So of my two best subjects history and science I think I???‚¬?„?m going to lean more towards History. Why? Well even though I was leaning towards science at first I think I could have more fun with History. I could be very interactive and make the class more of a living history class where they got to participate with weapons, armor, and other aspects from the historical time periods in question. It???‚¬?„?s about time learning was made fun again. Of course with science it could be done very similarly, but to me a lot of high school teachers make science hands on???‚¬?¦ not many make history hands on.

I want my students to know what it is like to shoot a trebuchet, wear a hauberk, and swing a sword. Too often kids get bored with history because there is no interactivity, and they cannot relate to the time period. In a world of computers, txt messages, IM, and email we forget what it might of been like to be on the front line surrounded by enemy and waiting on a horse and rider to carry your message of distress. Yes, I think history could come alive again for a few students.

The original idea of this website was to keep it to have a diary of my life… after two years of that I realized that I never really looked back on anything anyways and very few people were looking for history of me so things started to fall away. Then I realized that I could make money with the site and I picked back up on here… the site was banned from Google for taking paid posts so I have once again nearly stopped posting anything new here. As you can see it has been nearly 3 months since my last post! Every once in a while I’ll pop in and update things, but mostly because I’m getting paid for it. Sometimes I wonder if I really know what I am doing when it comes to online development… it seems my knowledge continues to grow on how to build and design. I keep making websites better, more easily used and vast… Search engines even love them, but something is missing as I can’t seem to squeeze anything more than $5 a day from my sites without PayPerPost… and worse yet it seems that every time I get up to that with one site and think I can move onto another to do the same thing then the previous site gets knocked down and starts making nothing again. Well the economy is picking back up again, so we will see how things are doing here in a year or two. I really shouldn’t get so down since five years ago when I first began I was desperately trying to get my sites to pay for themselves… now I’m renting a $100/month server, and paying for 30 domains and paying the bills all on the income of about 5 websites.

Connor Gabriel Sortore was born to Cody and Rose Sortore on April 03, 2009

He entered this world weighing 6lbs and 15oz 21inches long.

First born of Rose and Cody, Connor will be raised with as much love and care as they know how.?‚?  Surrounded by a community of support from our church family at Oasis Community Church, and the crazies that we love so dearly at Faire.

Here in a couple of days I’ll finally have the opportunity to order the final piece that will allow me to put my 4 500GB hdd’s in RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks). The real question is what sort of RAID array do I go for? I’ve heard a lot of conflicting opinions on the different RAID setups. Originally I wanted to go with a RAID 5 setup… then researching it I started to find a lot of information that showed RAID 5 as ALWAYS having a Hot-Spare drive… No offense, but I don’t need/want a Hot-Spare. I’m not running a full on server environment where information is mission critical… I can lose all my information and I might pout for a few days, but I’ll rebuild it, I mean my websites are all up and running respectively, and most everything can be re-obtained in some form or fashion. So double redundancy isn’t really that necessary… and I don’t need it to be rebuilt THAT fast if there was a failure.

Either way with what I’ve been seeing (don’t know if it’s true or not) but with RAID 5 I end up with 1TB of storage space and a slower speed than RAID 0 w/ 2hdds which then brought me to RAID 10 which also gives me 1TB of storage space but is as fast as two hdd’s in RAID 0. Then there’s RAID 5EE which should give me 1TB of space with who knows what sorts of speeds… I’d say about that of RAID 0 with 3hdd’s but some of the people I’ve read stuff from say no. I’ve also read on TomsHardware that regular old RAID 5 (with no Hot Spare) will give me 1.5TB of space and be as fast as RAID 0 with 3 drives… so I think that’s what I’m going to risk running… if nothing else I’ll make sure and set it up without a hot spare and it’ll give me 1.5TB of hdd space whether or not it runs too much faster.

I’m thinking that the people having troubles with speed come from running RAID with too large of a stripe size so their information isn’t getting spread out. Which brings me to another point… do I make a super small stripe size to force files to be split up, or do I go with a larger stripe size for faster transfer speeds? I’m thinking 64kb stripe size… but maybe 32 would be the better choice since I’ve got a whole bunch of little files for website things that would just eat up hdd space in no time if they were forced to take up 64kb each.

Wow, so it seems that PPP may have actually done something right! Yeah, no kidding honest to goodness they may have done something that actually benefits bloggers. On a couple of different levels. A) they got rid of interim posts, so less writing for your money! B) they increased posts to 7 per blog per day! (used to be 3) C) they lowered the minimum cost per post to $1 (for bloggers $2 for advertisers).

All I can say is that my job is secure, when the seasonal LifeTouch position ends some time in June/July I’ll be able to jump right back into blogging and never have a break in what I make! Should be a good thing… combine that with what I’ll be changing about kclanparty, and the vacuum review website I’m constructing… I should be making about 1/3 of what I’m making at LifeTouch right out of the shoot! Couple of months down the road and I’ll be making just the same

So I FINALLY got the call back from LifeTouch! Not that I was ever really not expecting it???‚¬?¦ but that helps to give a little bit of a new direction for things in the coming months. Doesn???‚¬?„?t change anything with my copper jewelry campaign for Archmaille Designs, and it really doesn???‚¬?„?t change much of the plans???‚¬?¦ just sort of speeds them along I???‚¬?„?m gonna buy back a little LQ for this site so that when I???‚¬?„?m done with LifeTouch I???‚¬?„?ll be able to blog on P3 with a PR4 or maybe even a 5 ya never know!

Now the real question is should I buy any of it directly? I don???‚¬?„?t want any of those other bloggers out there getting ideas and creating too much competition in the market???‚¬?¦ so I???‚¬?„?m thinking the way of going about this is to pay someone to finish up on ApplyMyWay.com then spending about $1k on pimping out AMW.com At first I???‚¬?„?ll spend $500 on a P3 campaign to get the site recognized and attended, also a $300 entry on PRWeb. That alone should boost the site right up there???‚¬?¦ well later I???‚¬?„?ll do another $200 on the site promoting the best surveys and stuff created (2 posts per awesome survey for epic wins). Along with what I???‚¬?„?ll be spending on ArchmailleDesigns.com some of that LQ should trickle down if ya know what I mean

I???‚¬?„?ll keep blogging here, selling stuff on Archmaille Designs, and getting people from MySpace, and other social networking sites to help me do it all by creating more LQ with AMW.com (also the clicks generated by AMW should make a lil monies)

So yeah… I’ve got the new shopping cart up on archmailledesigns.com! Woot! But it’s still a LONG ways off from being complete. The new shopping cart FINALLY offers a way to set up pictures without destroying the template, or taking tons of time resizing each one. So I’ve got to redo all the pictures, then I’d really like to get descriptions up for each item that I have online. I’d like to get all items that I have made up online too (that should add about 15 items to my online stock). Then I’m working on making new items, I want them online too! I can now also add a product to multiple categories (say a copper and silver bracelet can now be in both the copper jewelry section, and the silver jewelry section), so that needs to be done for all copper/silver, and japanese chainmail items. I’d also like to add a chainmail armor section as well to put up a couple of the chainmail pieces that I have made up. The “discussion” part of the site now works with the new shopping cart, and of course I had over 500 spam comments to delete with that! So basically speaking… I’ve got two weeks to continue blogging, fix up the shopping cart, fix some things with the car, get ready to move… and whatever else comes up in that time… This will be a fun little adventure, maybe I can get some help out of Hiei

Have you ever been excited about something that you couldn’t accomplish on your own? I guess I really could accomplish what I want to it’s just a little bit hard… and rather scary with the duty vs desire argument. Alright, so here’s what I’m looking at doing:

• Creating a template for the new shopping cart on Archmaille Designs
• Moving everything over and 301 redirecting all current shopping cart items
• Adding all currently made up items to the stock of Archmaille Designs including chainmail armor
• Creating sub-directories with CakePHP for armor creation, guys jewelry, copper/healing jewelry, and Nerd Bling to add specialized categories for Archmaille Designs
• Promote all new, and old jewelry items to where they get some sort of search engine rankings
• Create PDF’s on jewelry care, chainmail creation instructions, and anything else relevant
• Set up commission tables and get items listed on Commission Junction so other people can sell products for me (mostly PDFs)

Now I can get most of this done by the end of the month… some of it will still need to be done later. The problem comes when at the moment Archmaille Designs accounts for a very small portion of my income. I would like for it to be accounting for more, but in order to do that well I have to get all of this done and have at least 100 products for sale in my store. In order to get all of this done by the end of the month I’ve got to put all my energies into that (besides what is going into the wedding planning and what not). If I do that however I lose income… with the paid postings with blogs it takes 30 days from the time that I submit a post until I actually get paid for it… Right now I’ve got $450 that will be coming in over the next 30 days for my paid posts… that just covers the bills for now in combination with what I’ve already got in the bank, and I need to continue posting to pay them again after January… In order to do that I’ve got to be writing posts now… or I need to have a job in the beginning of January. I don’t mind having a job in January, and was actually looking at either MAST, or LifeTouch… LifeTouch is only seasonal, but if I can get my site stuff done, and promoting stuff while working there things will work out by the time it’s over. The problem is with how the economy is the job market is flooded, and it will be more competitive to get either one of those jobs. So if I take the risk and try to get my site up and running by the end of the month, and neither of those jobs are available… well I’m screwed… if I don’t take the risk, well I’ll be all depressed, sullen and just generally no fun to hang around

Amish Friendship Bread Starter Instructions

Important Notes:

• DO NOT use any type of metal spoon or bowl for mixing

• DO NOT refrigerate

• It is normal for the mixture to rise, bubble and ferment; ???‚¬?“burp???‚¬?? the bag as needed

____ Day 1 ???‚¬??? Do nothing

____ Day 2 ???‚¬??? Do nothing

____ Day 3 ???‚¬??? Do nothing

____ Day 4 ???‚¬??? Mush bag

____ Day 5 ???‚¬??? Mush bag

____ Day 6 ???‚¬??? Add to bag: 1 cup flour, 1 cup sugar, 1 cup milk; Mush bag

____ Day 7 ???‚¬??? Mush bag

____ Day 8 ???‚¬??? Mush bag

____ Day 9 ???‚¬??? Mush bag

____ Day 10 ???‚¬??? Follow instructions below…

1. Pour entire contents of bag into a non-metal bowl

2. Add 1 ?‚?? cup flour, 1 ?‚?? cup sugar, 1 ?‚?? cup milk. Mix with non-metal spoon or whisk

3. Measure 1 cup of batter into 4 one-gallon Ziploc bags, Label with the date. Keep a starter bag for yourself and give the other three to friends, along with a copy of this recipe

4. Preheat oven 325 degrees Fahrenheit

5. Add these ingredients to the remaining batter

3 eggs

?‚?? tsp Baking powder

1 cup oil

?‚?? tsp Baking soda

2 tsp cinnamon

2 cup flour

1 cup sugar

1 pkg Vanilla pudding

?‚?? cup milk

?‚?? tsp Salt

?‚?? tsp Vanilla

1. Grease two loaf pans

2. In a small bowl, mix 3 tbsp sugar, and 1 ?‚?? tsp cinnamon. Dust greased pans with the mixture.

3. Pour the batter evenly into two pans and sprinkle the tops with the remaining cinnamon sugar mixture

4. Bake one Hour. Cool the bread until loosens evenly from the pan. Serve warm or cold.

If you keep a starter for yourself, you will be baking every 10 days. The bread is very good and makes a great gift. Only the Amish know how to create the starter, so if you give them all away , you’ll have to wait until someone gives one back.

These are mostly my usual excitements about future prospects, current ideas, and past blessings… Either way this is what I have to be thankful for. God reveals things to me slowly day by day, and that too I am thankful for.

It’s Thanksgiving, and you know what that means right? Family, food, and lots of reminders of what God has given to us all throughout the year. I have a lot of great things to be thankful for. Especially over the last few months things have been really good. First off after getting sick of working for Viacom I was blessed with the fantastic work in blogging… not great pay, but it covers the bills and is a lot more creative of an endeavor than reviewing websites all day long. Writing over 1,200 words a day gets tiring too… I took a week of light blogging only about 300-400 words a day, and nothing on the weekends. My income dropped drastically but it gave me the rest I needed to get back into things and continue blogging Which is good because a few smaller jobs that I was looking for in the meantime will only be available after January.

Now there is also a little hope on being able to run ArchmailleDesigns and do light blogging to keep up on the bills. The shopping cart that I use for this site has just been redesigned… now it’ll cost me to keep the updates coming, but they allowed everyone who has purchased a copy of it to get the new version for free. There are two features that particularly intrigue me. First off the addition of being able to sell downloadable items. I’d like to create some PDFs on jewelry care and techniques… then some on chainmail creation and sell them super cheap so I can make a couple bucks a day. Couple dollars a day from that, couple dollars a day from advertisement clicks on kclanparty.org, $25 bucks a day from blogging, and then building capital for a few months working at LifeTouch. That should give me the foothold to be able to start listing my products on ClickJunction… let other people sell my products for me The next favorite item on the new shopping cart is the ability to create widgets so I can put things on other peoples sites, blogs, etc. to where they can purchase directly from the other sites!