Dance like no one's watching

Ok… cheapo me has been looking for ways to raise the viewership of my blog ever since it got dropped from search engines thanks to those (damn) spam hackers.  I found the Nuffnang communnity site, innit.nuffnang.com where you can post an excerpt of your blog post and people can click on it to read!  Of course, once they click on it, this registers a "unique visitor" to your site and that helps in getting Nuffnang to serve ads to the blog.  (I think a blog needs to have min. 20  unique readers a day before ads are served).

Anyway, I was going through some of my old posts to see what would be funny / interesting for people to read.  And I think of all the posts I’ve ever written, my favourite is "Turf Wars".  Heh.  Don’t ask me where I got the crazy idea from to use my bunnies to tell a story.  😛

Here’s the link if you haven’t read it yet… this story is actually about the battle my real estate team had with a team that was brought in to challenge us at a condo we were selling… we won of course.  😛

https://uptowngal.org/blog/index.php/2006/04/14/turf-wars/

and the continuation…

https://uptowngal.org/blog/index.php/2006/04/25/episode-ii-the-first-battle/

When I was working at the phone-in helpdesk of a local ISP, I used to say I would one day publish a book titled "101 Stupid Users".  That could be module 101 for stupid users, or a compilation of 101 stories on stupid users… of which after they read the book, they wouldn’t be so stupid anymore.

Anyway, before I start on my "stupid users" story, let me tell you a story I heard from my colleague yesterday.  Her brother-in-law (BIL) is from the Jurassic ages.  He hates going to the bank so whenever he needs to get cash, what he would do is ring his provision store and order like loads of groceries and he’ll tell the provision shop owner, "Bring $2000 cash when you come".  So this way, the BIL gets his cash, together with his goods.

Recently, my colleague met the BIL again at some family gathering.  Very excitedly, the BIL said to her, "Tell you something.  If you ever want to get cash these day, you can just go to an ATM you know!  It’s so convenient!".

Bursting out laughing, my colleague said, "Oh my gosh!  Which age are you from?".

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P.S. Booze Queen – the colleague in question is your boss.  Hahahahaha.

Woke up early (i.e. while it was still a.m.) today ‘cos I thought I could help Iceman collect his $50 prize from the National Library.  Unfortunately, they’re closed on Saturdays.  Slackers.  Decided to watch TV… sigh.  Nothing good on either.  Channel surfed and paused at Kids Central.  Don’t know what crappy cartoon was being shown.  Bleah.  Whatever happened to good old cartoons like Smurfs, Carebears, Walt Disney, Pink Panther, Popeye, etc??  All the cartoons nowadays are like violent, weak plot and badly drawn.  Yucks.  No wonder kids these days are growing up weird too.  *Yawn*.  Maybe I should go back to bed.

Been using WP 2.6.2 the past few days to great satisfaction.  The bug on the Admin Panel Comments section got resolved too.  My pretty permalink isn’t quite cosmetically perfect but that’s another issue all together.  Since the index.php workaround works, I’m not very bothered.

Anyway, for those who weren’t aware, everytime you do an upgrade, you should compare your existing wp-config.php file with the new installation file which is named wp-config-sample.php.  Either transfer your settings to the sample-file and rename it to wp-config.php or copy the new statements from the sample file into your current file.  Don’t do a simple overwrite else your customised settings will be gone!!  It’s important to compare the statements because different versions of WP may have different authentication keys / secret keys that help harden your blog again spam attackers!

Peanut is a yoga master.

She says with the correct breathing technique, this half-out-of-the-cage position is very comfortable.

Coffee thinks black and white photos work just fine.

Pinky doesn’t really like the idea but he’s a camwhore anyway.

Horlicks looks regal – with colour or otherwise.

Took some photos of the bunnies the other day… unfortunately, the green plastic shelter thingy that was installed to provide shade to the bunnies caused my pics to be cast with a horrible green light!  :(  Tried to use Adobe Photoshop to rectify but couldn’t get the colour right.  I’m not good with Photoshop.  Sigh.  Go I need to confess… these photos are in black and white not ‘cos I was trying to be arty farty… but ‘cos the colour failed me.

Did a very quick WP upgrade to version 2.6.2… painless and so far so good.

Heard today that I may not be going for our regional product class conference after all.  Seems like senior management is not happy with the fact that even though my department has almost hit our very high budget for the year, the income we earned is considered inferior because it’s mainly "non-renewable" income.

We have 2 types of income class – renewable and non-renewable.  Renewable income is brokerage earned from the placement of policies that are renewable.  This would be things like your property insurance, fire insurance, liability insurance, etc.  As long as the building stands, you need to insure it. 

Non-renewable income is generated from "once off" policies, which "unfortunately" forms the bulk of the policies I place.  The reason is because my product line covers insurance for offshore loans into emerging markets.  Thus, just as loans are not renewable (you won’t ask to renew a loan after you’ve finished paying off the instalments right?), the insurance that cover these loans are also non-renewable! 

Senior management has a strong preference for renewable income as they as it as being stable earnings for the company.  I beg to differ.  If one always relies on renewable income, it also means that you’re extremely reliant on your existing portfolio of client.  Piss the client off and you lose a % of your business.  Another broker pleases the client more, you’re screwed too.  On the other hand, if you have the ability to bring in an on-going stream of new business (albeit non-renewable), your focus and strength is then expanding the portfolio of clients.  Isn’t this better than clinging onto your existing clients and praying hard that they don’t defect?

The saddest part about the whole thing is that it shows that senior management doesn’t understand my product line.  Because if you had even a rudimentary grasp of the nature of the product line, then you would also understand why it’s not logical to have renewable income.  The fact that my department probably has the highest brokerage earned per employee basis in the specialty division (and possible the entire company) should count for something.  Don’t look down on my non-renewable dollar.

oldest cousin on my mom’s side’s wedding tonight.  i’m so proud of myself.  makeup went on perfectly.  no crooked eyeliner, no smudged mascara, eyeshadow looks ok.  all in 15min.  hehehe.  very, very rare.

i’m feeling a little sneezy though.. think lack of sleep.  think i better go take a clarinase before i leave… don’t want to be a sneezing receptionist.  heh.

I linked from my friend’s blog to a blog she reads regularly.  The post I was directed to was about the blog author’s separation from her husband.  Sad stuff.  But more than sad, I was astounded when I saw a photo of her soon-to-be-ex husband – he’s my client.

Kind of freaky how the Internet makes our lives a lot more public than what we think sometimes.

Just a log so I remember what I’ve done…

5 Sep 08 – Blog got hacked by those damn spam injection bots again

6 Sep 08 – I realise the hack and also found out that the Secret Key for WP 2.5 & WP 2.6 is different.  (Mine wasn’t updated after the upgrade).

7 Sep 08 – Finally manage to get the new Secret Key to work (something wrong with my coding on previous attempt).

7 Sep 08 night – Realised I couldn’t log into my Admin Panel.  Tried everything suggested in the forums – changing mysql password, resetting Admin Panel login pwd, etc.  I even went backwards and loaded my blog snapshot as of 24 Aug but still caught in endless wp-login.php loop.  Gave up, posted on forum asking for help.

8 Sep 08 – Another WP user said what worked for him was disabling all plug-ins one by one… different plugins were the cause of the problem for different users.  Tried & worked!  My culprit plugin was the WP Automatic Upgrade plugin.

Lesson learnt?  Not all blog problems can be solved in 1 day… and the forums are a GREAT help. 

I wasn’t as frustrated this time as I was the last… heh… but I do note that I need to learn to be patient… that’s something I didn’t inherit from my dad unfortunately.  He’s the most patient trouble-shooter I’ve seen.  😛