Oh My…

OK, I’ve been digging into why & where people are making money by blogging. There’s actually a lot of potential out there if you can write good enough content to bring people coming back for more, and if you can drive a lot of search engine traffic to your site.

Now don’t get me wrong… tmasman.com (even tech.tmasman.com) will never be capitalized on. These are just my online playground & nothing but a personal space online to collect thoughts, ideas, and to share pictures with family/friends. Sspeaking of tech.tmasman.com… Um, Yeah. I wasn’t ready to start something like that & it’s really a waste of effort for me to keep 2 personal blogs running. So it’s getting wiped today. It was a nice idea, but a little ill-conceived.

For those of you who don’t know, I have decided to launch a new site http://techiethomas.com that is my web-front for my tech support & web design/hosting company. It still needs to be spiffied up & I’ve got a LOT of information I need to update it with, but it’s a start.

Anyhow, that brings me back to blogging for money. I’m going to create a blog who’s primary focus will be “Technology for everyone else”. What does that mean? I’m glad you asked.

Basically it’ll cover a bunch of topics from software, computers, consumer electronics, websites, search engines, etc… The idea is to make this technology available to people, or better put, to explain these things in simple terms that make sense to people who aren’t “in the know”.

So far, I’ve thought of a few topics to specifically focus on.

• Open Source Software (What is it, why is it free, is it any good?)
• Digital camera terminology & what features really matter
• Consumer electronics reviews (starting with the stuff owned by me, family, & friends… Hey Ryan, didn’t you just buy a new netbook?)
• What computer is right for me? (desktop, laptop, netbook. Windows, Mac, Linux.)
• Reviews & breakdowns of some of the popular open source programs
• What is a website, and what’s involved in owning/running one?
• What is social networking all about?
• How do I put stuff online (Video, pictures, journals, blogs)
• What is a web application?

You can see there a lot of web-related things in there, but I also want to focus on electronics, programs, and computers. All of it focused on teaching “newbies” what it is, how it works, and why they need (or don’t need) it.

Now, for those of you nay-sayers… You know who you are… I know I don’t update this blog very much, but like I said in the beginning, this is a personal playground. A place to toss out updates & pictures every now & then with no real requirements. I plan on treating this new blog as a part of my new business. It’s going to be a part of our financial future, so I’ve GOT to work on it & if I’m not keeping up with it, I’ll count on YOU to help nudge me along & keep me accountable to posting new content regularly. That’s what friends & family are for. If if you’re still reading this blog post, I’ll assume you’re either friend, family, or at least an acquaintance.

Now for the fun part. I need to come up with a domain name for this venture. It’s got to be unique, catchy, & memorable. Ideally, I want it to tie into my http://techiethomas.com site (graphically & hopefully with a similar name/title/ring) .

I’m open to ideas (for domain names and for topics you want to know more about).  So leave a comment (or 2) and tell me what you think.

Well, I took Taven to the clinic Monday afternoon to get his stitches out. I thought that maybe, just maybe, he’d let them take them out without the same fuss he gave getting them. I was wrong.

We ended up doing almost the exact same dance with one minor exception. He let me lie him down on the papoose & he even let us strap him in with a silly little smile on his face. We made it a biit of a game by calling him a silly wiggle worm. He never admitted to being a wiggle worm though. He kept saying “no, I am not a wiggle worm”, the only thing he’d admit to being was “a Taven”. (That’s my boy! He is what he is & you’d better like it that way!)

Of course all the smiles & giggles stopped when the shiney metalic objects started coming around his eye. We had the same struggle to pin his head down while the Dr removed the stitches, but we made it through.

He’s still got some little bandages on there that are supposed to fall off after 2-4 days & they’re starting to peel up. Over-all I’d say he’s been a real trooper through all of this craziness (or did I mean crappines?).