CHESSNOID

Lately, I have been getting more spam comments on my site. Many are easy to recognize because I know I don’t have any real celebrities reading my blog telling me how cool it is. Seriously, I am getting a ton more of celebrity comment spams. If you blog, then you definitely know what I am talking about.

Christmas is nearing and only 18 more days away. I have basically finished most of my shopping. I took the easy way out and brought most things online. The last few things I will get will probably be some gift cards. I don’t think the retailers got the sales they wanted this season, so I am expecting some major markdowns after the holidays. I think there will be tons of great deals.

The other day I took my wife’s Apple Mac to get fixed at the Apple store at Fashion Island in Newport Beach. It’s a ritzy area in Southern California. I had made an appointment to meet up with an Apple “Genius” which is what they call their tech guys. Parking was a bear and it seemed like a 3 block walk. By the time I got to the store, I was out of breath because the Mac is pretty heavy to lug around. It started out at 45 pounds in real weight, but by the time I got to the store it felt like 100 pounds on my tired arms. Seriously, I think I sprained my ankle. ;(

I met with the Apple store concierge who verified my appointment. This is the first time I made an appointment to see a tech guy. I still had to wait for a good 10-15 minutes for my appointment. There were about 30 red shirt Apple Sales reps just standing around waiting to help the 10 customers in the store. Anyways, they fixed it and it seems good as new. Hopefully, it will stay perfect. My personal experience at the store was great and the nerdy Apple genius was cool. He didn’t look anything like the mac guy in the TV commercials. My wife recently started stumbling on her Mac and that’s when the problems seemed to start. If you ask me, I think her Mac is just allergic to stumbling.

I am a windows type of guy but I am planning to buy a linux based laptop next year when it comes out at Walmart. I was planning to buy their $199 everex pc online but decided to wait when I found out about their $299 linux laptop. I am not really tech savvy and my needs are mostly surfing the net and using word and excel. That’s about it.

My technorati authority is up to 164 which is great. It seems to just keep growing by itself like a weed. I don’t really comment anymore on any blogs nor do I engage in the viral stuff but I guess I have cool people linking to me. Thank you for the link love because I do appreciate it. It definitely creates traffic to my site.

Recently, I have been using most of my free time using stumble upon and have surpassed the 14,000 mark. I truly enjoy stumbling. If you want me to stumble something for you, just put a comment here and I will check it out. I am an easy going stumbler and pretty much like most things. If it is stumble worthy, then you will get a thumbs up. Don’t be bashful. Feel free to add me as a friend and give me a stumble.

I did get approved for Pay Per Post and will start doing that soon. I will read all their terms before I get on it. I think it will be fun if I can blog about stuff I like. If you already do PPP, let me know what your experience has been and feel free to share any good tips to help this newbie out.

Today, the stock market took a breather after a few good days. There is still a lot of nervousness in the market. I read a lot of business articles in regard to the economy, housing, and stocks because I enjoy it. From what I gather the recession has started but won’t be official until we have to down quarters. If you look around, you can see this housing bust is in full swing. The federal reserve is trying to make a bail out plan even though they don’t like to call it that. It really doesn’t deal with the problems at hand. This is the way economics works when we have excesses in the market. People get squeezed for being greedy. I know most of these speculator investors were trying to make a quick buck. For 6 years they did it and now the music has stopped playing. One of the blogs I read on a regular basis is Dr Housing Bubble and the Irvine Housing Blog. Dr HB has good analysis of the housing bubble and real estate industry, while IHB has excellent examples of many houses that are overvalued in Orange County. Definitely check them out when you get a chance and then you will have a better idea of how many house flippers are out there. They both have strong opinions but usually back everything up they say with facts. Dr HB seems to have a great economics background and IHB seems to know everything about Orange County properties.