blog make over

Finally, I am able to update this site’s design. I am not yet completely done but I am glad that I am able to spare a few hours last week for this blog.

This blog really needs a make over and I need to exert a lot of work to bring this blog back up. Other than it has not been updated regularly last year, this blog also experienced a lot of down time. Obviously, my web host is not that reliable. I have thought of getting another web hosting plan from another web host but since I really didn’t have the time, I just put it off.

Consequently, this blog suffered from it.

Right now, I am determined to bring this blog back up to where it used to be. It will be difficult considering that this does not have a PR and a decent traffic but I’ll keep it. I know, it is much easier to create a new blog and start from a scratch but I have around 705 blog posts in this blog and I dont want to put them all to waste.

I’ll start with the design and later, I will proceed to populating my blogroll with related blogs and while doing those, I will try to update this blog as often as I can.

search love online

If you ever came across my Bizarre Marriage blog, you know that it is about my personal experiences and insights on intercultural marriage. Although I did not meet my husband online, online dating is something I was already open to (that’s when I was still single, ok) . When I met my girlfriend Ruthi (online), I felt an instant connection with her not only because she’s likable but also because she’s in an intercultural marriage herself. I invited her to contribute some articles for my intercultural marriage blog and she not only shared about her thoughts on intercultural marriages but she also gave a thorough account of her experience with meeting the love of her life online.

A lot of people still prefer the traditional way of meeting new people but a growing number of singles all over the world are opening up to online dating. Online dating is easy especially if you are the shy type because you get to postpone face to face encounter. Online dating enables you to get to know a person through talking first (this way, you avoid the pressure of physical intimacy) then when you are good and ready to meet each other personally, you can simply agree on the time and date.

There are a lot of available resources on the net about online dating so if you are thinking of trying out this new way of searching a partner, it wouldn’t hurt to read a few articles about it. Doing so will give you information on how to succeed with online dating. You’ll also be warned about what to avoid and what to do when things don’t turn out well.

thanks to google cache

Something happened to my blogs again!

I don’t know why the things most bloggers would consider nightmares happen so often to me!?! I don’t have a birthmark on any of my butt cheeks but still, these ill-omened things find their way to me.

Back to the “thing”. Did you know that my blogs (we are talking about blogs, ok?  NOT just ONE blog) lost their entries for March? For some reason, the entries were not displaying. I immediately suspect that it has something to do with my webhost and I was right!

Some days ago, my webhost experienced a downtime. My blogs didn’t load for a day. I contacted support and I was told said that the blogs will load again in a few hours and they did BUT the posts and the corresponding comments for March were missing. So I contacted support again and I was told to wait 4-7 hours because their servers are updating. That’s a long time to wait so I went to bed and slept.

Next morning, I checked my sites again to see if the posts were back but they weren’t. I contacted support again and I was told to wait yet another 4-6 hours because their servers are still updating. I already felt fooled but ok, I didn’t have the time to argue so I went about my day.

After coming home from work, I checked my blogs again and was not surprised that the posts were still not there. So I contacted support AGAIN and complained. This time, I was not merely asking about what’s wrong with my blogs, I was also complaining hard. I was really angry especially because I was getting all these copy-paste answers. It was really annoying. Towards the end, the support agent admitted that the backup they used to update their servers didn’t include March. How stupid! I wonder how many blogs hosted by them lost their entries. And what’s the point of lying to me and making me wait for hours because “their servers are still updating?!?!!” Stupid, I tell you.

It was totally infuriating specially because I have sponsored posts in there!

And support has no means and can’t even suggest means to retrieve these posts. I am not mean but some times people can really be brainless.

I gave up on the support because I was getting more irked by the responses  they give me.

I needed to find a way by myself. It didn’t take me long before I thought of checking google’s cache because unfortunately, my backups don’t cover March. So I googled my posts and I am glad google caches often. I was able to retrieve most of my entries.

So that’s the story.

I should really think of moving to another webhost soon.

my cousin’s wedding

The main thing I am thankful for about the internet is the face that it offers me means to get in touch with my family back home. I would go home often if I could but that is not simply possible so needless to say, I have to be content with communicating with them over the net. At the beginning, we emailed each other and used messenger software to chat. If they want to show pictures to me, they have to send the pictures to me via email. Now there’s Facebook, of which most of my family and friends are members. It is way cooler because we can chat, message each other, share videos and photos.

I was invited to attend my cousin’s wedding but I was not able to attend. Over chatting, I told her I was sorry and that I wish I was there. She said she’ll upload some of her wedding photos so I can have a glimpse of what it was like. After a few minutes, the photos were live and I was viewing them. It was a lovely wedding. The motif and the wedding accessories used were really pretty and unique. We chatted more about her wedding and after the chat, I felt like I was there and that I didn’t miss a thing.

FB is cool. I am always updated with what’s new back home and this is something I consider really important.

my new blog

As I have said in my previous post, I will be starting a new blog and I will be writing about it here. Well, sorry for the delay but let me give you my old excuse… I was busy.  I wanted to write about it right after my first entry but things got in the way and before I know it, 2 weeks have elapsed.

I believe in the saying “better late than never” so please allow me to announce that my new blog Vien’s Pot is now up and running. I would really be grateful if you could include it in your links and to show my gratefulness, I will definitely link back to your blogs (just leave a short comment there to say that you’ve linked that blog up).

Cheers!

you’ve got to be kidding

The PR update for the month of October 2009 has come and gone but this blog remains PR 0. I was hoping that this blog will get something other than zero considering that I’ve put more effort on it in the last few weeks. I’ve changed the theme which I thought would help the SEPRs of this blog and I’ve also posted entries here more often than in my other blogs because I really would like this blog to get a better PR.

Thing is, I would like to earn from this blog. My other blogs have better PRs but unfortunately I refuse to use them for sponsored entries. I wouldn’t mind my other blogs having PR 0  but things are the other way around so I have to have and alternative if I want to continue earning money from blogging.

I have considered using one of my other blogs to do sponsored posts but I decided against it at the same moment it entered my mind. So that’s not an option.

I thought of submitting this blog for reconsideration to Google but I did that already in first quarter of 2008. This blog had a PR 4 but I used it for sponsored posts so Google took my PR away. I submitted for reconsideration and I got the PR back but I felt that I already have therecord” because from then on, this blog just kept getting a lower PR every PR update. It finally dropped all the way down to PR 0 sometime in the second quarter of this year.

I don’t think it will ever come out of that rank anymore.  So resubmitting it to Google for reconsideration is also not an option.

So…

I decided to start another blog. (What!!!)

I know that I promised to myself not to have yet another blog because I know how difficult it is to manage many blogs but I think the best way to earn a decent PR is to start anew.  It will probably take me a quarter of a year to start earning money from it but I can wait. I’d rather wait for three months and be sure rather than put my hopes on this blog.

What will happen to this blog?

Well, it will stay for sure because I don’ like to waste its entries (around 700). And I will also update it every now and then.  If this blog gained a better PR in the future, it would be great but right now it is better for this blog to lie down low.

One thing is true even in the blogging world and that is: don’t put all your eggs in one basket.  So I will be creating other baskets I can use. Hehe.

Where’s the new blog?

Well I haven’t started it yet but I’d sure be writing about it here once I launched it so you’ll know where to direct your links, *wink

day job over blogging

I am really happy to get a teaching job here. When I got the job about a month ago, I immediately started to prepare even if the start of the semester won’t be until the 14th of September (yesterday).

Before we came to Austria, I thought that I could do blogging full time. I wasn’t earning a lot but 400-700$ each month was enough. I had like three PR4 and four PR3 blogs. I thought if I really sit in front of my computer for at least five hours a day, it is possible to earn at least 20$ each day.

But towards the end of last year, I lost my PRs because of google-slapping and I also neglected my blogs. I needed to attend a German course and there were also other things that made me busy. In short, an income of 400-700$ each month from blogging is no longer feasible.

When we got here in April, I decided to go out and find a day job. There are actually a lot here in Austria if you are not choosy. Jobs as a clerk or a receptionist were among my choices but I said to myself that if I can’t have such jobs, it’s also okay for me to work manually… like… be a chambermaid, kitchen crew and the likes but my husband disagrees. He wanted me to study and practice my profession later on.

I really don’t like to go back to the university. Maybe someday I’ll do that but right now I don’t have the energy for it. So anyway, I tried to look further. I sent out hundreds of applications and I also got a lot of rejections. It took me three months until I finally found a teaching job in a private learning center.

I honestly wasn’t aiming high. I just wanted a simple job that I can do well and that will give me the feeling that I am able to help my husband with our finances. It took me three long months but the job I got is really more than I asked for so it is definitely worth the search and worth the wait.

A new look

I’ve been using my old theme for almost two years and so I thought that it’s about time to install a new theme. I’ve been merging blogs and seven of them where either merged with this blog or my other blog (Vienna Lopez). The merging of blogs and installing of new themes are the steps I feel I need to do to sort of renew my blogs:  My Pink Notes, Bizarre Marriage, and Vienna Lopez.

I took a step back from blogging in the second quarter of this year because I was preoccupied with other things but now I really would like to renew my blogs and my blogging habit. I know that with the new day job, I won’t be able to manage a lot of blogs. Due to this reason I merged them because I believe that having lesser number of well managed blogs is way better than having a lot of neglected ones.

I also want to have that blogging feeling back and not the constraint of updating 10 blogs and the pure pressure of meeting writing assignments’ deadlines. I want to post only when I have a thought and I want to write about it.

Will I go back to paid blogging? Perhaps but right now, I just want to concentrate on my new job. I also want to focus on blogging but only as a hobby.

So… yeah, my new theme… I like the simple and neat look and feel of it. And because I want to keep it neat, some widgets like mybloglog and blogcatalog and the chat box have to go. I really want to keep my blogs simple this time.

The original color scheme of this theme is grey/black but because I like pink and this blog’s name is My Pink Notes (obviously), I took the pain of changing the color scheme to light-pink/pink. I was a lot of work specially for a non-Photoshop pro like myself but I am pleased with the result.