Category: Uncategorized

Road Stop Iced Tea vs. Grocery Store

May 2, 2009 – 8:17 pm
su button  Twitter button  pingfm
ADVERTISEMENT

I don’t know exactly what it is, but sometimes an over priced $1.50 Lipton Iced tea purchased at a road stop gas station tastes universes better than the same one in a six-pack bought on sale at a grocery store.

Maybe it’s because you only have one.

When you know there’s only one, you sip and savor . . . you don’t gulp. It might take about 5 minutes to drink a grocery tea as opposed to 20 or even 30 to finish your road stop one.

In my town we have a grocery store called “Food for Less.” At Food for Less there isn’t much of a selection, and the prices are dirt cheap. At the same time, we have Ralphs. Ralphs has an amazing selection but sky high prices. If I ever shop at Ralphs, it’s amazing how good the food tastes. Maybe I’m just spoiled, with a silver spoon in my mouth or something, but I swear it’s true! For me anyway.

That’s probably why I shop at Stater Bros., which is a happy medium between the two.

By Damien Riley | Comments (0)

Teachers, Parents, District, and Students Should Vote on Budgets

May 2, 2009 – 10:09 am
su button  Twitter button  pingfm
ADVERTISEMENT

Having taught public school for over ten years now, I am quite familiar with the process of money coming into the state and district budget and then getting meted out to the schools and finally … children.  The same amount (more or less) is allocated to each school district and then they take that chunk and put it in a fund.  From there, many processes take place to decided where it will go.  It is that process where a lot of things can go wrong.  Many districts feel they need to keep what they call a “reserve.”  This is in effect “saving for a rainy day.”  Sometimes, districts will keep this money in “reserve” at the expense of much needed expenditures.  Other times, they will spend millions of dollars on theings that, debatably, are not necessary.  Some examples I have seen are: changing macs to PC’s at every school.  Another example is hiring an outside agency to train and mentor teachers.  In this case, think of the money that could be saved by using the accomplished, veteran teachers to mentor in-house.  In the case of the computers: do elementary school kids really need brand new computers every 5 years?  I agree computers are important but they are also really really expensive.

I could go on and on but I want the reader to understand that the government does not tell school districts what to do with the money they are given.  It is decided by school boards, pressured (but not decided) by teacher unions, and then given out in a budget to the schools who choose what they want to spend it on.  When it finally reaches the kids, it has gone down the a pachinko ball through every check and balance you can imagine.  Sometimes this can be a good way to get money to the kids and sometimes the things it buys are obsolete and not necessary.

I feel there needs to be more emphasis on what the parents want.  They should have a place at least equal to the school board.  They can go up and argue with school board decisions at meetings but they usually have a vote only at the school level (if that).  We should move more toward a system that involves the community.  The reserve is a nice thought but it can get far too big.  Taxpayer money should be spent on books and items to promote learning and achievement.  What good is a reserve if the stuff TODAY is not being funded.  As we move into a deeper recession, I think it is high time we brought parental influence into the decision making process.  Let the experts (us) weigh what they suggest against reason and academic benefit but at least we should hear from them and let them vote on our budgets.  A 4 group vote makes sense to me: teachers, district personnel, parents, and students.  I don’t know how that would look, I’m just thinking out loud … isn’t that why one has a blog?

By Damien Riley | Tagged school funding, School spending | Comments (0)

Considering Audience in Communication

April 29, 2009 – 10:35 am
su button  Twitter button  pingfm

Aristotle and Plato wrote of the importance of the audience in rhetoric.  If you want to communicate something, you ought to consider the receiver.

In writing a college essay, the audience is clear: the professor.  In writing for a magazine, you have a focused idea of the demographic you are appealing to.  Most every writing situation has an audience you can imagine, outline, and write with respect to . . .

Not so the blog.

Writing a blog can be like a diary.  Looking around at blogs through Technorati and some interesting keywords, I have found MANY blogs of this nature at Live Journal.  That makes sense, it’s called a Journal, so no bad there.  But blogging can be a wide array of other types of writing.  The blogosphere contains diary blogs and blogs about bands and blogs about (insert blogs you know here).  Blogging, like all writing, will benefit when the blogger considers her/his audience when composing.  I’ll give you a few ways that good writers can do do that:

#1.  Take the time to think about your audience.  This will depend on your purpose and subject of your post.

#2.  Outline the typical reader in this audience, then form your words around that person.

#3. Use their vernacular.  We live in an exciting culture full of sub-culture phrases and idioms.  Write a couple down before you start and use these in your post.

#4. Guess some questions the reader might have and answer them in your post.

Just thinking about your audience will make your blog (ironically) universally more coherent and effective at persuasion. And if you are thinking “I don’t write to persuade.” Then I must respectfully reply to you: “All writing is persuasion, just ask old Plato and Aristotle.”  That’s my 2 cents on that.

By Damien Riley | Comments (0)

What I Learned at my Accidental Garage Sale

April 29, 2009 – 8:00 am
su button  Twitter button  pingfm

Though I wasn’t planning to, I received an impromptu lesson in garage sale vernacular a few weeks ago: people showed up as I was cleaning my garage and tried to buy my things I was arranging.

As the people rummaged through my garage, I didn’t have the heart to tell them I wasn’t having a sale. At the same time, I was curious. I didn’t care about most of it and we were saving up to rent a couple of dumpsters. It was kind of a rush. I wondered what my junk could go for? In the hours that followed I fancied myself quite the garage salesman, but after several only marginally profitable sales, I realized I had a lot to learn about this odd breed of people.

In the negotiations that followed, I learned that terms like “really good condition” are not the best when trying to get the highest price. One has to somehow let the buyer know that the item is of good quality without bragging. The reason is that if one brags too much, the buyer will feel the need to find fault in it and haggle a lower price. I even had one buyer completely drop an item and leave when I extolled the virtues of a never before used water foot spa, he probably wanted it for a quarter though, so no real loss there.

One guy who bought about $40 worth of my stuff seemed like a pro. He had gloves in his back pocket and a tape measure he pulled out more than once. I’ve often wondered since that day if he was an eBay enthusiast. If he was, he probably made quite a profit off some of my things. I admire that guy for knowing his craft. I’ve already bought my gardening gloves and I’m ready to be on his side some Saturday when I can convince my wife it’s worth my time!

Hindsight is 20/20. I learned that one avoids the pitfalls of low selling prices by stating a price one wants up front and using dispassionate, minimal language like,

“Yes . . . that’s for sale . . . it works. . . . it’s 15 dollars . . .etc.”

In doing this the buyer doesn’t have to wring his/her hands and tell you dramatically about how it is missing this or that or show you the holes in it to get you to lower the price. In short: Play your language down and hold on a price. This is the best way to get the most money for your stuff.

It was a key strategy I learned over the course of my 4 hour accidental garage sale. If I had known it at the start, I would have gotten a lot more money for my things. I made the mistake of thinking that retail sales strategies are the same as garage sale ones: they are not. At Best Buy, for example, a salesman would extol the virtues of a plasma TV to get the $3000 from the buyer . . . that would make sense. At a garage sale, extolling the virtues of wares can backfire when the buyer senses they have no chance to talk the seller down. This can be a real problem especially since traffic at garage sales is not guaranteed throughout the day as it is at Best Buy.

At any rate, I did okay that day and we took the kids to John’s Incredible Pizza (Kind of like a Chuck E Cheese of the High Desert) with the proceeds that night. I’m looking forward to putting my lesson it into practice first thing the next time I have a garage sale. The only trouble is that it may have to wait a while . . . I’ve already sold all my junk. Maybe in 10 years . . . this approach is probably timeless so I hope I’m in luck. I know for sure I’ll have a chance soon to be the buyer, so watch for that post. Since this experience I have learned that garage sales can be the BEST places to get things from horse saddles to the best diet pills Who knew?

Have you learned/observed anything funny or productive out there from a garage sale?

By Damien Riley | Comments (0)

Stages of Change

April 28, 2009 – 9:27 pm
su button  Twitter button  pingfm

A post I wrote December 29th, 2006 that I found relevant to bring back

Everybody I know makes New Year’s Resolutions.  I don’t much. I used to. It’s kind of like, for me, having a religious experience and then slipping back into your old ways . . . If I’m gonna change something, it’s gonna be for good! As they say . . . GET REAL! Change is difficult for us due to our brains, that’s right OUR BRAINS!  We get into “grooves” in our behavior and it is hard to break out. We can change, but it isn’t easy.

I did a search on blogs of resolutions and there were a phenomenal number of posts in the past week on that Tag.  Like I said, I don’t usually make them so it seemed foolish to write on them.  Nonetheless, I have been wanting to start a category for psychology posts so I figured this would be a good time to comment on the brain and change.  They say if you do something 10 times its a habit.  That’s a brain/behavior thing.  Just like working our muscles at the gym, change is like flexing our brain.  We shouldn’t expect to change overnight, it takes time and persistence.

I’ve always thought that our identity is not part of our nature but rather what we decide to do again and again.  Our choices eventually, through a process, make us who we are.  In essence, all of our life is change.  They say our bodies are changing so much that every 12 years you have completely replaced every cell in your body.  Like a fountain holds its form but constantly replaces water molecules.  Nothing really stays the same.  Why do we have such a hard time changing?

For me, change is possible but it should come as a calm cool decision made over time.  Once you make that decision, there are steps you take.  I got a helpful list of them at the about.com website.  They are called the classic “Stages of Change:”

  1. Stage 1 – Precontemplation
  2. Stage 2 – Contemplation
  3. Stage 3 – Preparation
  4. Stage 4 – Action
  5. Stage 5 – Maintenance
  6. Stage 6 – Relapse

I haven’t thought much about what my New Year’s resolutions would be this year.  Maybe you have yours.  It would be great to hear some out there so I can get some ideas.  I have started a lot of “change” in the positive direction this past year, so I hope to just keep them going.  I think this time of year is good for resolutions as long as we realize that we should be changing all throughout the year when it is warranted to improve our life.  There is a psychology about moving forward always refining, trying to be better as time marches by.  I think change can be healthy when we respect the process, and most of all take care to gradually change our brains.

By Damien Riley | Comments (0)

Que? – A Funny Experience I Had as a First-Year

April 25, 2009 – 1:33 pm
su button  Twitter button  pingfm

Scott was a wild 4th grader. He was the first out the door at recess and the last one in. He was also extremely funny to a first year teacher. While other teachers had given up on the hispanic lightning bolt, I was ready for the challenge.

Scott had developed a shocking trend of “mooning” people on the playground. It was first brought to my attention by the noon-duty aides and then later by other students. Each time I gave him a detention and he missed his recess . . . but the mooning continued so I wrote a note home.

Being a new teacher, I was not as savvy as I am now after almost 10 years. It didn’t occur to me that his parents might not be able to read a note in English. Scott accepted the note and I told him the customary warning that if he did not bring it back the next day signed, he would have no recess and there would be a call home.

When he brought the note back, I assumed the issue was resolved . . . but then recess came. Yup, he did it again. This time I had to schedule a parent conference. I spoke timid Spanish then but I did speak with his mother over the phone and she verbosely apologized in her native tongue. We made an appointment to meet about it and I made sure I had a bilingual aide on site available to clearly translate the meeting.

In the meeting Scott sat next to his mother and I began to explain how ashamed I was to be Scott’s teacher when he did this at recess. The mother listened to the translator and then replied in Spanish to the effect of: “I know, we hate it when we do it at home and at the store, but everybody slips sometimes you know?”

After hearing the exact translation I was astonished. I said with the clearest Spanish I knew: “le permiten removar sus pantalones en publico a veces?” If you don’t speak Spanish, I said “You allow him to take off his pants in public?” If you do speak Spanish, you can see I need some tutoring. Then she said:

“QUE?”

The woman flushed immediately and looked at her son with a furor I rarely see in moms. She babbled something quick and angry at her son, slapped him on the head and then said in broken English:

“He told us you were mad at heem ’cause he deen’t tuck hees shirt een.”

By Damien Riley | Tagged humor, kids, language barrier, Teaching | Comments (0)

Disneyland: 50 Years "Flash" By

April 24, 2009 – 8:16 pm
su button  Twitter button  pingfm

flash(PG-13 post) Duward Discussion had a post on Disneyland’s anniversary. I decided to take a Google walk and share what I found. Most was your average Disney history stuff (which I love) but I discovered something else I thought was an urban legend and now have seen it is decidedly not! (Hint . . . put the word “flash” in context with the “BARE” necessities of . . . well, that will come later).

I’ve been a D-Land aficionado since I was a very young kid. In fact, since I grew up in Southern California, I celebrated many birthday parties there through the years. Now I have annual passes for my whole family which I renew most every year and we still go there to get amazed and inspired by the genius of one man. I’ve written 2 other posts here about Walt Disney and Disneyland: “Unfreezing Walt” and “Patch of Orange Groves.” This post brings that count to 3 and still that is not enough to display my admiration for the man. He is truly one of my top heroes in life, art, and imagination. Disneyland is a 3-D extension of what his ingenious mind was all about. There is an amazing Wikipedia article on the 50th “Homecoming” of Disneyland. It gives some amazing facts and details about the theme park and its visionary. Thomas Kinkade has an amazing painting available of the Main Street view of the castle. Everything about Disneyland is wholesome and childlike . . . except for a few things . . . ahem. One of them is the TRUE urban legend about women who “flash” their stuff on the world famous drop cam at Disneyland’s “Splash Mountain.”

This is affectionately called “Flash Mountain.” I wonder what Disney would make of this phenomenon? Kind of takes away the need for his favorite thing . . . the imagination :) I won’t link the sites showing these photos. One site said they used to be on average/funny sites with minimal burlesque photography. The ones presenting them now are a little much for linkage here at Riley Central. At any rate, you know how to Google . . . have a laugh when you get the chance.

Well, there’s a few links and something you may not have known about the happiest squeaky clean place on Earth . . . Happy 52nd D-Land. Thanks for the wild ride: it seems like it went by in a flash. LOL!

By Damien Riley | Comments (0)

What is the Value of Entrecard?

April 18, 2009 – 8:32 pm
su button  Twitter button  pingfm

ec

If you are a profit-driven blogger like me, there are many sites, services, and offers always begging for your attention. If you get sucked into one that doesn’t provide value, It can waste days, weeks, and months of your time causing you to miss out on earnings. Currently, I’m trying to decide how much time I should spend at Entrecard. I’ve been back using it again for almost 2 months and found that the referral traffic has been negligible. Entrecard may have other benefits for me though, which I am explore in this post.

The way Entrecard works is this: Users click on each others’ widgets and earn “EC” credits for doing so. These credits can then be used to “buy” a 125×125 ad space on a chosen blog for usually a day but deals can be made privately for longer amounts. This past week, Entrecard introduced paid ad services to external advertisers. This has created more than one some disgruntled EC user because most the ad spots are not other bloggers as they used to be. Those spots are now movie ads and everything else you see on any advertisement on the web.

Entrecard has attempted to appease the community by allowing users to “cash in” their EC’s at a payout rate of $1 per 1000 EC units. Since I know Entrecard is not bringing me an exceptional amount of referral traffic, I decided to test the profitability of this for me. I conducted a short experiment. Here is how my experiment went.

First, I needed to know my speed at which I could “earn” EC’s. In 1 hour I dropped 144 times, reading and commenting once in a while. I tried to keep my pace comfortable, normal, and non-rushed to get a valid reading. It should be noted that EC dropping can become a “game” of speed where the blogs one clicks on are never read. When I checked the bounce rate of my EC “spikes” in traffic” I noticed they were always 100% (which means the reader came and left without reading my blog). I try to read blogs I drop on. If used conscientiously, Entrecard can be just like a giant “Google Reader” or Blogroll providing you with a list of blogs to visit. It can be the same except of course, you are earning EC credits while you “make your rounds.”

Based on the new Entrecard payout rate, I made about .14 cents an hour. This means, to make one dollar, I’d have to drop at this pace for roughly 7 hours. That’s not including the estimated 1,000 more per week I’d need to purchase (minimally) their advertising process for my blogs. That’s another 7 hours.

So what does that equal? This: To make $1/week through Entrecard drops and still use their low-return traffic referral ads, it will cost me about 14 hours a week. To me, that is not a valuable use of my time.

But wait! In attempt to get all points of view on Entrecard out there, I consulted my good friend Justin. He has been a prominent user of Entrecard since he started blogging a year ago. He is averaging 700 visits a day currently. In an email recently, he mentioned another aspect of the service I knew nothing about. It’s called “The Marketplace” and it could be a reason for me to hang out at Entrecard. Only time will tell. Here’s what he had to say:

“Far better way than dropping to earn traffic. Use the Entrecard Marketplace to make money. People charge 10 or 50 EC to DIGG or Stumble a post. Or even charge 1000 or 3000 EC to write a 200 word guest post. Using this method people make thousands of EC’s per week and never do a single drop. Think of this, 50 people purchase your 50ec stumble/dig, and you spend what 30 minutes doing 50 Stumble/Digg’s and you make 2500 EC? This would be $2.50 per hour true, but these are just examples.”

And this:

“I charged 5000ec for a 1 month 125×125 spot on my blog and 2 people bought, that is how I made 10,000 EC without doing any work. So same as being paid $5 per month right?”

In conclusion:

Entrecard is a very organized service and I enjoy using it as a blogroll or RSS reader. I also appreciate the way the admin states the users are the most important thing.  This, however, is not evidenced in their payout rate for EC’s. A blogger could make more money writing 50 cent sponsored posts. The marketplace is a new aspect I haven’t checked out yet.  It may draw me back in to drop more. If I find, as Justin has suggested, that EC credits can buy me items that significantly increase my traffic, then I will be interested. I will report my findings on the marketplace in a future post.  I’ve almost gathered enough data to write part II and answer the question in the title.

Please share your opinion: what is the value of Entrecard to a blogger?

By Damien Riley | Tagged Entrecard ads, Entrecard for traffic, Entrecard review | Comments (0)

Bloggers from Whom I Learn the Most

April 16, 2009 – 9:50 am
su button  Twitter button  pingfm

Below is a post I wrote mid 2007.  It’s funny how I still agree with some of this and other stuff I once swore off I now tend to do.  This is a cool by-product of blogging, you get to go back and read your own hopes, dreams, and goals to see if they’ve changed or not.

A while back I blogged about the people from whom I learn the most. Tonight I want to talk a little bit about the bloggers from whom I learn the most. Blogging as a genre, hobby, art form, or medium, whatever you wish to call it, is an umbrella over a wide wide array of writing “types.” Which ones do you learn the most from?  I have my favorite “types” on my Google Reader.  I spend a lot of time (my wife often tells me too much and she’s probably right) trying play my part in the game. I think of it as my “contribution” and whatever I do in my life I always aim to do right by my contribution. Anyway, as I peruse blogs and read posts out there in the vast nothingness, I learn what I like and what I don’t. I thought I’d list 5 and 5: 5 blogger “types” (no need to name names, though names exist!) that I glean things from and then 5 types that teach me what NOT to do.

First, Bloggers from whom I learn the most:

  1. Writers of short posts. Long posts, unless they are very well constructed . . . bore the hell out of me and I rarely finish them. If the title isn’t “amazing” then I will prboably move on before I even reach the end, ergot the point, of the post.
  2. Writers with a “#### you” attitude. The rugged individualist has always been my arch-typical hero in modern culture. The day I lose my attitude, is the day they’ll be lowering my casket into the ground. I identify with other bloggers who share that perspective.
  3. Bloggers with original layouts.
  4. Bloggers who post often.
  5. Bloggers who comment on my site and re-comment when I visit their blogs. Also those who respond in the form of a comment to comments on their posts.

TIP: Usually you can go back to check replies to your comments on other blogs by checking their “subscribe to comments” box. Sometimes they don’t have that feature. In that case, I have a dedicated folder on my bookmarks list where I save links to posts I comment on. This makes going back much easier and much more probable.

Second, Bloggers from Whom I learn what generally NOT to Do:

  1. Any blog on monetization, seo, or “how to grow your traffic.”
  2. Angry bloggers that never come up for air.
  3. Pity party posters.
  4. Careful bloggers who explain too much.
  5. AND . . . (of course you had to know this was coming) OVER-THE-TOP AD WIDGET FOLKS. (sorry, just callin’ it like it is!!!)

*If anyone feels personally attacked by this post, please don’t. I write posts of all these types. None of us will ever be perfect at this but I’m aiming at perfection anyway! From which bloggers do you learn the most?

By Damien Riley | Comments (0)

Significance of Community

April 16, 2009 – 9:42 am
su button  Twitter button  pingfm

From a cultural standpoint, there are many communities local and global.  One person will be part of many whether willing or not.  By sheer statistics, each person will be part of distinct communities and those communities will shape her/his life as she/he shapes that community.  Communities exist for every aspect of our lives:

Social Media: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Myspace … these are all online communities that have evolved from a need for community in the online arena.  These are used to promote people and services and many people spend part of their day in these communities making connections.  How many of these do you belong to?  My guess is more than one.

Work: If one has a job, then one has a work community.  In my case, my work community is my primary interaction these days.  Since I graduated high school wayyyy back in 1987, my personal contacts seem to have frittered to few and far between.  I would like to develop more “in real life” (as opposed to online) friendships but with all my blogging, my family hours and  and time spent at work, my work community is really my main outlet to cultivate friendships.  I hope this will change if not in my 40’s (which start June 9th, 2009) then maybe closer to retirement age when my kids are grown.

Marriage:  Though this is a community of only 2, it is a community nonetheless.  Nurturing our marriage and spending quality time with each other is a goal for my marriage community.

Niche Communities and forums:  I see deals all the time for travel to Vegas with a group.  Before he died, my gradfather used to take senior buses out there and they got amazing deals on things.  A retired colleague of mine is also a veteran and he was able to get an amazing deal on two VW beetles through a veteran’s “fleet” sale.

These are just a few examples of communities and how people benefit finacially from them.  There are also instrinsic, non-monetary benefits to belonging to a community but I’ll save those for another post.  It can feel like we are ants marching to a cliff sometimes as we go through life.  Community helps etherize that feeling.  Whether your community is as predicatble as the Rotary club or something “out there” and truly niche like gay vacations, these days there is a community extant for every niche and then some. Whether you join one or start one, I hope this post has made you more aware of the significance of community. If nothing else, joining a community nowadays can qualify you for some great deals, right?

By Damien Riley | Comments (0)

Page 1 of 4612345102030...Last »

Page 1 of 4612345102030...Last »