The Adventures of Cowboy Hazel

Nobody told me that it would itch this much. As most of you already know (I publicized the hell out of it) I got a tattoo of an eagle on my back last week. (You can see the photo here.) What you may not know is that getting a tattoo involves a great deal of physical discomfort. I mean, I knew it would sting a bit, but I was really surprised how much getting it done actually hurt and then it was sore for like four days and ever since it has been itching like crazy. And I can’t itch it. But it itches so bad…

Anyway, enough of that nonsense. Who the hell cares, right? So, I went to CitySearch today to post a positive comment for the place where I got my tattoo, Red Rocket Tattoo. I did so and then the site automatically, without asking me, pops up some thing saying that they were importing my review into Facebook. Um, no. That was, officially, the last time I ever used CitySearch. If they want to try sneaky shit like that, they better find someone else to visit their site. Plus, they have like the slowest servers in the world and make you answer a ridiculous amount of questions just to post a review. I don’t really know why I dealt with them at all before. Anyway, from now on, I’m using Google Maps for local search (until something better comes along). By the way, if you know of a better local search, let me know.

Wow, that was a little rant on a soap box. It may have something to do with the fact that I’m reading a book about web marketing and it talks about how much importance bloggers have in swaying consumer opinion. I don’t think I really fall into that category, though, because there aren’t too many people reading this blog.

And why not? Well, I’ve been thinking about that too. The most popular blogs are those that focus on a specific topic. If I decided to publish a web design blog or a running blog or a beer blog (why not?) it would get a better response than this general/personal/nonsensical blog that I have up now. Then again, that whole writing for an audience thing seems to take a lot of fun out of writing. I mean, yeah Web 2.0 gives more of a voice to individuals but, really, most people are ignored as always. If you want to be popular, you have to really make being popular your goal and strive for it. That’s not how I want to spend my free time. I see self-promotion as work. When I’m out browsing the internet commenting on blogs, posting links to myself, etc. I consider that work. It’s not fun. This blog, however, I consider a recreation. I’m writing this for, as Austin Powers would say, “shits and giggles.” Sure, I drop a link in to my projects here and there, but overall, this is just a cathartic release. If you read my first post on this thing you’d know that I’m really not writing for anyone other than myself.

Moving on. So, last time I talked to you (by you, I mean the infinite abyss known as the blogosphere) I was employed. Now, I’m not. Some would call me self-employed. But, really, that’s just a fancy name for unemployed. I hope you laughed at that. But, the truth is, I’m not as self-employed as I had hoped to be. This whole advertising and getting clients thing sucks. I just want to write awesome code and design kick-ass sites. I don’t want to have to convince people that they should be paying me to do so. I have ad campaigns running on Google AdWords and Microsoft adCenter, plus I’ve been trolling the ads on Craigslist and Kijiji, but I’m turning up a whole lotta nothin’. Thank god, my biggest client, Precision Prospects, has plenty of work for me and has been able to bump up my hours a bit because, to be honest with you, there’s not a lot else coming in right now.

And, now a word from our advertisers: (a.k.a. me) If you need web design work or know someone who does, please visit my NYC Web Design company’s website and consider us for the job. We do good work for a fair price.

The good news is that all this free time has allowed me to catch up on a lot of projects that I had in my queue. One of the coolest is the running charts I did on my site East Coast Runners (which has finally moved up to #2 in Google’s rankings for “east coast runners” and #1 with the quotes). I made them from scratch using the PHP GD image class. For those of you who have no idea what I just said, don’t worry, it was pretty nerdy. Basically, I was just saying that I wrote the code to draw the pictures by hand. Or, as some would call it, I re-invented the wheel again.

Truly, though, I’ve been better about not re-inventing wheels lately. I just upload 6 videos to YouTube today. I used to host them on my site, but I don’t have the ability to offer streaming video and frankly, I’m not willing to spend the time or money necessary to do so. So, instead of doing it myself, I just moved them to YouTube. Plus, they’ll probably get more attention out there than they would have on my lonely little site.

Other recent projects include the reorganization of plant ink (more improvements are coming soon) and the addition of Google search to the Five Fish List. Check them out if you get a chance.

Well, I have to be at “work” at 9:30 tomorrow so I should probably call it quits for tonight. I hope you’ve enjoyed my nonsense. If so, feel free to comment — I still haven’t gotten any comments on this thing. And, even if you didn’t enjoy it, feel free to comment and let me know how I can make this better. ‘night.

p.s. This had nothing to do with strippers. That sucks if that’s the only reason that you read this. It seems as though you have wasted your time.