One Year Goals August Update

Here are my goals as I updated them on July 4th, 2008…and below, my news as of now, in August:

1. Art portfolio begun: As I have a full year to just get *started* on this, I feel no rush. I am thinking once it gets chilly out and I want to be indoors and moody again.

2. Credit Scores up to *good* level - the 600’s: Have to follow through with getting Dan’s scores even though he won’t pay his student loans no matter how I beg. This might be a lost cause. At least mine is coming along. I am doubting I will make this goal.

3. Jillflorio.com up to date with old online articles: The site is up and looking great. I am happy with the theme. I am not sure I can do ALL my older work within the year’s deadline I have set here.  I decided to work on getting my old articles from other media (floppies, zip drives, paper, etc) up next year. It’s too much for a one year goal and I want to set myself up to succeed.

4. All my stuff from AZ here: Had to shelve this for Fall as it’s way too hot to cross the desert right now. But I can’t wait for winter either as we will get snow here. So looking at Sept, Oct or Nov. We need an actual date.

5. One or two ebooks up in Cosmetics topic on BellaOnline: This will probably be a project I have the energy to tackle AFTER I move my old online work to Jillflorio. Also by then I will have enough articles up to consider using for an ebook.

6. Cosmetics site preloaded through end of year: See number 5. My energy is being sucked into some other tasks first.

7. Crestline Living up to date and number one hit for Crestline searches: Well, it’s looking good and getting nicely up to date. I have articles preloaded to go live every day for a bit ahead of time. I still don’t have any sort of pagerank and am not yet ranking with search engines. I am probably still in the Google Sandbox, as I know my SEO. I am also waiting on my person to make my logo and website design, but i don’t think she will have time until next week. It’s hard to be patient! I do have cards that I am passing out though and make plans to find advertisers. Anyway, this project is getting a big chunk of my attention right now.

8. Break 500,00 in amazon rank: Way ahead of that and need a new goal. Have almost 80 reviews up and rank is now 135,000-ish. I am using twitter to let people know when I have reviews up in case people want to rate them. I am hoping my next leap will take me under 100,000.

9. Earning 1K a month from projects: if my plans for my ads on CrestlineLiving.com are successful, I will get there easily! I have to be patient and wait for the pagerank machine to notice me first. At this point I am probably earning around $250.00 a month, which is at least a quarter of the way there.

10. Camping once a month alone or with Dan: this has been going well! We’ve been to Big Bear, the Beach and next month will head to the San Jacintos/Idyllwild. September will see us camping around Lake Mead and the Valley of Fire. Yay! That’s what is planned for so far but I have great ides for each month following (we have great deserts out here - probably to Joshua Tree for October, for example).

11. Accountant/Taxes person: we hired a friend and i made up a packet of things to send. Am nervous about this and have not sent it yet, inexplicably.

12. Intermediate level yoga - Okay, this is going great. I am at a beginning intermediate level and will truly consider myself a real intermediate when I can do a crow pose, a headstand away from the wall, and handstand with/without wall.

13. Office organized - haven’t touched yet. Maybe when the weather gets colder.

14. Kitchen/laundry rooms organized - same as above.

15. New flooring, painted walls, new fan - this is going slower than ever expected. We hired someone to do some things, expected it would be done last week, and now are told it MIGHT happen next week. Another exercise in patience.

16. Will have tried all local yoga classes - a few are now checked off but not halfway there yet.

17. Worked out getting packages - this is DONE! I did it! Wow this was frustrating, but a nice neighbor lets us use his house.

18. Control journals created and emergency plans laid - I will wait on the colder weather to finish the control journals. emergency plans are being made. We have some kits made up and have tons of gallons of water, wood and food stored in the build-up. We planned where we would meet and bot more first aid supplies, plus a grab and go documents case.

19. Weight to 120 to stay: I am still hovering between 126 and 122. My body seems to be comfy there. I am getting daily workouts and eating at least one meal with salad/veggies a day. Working on having tuna once a week and eggs once a week. I added fiber everywhere possible. I think I will have to ramp up the workouts.

To Know Me is to Tweet Me

I am closer to my Twitter friends than any other group of people in my life. It’s strange how quickly this application became my default method of communal interaction. There are people I IM every few days, people I email every few months and then the very few I see or call once a year.

But I read all my Twitters every day.

I thought for a while that Facebook would be my main source for knowledge about friends, coworkers and family. Then Twitter came along to teach me how much quicker and easier it is to read a tweet than to open my Facebook and muck around. Twitter taught me that Facebook is a timesuck and even a source of guilt (ie - when Facebook friends send me “plants” and such, do I HAVE to send something back? And why?) .

Twitter doesn’t ask anything of me. I can read the links people tweet out or ignore them. I can respond or not. Twitter fits right in with my attention span, allowing me to be the social hermit I really am without getting totally out of the loop.

What does this mean to you? If you are one of my friends, chances are good you’re waiting for me to email you back - or worse, to give you a call.

Shame on you. You should all know by now how much I hate talking on the phone. And I will probably return your email or Facebook message one of these days. Honestly! Some day.

It’s not a rudeness thing. It’s just a me thing. My brain is usually foolishly full, plus I don’t enjoy small talk.

Twitter, with its 140 character limit, gets us right to the meat of the matter. I can cheerfully tweet, like a songbird, all day long. If you tweet me, I will actually read it and probably get right back to you. I can keep up with your daily life and you’ll be an intimate of mine.

Do you love Twitter? Prefer Facebook, MySpace or good old fashioned email? Are you an IMer, or a text fanatic? Maybe you still really love yakking on the phone. My hermit-like mind wants to know.

[PS - My Twitter name is HippyGeek, BTW, and if I know you, I will follow you back. Birds of a feather, and all.]

Happy with Crestline Living Development

I’m pretty pleased with how my Crestline Living site is developing. I still have a ton of work to do to make it really comprehensive: more basics about lodging, coffee shops, eateries, the towns themselves, the roads, adding more web cams, making lists of Most Useful Links, emergency and fire preparedness, shops reviews, summer concert series, day trips and weekend excursions. Etc.

I also had my FIRST post by someone I do not know on the site! On my Alpine Mall article. That makes me happy. Begging friends to post is a little demeaning.

I do have a professional blogger on staff (Mdm Michelle Snow) to help out, which is a huge deal. She is also giving me a resdesign and working up my logo. I can’t wait to see the new look.

I also have to figure out a better way of hosting photos than using Facebook. It’s annoying and time consuming. Maybe using Flickr is better? Or using my own FTP host, which is like Greek to me? Erk?

In the discouraged front, I still have no page rank. Boo. And am not ranking on Google for Crestline CA, yet. I need a solid Google pagerank of 4 and to be the number on result for Crestline before I can actually go forward with my serious plans for the site. These serious plans include world domination, of course.

Paisley Pages for HippyGeek?

A friend told me I need to add paisleys to this site. I guess because I am a hippy.

So, do you think this site needs paisleys? I am not sure I am ready to take such a monumental step. It could change everything.

Please leave me a comment on this crucial matter, writing either:

1. Yes Jill, you desperately need paisleys all over this site.
2. Never! Paisleys are evil! They must be rooted out and destroyed!

What IS this Blog?

Some of you have been asking - what is this site for, anyway?

This is just my personal blog. It ain’t much so far, but is for my random jottings, notes and fevered delusions. Everyone’s got to have a place to ramble, right? I am the HippyGeek, BTW. Pretty much sums up who I am and what I like in life.

The breakdown for my writing:

CrestlineLiving.com is my local town website
JillFlorio.com is the archive of my professional articles
HippyGeek.net is just day to day thoughts

Going Camping in Big Bear

One of our life and relationship goals is to do a camping trip around every three weeks, even if it’s just car camping. We have a thick foam pad we sleep on in the back of the Pathfinder. We bring our pillows and blankets and sleep very soundly.

We are heading to Serrano Campground, on the north shore of Big Bear Lake from Sunday through Tuesday. As we have not been to Big Bear yet, we are excited to explore the town and have a mini-getaway.

Here is a photo of the campground on the Big Bear Chamber of Commerce homepage.

UPDATE 7/19/08- I wrote about our Big Bear camping trip on Crestline Living and added photos. Was a lovely three days along Big Bear Lake. Dan says we should make this an annual trip.

Using Email to Talk at Home

Dan and I both work at home. Our offices are a few bedrooms apart in the downstairs part of our house. So we are both here all day: yet to communicate, we email, IM and Twitter each other.

I woke up to this in my inbox today:

I’m going to work until about 1-2 and then go run some errands:
* Check mail
* get a haircut
* get milk
* mail the Cisco device
* go to bank and deposit checks, if there are any.

Today is going to be about as hot as yesterday so it will be good to be out of my office this afternoon. The highs are supposed to drop into the mid 80s starting tomorrow.

Aren’t we cute? (Or lazy, or waaay too plugged in, you choose).

Geek Like Me

Well, it’s official. I have a high nerd rating. I know that, although I prefer to call myself a geek according to Dan’s Rules of Geekdom. My husband had an 86%, but he is better at math. I’m the artist one in the family. And while I did vote for the Vulcan Ears on the girl, I do suspect she is actually wearing Elvish tips. What, you say? Take your own darn test.

Anyway, here is my score and your chance to see how you rank:

One Year Goals, July 08 Update

Reassessing my one year goals:

1. “Have begun art portfolio” - It’s not time yet. It feels like autumn will be the time to start.

2. “Both our credit scores are good” - We’ve ordered them and they are still quite poor. I found that although I am out of default now on my student loans, they need to have me sign an official paper stating so, and THEN they will report my good behavior to the credit companies. I am awaiting the paperwork. YAY! On DH’s front I am having trouble getting his scores in - we don’t remember his security info from the last time we did this. They keep locking us out. So that is at a stall right now.

3. “All my stuff from Arizona is here” - My MIL has agreed to run out with me and at least unload my storage and get things from my friend’s house. The next step is to figure out how to get her here (it costs us 75 bucks in gas to go and pick her up and drop her off in LA). Also, driving across the desert right now is a horrible idea and this may have to be shelves until September.

4. “I have one or two ebooks up in Cosmetics” - Just adding regular weekly articles at this time.

5. “JillFlorio.com is up to date with all old articles and current ones and back online” - The site is still offline while I think about hiring someone to make a nice design for it.

6. “Cosmetics site is preloaded through end of the year” - Not my first priority right now but am loaded through the month at least

7. “Crestline Living is up to date and number one google result for Crestline” - This has been a big priority. I am adding content almost every day and using my social networks and misc blogs to promote it. I hired someone to make me a nicer design. I ordered free business cards from vista print and paid for 14-day shipping. I am still not ranking with google, but the specific searches are going well. Traffic is rising and i am number one for ‘crestline basics.’ I still doesn’t show up anywhere for just ‘crestline’ or even ‘crestline ca.’

8. “Break 500,000 in Amazon reviewer rank” - Broke this to the 200,000s already - yay! So new goal is to hit the teens in one year. Am adding tons of old reviews from previous articles, plus new reviews every few days.
9. Earning $1000 a month from my various projects - still totally broke. I think I am earning a hundred or two a month.

10. “go camping with dan or alone at least every three weeks” - we made plans through September so far

11. “Have an accountant/tax person and all business/taxes will be well in hand and no longer a source of confusion and stress” - Hired a friend to take all this on. Compiling a package of all my info and receipts/donations to send next.

12. “Up to intermediate level yoga poses” - I don’t really know when one can say they are there, but I really can do most of the intermediate poses. So revised goal is to be comfortably solid in the Intermediate camp in a year and playing around with Advanced poses.

13. “Office will be organized” - Haven’t started.

14. “Kitchen/utility room will be organized” - Haven’t started.

15. “Will have new flooring, ceiling fan and wall paint done” - We have hired a neighbor to help us with the last of the carpet and staples and to paint the wall. have not set a date yet. The fan is a sticking point - we actually need a legal contractor for that. Have not decided what to do about replacing the floor yet.

16. “Will have tried all local yoga classes and reviewed them for crestline living” - This is going well! I have gathered all the information and scheduled out when to go to what classes. I have a few down already - this is fun!

17. “Will no longer find getting packages to me as a nightmare” - Finally!!! it took six months but we figured something out that is working. This is such an unbelievable relief!

18. “Will have several control journals created and in use, including emergency plan journal” - DH and I talked about our emergency plans (where we will meet, what we will grab) but we still need to write out an Action Plan and update our emergency kits. Fire is a huge danger up here.

19. “Weight down to 120 to stay there, with under 20% fat levels” - Using the Milestone Sign weight loss plan, seems to be going there. I am trying to made sure I have a salad each day but keep forgetting.