30.06.08
Posted in General, Search Engine Optimization at 3:04 pm by Colin McNulty
I’ve been having some problems these last few weeks with excessive bandwidth usage and had been unable to work out why the average bandwidth used per visitor had increased five fold!
Basically I’d hit my upper bandwidth limit twice in the last week (you may had noticed) despite not loading the site with much more material than normal. Further, the webserver statistics showed that 93% of the bandwidth was being used consumed just downloading raw html files, not images or videos or anything. I was flummoxed as to what the problem was.
Then this morning I saved the home page to my PC, to see if it really was as big a file as the stats seemed to be suggesting… sure enough it was: a 900kb .html file! Why was it so big? Checking the raw html source code I was shocked to discover literally thousands of hidden links out to other sites, for all sorts of nefarious links, I’m sure your imagination can work it out.
My blog had been hacked and had all these links inserted without anyone noticing. They were hidden with a style that stopped them being displayed by your browser, but they were still there.
It only took a few minutes to delete them all, but it’s taken me all morning to upgrade the wordpress version from 2.1 to 2.5.1 I hate upgrading, it’s a pain in the butt, not least of which because of incompatibilities between the new version and all the plug-ins I have installed. This is why I’d been sitting on such an old version for so long.
The irony of the situation is this though: if the hackers hadn’t been greedy and uploaded such a huge number of links (a pointless exercise from an SEO perspective to be honest) I would never had noticed. If they’d just restrained themselves to 2-3 links, or hell, even 50, I probably would never have suspected a thing. But 800kb of hidden links is hard to miss. Just to be clear, that’s about 2000 lines of extra links.
If you don’t understand why someone would do such a thing, it’s all to do with how the search engines rank pages in their results. Basically links to your sites are like votes, the more votes you get, the more important Google thinks your site is and the higher up it lists your website when people search for stuff. It’s rather more complicated than that, as I’m sure you realise, but that’s the essence of it.
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22.04.08
Posted in General, Search Engine Optimization at 9:49 pm by Colin McNulty
Wow been a busy week or so.
- Have had a client who’s getting slow screwed by his arogant web developer who refuses to take responsibility for their mistakes and I’m playing piggy in the middle.
- Been working on promoting several client sites.
- Having issues with one of my outsourced staff not following instructions.
- Having to fire some outsourced authors and recruit others.
- Dealing with company issues.
- Reading “Getting Things Done” by David Allen
- At not least of which, I’ve been working on a new air conditioning website.
Speaking of which, the new air con site hasn’t yet been spidered by Google since it’s new pages were launched. This post will serve as an interesting SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) experiment. As I’m sure you know all search engines work on links to sites and Google swings by this blog once or twice a week so should pick up these links shortly. I’m betting a few well placed links to the TotalHeatControl.com Sitemap and the 3 main categories of portable air conditioning (mobile air con units with casters), split air conditioning (have the noisy compressor outside and quiet air handles inside) and commercial air conditioning (hugely powerful air con units for an industrial setting) should do the job.
On a personal note, the golfers elbow is still a problem, and I seem to have developed a bad back this last week, and oddly a sore bone in my foot. I’m a wreck, lol.
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10.04.08
Posted in General, Search Engine Optimization at 3:24 pm by Colin McNulty
This is a Thursday Thirteen Meme post:
- Jogging
- Sit ups
- Press ups
- Squats
- Back extensions
- Pull ups
- Box Jumps
- Wall Balls
- Lunge Walks
- Burpees
- Ball slams
- Cleans
- Snatches
Tada!
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29.02.08
Posted in General, Search Engine Optimization at 1:13 pm by Colin McNulty
Gabe and Max’s Internet Thing (yes I realise it’s a spoof):
How it should be done by Andy Jenkins from StomperNet:
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17.12.07
Posted in General, Search Engine Optimization at 10:02 pm by Colin McNulty
Like many people, I’ve bought every present online this year. However I’d just like to share with you the worst buying experience I’ve had for a long time at an online retailer. The shop in question was www.cd-wow.com and needless to say, they did not get my custom, in fact I ended up going to play.com and paying a few pounds extra.
Alarming DVD Region warning.
I came to buy a DVD and when clicked Add To Cart, a rather alarming window pops up in glaring red warning me that this is a Region 2 DVD and to check my DVD Player can play it.
Please ensure that your DVD player is able to play discs designed for Region 2 (UK & Europe/Japan)
I have never been to any site that feels the need to do this. Not to mention the terrible feeling that it gave me that perhaps I’d got the wrong one. As someone who knows a thing or three about online retailing and what effects a sites conversion rate, I can tell you that this is not a good thing to do.
Couldn’t find the Checkout
Having taken my life in my hands, I clicked continue and the popup disappeared. Great… now what… Where’s the cart checkout button? Normally it’s at the top right. Nope not there. Bottom right? No, not there either? On the right most column… nope. Wow this site is busy, there’s bright pictures and stuff everywhere drawing my eye. Where IS that checkout. Ah there it is, down the bottom left (what’s it doing there?!?) with a very bland dark blue text that says Click to Checkout under a tiny dull blue cart sign.
Blimey, these guys really don’t have a clue do they? Still off I go to pay.
Checkout Process Timed Out
Hmmmm, that’s odd. I clicked to checkout and got a blank page. I’ll refresh. Oh, I’m back at the home page. I’ll try that again… Oh, my cart’s empty, doh! Back through the whole sales process again, oh there’s that warning pop up again. Yes yes, I know I’m buying a region 2 DVD, I live in region 2, you’re showing currency in region 2 (GBP) and my DVD is region 2 (the hint was it was bought in region 2).
Coupon codes
Finally, I get to the checkout page and there it is, that inviting field that says E-Voucher No: I personally think coupon codes / evouchers are a terrible idea, for the simple reason that people do what I did: leave the site and go looking for one. I know that most online retailers have some Christmas promotion codes, surely it’s a matter of just looking hard enough and I can get some free cash off my purchase.
Actually, I couldn’t find any, which annoyed me for 2 reasons: firstly, I’d just wasted another 20 minutes of my life, and secondly, what kind of out fit are cd-wow that don’t have a Christmas coupon promotion??
Checkout Process Timed Out - Again!
DOH! I’d spent so long looking for a coupon, when I came back to hit Proceed, I got dumped back to the home page and lost my cart again. So now I’m going through the sales process for a 3rd time and already wishing I’d bought the damn DVD from play.com and paid the few pounds extra. Oh there’s that damn region 2 warning again! I tell you, if I see that warning one more time….!
And relax…. *sigh*
Here’s my details, no I don’t want to go on your mailing list.
Credit Card Processing
That’s interesting, there are several warning pointing out that my Credit Card statement will show up as “PayNova.com” not CD-Wow.com . That’s not necessarily a problem, but it’s odd as this day and age, it’s not beyond the whit of man to get the name of the website on the credit card statement, instead of some other parent company or something, but ok, I’ll go with it.
Now what’s this, they want my email adderss again? But I filled that out on the previous screen, why do they want it again? I’ll just ignore that. Hmmm it won’t let me pay without putting my email address in again, something to do with a PayNova.com account. But I don’t want a PayNova account. I don’t know what or who they are. Ok ok, here’s an email address.
What? It still won’t let me pay, don’t these people want my money!?! What now, oh I have to tick to accept the PayNova terms and conditions. But I saw the CD-Wow terms and conditions on the previous page, wtf is going on here, this looks like PayNova is a separate thing to CD-Wow and not just a parent company name at all.
Right, Nerd hat comes out, lets work out what this is all about then, let’s take a look at these PayNova Terms and Conditions, cos I’m not signing up to something with an email address on the same page as entering my credit card details without reading what it’s for, as it sure doesn’t look like a simple CD-Wow website thing. Here’s the link to their T&C’s for your viewing pleasure, but I shall highlight the shocking bits.
http://www.paynova.com/ENG/kundavtal.htm
Right, it appears that PayNova.com is a competitor to PayPal. By signing up for this, I’m signing up for a PayPal type service where I stick cash in my PayNova account, and that pays CD-Wow. Great, except I don’t want to do that, I don’t even want a CD-Wow “send me spam” account, I just want the damn DVD.
But wait, there’s are few conditions here that are a real shocker:
> The Customer shall, without unreasonable delay, report, to its Paynova Account, changes in the Customer’s name, address, e-mail address and any other information.
I have to tell them “withour unreasonable delay… changes in… any other information” about myself. So when I have a child, or buy a car, or change house insurance? I don’t think so.
> Unauthorised transactions - Paynova cannot control that it is the Customer who has initiated a payment, but only that the correct password or answer to a secret question has been used.
> The Customer understands and accepts that orders and instructions given to Paynova by using the Paynova Account, and where the Customer has been identified and verified through the use of the Customer’s password or answer to the Customer’s secret question, are binding for the Customer.
So basically unlike every other financial institution you use (Banks, Credit Cards etc) PayNova are not responsible for fraud as a result of someone breaking into your account!
> Withdrawals from and termination of the Paynova Account are charged a fee of 4 per cent of the amount withdrawn, however not less than EUR 2.
Charging me to take back my own money, WTF!
> The Customer undertakes to hold Paynova harmless for amounts that Paynova may have to pay to third parties because of the use of the Customer’s Paynova Account
They are not liable for anything, no matter what happens, it’s all my fault.
> Paynova intends to process the Customer’s personal data with the object of administering the Customer relationship, fulfilling the obligation to provide information to authorities, and providing information about its own services through marketing.
So by agreeing to this, I agree to allow them to send me junk mail. Note, there is NO opt out of this clause. But wait, it gets worse:
> By accepting these general conditions, the Customer accepts such processing of personal data as has been described above. Such acceptance also includes transfer of personal data to third countries.
Hahahahahhahaaaa *cough*…. I think not.
> On request by Paynova, the Customer undertakes to provide information about the Customer’s identity, etc., as well as other information which can be considered material for Paynova’s business. Paynova also has a right, on its own or through a third party, to conduct its own investigations about the Customer.
My God, I must submit to the Paynova Gestapo now must I?!?
And finally:
> This Agreement shall be governed by Swedish law.
Errr, no.
It won’t come as much surprise I’m sure to learn that I didn’t continue my purchase. This was the most shocking online shopping experience I’ve ever had and CD-Wow will not be getting a single penny of mine, neither now, nor at any time in the future. They alienated me from the start with a shoddy user experience and continued to put every road block possible in my way, before finally trying to sign be up for a service I didn’t want, force me to accept spam and junk mail, and admit to transfering my personal data to undisclosed third party countries, Nigeria perhaps?
Sorry CD-wow, you blew it big style.
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10.12.07
Posted in General, Search Engine Optimization at 9:11 am by Colin McNulty
Facebook are under fire for their user tracking software Beacon, which apparently not only tracks users on Facebook but also on “partner sites” too, and collates the data across these sites, to build up a bigger picture of their users. You can read a back ground to the story here
Whilst I don’t use Facebook, I’m not surprised by the story. There are more and more ways being invented all the time to track what you do and how you interact with sites. Google Analytics is a great example. This Beacon seems to go a bit far by collating data from other sites too, but from an advertiser / publisher / retailer perspective, knowing your customers better helps you to provide more targeted offers. I’m sure Beacon could be deployed to any website, is MySpace next?
I take the view that if you use the net, expect people to be watching and tracking what you do. Mostly it’s harmless, they are looking to see how you interact with their sites and so how they can improve your online experience, and of course maximise their income from you, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing if they are offering you what you want. It’s not all about privacy and identity theft.
Simple webstats will tell you what url a visitor to your site came from. If you notice that a lot of visitors come from Site A, you may want to increase the number of adverts / articles / products on your site that cater for the kind of market that Site A attracts. What you’re less interested in is what any particular individual did, it’s trends that hold the valuable data. This benefits the website owner but also it benefits the visitor, as they get more of the things that interest them.
For example, if you regularly visit the Manchester United website, and from there go to the Football Association website, you’re not going to be interested in seeing adverts for cheap Liverpool shirts. But you may be interested in seeing adverts for cheap Manchester United shirts, or Manchester United game tickets, or Manchester United memorabilia. By tracking where it’s visitors come from, the FA site can provide a better experience to it’s visitors by offering them more content that they are interested in. This is a good thing!
I read somewhere some good advice recently - Don’t post anything on the internet, anywhere, that you wouldn’t be prepared to stick up on the public notice board of your local supermarket. I guess that also applies to a list of what websites you visit, and what you buy online.
My personal view is that people get far too upset and paranoid about these kinds of things. Take the recent loss of a disk with details of 25M child benefit records from Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC). This got the wife really worried as we’re on the list. But it doesn’t bother me in the slightest, here’s why:
1) The disk is lost, there’s no evidence or suggestion it was stolen and now in the hands of the Russia Mafia.
2) The database, whilst not specifically encrypted, was password protected.
3) The data holds information that most people have no problem giving away: Name, Address, DoB, Bank details etc. You give away that information freely every time you register for any service and pay by direct debit or cheque. I reckon there’s at least 50 organisations that have those details on me.
4) Those details do not allow someone to empty my bank account, they don’t know my password or PIN’s.
5) Everyone is automatically covered against Fraud by the banks. If someone fakes a cheque, it’s a pain, but not your fault so the banks will compensate you.
6) Then there’s the issue of scale, 25 MILLION records! A criminal gang would take a lifetime to work through even 0.1% of that number (25,000).
7) 90% of households throw more valuable personal data away in their rubbish every day. If I wanted to steal someone’s identity, I’d just walk down the street picking up bin bags, especially paper recycling bags.
In conclusion, Facebook’s Beacon is just the next thing on the list of things that will track your movements. As long as you’re careful about what you do online, you should have nothing to fear.
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11.10.07
Posted in General, Home Business Opportunities, Search Engine Optimization at 7:31 pm by Colin McNulty
Last week, I offered to take a look at an email newsletter that a friend on mine sent out to his customer base, which got a terrible response, to see if I could spot anything that looked like it could be improved. I thought it worthy of posting up here as an example of what not to do, and compare it to a professionally produced email. Here’s the starting text of his email:
Here we are again..
Just like you, I am always looking for a super way to make money from Internet Marketing. Looking for an easy way in which I won’t have to work 14 hour days.
Well I bought “Get Google PPC Ads Free” a couple nights ago, and I read it all in one day. Lots of info, 124 pages of good explanations of a surprising system that promises to achieve my goal of making life easier.
From my first reading of this well written ebook, I understand the basic principles of the plan. I was surprised at the simplicity of the “Secret” and especially of the extra options provided.
All in all, I feel compelled to put you aware of this opportunity. You know I don’t bother you daily with every little product that comes out, like so many others do. I only offer what I consider to be the good stuff. So read this little note, take a look at the explanation, from the link below, and make your own decision…
And now my feedback:
> Here we are again..
My very first thought was: “Yes, here we go again, another spam email !” I would say this was a bad starting sentence. You need to say something here that grabs the readers attention. E.g. An email that was advertising a lottery syndicate scheme could start with: “I’ve won the lottery 3 times in the last 4 weeks, how have you done?”
> Just like you, I am always looking for a super way to make money from Internet Marketing. Looking for an easy way in which I won’t have to work 14 hour days.
I see what you are trying to do with “Just like you”, it’s important to appear on their side, however the theme of this paragraph is wrong. You should not be talking about “always looking”, you should be talking about “I finally found the easy step by step solution.”.
People are lazy, they want their problems solved and answers on a plate without having to do any work. This paragraph doesn’t instil the confidence that you are an authority that should be listened to, if you are “Just like you” and they are not making any money on the internet, why should your opinion be better than theirs? However, if you *used to be* like them, but have now finally cracked the secret… that’s a different matter.
> Well I bought “Get Google PPC Ads Free” a couple nights ago, and I read it all in one day. Lots of info, 124 pages of good explanations of a surprising system that promises to achieve my goal of making life easier.
Don’t say you bought it, you are immediately letting go the knowledge that they will have to spend money, but you’ve not sold the benefits yet. Big turn off. I understand why you quoted the number of pages, but that’s not selling the benefits, this will only put off people who don’t have the time to spend reading 124 pages of content. Also, there are a million e-books out there that “promise to achieve”, you need to sell this from the perspective of actually achieving based on following the books advice, which of course is hard if you haven’t!
> I understand the basic principles of the plan.
The implication here is that you didn’t understand the advanced bits! Oh dear, it must be too complicated or poorly explained…. See my point?
Now compare this to the opening paragraph of this email newsletter:
This may come as a SHOCK to you, but after all these years with Google selling pay-per-click advertising, a New York medical doctor comes forward and admits that he’s never paid for any of his now more than $87 million in otherwise paid-for advertising.
Let’s analyse the starting sentence:
“This may come as a SHOCK to you” - I’m about to learn something exciting (builds interest)
“after all these years” - this is a tried and tested system (builds credibility)
“a New York medical doctor ” - clearly an intelligent, educated and reputable man (builds authority).
“comes forward and admits ” - he’s reluctantly revealing a secret (builds interest)
“he’s never paid for any ” - he’s getting something for free. Hey, that’s what I want! (everyone likes free right?)
“more than $87 million ” - OMG, that’s huge, this must be an incredible system. He said I would be shocked, and he was right! (builds interest)
See how every single part of that opening sentence is designed to get you to want to read the rest?
Now compare that to the original starting sentence: “Here we are again..” It’s worlds apart.
Copyrighting is a tricky art and it can take all day to hand craft a single email. However this time and effort is definitely worth it when trying to get your message across.
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13.09.07
Posted in General, Search Engine Optimization at 6:20 am by Colin McNulty
My current job at Intrinsic Marketing, is to promote other peoples websites. This is a multi faceted role that covers many aspects of how to improve website Return on Investment (ROI). From on-site factors like layout, keyword density, titles, shopping cart process, customer experience etc., through to off-site promotion techniques like Pay Per Click advertising (Google AdWords for example) and general Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) which contrary to popular belief, is mostly about what happens off your site and revolves around getting external links to your website.
Well one of the clients sites I work on is a review site for UK Business Opportunities. In fact I’ve been working on promoting this site for about 6 months now and have see it steadily rise up the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) over that time. Yesterday I came to check on how the site was doing, and look what I found (click to enlarge the image):
For the unquoted term business opportunity, the site is #1 in Google.co.uk (it’s a UK site) even though I selected to search all the web, which is great news in itself and I was pleased about that. But then I looked more closely and saw how many competing sites Google had returned.
Out of 264,000 websites, and my clients’ site is number 1 !!!
I knew that “business opportunity” is a very competitive term, but it had never occurred to me just how big that number is, or how significant that result is until now. In fact it’s easier to say 1/4 of a Billion, and I don’t know about you, but I struggle to comprehend even how big a number 1 million really is, let along a billion..
Whilst I was pleased, I thought I’d let my client know before Google decided to change the algorithm and mess up my hard work. This was his immediate reply:
“firkin hell ! how did you pull that off !”
Lol! Of course exactly how, will remain a secret that I keep, but that actually raises an interesting point. Having achieved the impossible, can I now rest on my laurels? Can my client now say, “Thanks Colin, I’ll take it from here.”? No, clearly not. In some respects, now it becomes harder, because when you’re at the top you become a target for the guys below you. And if they have and SEO expert worth their salt on their side, he will be busy trying to reverse engineer what I did and find out exactly how I’ve achieved this success for my client.
Fortunately for me, it’s not a trivial exercise: Google obfuscate their algorithm by hiding some back links, and deliberately showing some that don’t count. MSN (or Live as it’s now called) have disabled their backlinks function. And steps have been taken to ensure that Yahoo’s Site Explorer links function is full of noise and hard to trace through, besides, it only shows 1,000 back links anyway.
Despite this story, there is one important thing that as a responsible Website Promotion Consultant it’s vital not to lose sight of: are we ranking for the correct term, and hence does that ranking equate to traffic that converts into customers? That I’m afraid, is a confidential conversation between me and my client, but I wouldn’t have spent 6 months working on it now otherwise would I?
Of course the next question is, how do you know a search term will bring converting traffic before you spend 6 months optimising for that search term? The answer to that is also a trade secret, one that I only share with my paying customers… 
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06.09.07
Posted in General, Search Engine Optimization at 7:46 pm by Colin McNulty
Last week I wrote and released an article on how it is possible to kick a website out of Google’s Search Engine Ranking Pages (SERP’s), and how to defend yourself against it. I released it under the title: How to Defend your Website from the Google Duplicate Proxy Exploit and under the psedonym “Sophie White”.
Why the pseudonym? It’s a Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) trick, as it’s easier to track where articles go and who publishes them, if you use different names. I have several, Sophie White is just one I occassionally use. Also,sadly sexism is definitely rife on the internet, and some sites only publish articles written by women. Such is life.
Anyway back to the point, how can it be that it’s possible to knock a website out of Google? You’d think that Google were pretty on the ball these days on this sort of thing? Is this a new exploit that Google have yet to become aware of? No, Google have known about it for at least 2 years, and have done nothing despite repeated appeals from SEO experts like Dan Theis for example.
I’m not going to repeat the entire contents of my article here, you can click the link above and read it in its full glory. So here’s the short version:
Google has a duplicate content filter. Every time the GoogleBot indexes a page it gets checked against Google’s database to see if they’ve found that page before and determine whether it’s a copy or not. They do this because Google doesn’t want to be serving up duplicate pages all the time. It’d be irritating if you searched Google for “blue widgets” and the first 10 results were all the same page content.
Let’s say Google finds a page and determines that it’s a duplicate (how they do that is beyond the scope of this post) what happens is Google decide to heavily penalise one of the pages. Simple huh? Here’s the rub, how does Google know which is the original page, and which is the copy? What if they get it wrong and they penalise the legitimate site, in favour of the duplicate? Doh!
And this is where it gets worse, what if a competitor of yours deliberately sets up a duplicate page and gets Google to rank it instead of your page? Ok there’s a raft of things you can do in this circumstances, many involving changing content, engaging lawyers, cease and desist letters to the ISP’s etc. However, there is one kind of webserver that is built to do exactly this: proxy servers.
Proxy Servers are designed to copy the web and serve it up as a local cache, and they are integral to making the internet run faster. If a competitor gets your page cached by a proxy, and then starts using normal white (or black) hat techniques to promte the proxies copy of your site, there’s every chance that Google will think that this big proxy servers copy of your web page is the true legitimate copy, and pow, there goes your sites rankings as Google boots you down it’s index.
There are various defence mechanisms you can use to protect your site, and they are detailed in the article I wrote. If this has happened to you, and you are completely stuck, my SEO company Intrinsic Marketing will be able to help.
(On a side note, I submitted my article to be published on eZineArticles.com sadly despite being a Platinum Author at eZineArticles, they refused to publish my article, claiming that it might be used for malicious intent. Whilst that’s true, I believe far more good will come from informing the masses on the proplem and the solution, rather than sticking our collective head in the sand, and hope the bad guys don’t notice!)
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10.08.07
Posted in Crossfit, General, Home Business Opportunities, Search Engine Optimization, The Zone Diet at 6:53 am by Colin McNulty
I’ve suddenly realised it’s a few weeks since I posted. I don’t know about time flying when you’re having fun, but it certainly flies when you effing busy! So, in no particular order, a mega update:
Work - Works gone mad, I’m going to be launching a new website shortly and it seems every waking moment is devoted to it. I’ll post up here what it is when it’s ready.
Crossfit - I’ve got “magic shoes” as they are called down the gym. Actually they are Adidas Adistar Weightlifting Shoes:
To be honest, they are a bit tight and not that comfortable, but they are managable. They were “new” off eBay for £60 including postage, half the shop price of £125, so a bargain really. They are better to lift in than normal trainers, but not a revolution I think. Either that, or I’m just not good enough to notice the difference, which is the more likely scenario!
Zone Diet and Fatloss - My Zone Diet Plan continues to work…. slowly, making incremental decreases on last months weight loss. Weight is down another 2 lbs to 13st9 now (191 lbs) and waist at belly button down another 1/2 inch to 37.5″, giving me a body fat calculation of 19%. It’s been 1% drop for each of the last 2 months, and I put this down to being slack on the diet.
I don’t measure anymore, I don’t calculate the blocks (other than protein) to ensure perfectly balanced meals, it’s all done by eye. I also cheat horrendously, I drink wine most nights of the week (too much still, got to work on that) and have chocolate several times a week. I guess it’s a testiment to the zone diet that I’m losing weight at all!
At the moment though, I’m content to not be on a “strict diet” and pretty much eat and drink what I want, and lose 1% of my body weight in fat each and every month. I figured when I started in February at 30% body fat, that it would take a year to get to where I wanted (15% - halving my fat) so I’m actually well on target for that, even at 1% per month.
Dead Cats - One of our four cats, Romulus, died. 
The wife found it knocked over by the side of the road on her way to work. Why is it always the nicest most friendly cat that dies? Romulus used to jump on the bed in the morning and butt me awake to feed him, annoying but cute. Still, we had a full burial in the garden, the kid of course was extremely upset, actually we all were, it’s very sad when cats die. Bye Rommy.
Hamster Jams - In ironic timing, a few days after Rommy died, we got a Hamster for the kid. It was a long planned reward for her excellent school report. We’re a bit worried though that it might have Wet Tail which the shop assistance put the fear of God into us about. Certainly it’s not a happy bunny at the moment and it’s tail is constantly wet as it’s weeing in its own bed. The stress of the move from the shop I guess. I’m not sure it’s going to make it to be honest, we’ll have to wait and see.
Weddings - Went to the wedding of our good freinds Becca and Marcus last week, a good time was had by all *hick*. Errr that’s all there is to say really, a wedding’s a wedding. Been to rather a lot of them it seems. Oh, did have a small mishap with the wedding present: I was sent out to buy crystal wine glasses as a wedding present… managed to come back with a 600 piece poker chip set in aluminim case. I can’t imagine how that happened. I wonder if Marcus will bring it next time he comes over?
New Babies - Another pair of good friends, Dan and Rachel, have had a baby. At 2 weeks over due, and a 36 hour labour, Ethan was a hefty 8 lbs 13 oz! Congrats to all three of them.
Google Dance - Times up, I’ve got to run. I’ll have to come back to how I’ve faired in the latest Google Page Rank Dance.
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