Yahoo!’s Domainapalooza

Yahoo has decided to release some of its premium domain names to the public through an auction at Sedo…

Yahoo!’s Domainapalooza …(This link was updated on November 16th, 2013)

This premium domain name portfolio auction started today, November 14th, and runs to November 21st, 2013.  Although there are quite a few names that I feel are not very good (especially for the reserve price indicated), there are some great domains in the bunch…

• AV.com
• WebServer.com
• Sandwich.com
• Sled.com
• VoiceMail.com
• Crackers.com
• Freeby.com/.net
• BlogsPort.com (or brand it as BlogSport.com)

Now, please note that the above is merely a sampling of some of the best domain names in the Yahoo Domainapalooza premium domain portfolio auction.  But that portfolio is listing over 500 names on its first day, and Yahoo! also indicates that it will also be adding even more domain names throughout the auction.

Can you walk away with a great brandable domain name that you could develop into a profitable website or business?  Very likely, considering the quality of some of these names.  Especially with names that have an excellent second meaning.  For instance, even though winter is coming and sled would make a great name to sell winter snow sleds, “sled” is often how I refer to older muscle cars that had great power but lacked the handling of a sports car.  These beasts will never have sports car handling because they double as grocery-getters and transportation to work.  And if you are into muscle cars like I am you would see the opportunity in that street rod slang name.

As of this writing, there are 517 domain names available for auction and with Yahoo planning to add even more this may become the most watched premium domain name portfolio auction in history.

Happy domaining!  I hope there will be many domainers taking advantage of this opportunity to add to their portfolio and domainate the market with domainating names.  😉

Yahoo!’s Domainapalooza …(This link was updated on November 16th, 2013)

-Doug
…”Domainating”
(I’m going back to check out that list!)

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There are ADS in posts on My WordPress.com Blog, Now?

HOLY CRAP!

I came back to post on my blog and I find out that WordPress.com now posts ads in My blog?  

I’m done.

F U WordPress!  I’ll transfer My domain name back to my own service at DomainHostmaster.com and put up a Blogger site.  

YOU ARE GOING TO SPAM MY BLOG WITHOUT PERMISSION WHEN I AM ALREADY TRYING TO SUPPORT YOU WITH THE LITTLE BIT OF BUSINESS THAT I CAN AFFORD? 

Progress for the sake of Progress?

WordPress is certainly changing…  and just like with Blogger I am not happy with the changes.  

It isn’t a big deal, I can still find myself around the interface and all, but it’s all very unfamiliar and unfriendly to me.  I liked things as they were and moving the OS all around and putting the same options in different places just is not even intuitive.

Don’t get me wrong, as a designer I recognize that we should push the boundries of design.  But when you have spent some time away from the blog and return and everything is different and you have to look around and think when everything was second hand, and you posted freely before, you get a little put-off by all this user interface magic.

There is nothing new here, it is all just changed around.  WTF?  How is that beneficial?

Then, because I am so miffed and disturbed by all these changes on what was a friendly place to go post on my blog…. I left for a while, again.  But wanting to revisit and update My blog I return and everything is different in the blog dashboard/control-panel YET AGAIN?  It hadn’t really been all that long?  

I’m starting to get dizzy with these non-improvements.  The new blog entry editor pops ABOVE the blog?  Ad you only have a tiny window in the editor, with no chance to update the text field window gadget?  That seems a bit backward to me.  Everyone uses text fields that you can drag around and make larger, now.  And if you “pop-out” the editor window, it is still the same size.  You can make the window itself larger, but the text field size won’t budge!?  WTF?

C’MON MAN!

This is a joke.  Stop trying to be pretty, WordPress, I want functionality.  I just so happen to hate tiny little text field windows unless I can drag them farther open.  But look, this is not a step forward, it is a step back.  

Why do I even bother?

Life, Such As It Is, At My Place…

A lot has happened in the past year and a half. I was working a part-time job at Kohl’s and hoping that after a year or so I would be able to get a good review and try to transfer into a graphic designer position. But, then I hurt myself at work. I tripped over a set of rolling apparel racks called z-rails. I didn’t even fall down, but immediately after that (and not until then) my hip started making a popping noise that was extremely alarming.

I made the report of the injury with my supervisor and went to the doctor right after my overnight shift was over, making an appointment with my doctor for later that day. He thought it was a rupture or a hernia, so I took a week off to heal and then went back to work. But the hip popping sound never stopped, every pop or click was a violent shock to my system, and the pain never ceased. In fact, the pain got worse, much worse. After 6 months and nothing was sticking out, ruptured or herniated, I went back to the Doc and he sent me to an orthopedic specialist.

I suppose I should note that during these 6 months I was unloading trucks. Not an easy feat with a clickity-click hip. But I worked through hoping something would burst and I would get the treatment I needed.

Dr. Kaylo diagnosed me with a disjointed labrum, put me through some tests, gave me an injection that didn’t produce any results and was ready to schedule an orthoscopic operation on my hip way back in February when Sedgewick Claims Management Services started screwing everything up on purpose with all kinds of delays making me get a second opinion with another orthopedic surgeon, which well took over a month for them to schedule, and over a month for them to finally get back to me.

All the time we were doing this, Sedgewick CMS was trying desperately to talk me out of getting the operation. I had to wait for them to get paperwork that they had clearly been briefed on properly over the phone by the physician’s staff, I had to wait for them to look it over, I had to wait for them to send me documents, I had to wait for sedgewick to get its head out of its butt. It has been sickening how obviously they have maneuvered and delayed this operation so that when I am recovering they won’t have to pay me much as my employer cut everyone’s hours. So now that I haven’t been making anything worthwhile since January because of the seasonal nature of retail, and because Kohl’s has deliberately cut the hours of all available overnight staff by hiring way too many people way too early in the season, my average rate of pay has taken a huge downward spiral.

I can’t do anything about it, either. No one will hire me at any other job until I am healthy again and this situation is resolved. I can’t even transfer to another position in the company because I need to be healthy in order to make a move to Wisconsin (or New York), where that position would be. Hell, I can’t even work my business anymore because of the pain I have been in.

Finally, there are no more excuses from Sedgwick CMS. They have to give me the operation. I go under the knife on the 28th, finally, after 17 months of pain.

In the meantime my wife looks at me as if I am worthless because I can’t do anything or even make a decent living wage. If she has any feelings for me it is pity, but her love for me is long gone, as she had always refused to communicate with me.

So, maybe I can put this hip crap behind me soon, get better, get a divorce, and get out of this miserable life in my God forsaken home. I have always hated this place. I just can’t wait to start a new life somewhere else.

Theme Upgrade Crap

The theme for this blog, Andreas04, was upgraded to “Able”. I personally think that Able is crap and is the absolute kind of theme I am trying to avoid, one that lacks creativity of any sort.

To that end I have been strained trying to find a new theme. Which also keeps me from posting anything new, because I arrive at my dashboard and am presented with a problem indicating that my theme won’t work well, or might not even be around, for much longer. hence I go look for themes and get lost in a sespool of muck & mire.

Samsung Galaxy Note II… WOW

My wife upgraded my Droid X to a Samsung Galaxy Note II for Christmas… WOW!

So this is how a smartphone was supposed to be all along.  Don’t get me wrong, the Motorola Droid X that she gave me 2 years ago was the most advanced thing that anyone could get at the time.  But who knew that in about 6 months time Verizon would bring 4GLTE to Sioux Falls? 

That changed everything and we had to wait another year and a half before we could updrade.  But it was worth the wait.

The Galaxy Note II has a much larger 5.5″ 720p display and just using the keyboard is a great deal easier for me with my big fat fingers.  In fact, I am actually typing using the on-screen virtual keyboard now, to write this post.

Even better is the fact that this device supports the external bluetooth keyboard that I had bought to use with my Droid X.  So I guess getting that kb on sale at Kohl’s was actually a smart move, afterall.

Thanks to its quad core 1.6 GHz processor, the Note 2 flies.  This Note II is remarkably fast when compared to my old Droid X, which seemed to require a daily reboot just to run well. While the GN2 will run all day on a battery even when using it as lot.  And I have only reboot a few times just because I am superstitious after having to do it all the time with the Droid.

I have a great deal more memory to work with, as well.   The Droid X maybe had about 500MB working RAM, less than 2GB internal storage and whatever size microSD card a user could get.

The Galaxy Note II (GN2) comes with nearly 1.75 GB of working RAM and another 2 GB cache with over 10 GB of on device storage memory. Plus, it supports the microSD format flah memory card for additional photo/video/app/data storage. I happen to think that that is a really big deal, because so-called “top of the line” devices such as the HTC Droid DNA don’t even support the microSD card anymore. They want you to buy cyber drive storage though one of the offered cloud drive services and everyone has a plan to cash in on this. But that also eliminates an easy and inexpensive means to upgrade to a new device quickly. It also eliminates simple backup systems and sneaker nets. That is a poor choice, I expected devices to have already started supporting multiple SD Cards as standard equipment on all smart phones by now.

For me, since this thing (and most modern smart phones) now captures 1080P video, not providing at least one memory card slot is sinful… we want to keep the videos we recird of our kids, not lose them in the cloud. C’MON MAN!

The GN2 is quite a handy little tablet, as well. The stylus setup is extra cool because it works so well. It compliments my Asus EeePC Transformer tablet, perfectly.

There are some things that I will miss about my Droid X, though. One is that it is all paid for. But they charge us less on the new 2 year contract, anyway. But I will definitely miss the HDMI port. Especially since I bought a multimedia dock for it and that worked out well for me, using that as a charger and clock… I’m really going to miss that. Luckily, there is a system for the note to view HD Video with an HDMI dongle using the microUSB port… but that is not convenient. Still, the Droid Razor Maxx HD would have won me over if they weren’t dumb enough to make the battery unservicable by the customer. I just hate the way some companies nickel and dime you to death by engineering in unservicability.

So when it came right down to it, I had no choice but to get either the Samsung Galaxy S III or the Note II and I am really happy with my choice!

Still In Recovery

I have been spending a great deal of time recovering from 2 things… a physical ailment where I actually tore something within my inner hip/pelvis region when I tripped over a “safety guard” while working the freight at Kohl’s, and the second being that I still have not reinstated all of my online properties after my high speed web hosting reseller account (which was so expensive that I couldn’t resell it) was finally cancelled on February 14th of this year.

The Injury:

Although I had recovered well and felt good when I went back to work after over a week off and taking Advil every day, soon after the tolls of the graveyard shift and the constant physical labor of unloading and replenishing freight was wearing on me.  I plan on going back to see the doctor because now my hip makes popping or clicking sounds in my normal day-to-day routine when I’m not working.  This is often accompanied with a shooting pain, but sometimes it is more noise. But I still haven’t recovered from taking the one week off after I had the injury.  I am really hurting financially because work was already slow and my domain/hosting sales also slow-up in the summer. I admit I am feeling pretty frail now, these days.

The Websites:

Only a handful of websites remain offline currently, these are mostly my general subject directories.  One that remains up and online (after recovering it) is Hyperlink Directory.  Because of complications with the databases of other directories, I will be using the Hyperlink Directory database to form the start of my other directories which were previously phpLinkDirectories (Worthful Index & Reciprocate Links!, which are currently parked until I have some extra time to get them online).

Some of the other directories I ran seemed to be running on what might be considered insecure directory software, so I am leaving those offline until I can find a migration path.  Since phpLD doesn’t support directory database migration, I am looking to other software solutions.

In the meantime, I have not only continued recovering the websites and intellectual properties that went down in flames due to my expensive web hosting issues, I’ve also been making those recovered websites better, as well as continuing to build my empire of websites and brands. One example is that I setup Font-Journal on Domain Hostmaster hosting and I am also trying to keep it updated as I have a whole bunch more fonts to upload (the list is quite long).

I also setup Glossary Index, which is a handy little dictionary word lookup utility site with live feedback as you type in your word.

I have established a couple more pin-up beauty sites honoring and celebrating the unsurpassed beauty of women. These are both on Tumblr, Top Hot Girls seems the most popular. I don’t know if it is the monochromatic style or simply that I have been lucky to find some shots of very precious beauties in this format, but Super Elegance is one of my favorites. To me the beauty of women is undeniable proof of God.  You can’t tell me that there isn’t a superior intelligence at work there, they are pure living art.  I just wish they made sense.  And there you have God’s humor making our lives interesting.

I also setup a domain to display my old HTML Character Code Reference Table at (where else?) HTMLCharacterCode.com.

I am working on a few other new sites and updating some elder ones, as well.  Right now I am trying to setup sites using best web design practices that take advantage of the HTML5 & CSS3 web standards.  This is proving to a be a lot more difficult using CSS to structure the layout.  Although I love the standard, it is a great deal more difficult to code this way.  It is also harder to struggle through the code when designing radically different sites, as I always have to start over from scratch.

The worst part is that while I am trying to get all my old sites updated with HTML5 and CSS3, I am not learning all the neat things that I can do in HTML5 with the canvas property that I need to know.

I feel like I’m always racing to catch-up.  My part-time job doesn’t exactly help me accomplish a single thing, either.  It’s a very physical job moving freight all night long and always wears me out and takes me out of the game for well too long recuperating afterwards.

Why even have this stupid menial labor position, I don’t know, I am farther in debt now than when I started a year ago.  WTF?

Swamped!

Right now I’m just making a quick post because I am swamped with things to do after my web host finally shut-off my services (and did I ask them to shut off my hosting and stop charging me for it, SIX MONTHS AGO).

I’ve been documenting what I’m doing to get caught-up at http://www.Blare.Info/ – but I have a long way to go, yet, and I better get some sleep before I go into work again tonight.

I thought this freelancing stuff meant I would have FREE Time, but NO!

Busy as a Bee…

I’ve been so busy updating domain names and websites. I have a bad host that is costing Me a great deal for the account. I really liked the hosting, even though they were so expensive, until they made a big deal about my Top Sites script and shut down the site.  That’s the one I was paying them to handle.  I can get all sorts of other hosts to handle the other domains at almost no cost to Me.

What sites have I been updating? I’ve been trying to get lots of domains and websites moved off the old host. So I’m not doing too much. But here’s a list:

http://www.4gz.net/
http://www.4gz.us/
http://www.abitofallright.com/ – Actually, I messed this one up. I still have to go back and fix the a names.
http://www.adgtw.com/
http://www.adtda.com/
http://amanshomeishiscastle.com/
http://automotivesalvageyards.com/
http://www.derivant.com/
http://www.designerartist.com/
http://www.domainance.com/
http://www.domainants.com/
http://www.domainperfection.com/
http://www.poetlike.com/
http://www.superelegance.com/

Aside from moving them off that expensive server so that I can close that web hosting reseller account, I am trying to get these sites to look good on a mobile phone screen. Let me know if I need to address any particular site. I actually have a Droid X with an HD aspect screen that most websites actually look pretty good on.

Back In Action

I’ve been stuck without a working PC for way too long now.  I’m back.

I was relying on a cheap ($120.00) tablet or My smart phone for email an such, but My Polaroid T7 internet tablet sucked so bad for typing because of the incapability of its insensitive touch screen that the attempt was pointless.  And although I managed some email with My DroidX, I do not recommend counting on a smartphone (of any type) for managing your digital life.  They can enhance your mobile life, but to rely on them as a digital answer is going well beyond what they are capable of doing.

I would like to grab an Asus Prime Transformer to replace My broken netbook PC, but at least I have my Sony Full HD Laptop working again.  The power supply (the AC converter) went out on it and now I am using a 3 prong version from Batteries Plus while I await My order for the Sony stock replacement (which isn’t the one that it came with, as My computer has become obsolete).

But at least I can blog again.  And I will in the future.  Let Me tell you, cheap tablet touchscreens suck and tiny smartphone touchscreens are better, but they are still so tiny that they are too much of a chore to use.

I have lots of Android apps and hardware to recommend in the future, and I’ll be reviewing the Polaroid T7 as well as the Pandigital Planet (that I had been stuck with for 3 months), some android accessories that I think are cool and lots of cool apps, games and even some apps that need their creator(s) scolded.

I’ll be writing again, soon!

Glad to be back.

Crap, WordPress has changed.  This will take a great deal of getting used to.  I hate advertising.  I’ll look for a non-spammy alternative.  Maybe Tumblr…