“All Things Must Pass”

The best album title of all time.

And so another year has passed. As I write this, it is 7:45pm East Coast time on Friday, December 31, 2010.

Where does the time go?

I have a lot of internal soul searching to do. I need to make sure that my 2011 is better than my 2010. Although, making an improvement over my “accomplishments” this past year ain’t that difficult.

Let’s just say, I’m pretty much writing 2010 off as one big class on how not to be.

Although, physically my life is as good as it has ever been. The demons have been exorcised.

However, mentally I’m at a loss, still, about how to improve things. I hope answers will be forthcoming as I implement my “Plan” for 2011, which includes, physical, mental, financial, and social goals. For you non-Mensa members, that translates to get in better shape, having a positive outlook, building my business, and probably most importantly, making (and keeping) more friends.

Happy New Year to all of you.

I’ll close with my favorite passage from the Bible

Psalms 23

The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures

He leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul:

He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,

I will fear no evil: for thou art with me;
Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies:

Thou anointest my head with oil;
My cup runneth over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life:

And I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.

Good morning my loyal, but deeply disturbed readers. Not much time right now, but I needed to get this posted to respond to a challenge made to me by… lets call this person “Ms. S”. After scoring near genius status on a Facebook IQ test app (yea, that’s reliable), suddenly I’m confronted with having to prove myself, my manhood, in fact my very existence as a human entity, and with it, my right to take up space on this crowded planet.

I will bid you all my special farewell in a later post. Didn’t go so well. The chart below pretty much says it all.

As you can see, I’m stuck smack in the middle between a bag of Uncle Ben and a “challenged” insect. And my dear friend, “Ms. S”, is just 2 points away from a Mensa membership.

I’ll admit, this is so new I haven’t yet fully processed what this all means, but it don’t look good.

For now, I’m just gonna lock the door and keep the world at bay. I’ve earned my spot here.

And lets face it, not every one of the millions of retarded ants can be smarter than me. And the bag of rice… I got 16 points on you!

As for you my dear “Ms. S.”, congratulations, enjoy your brain, I know I do, and don’t think for a minute that this is over.

I don’t see no “Fat Ladies” nearby.

EMERGENCY UPDATE: I just realized that the above was all just last night’s dream! Kind of like that time CBS treated the country like bags of rice when a whole season of “Dallas” turned out to be Victoria Principal’s dream. Whew! Glad I got that off my chest. I’ll take the test very soon though.

That is all. Carry on. Man your stations.

EMERGENCY UPDATE – PART 2: And no one had to bring this to my attention, because honesty is my “thing”.

WTF?! I end my last post with the phrase “Stay tuned”. That was in January. Let me just say… to all of you who actually “stayed tuned”, get help for your sorry asses. You know damn well that writing these blog posts is totally draining for me and takes me 6 months or so to recover from (and don’t ever end a sentence with a preposition like I just did, even if you’re a professional writer; it’s so … unbecoming). That said, I’ve got another post sitting in my brain as I type this and will be posting it soon, hopefully today. As you can see, I be busy working away on it now (shut-up, it’s hot today).

Working, working, working

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, forget about the idea in the post below. Fix your own damn problems. That particular situation I referred to in the post… ever farted in church? Problem solved and one less Christmas card to mail.

In the meantime, always remember when you’re “Pink”, Everybody Loves You! xxx

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!