Ad Free

 

 As you, my readers, know, my ramblings are on a platform called Blogspot. or Bogger.com. On my template page, where I originate each post, there is a feature called "Stats". When I click on it, up pops a counter of how many views I am receiving on each post, my blog overall, and the monthly and daily traffic. I have always been impressed and proud of the fact that I have any readers or followers at all. About three weeks ago I checked to see how much traffic there was. I had not checked in on this stat for quite some time. I did a double take and was shocked to see that I was still capable of reading big numbers. 

In fact, the numbers were so large that I became quite curious as to  how lucrative it might be to 'monetize' my blog, you know, pollute it with advertising. It would have to be profitable for me to stoop that low as I have an aversion to ads of any kind as I am reading or scrolling, or researching anything on the internet. So I made use of AI and inquired as to how to monetize and if it would be profitable for my bog, given the amount of traffic. 

I quoted a modest figure, a small fraction of the actual totals and asked AI if it was worth the bother to open a account with AdSense and earn some money, if possible. I quoted about 1/7 of my actual numbers and AI said in bold CAPS, "Absolutely yes". After taking the advice on how to go about monetizing, I did actually open an account with AdSense and was delighted to hear back from them that my blog was under review and they would get back to me in 2-3 weeks and let me know if my blog qualifies. AI stated that I would easily earn between $600 and $1000 per month. 

I then examined the code of ethics and rules of conduct so I would know what I was going to sign. I read nothing that gave me any indication that my work would be rejected. Now, tell me if I am wrong. What would matter to an advertiser more, quality of content, or numbers? Would not a blog that got huge numbers of visitors prove that there was value to a lot of people? As long as there is nothing offensive or seditious, is it not the number that count the most? My readers know that my writing and photos are for entertainment, general information, and some useful advice or perspective on the occasional topic. 

Last week I was informed that my blog would be considered if the content had more value and that I should re-apply when I have corrected my content. But, no, you do not qualify at this time. I am perplexed. I had 340,000 views last month. Does the advertiser care why they are 'viewing'? They just want eyes on their ads, and clicks on their websites. The only conclusion I can come to is that they disagree with some of my content. There is very little controversial on my blog and certainly nothing that would be deemed hate, misogynistic, or racist. 

I shall remain perplexed, and my blog shall remain ad free despite the 1,348,550 views since inception. Please leave a comment if you can shed some light on this issue. Thank you. 

Lakehouse Diaries

      The following ramblings are about a real life adventure. I thought it was time to immortalize the story in printed format before a) I get too old to remember b) life goes on for everybody and history is forgotten. This is a true story with some details and names changed to avoid offending anyone. Only those who are intimate with the story will know who the characters are and I do not doubt that perhaps some might be offended. Let it be known that this is the story according to my own personal memories and recollections. Included is "my take on things", realizing that many events are open to interpretation and seen through different eyes, experiences, biases, and general views on life. 

     Let's start at the beginning when Greg and Ethel were approaching possible early retirement after starting and growing a successful business. They heard about some property in the interior of British Columbia, that was on a lake, had a warm dry climate, and was just south of the US/Canada border. Some friends had already purchased in the area and were very encouraging. 

     The idea appealed to Greg and Ethel because in their early married life, they were pioneers in a South American Country and if they bought this piece of barren desert it would be like reliving those early years, except this time they would have the resources to do it properly. It was 1979, the Canadian $$ was just above par, and it was very easy to cross the border in either direction. The children were more or less all grown up and could not only fend for themselves when alone, but could even help with the ambitious project taking place in Greg and Ethel's minds. 

     The realtors were approached, a price ($40,000.00)was agreed upon, and they were soon the proud owners of 3/4 of an acre, right on the lake, but with a whole lot of nothing else, unless sage brush, cactus, and rattle snakes count for something. 

     Their eldest daughter was married with two small children and they were one of the first to visit the 'new property'. Greg and Ethel were staying in a camper van while scouting out the property, drawing lines, measuring, and planning where the house would be, etc. Ethel seemed to only care about where the garden would be, but played an active roll in all plans. The daughter Em and her husband Tod, were a bit shocked at first. They did not have the vision or desire for anything like what they were seeing and were skeptical to say the least. Tod particularly, saw nothing but back-breaking work in the heat and dust, not having a creative bent, but more appreciating that which had already been built or developed. But then, he and his father-in-law were so very different in so many ways. Soon the work would begin in earnest and Tod was content to know that he had his own business to run back home and this would be a project that he would observe from a distance. That was true, to a point. 

I'm Back

 

I'm Back!  Was it really two weeks? I missed a huge chunk of December, the month of hype and commercialism that almost spoils my favourite time of year. I now embrace Christmas Eve without the carol fatigue and the shopping anxiety. I feel rested, renewed, and actually thankful to be home.

I debated with myself about taking my camera to Mexico, as I have done in years past. But I did and now I have some photos to post in the next while that will contrast with our northern winter. The temperature, humidity, and colour differences are huge, and as a photographer, I love colour.

So, as my bronzed 'Greek God' body fades to white, I will process the photos and get them on here as soon as I am able.

In the meanwhile, have a wonderful and blessed Christmas as we celebrate the birth of Jesus, the Messiah, who came to take away the sins of the world, and they are many. May you make memories that will warm your hearts throughout the year.

Now go eat some chocolate.

 

 

 

 

Silence

 

During my blogging absence, I was not misquoted.

Perplexed and Bewildered

   The New Year has brought a perplexing problem to my blogging. When I want to insert a photo onto my post, I no longer have the option of uploading a photo from my own computer. Do they think everyone on the planet has gone to hand held devices? This angers me. I process all my own photos with Photoshop and then save them on my computer. When I want one, I simply up load it. Now I can only load one from Picasa, this blog, a web cam, my device, my phone, or from a URL on the web.

    I am working on it, but if I can no longer do it my way (like Frank Sinatra did) then I am out of here and I will start a new blog on any one of the many other blog sites that are out there.

Blogger.com, what are you thinking?!

Sorry, But I Had To

 

A while ago, I had a few requests to remove 'word verification' from my blog settings, you know, those annoying funny letters and numbers you had to re-type to prove you were a real person commenting and not a spam program. I did that and for a few weeks it was OK. Then the spam started coming, but only came into my email inbox and not on my comments on the blog. Then a few days ago, the spam started coming fast and furious, onto my blog, but only one or two into my email inbox. It really is over the top and I cannot keep up with deleting all the junk on the various posts.

I know that not many of my readers comment, but I had to change the settings back. Sorry. It is either this or I have to have readers by invitation only.

Done for the Year

 

Elvira came up to me in the restaurant yesterday and told me that she reads my blog every morning. I had no idea who she was until she introduced herself. So, good morning to you Elvira. It was a pleasant surprise meeting you. Thanks for reading. I hope you like Morning Glories as much as I do because I will dedicate these photos to you.

 

I took these images a few weeks ago when the warm morning sun coaxed the blossoms from the buds very early each day. Now that the cold has invaded, the blossoms are stunted and a deeper purple colour. The first frost will kill them and then I will only have the photos instead of the real thing every morning, as I look out the kitchen window, drinking my coffee and eating my Mini-Wheats.

 

 

 

 

1500 Posts

A Mexican beach villa.

I was once asked what my hobbies were and in my list, I included writing. The response was "Are you a published writer?" I was not sure how to answer. I have many letters published in periodicals and newspapers and on many websites, but am not sure if that counts. Since I started this blog, most of my writing has ended up here. Just before we left for our little vacation, I 'published' my 1500th post. That is a lot of writing and a lot of photography! If sheer volume is a qualifier, I am a published writer.

The writing I do apart from my blog may or may not ever get published, but sits in my computer files waiting for further instruction. There are memoirs, journals, and a book of legacy for my grandsons that is already in book form. I am also working on a manual for a consulting business idea I have been toying with. If you have been reading my 'stuff' for a while, you know I am also a numbers guy with a keen interest in the economy and investments, but my first love is words.  

Four Years Old

This is a busylizzy inspired contribution.

In a few more days I will have been blogging for four years. It started out as a lark, but as time progressed, I enjoyed it more and more. I have, to date, published 1434 posts, most with my own photography attached. I have never once considered packing it in, but there have been a few times when I was going 'dry'. Some days I feel very creative, other days I am so distracted by issues in my life that I struggle to put two words together. During those times, I kept on going because it has helped me to focus. I suppose we all need constants in our lives, and this blog spot has become that for me.

I am amazed that I have had almost 35,000 visitors and a good number of 'Followers', viewers who look in regularly because they have requested notifications on their computer or mobile device. If nobody ever read or even looked at my blog, I doubt I would continue. Who enjoys talking to a brick wall, other than those devout Jews at the old Temple Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. I am still keen on photography and words and am a story teller so I am expecting a few more years of terryography. A BIG thank you to all my readers.     

Trying to Make a Comeback

A Double Crested Cormorant at Fishtrap Creek Park

They are very shy and when I tried to get too close, he took flight.

He only settled down again when he thought I was at a safe distance.

I have a number of hobbies and one of them is this blog. There has been so little time, lately, to do this thing, but I am trying to make a comeback. Funny how work interferes so much with life. Yes, work is picking up, like it does every spring, but this time around, the jobs are many and small. Doing five small jobs in a week is a lot more time consuming and inefficient than doing one five day job. As well, there is not very much money in small jobs. I usually like them because they are a filler for the between times for large jobs, but lately it is all that is out there. We were spoiled last year with a six month job, the largest one I had ever done. 

We went to a "Heat" game a few days ago. They are our AHL hockey team, one tier down from NHL. It is good hockey, but, our guys, even though they were the better team, lost by one goal. The half full arena reminded me of the fact that the sport of hockey in our town is heavily subsidized by the tax payer. If I had not had a free ticket, I would have been paying double for the seat. 

My accountant has finally waded through my financial situation and told me how much money to send to the government. When I peruse the PDF files of my tax return, I cannot believe the complexity of the whole tax thing. In my world, simplicity is the key to efficiency. Inefficiency is the key to costly ways of doing things. I cannot help but think that there are thousands of pencil pushers in the civil service who have to justify their huge pay cheques, so they come up with more and more convoluted ways of figuring what the tax payer owes. But, it does feed the accounting industry and those guys have to eat too. My Accountant tells me that there about 250 changes to the tax act each year and it is their job to know which changes are relevant to which client. We paid our taxes today, but are now six weeks behind in our installments for 2011 and this week I have to send in the HST that I collected for the government, off the backs of my clients, in the last three months.  It just never ends.     

I'm Back

The Robins are back! Can Spring be far behind?

Yes, I am back, and you did not even know that I was gone. I had a near death experience on Friday, or at least my computer did. It was the moment that everyone fears, the moment when the computer freezes and there is nothing one can do to breath life back into the cold and frigid veins (circuits). I was about to call Henderson's funeral Home and then arrange for a memorial service, when to the rescue came the best techie guy west of the Rockies.

He declared that it was not good news. At first I thought he meant that I had lost all my files and 'stuff'. "No, we can recover that, but then we have to reformat the hard drive and re-install your operating system and all the programs that you were running."

Long story short, 10 hours later, everything was running again. I am still muddling through all the settings and preferences but I think it will be OK.

The cause? Who knows. We only have ideas and suspicions, but the important thing is that new life has been breathed into my link to the world and I am again 'connected'.

Eldon, you are awesome.

Rats!

I don't know what the problem is, but the photos are in the posts, you just cannot see them. Click on the tiny icon and they will pop up in another window. It took several weeks to resolve the issue of no photo uploader on this site, and now this. Very frustrating. If any of you fellow bloggers out there can help me, I would be grateful.

Analytical Powerhouse

                                                             Can't wait for summer!

I was reading another Blog the other day and came across something that intrigued me. It is a site that almost instantly analyzes your blog and gives an educated guess as to who writes it, the age, and a general comment about the content.

It looks like I am going to have to change my style and content to create a different impression. I had a good laugh.

http://urlai.com/Default.aspx


terryography.blogspot.com is probably written by a female somewhere between 66-100 years old. The writing style is personal and happy most of the time.

OOps!

Scroll down to find today's post, inadvertently posted yesterday. It is the one with the black squirrel.

Relief From the Heat

I needed a cool and refreshing photo for today's blog post because of the heat we have been experiencing the last few days. When I took this picture, there was a lot of cool mist rising off the river as the water thundered over the rocky escarpment. We could use some of that here now. Quite frankly, I do not understand how some people (quite a few actually) can handle standing under the sun on the hot tarmac at the air show which is taking place this weekend. As I type, I am in my comfortable house where it is 7 degrees cooler inside than out. The birds of war are thundering overhead, expelling hot exhaust and fumes and for what? 

Starting tomorrow, I am taking a blogging break. I will be back in a week or so.   

How To Comment

I have several readers who have indicated to me that they would comment on my posts but do not know how to go about doing so. So I am dedicating this post to teach a quick lesson on 'How to Comment'.

At the bottom of each post, there is the word "Comment". 
Step one: click on the word "comment". (If there is a number in front of it such as 2, that means that there are already 2 comments. You can read these by clicking on the word "Comment") 

A window will open with a dialogue box in the top right corner of your screen (an area where you can type a message) that already has a blinking cursor in the top left corner. It the cursor is not there, simply click on the the top left corner of the message box. 
Step two: Just start typing your message (comment)

If you have a Google Account, log in with your user name and password. You probably do not have one so just ignore that message and you will find a rectangular box with a series of letters in it. Type those letters in the box immediately below the letters. 
Step three: Type those letters in the box. 

Now all you have to do is click on 'Anonymous'. If you do not put your name to your comment, you will indeed have sent an anonymous comment. If you want to identify yourself, simply put you name in your message. Example:  "Get off the pot, Terry"  your pal, Alphonse. 
Step three: hit 'Anonymous' 

Step four: Click on the big orange button called "Publish your Comment"  

There now, you are done. 

One more thing. There is a chance to do a quick response by clicking in one of the little boxes in front of the comment words at the bottom of each post. These are totally anonymous but they are fun. If any of you have suggestion as to other words I can put there, such as "immature" "insightful" "out to lunch" or "brilliant", I am able to edit that feature and I can add those or other words. Don't be bashful. 

Thanks for reading, and, now, for commenting.  :)  

A Milestone

This is a storm brewing on Sumas Prairie but it has nothing to do with today's topic. My humble little blog has reached a milestone. Sometime in the last few hours the 20,000th visitor logged onto 'terryography'.  I would like to think that I had twenty thousand readers but what probably happened is that the same two people 'hit' my blog ten thousand times. :)  I am still enjoying the experience and will keep it up for a while yet. I am looking forward to blogging about my upcoming trip to Saskatchewan. Expect to see some prairie photos, you know, a sky above, a horizon, and some wheat in the foreground. Or maybe they will look more like ocean scenes if the rains come back. Either way, you will know soon enough. I leave Thursday (July 15) morning. My trip will have an interesting twist to it. Stay tuned.  

1000 Posts

Today I reach a milestone in my blog, post number 1000. It has been a little more than 2 1/2 years since I started 'terryography' so that means that I have been averaging more than a post a day. Because I can 'post date' the posts, I am able to write a whole whack of them at once and then have them publish the day I want them to. I have had as many as 12 in the wings, awaiting the day of publishing, so I do not really have to take time every day to write a post. I can write them and lay them out quite quickly now with all the experience so they are like brushing my teeth every day, something necessary but not that time consuming. 

Somebody asked me a few weeks ago when I was going to write my book. I found a site on the Internet that will publish my blog, for  a small fee and send it to me in a beautifully bound coffee table book. If I did that, I would have a book of more than a thousand pages because some of my posts are quite long. If I edited out all the 'garbage posts' and the time sensitive posts, I would probably have at least 300 pages and there would be my book. My childhood stories and my "Painting to Learn" stories alone would fill a volume. So, you might say that I have written my book. I just have to edit it.   

Blog Anniversary

Today it is two years since I decided to start my own blog (Web Log). I have not regretted one minute of my experience and indeed have found it quite useful as a creative outlet. I have been able to get a lot of things off my chest, share my passion for photography, and let my readers know a bit about me. It has helped me to be disciplined, think outside the box, and be accountable for some of my ideas. I have a stat counter application attached to my blog site and it gives me such things as numbers of unique visitors, page loads, locations of readers, and how long a reader stays on the blog. It does not tell me who the reader is. It has been interesting to say the least. I am continually bumping into folks who read my blog and sometimes I gulp and just smile. It makes me aware that I should be careful what I say because it is in the public domain. I am surprised that I have regular readers. As a blog follower myself, I have an idea what it requires to grab and hold a reader's attention. The last few months I have not been able to post everyday and I do not know what the future holds as far as time commitment on my part. Work continues to be hectic, my father and his affairs continue to take a lot of my discretionary time, but I have not run out of ideas or photos.

A great big THANK YOU to all my readers for your encouragement, if by no other means than simply logging on. I hope the best is yet to come.

Missing Blogology

This is what I see every morning right outside my kitchen window, as I am eating my breakfast. A family of birds would certainly make it more interesting. I should put up a 'Vacancy' sign.

I have really missed blogging regularly. There has just been no time. This is my busy time of year and after a days work, an evening out estimating and consulting, back home for some paperwork and crunching numbers for the quotes, I have put in at least a ten to eleven hour day. Add to that a trip to the hospital at least 5 times a week, to visit my father, and you can see that there just is no time to blog.

I think I have discovered a way to get around without hurting my hip. I cannot drive for more that ten minutes at a time, but tonight I experimented with my bike. I have not ridden for a few years, but after going around the block tonight (yes, I wore a helmet) I discovered that it was relatively pain free. My plan is to rise early tomorrow morning, don helmet and camera bag, and cruise around my end of town for some new photos. The leaves are starting to turn and if it is a sunny day, there will be good early morning light and if I am lucky, a bit of early morning fog. But, then again, I might just lay in bed and enjoy not having to get up and go to work. I am actually taking the long weekend off and I cannot miss the once a year opportunities to shoot some fall colours. Last year was spectacular for variety and intensity so we will see if this year is as good. With my new camera and Photoshop, I will make sure it is a good year.