Well, where does the time go? It seems like it was just a brief 605 or so days ago since I last wrote a post on my Shut-up, Stop Whining (SUSW) blog. So here’s the deal. I was busy. But I have some free time now.

Here’s what I’m thinking… “Shut-up, Stop Whining” first started out as an idea for a platform to bitch about people who bitch about everything. However, it has recently occurred to me (with the assistance of the legendary, recently deceased and highly recommended Jim Rohn) that bitching and complaining is a pointless exercise in avoiding the pain that we all have in life, and more importantly, an excuse to do nothing about the situations that cause us to bitch in the first place. Sooooo…..

I want to start publishing helpful “How To” problem solving guides, direct from the trenches, on how to stop complaining and start fixing. I’m thinking fairly narrowly defined, common problems that a lot of people face. If you prefer complaining over problem solving, you might as well take this blog off your reading list – “nothing to see here, move along”.

If, on the other hand, you want to start 2010 with a new “I’m going to take action and solve this problem” attitude, you might want to stick around.

If you have solutions to life’s daily challenges that you have successfully used and think other may benefit from, I’m definitely interested in talking to you. Email me at fixit@shutupstopwhining.com

It will all be free for now, but if we actually start getting good info out there and people are giving us positive feedback, there may be a nominal fee involved in getting access to some of the more prevelant and high demand problems. We’ll see how it evolves.

I’m working on the first “How To” right now. It pertains to a particularly painful situation I’m currently dealing with that is 100% my own fault –   how to make things right between you and someone who you have treated badly and who did absolutely nothing to deserve it. I don’t know if the situation I’m in is salvageable or not ( I really hope it is). But, whatever the outcome, there are certainly lessons I can pass along on how to not make the mistakes I’ve made, and if you do make them, how to recover, or at the very least, how to avoid having it happen again if the situation can’t be fixed.

Stay Tuned.

My last indexing experiment went just “ok” (see post below). I posted that brief paragraph for the Marketing Solutions Blog just to see how long it would take google to index the site. The domain and site were both brand new as of February 14th. The site got indexed on February 18th. I made no other efforts to get it index; just that single post with that single link in it.

Here another opportunity for you to do better, Google. My newest site is a WP blog called SEO:ByTheNumbers. The main theme of the blog is SEO discussions with emphasis on quantitative experiments of how various SEO practices work in the real world. In other words, I’ll be trying out various techniques (a lot of them put forth by the so called “guru’s”) and seeing how they actually perform in the real world.

My guess is that there will be some wide variations in claims made and actual results. My hope is to have this blog recognized as a totally objective resource that reports “just the facts ma’am”. Come have a visit.

Marketing Solutions Blog is a new domain I just launched. How fast will Google index it? Well that’s why I’m writing this post. Here’s a link to the Marketing Solutions Blog. It’s Valentines Day, February 14, 2008 at 8:00am. Go Google, go.

Well, as you can tell by the dates of my posts, I pretty much took the 4th Q of ‘07 off from Shut-up, Stop Whining. But that doesn’t mean I was just taking up space. Actually, because of the holidays I’m taking up more than my usually amount of space and it’s getting harder and harder to get rid of that unneeded bulk as the years go by. But I guess in the bigger picture, at least I’m here to see the years go by.

After much trial and error, I think I’ve got this internet marketing stuff under control. I have a system put together from a variety of resources that allows me to efficiently test campaigns then build the winners up to viable income producing entities. Mind you, it’s still chump change compared to where I hope to be in a year, but I think it’s a good start. I spent too much time reading and learning instead of applying and trying and tweaking. If you’ve had any doubts, I’m here to tell you that it is far better to get something up and running than it is to wait until what you have is perfection then launching it. There’s a couple reasons for this. First, what you think is perfection, isn’t. So you can work on a project forever, but until you test and track, you know nothing. So second, even a bad campaign launched is light years ahead of a “great” campaign sitting on your hard drive. Launch something, test it, track it, and tweak it. Set up parameters for how long you’ll give a new campaign before you pull the plug and move on. Then follow through. Don’t fall in love with anything you’re working on because the project you love may be the one that doesn’t measure up and that you’ll have to kill. I launch one a week now, and hope to crank that up to 3 a week very soon. That’s 150 a year. Of those, I expect 25 to survive the year and 10 of those to be real winners.

I’ll keep you updated. Till then…

(Washington, D.C., 27-Sept-2007). The Consumer Products Safety Commission confirmed today what many in Washington had been expecting since last weekend. Every product ever made is being recalled by the CPSC. A CPSC spokesperson, speaking anonomously confirmed the following to the ShutUp, StopWhining Washington bureau:

1. Every product ever made is being recalled
2. The CPSC admits it has lost control over product safety and that the only course of action left to it was to recall everything and start from scratch
3. This is a mandatory recall. If you own anything, you must return it.
4. There are no manufacturer time limits. Regardless of when it was made, it must be returned.
5. If you eat, you must return all food in your possession.
6. Shoes, clothes, toys, pets, friends, virtually everything must go back.

If you’re not sure where you bought it, bring it to Walmart. The CPSC and Walmart have been working closely behind the scenes to coordinate this recall.
“We deeply regret this drastic action” a CPSC official said, “but we’re are truly grateful to have a company like Walmart to assist us.”

Well, OJ Simpson has been out singlehandedly keeping Las Vegas safer for us all and for that he should be applauded. I guess the story (or more accurately, his story) is that some perps stole some “sports memorabilia” from him so he decided to send the call out to his “peeps” to get his stuff back. Guns in hand, they broke in to a hotel room and held the alleged robbers at gunpoint with threats and (gasp) swear words. I guess he was just doing what any normal person in his situation was doing – getting his shit back.

Just one minor detail that our hero apparently didn’t think of – YOU CAN’T TAKE THE LAW INTO YOUR OWN HANDS. Sorry Juice. Ya just can’t go do that stuff.

Now we all know that O.J. has been devoting the dozen or so years since his acquittal on double murder charges to find the real killers. He has apparently narrowed down his search to golf courses, mainly in Florida. This Vegas twist is new however. He must have gotten a tip that the “real killer(s)” were possibly in Vegas. I mean, there’s really no other explanation for him being there. He did say right after his acquittal that he was going to devote the rest of his life to finding those elusive real killers even if it meant going single-handedly into the seedy underbelly of the golf world, which is obviously exactly where the search has taken him. Brave man.

Let’s just hope cooler heads prevail in this latest misunderstanding and OJ can again be a free man again. We need people like him out there keeping us all safer, I know I woke up this morning just that little bit more on edge with the knowledge that there was one less citizen cop out there protecting us all.

I hope they fly Judge Ito in to take charge of this mess. Now there’s a decisive guy for you. You need a well though out, stand up in appeals court kind of ruling, Ito’s your man. Just give him adequate notice so he can weigh both facts before the coin flip.

O.J., here at Shut-Up, Stop Whining we’re pulling for ya. Whatever help we can be, just ask bro. We’re on the next bus to Vegas.

I’m studying the toilet paper behavior of Americans. Please take a moment to answer the brief 2 question survey below. Results will be published once a sample of 250 responses has been collected.

Take the Toilet Paper Survey!

Maybe you’ve heard the phrase “quantum computing” before, maybe not. It’s a branch of computer research still in its infancy. And it’s a branch of computer research that is truly a world of bizarre concepts and behaviors that runs counter to everything you have up to this point taken for granted about your world.

Here a very simplified version of the basic concept behind qubit behavior. As you may know, computers, at their most basic level deal with “binary units” or bits, that have one of two states, “on” or “off”, represented as a value of “1″ or “0″. Everything you do on your computer is ultimately manipulating these 1’s and 0’s to give you the desired action. A bit is like a light switch. The light is either on or it’s off. Well, buckle up folks. Quantum physics blows this fundamental computing concept out of the water.

In a quantum computer, instead of binary units (bits), there are what’s known as “quantum units” or qubits. Qubits can exist in an “on” state, in an “off” state or in both an “on” and “off” state simultaneously. This phenomena is called “superposition”. How can that be? I have no clue, but it is true. And it has huge implications for building computers orders of magnitude faster than today’s fastest supercomputers. Today’s best data encryption would become obsolete because computers that would take years to break codes with today’s binary unit architecture could break them in seconds using a qubit architecture. Computing on steroids to put it mildly.

Now are you ready for some even more bizarre qubit behavior? Researchers at the University of Michigan have demonstrated how two separate atoms can “communicate” even though they are physically separated from each other. The concept is called “entanglement”. In this case, the researchers trapped two atoms in separate enclosures one meter apart. They manipulated one and the other one reacted as a result. Now this is a gross oversimplification, but you get the idea. The important point here is that the “entanglement” occurred while the atoms where physically separated. In this case, they were one meter apart but they could have just as easily been a million miles apart. It’s kind of like those stories you hear about twins where something happens to one of them and the other one just has a “feeling” that something is not right with their sibling.

And I’ll leave you with what is to me the most bizarre aspect of entanglement and superposition. Imagine flipping two “entangled” coins, one in NYC and one in LA. The NYC coin comes up heads. And the LA coin comes up heads because the NYC coin came up heads. That’s entanglement. However, if you were to actually observe this experiment, you would force the coins to come up however they came up individually. (i.e. one could be heads, one could be tails). The very act of observing qubit behavior forces that behavior back to the more conventional “on/off” state. The superposition quality of the qubit breaks down.

If you want to know more, visit Wiki. But be prepared to enter the twilight zone.

Or if you need a break, just take my toilet paper survey above. Thanks.

Yep. He’s dead. They couldn’t check his pulse because of the excess fat, but when he stopped asking for food they figured he had kicked. So some brave soul put his ear up to that thing we called his face to check his breathing. And, alas, there wasn’t any. I would have bet the ranch that he would have pulled a Mama Cass and choked on a ham sandwich. But he fooled us all. After living through 18 months of pancreatic cancer he probably wished somebody would have given him a ham sandwich. That’s a tough way to go. But as they say, he’s in a better place now where he can eat all he wants and sing till the wee hours. Somebody get me a tissue.

By the way, that is not Saddam Hussein in the picture, although you swap the tux for whatever is proper “spider hole” attire and you’ve got a dead ringer for that wily ex-dictator. You know how all Chinese look the same to Americans? I wonder if everyone looks like each other in heaven. Food for thought. I’m hungry.

Well it’s about time. Fred Dalton Thompson (I just like the name ‘Dalton’, so I threw it in there) finally announced his candidacy for President of the good ol’ USA yesterday via a video posted on his web site. Now all the political “analysts” can spend the next week debating whether he should have entered earlier and what effect this late entry will have on fund raising and is he a viable candidate and can he beat Hillary and Rudolph and blah, blah, blah. It will probably be a mini version of the endless mind-numbing non-stop inescapable analysis we were force fed through during the OJ trial. It’s a wonder more people didn’t stick a collective revolver in their mouths back then. As the Brits would say “it was daunting and dreadful”.

Yea, he’s late getting in, but a week in politics is a lifetime. So I won’t bore you with analysis. Let’s just sit back and watch the actor do what actors do. I’ll leave you with this. This guy has stage presence out the wazoo. If the public takes him seriously and he remembers to zip his fly 90% of the time, he’ll be fine.