New York Renovator

I do not “believe” that global warming is 1) a trend, and 2) caused by man’s activities. I think it is a short-term global climate change, if it is even warming at all. History seems to prove that the earth frequently goes through temperature “seasons” of periodic change.

Anyway, today in Upstate New York it is 40 DEGREES. It is FREEZING! I had to turn the heat on today. This is 20 to 25 degrees below normal for us at this time right now. In previous years, we’d be out in our swimsuits catching some rays, man. Well, maybe not as extreme as swimsuits… but Memorial Day weekend is a week away and that is when we traditionally hit the beaches. This is crazy. We had to unpack our gloves and hats over the weekend. :-p

I’ve heard of tiny little modular cubicles in Europe. It is only fitting that the United States have our own style of small-scaled housing. What else would it be but a tiny log cabin? I saw this at Off-Grid Living. I don’t want to copy the photo– you’ll have to go see for yourself. Off-Grid Living is one of my favorite blogs, because I would so love to live that way! Here in New York, the energy rates are… shall we say… OUT OF THIS WORLD. So I’m always looking for good ideas.

Having a little logg cabin like this isn’t really feasible for my large family, but I do like the idea behind it: that of self-sufficiency and thrift. Amazingly cool!!

I have a good-sized vegetable garden (600 square feet) plus scads and scads of flower beds. It is a CONSTANT battle against weeds around here. We live at the bottom of a wooded hill, and every weed in that durn forest floats down into my yard and roots itself firmly into my beds. I can’t even begin to count the hours spent pulling weeds.

I have laid mulch in my flower beds (every year the mulch floats away when the floods come, though) to try to deter the weeds. But I have come up with something more progressive– ground cover! I have some periwinkle (also known as creeping myrtle, or vinca minor) that grows under trees, and I have noticed that few weeds are able to sprout between the lush cover. So I have planted vinca minor in strategic places in the flower beds, and am in the process of planting it all around the perimeter of my vegetable garden. Hopefully, the weed seeds that try to infiltrate my yard will bounce off the ground cover, and DIE! Muahahahahahahah!

Perhaps you’ve noticed that little 125 x 125 button in my sidebar for EZ DIY Electricity? If not, go ahead and take a look, I’ll wait! I found out about Wayne through Entrecards. Since we have some common interests and readers (I am rewiring the electricity in my house myself, slowly but surely), we swapped buttons. I just wanted to say if you are interested in DIY, it would do you good to check out his site. He has a lot of DIY stuff, but even if you are not into DIY, there’s a whole lot to learn from his website. If you’re a homeowner, you can really benefit by learning more about how your electrical system and all the electronic stuff in your house operates. I have been impressed by his Help pages. I intend to go back to his wiring diagrams, too!

In other news, I got my electrical inspection license in the mail! Yippeee! My home has new (and officially inspected) wiring in the living room and girls’ bedroom, and in the circuit panel. I have yet to wire the rest of the house, though. It’s a slow process because I have two choices– either gut the walls of the plaster and lathe, or punch holes and try to snake it through. I’ve been going beserk trying to snake it through. I HATE it. But I don;t have the money to rip everything out and rebuild again. So… I’m still in limbo. And we continue to use floor lamps in the rooms without electricity. Sigh.

Little anemones that I got for free with a tree order last year. I love blue flowers and have an assorted mix of blues and purples in the gardens.

My seedlings will be ready for transplanting soon. A mild cold snap (40s) is expected this week, so I’m going to wait until that passes before I plug these in.

The snap peas are peeping up now.

When you monetize your blog, like I do, weird new terms such as SEO, Page Rank, and backlinks become part of your vocabulary. Page Rank is a somewhat mystical calculation by the Google people, to determine your “value” among all the other websites on the Internet. Google says they use a “secret” algorithm measuring a blog’s backlinks (how many other sites link back to you), traffic, keywords, posting frequency, etc. It’s been advised by most Internet geeks that in order to get a higher Page Rank, you have to work at your blog; and a common assumption is that the harder you work, the higher your Page Rank.

After this blog took off, it’s Page Rank went to 3. Which was not too bad for a “new” blog back then. Yeah, I said “was.” As soon as Google discovered I was blogging for money, they removed my Page Rank, not just on this blog, but all of them, even my PR4 and 5 blogs. So out went any appearance of “algorithm” when it came to valuing my blog. And my money-making capabilities were crunched, just as Google intended. I do still make some money writing with the PR of 0, but not nearly as much as I did. (By the way, just recently two of my other blogs were re-evaluated and were given PR 2. They should be more like 5, but I’ll take what I can get). So I am keen on tips and advice on getting Page Rank back. I came across this funny article at Read My Mind, The Secret to a High Google Page Rank. He describes reading a post by a fellow blogger who woke up one day to see his blog had been given a Page Rank 5 by Google! The blogger couldn’t believe his eyes, because he doesn’t post to the blog much (he’d rather sleep), he does not have any “big bloggers” who backlink to him, and his traffic is low, about 20 hits a day.

…Can you imagine that? He we are laboring day and night ( sometimes even until the wee hours) just to get some traffic and a decent page rank for our blog and all we get is a PR2, 3 or even a zero. While someone who claims to be doing almost nothing gets a much-coveted PR5! It sounds illogical, I know, especially to SEO experts out there, but what can I say? I even double-checked his claim and confirmed that it is indeed a PR5 for his blog.

So what have we learned from this? Pick the most appropriate answer:

a) this is a freak of Google’s page rank algorithm; links, SEO, traffic still rule
b) all work and no sleep makes blogging an unworthy activity
c) Google is stupid
d) all of the above

I am planning to test this new-found theory by setting up a blog and doing almost nothing.

My answer would be, you guessed it, (d). HAHA! I thought the post was pretty funny. But, sigggggh. I think Page Rank is so overrated, yet it seems to control everything related to online entrepreneurship! :-p I’ve decided to leave the Page Rank rat race and let the chips fall where they may. I’d much rather be reading the latest furniture catalog, anyway. heh.

I’d blogged about my HP All-in-One that bit the dust a few weeks ago. I procrastinated buying a new printer, hoping I could make due with emailing all the necessary documents to my husband’s computer and printing them that way. Wasn’t working out very well. Plus, I absolutely need a scanner for the homeschool and didn’t have one. A kind person donated some moola for the cause, and I wanted to spend it wisely. I was wise to wait for a good deal, because that is what I got!

I went to Staples to look around again and I found a GREAT deal. I bought a Canon MP530 scanner, printer, copier, and fax machine. I didn’t really need the fax machine, it serves about the same purpose as an attached wine refrigerator would… but the machine was so inexpensive that I could make do with an extra feature.

The retail price is generally in the $200 range, according to C|Net. Amazon is selling it for $112. Staples was offering a $50 rebate, so I got this machine for $66! I couldn’t believe it! This printer is less expensive than my HP All-in-One when I bought it for $100 four years ago. And the Canon ink is much more affordable than the HP. Plus, the ink comes in separate tanks, saving me even more money. It also has an automatic duplexer (prints on both sides of a sheet), although I haven’t been able to figure out how to do it yet. The machine comes with a novel-sized manual that I have to read through.

The Canon MP530 has gotten rave reviews at C|Net and I will probably be joining the gang! It installed so easily, and it had no problem with my Vista operating system. This was such a relief that I remained in unbelief for a while. See, I have had to wrangle with all my HP products all these years that I guess I am a little punchy now. I was surprised that something actually installed correctly the first time, and then continued to work well afterwards!

FYI, Staples seems to be having a lot of good deals lately. Last week, they had a special where they would take $50 off the price of an HP printer $160 or more if you brought in any old printer. It was a great way to get an expensive printer for a low price, but I have been steering away from HP, and $100 or so was more than I wanted to spend. Nonetheless, I have noticed that Staples is trying to appeal to the budget buyer lately. I love the deal I got and I think I love Canon! And I can claim the printer as a tax deduction for my writing business, too, since I use it for that.

I was at WalMart today. I (finally) got my hair cut (I’d let my hair grow to halfway down my back!), but I had to wait a little while before the stylist could see me. So I browsed the store a little. I do my grocery shopping at WalMart every other week, but I rarely go beyond the food and household sections. I decided to see what was new in housewares, and it blew my mind! WalMart now sells chest freezers! What will they think of next, burial insurance?!

Here’s another very helpful website I discovered today, Easy2DIY. In the “olden days,” you had to buy books to learn do-it-yourself techniques, and good luck if the library carried anything useful! Today, you flip on the computer and away you go. Love it. The website has a slew of good tutorials and a handy-dandy paint calculator. It’s a good website to bookmark.

My old Hewlett-Packard All-in-One (printer, scanner, copier) has died. I hated it, anyway. It never printed like I wanted, it made my computer crash from time to time, and every time I turned it on, it always did a “test print” which wasted ink. So the rollers finally collapsed and it would cost more to replace the part than buy a new one.

I’ve been surfing around looking at various models. I AM TOTALLY LOST. How on earth do I choose?! So I figured I’d ask my beloved Internet blog readers for help! I’d really like to know what printers you use, what you love, what you hate. I’m hoping to stay away from HP unless someone glowingly recommends one. I’m also open to higher-priced models since the printer is for business and I can get a tax deduction for it.

If you have ANY advice– anything– would you please leave a comment?