I found out today that someone I went to high school with has cancer and is likely dying.

She’s just a few months younger than me - and taking her last few breaths.

I’m hoping to be a mommy someday still - and she’s laying in a bed dying.

I remember when my dad was dying from cancer, he was 77 and had a long full life.

Her life should, at most, be half over.

But instead she’s laying in a bed dying.

Just as my dad was.

I hope that I never stop appreciating how lucky I am like I do at this moment.

Someone sent this to me a few days ago:
http://www.talgas.com/pics/unattended-children.jpg

I thought it was pretty funny!

Stuntdubl has had a couple good posts on his blog lately, I’ve been meaning to write about them for a few days now, but just didn’t have the time.

One of them: Why I Try to Spend Less Time Analyzing Algorithm Updates - brings up some good points about how best to spend your time. As well as some great ideas about what Google may start doing soon or already be doing.

I try not to spend too much time on update threads. I try to just skim through them quickly, as most of what is posted is either off topic or just complaining (and yes I’ve been guilty of doing that too) - and not really information you can use to better understand what Google is trying to do. However, there are a few good points made in those threads, so I don’t think they are completely useless. You just have to remember to scan quickly through them, focus on the good stuff and ignore the rest. I’m not going to repeat the whole list that Stuntdubl gives in this post of things to look out for - but if you have a web site - you’d be foolish not to read it and take some notes!

His post Natural SEO Logic - Simple Standalone Variable Guidelines is also a good one to spend some time reading. He goes through several characteristic of sites and makes some estimates of what might look natural to search engines. These types of guidelines seem more important as time goes by, as doing something wrong might hurt you more than you can be helped by doing the right things. Or so it seems to me anyway.

Stuntdubl is a nice guy too, I met him last year at LV and he is good at what he does - so read what he has to say - or else! (Or else what? I don’t know, I felt like saying it!)

Nick from Threadwatch and Patrick Gavin just started up Performancing.com - it is a group blog by professional bloggers and is made for professional bloggers to help them succeed! Other team members are Chris Garrett, Andy Hagans and Peter Brady.

They already have some good posts there about building and retaining credibility in a blog, how to get links to a new blog and the different blog software available - and much more!

I don’t have plans to monetize this blog - but I am getting ready to start up a blog on another site and I’m sure that Performancing.com will be a great resource! Thanks for creating it guys!

I guess Jagger 3 doesn’t like my site. Everything was going fine until yesterday, when my traffic went way down. I have no idea why Google doesn’t like my sites. I have no idea what to do now.

This site, for example - please if anyone knows, what is wrong with it? Why doesn’t Google like it? : Butterfly Gardening and Conservation - the only thing I ever did that might be considered bad is have a datafeed on in - but it has been gone for months now. Everything else is original that I did a lot of work for - all the photography I did myself and it took a lot of time and money.

And this one: Ideas for Women - it may not be as pretty - but there is nothing wrong with it, nothing that breaks any of Google’s guidelines as far as I can tell. And I spent a lot of time working on it. Every article on it that I wrote I put a lot of time into.

I give up!

Any one out there need some work outsourced?

Matt posted in his blog and at webmaster world that yesterday Jagger3 started showing at data center 66.102.9.104.

I don’t really follow any keywords too closely, so I don’t really know how Jagger 3 will turn out for me. However, I am a bit disappointed to see that one of my sites that has been penalized/filtered for quite a while now - and I have no idea why - is still not showing up for its name at that datacenter. A site: command does show the right number of pages now though. ["www.mydomain.com"] doesn’t show my site either.

My cafepress store for that site shows up in the top ten though - I wonder if using my regular site navigation on the cafepress pages is what is hurting the site? It seems it is good for users though - makes going back and forth from the site to the store seamless for them - but maybe Google doesn’t like it, or gets confused by it?

“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home, That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every ’superstar,’ every ’supreme leader,’ every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
Carl Sagan from ‘Pale Blue Dot’

Some other Sagan links:
http://www.coseti.org/klaescnt.htm - a lot of information about the movie ‘Contact’

http://www.sciencenter.org/SaganPW/ - A planet walk dedicated to Carl Sagan with numbers given for a scaled down version of the solar system.

http://paleblue.us/about.html - another blog inspired by ‘pale blue dot’

“Do we, holding that gods exist, deceive ourselves with insubstantial
dreams and lies, while random careless chance and change alone control
the world?” — EURIPIDES, Hecuba

“Is man one of God’s blunders? Or is God one of man’s blunders?”– Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900)

The French author and philosopher Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire
(1694-1778) once said that if God did not exist, we would have to invent
him.

“Now can anyone look upon and compare these systems (of Jupiter and
Saturn) together, without being amazed at the vast magnitude and noble
attendants of these two planets, in respect of this little pitiful Earth
of ours? Or can they force themselves to think that the wise Creator has
disposed of all his animals and plants here, has furnished and adorned
this spot only, and has left all those worlds bare and destitute of
inhabitants, who might adore and worship Him; or that all those
prodigious bodies were made only to twinkle to and be studied by some
few perhaps of us poor fellows?” –Christiaan Huygens

(I always wanted to learn more about Christiaan Huygens after I heard about him while watching Cosmos. Anyone know of any good sources of information?)

As I was trying to get motivated to write more content for one of my sites today I started thinking about what it is that I really want.

I realized that what I really want is to exist, be happy and to enjoy things.

But with life being as short and precarious as it is - with ageing, disease, weakness and death being what we inevitably have to look forward to with life - and so many people that die young and suddenly from sickness, accidents or natural disasters (some of which could potentially wipe out our entire species) - I can’t be satisfied with just living and being happy.

I want more.

Although I believe that science will eventually find ways to prevent ageing and most if not all disease, I don’t think this will happen in my lifetime.

So what is left? The only thing that makes sense for me to spend my life on this planet doing is to learn more about what we are and what the universe is - or in other words - find the answer to ‘life, the universe and everything’. Likely I won’t be able to find the answer in my lifetime either. But anything I do find out will contribute to the body of knowledge our species has. And will bring us one step closer to eliminating suffering and death - not for me but for someone, sometime at least.

So, back to writing and working on sites that mean something to me - those about some aspect of science or humanity that I can learn about and spread that information to others. And I’ll try to be happy and enjoy what I encounter along the way.

The studio of WebmasterRadio.FM was hit bad by Wilma and they have not been airing live shows since then. But starting tonight, live shows will resume with Domain Masters (with host Monte Cahn from Moniker) tonight at 7:00 EST!

The past few days they have been remotely streaming music and recorded shows only.

If you have not yet been listening to WebmasterRadio.FM and you own a web site - you really should! They have some great shows with informative hosts and guests! These include ‘Thats A Wrap’ with Greg Boser & Daron Babin, ‘Strike Point’ with Mikkel deMib Svendsen & Dave Naylor and ‘SEO Rockstars with Todd “Oilman” Friesen.