I can see it as a way to bring in a bit more cash and contribute to our Mexican trip and although it is in its infancy I would very much appreciate anyone who links to it as it will help me. I will be doing more posting there in future. For example my Heads or Tails will come from there now as well as other things although I will keep this one going until the domain name expires and it just goes back to the wordpress address. This money making thing might be a flash in the pan but I feel I have to give it a try, as I shared before our pension is cut this year by $500 a month, because of the nasty tax man, and this might help a bit. I have also got my beady eye on and Mobile Internet Device as the ideal thing to take on trips. They seem quite inexpensive and might be just the thing to keep in touch and blog on vacation. Anyone have one?
Hope this answers some of the questions I received in my mail this morning.
