Juggling

Although I never promised that this blog would be updated regularly I still feel I should explain (to anyone reading) why updates occur haphazardly.

Let’s start with this blog as Commitment #1. (Although I feel it’s too early for this blog to be considered a ‘commitment’ – it hasn’t been around long enough that I feel I have committed to it. I intend to commit but time will be the judge.)

Before I began this blog I immediately ruled out the possibility that it would be updated daily. Not only would that be immensely time consuming but I don’t have enough worthwhile things to say.

College is Commitment #2. Right now I am taking five different classes at my university – no small feat. And in order to stay current with my studies I must attend class and produce whatever homework is required. Continue reading

A Rule to Live By

“Nothing good happens after 2 a.m.”

This idea comes from the TV show How I Met Your Mother, and is an idea which I think is pretty self-explanatory. Although I found the idea funny when I first heard it, I didn’t really consider it to be ‘true.’

However, as time progresses, and I analyze and evaluate my adventures past 2am, I have come to whole-heartedly agree that nothing good happens after 2am.

This can be true for many reasons. To name a few: people are more tired after 2am.

Ok, that wasn’t a few reasons. It was only one.

I’m sorry, I’m a little tired myself.

It’s after 2am. I’m up, restless, and hoping this entry serves as proof:

Nothing good happens after 2am.

Amazon Makes Selling Fun

Right now I’m surrounded by old textbooks.

Textbooks from the previous four years of my college life. Some textbooks I don’t think I ever opened. Some textbooks I think I used at most three times. Some textbooks make me recoil with bad memories of professors (who weren’t the greatest teacher [but I may not have been the greatest student either]).

So what’s a college student to do with so many old textbooks – gathering dust and taking up space?

Sell them on Amazon Marketplace!

This has been on my to-do list for the past two weeks and this night the time was finally right. I did some brief reading over the past two weeks about how Amazon Marketplace works — gauging the level of difficulty and time it would take.

There was no way I could predict how easy Amazon makes it to sell things. It’s so easy it’s almost fun.

Almost fun – this post was written 3/4’s of the way through listing all the textbooks. It’s super easy, but also super monotonous and this is a nice break.

So, to all my college and ex-college friends out there: If you have no more use for your college textbooks and have a free evening: List your books! Aint nothing so sweet as making money. Except lollipops. They’re sweeter. (It’s because of the sugar.)

[Update 1: Less than 24 hours from listing my textbooks one has already sold! That was time well spent...]

To-Do List

Now that I have a new blog there’s a few things that I gotta do. These things are gonna let me have the most fun blogging. I figured it’d be interesting/fun for you to read what I usually do when I start a blog, mine or someone else’s.

  • Download WordPress and install it on server
  • Install theme of choice (after scouring hundreds of choices)
  • Find plug-ins that I want to use (install & configure)
    • Make a Google Analytics account to track traffic
      • Debate between the Google Analytics and Google Analyticator plug-in (went with google analyticator b/c of more frequent updates to plug-in)
    • Askimet to catch spam commenters
    • Install a better discussion engine: either Disqus or IntenseDebate (went with IntenseDebate, better compatibility with theme)
    • SEO – Search Engine Optimization plug-ins
      • Google XML Sitemaps
      • All in One SEO Pack
    • Feedburner (to handle RSS feeds) (burned feed)
  • Modify existing theme to allow for micro-blog style formats (so that I can make little ‘twitter-esque’ updates such as “Listening to new Hot Chip album – digging!”)
    • Or figure out a way to slip-stream twitter updates into the blog

Can’t think of anything else right now. I’ll update this post as the ‘to-dos’ become ‘dones’.[update: added more to-dos, crossed out completed tasks]