Joe and Jamie's Blog

Jamie and I are having a tough time deciding where to go for our summer vacation. We want to go someplace new this year. We narrowed it down to Rhode Island or Virginia. Last year we took a trip to Boston after making a stop in Cambridge, Mass. The Delaware shores and Baltimore where among the list this year, but we for some reason are settling more towards the shores of Rhode Island or Virginia Beach, the more touristy areas since they tend to have more to do.

My friend Jay just recently posted some pictures of his Memorial Day tip to Point Judith, RI. He has been to Block Island before and recommends it. You can see some pictures he took and if you take a gander at the comments he has more from older posts.

Basically we need your help. I want to book the hotel this weekend before prices go way up and nothing is available. Right now Hotels.com is running a special on a free $50 gas card if you book more than three nights between now and Labor Day. We’re planning to go July 17th though the 28th if that helps with the decision making.

Since I am a fairly new blogger with a even newer blog, I am very anxious to get and excited when I see comments. I know there are a lot more than my original two readers now, so please leave a comment if you like something or find anything interesting. I love the comments I get in person, but why not leave your mark here for all eternity?? While I was surfing around my usual round of sites to check daily I came across a post over at Blog Oh Blog about why people should leave comments.  Here are Jai’s 7 reasons to leave comments:

1. Do you know me?

If you regularly leave comments on a particular blog, it will make the blog owner recognize you and also your website. When you do this on multiple blogs, you will be socially recognized in the blogging community. Also, most of the blogs nowadays use Gravatars which can help in branding and getting some popularity for your own blog. I think that leaving comments on popular blogs is the best way to be known around the Internet.

2. Building Community

A community is built around people and their views. Leaving comments is a way of showing that you care and want to share your opinion with others including the owner of the blog. The comments can be a suggestion, feedback, appreciation or even criticism. They are good as long as they are not spammy or abusive. So, even if you are just stopping by, try to make that little effort of writing a comment, even if its just a line.

3. Getting What you Want

You should leave a comment because that’s the only way the blog owner can judge what the reader/customers want without getting a written e-mail or any other form of communication.

4. Link Building & Traffic

Most of the blogs allow you to leave your website link/s when writing comments (Dofollow or Nofollow) for the blog. This can help you in getting good inbound links and also some additional traffic to your site.

5. Selling yourself

If you are a service provider or have something to sell, comments can be an unobtrusive way to do this. I am not asking you to write your sales pitch in the comments but when you build a relationship with the people through commenting on their blogs, it gets easy to sell your wares to them. Cheap advertising for you

6. Go down in the Blogging history

This is for the people who do not run websites or blogs but just like to surf the Internet. Someday, when someone tries to search for your name on Google, believe me or not, if you mentioned your name in the comment author, the search results will pop out the comments that you wrote. For some people, the results can be very fascinating

7. Show off your writing style

Finally, if you have good written English skills, comments can be the platform where you can flaunt them. A lot of people will read them.

And last but not the least, when you leave a comment on a post, it is sort of a reward or a small prize for the blog owner. So, you know now what makes leaving comments so special! Go on, leave a comment and show me that you learned something

I found it very interesting, so support Jai and check out the original post here.

As of right now, I would say do not install Windows XP Service Pack 3.

I have experienced several issues with the latest service pack. I had a computer not allow users to login after it was installed and another that would just keep rebooting, which is the most common issue after install. The continuous reboots are mainly with AMD based systems, but it has been found with Intel’s as well. I personally had it happen to me with an Intel, but I have also one successful installation as well.

I have also heard that there are many compatibility issues with the HP pre-loading software. Some anti-virus programs, like ZoneAlarm for example, may show new security risks or threats that aren’t true, it’s all XP SP3.

As always, I recommend never installing anything from Microsoft when it just comes out, let everyone else test it out and find the errors first.

I decided to go with forums rather than blogs for the network administration help sites that I was designing. Forums are just easier for people to sign up and post their own topics, as well as making it easier to categorize everything.

For the last five days I have configured the phpBB forum that I have running now on NetworkAdmin.INFO. Please visit the site and feel free to ask any computer or technical question you may have. If I cannot answer it I surely have the resources to get the answer.

I hope this venture turns out well. I spent some pretty price money on old domain names to try and help this out and I would like to see it prosper. Over the weekend I will be posting as many help fixes as I can to try and fill the forum up a bit and make it look alive. I have some minor tweaking to do still and some SEO work, but nothing that will change or affect the forum.

VISIT NETWORKADMIN.INFO

Wanted for being himself. NO REWARD, except laughing your ass off.

Goes by the name of Pimp Master Jay, The World’s Greatest Webmaster, That Guy, and Gaulard.

I found this in someone’s office at Pamal and I had to post it.

The slogan “pictures say a thousand words” is soooo true…….

Tired of hearing about this yet? Regardless of your answer, here is more on it.

Paul at the Homeowner’s Blog recently posted an excellent article on a method of saving gas while driving. He backed everything he said up with equations and accurate results. I couldn’t say it better myself, so please read his post and its comments.

Click here to read Paul’s article on the best way to increase fuel economy.

I bought some more domain names this weekend. I was bored and stuck in front of a computer which never leads to anything good. I have had some idea of creating informative blog sites on basic computer and networking troubleshooting tips and guides. I started snooping around GoDaddy for some catchy names and found that they were all taken, like always. Some domain names were available for a premium price of two grand, but I don’t have that kind of cash to blow right now, especially when I don’t have time to make the site bring that much money in fast.

Here’s some of the names that I purchased that were surprisingly available for regular price:

• networksystem.us
• systemnetwork.us
• techadmin.us
• networktechnician.us
• systemtech.us

I picked up the same domains with different TLD’s (top level domains) along the way, whatever was available.

I wanted to get a few other domains, but they were too pricey. I searched around and found Sedo.com, a huge domain name aftermarket. Sedo.com allows you to actually bid on the site with the owner, rather than just pay the price posted on GoDaddy. After a few days of haggling with owners that wanted thousands for sites with absolutely no traffic at all out there, I obtained these two sites this morning:

• networkadministrator.org
• networkadmin.us
• systemadministrator.biz

What is great about networkadministrator.org is that it is seven years old and had a page available, it was not just owned without a site up. This means that it should be known to search engines and possibly already bookmarked by others and have links out there. You don’t make it in this business without links. I am in the process of getting the domain transferred to me now. There are a few more I am interested in, just have to keep beating the price down, hoping the owner doesn’t close the negotiations. [UPDATE] Just bought systemadministrator.biz while I was posting this for a fair price for a four year old domain, made for a fun night.

For these sites, I think I will start out using blogs to host the content. They are easy to set up and use, as well as free. The person who created this blog here as a whole slew of blogs, some free and some really nice premium templates. I really like a few of the templates at Blog Oh! Blog. You can check out the templates here.

I am out for now, going to start uploading the main templates now!

While at work today I had to change the serial key on one of the computers. I took the computer from an old building in Vermont and moved it to their new location.

When I started it up It was getting this nice error message:

Since it’s a three and a half hour drive home and it’s already 7PM, I didn’t want to waste time formatting and reinstalling. The old company used a volume license key but I just wanted to blow that out and use the OEM key that was on the side of the case. It’s the legal key that came with the computer, everything still factory built, not just some spare case.

Here is what you do to change the serial key:

Download the following file from here. Just select your OS (Vista or XP), agree to the terms and hit download.

What is good about this new way of updating the serial number is that it will check the system files for anything that is out of order. This is important because many cracked versions of XP will have hacked system files that will keep important updates from being applied. The old way was a script file that could be run to change the key. The old scripting way can be found here.

Once it is finished it will ask you for the new key.

Enter the key click finish and it will make the change and reboot. Now that the serial number is updated you will no longer receive the warnings from Microsoft, and updates will be properly applied.

Source: www.intelliadmin.com