Wednesday, March 29, 2017

Nicole's Bird-Watching Tip


It is much to my chagrin that negative feedback often counts for a lot more than the positive to me, and far too frequently, I feel rather apologetic when approaching someone about [SiteHoundSniffs]—as if I am doing something wrong.

Adding all the more to my shame is listening a little too intently to the whispers in my ear about it being quite obvious that our Heavenly Father is not supporting me in my endeavors concerning developing the new site directory.  “After all, would not the site have gone viral by now if He was?”

Yeah, I know where those whispers are coming from, but it still hits home a little too hard for my comfort.  Long after I have borne too much in my own very personal opinion, our Heavenly Father eases my burden in a myriad of ways, and this time was extraordinarily special to me.  For He arranged for the following email to be sent way.

Hello,

My name is Jessica Lowe, I am a middle school science teacher in Colorado. My class is working on a project I have assigned that aims to get them outdoors and identifying wildlife and learning about what’s in our backyards and surrounding areas! We really enjoyed the birding and other wildlife resources and information on
 your page https://sitehoundsniffs.com/birdingwildlife-additional-text-links/.  Several of my students are choosing to create a plan to identify and observe birds for their project. I thought this would be an excellent idea to encourage hands on learning and exploring the nature and science that is all around us!

One of my students who is working on bird identification, Nicole, found this article
http://www.homeadvisor.com/r/birdwatching-guide/ about bird watching. It gives a lot of great advice for beginners and I wanted to share it with you so you could add it to your resources for others, especially those who are interested in getting into birding as a hobby or kids who are doing similar projects.

Thanks again for the great information and help with my students project! Please let me know if you decide to add the article Nicole found to your resources, I would be very excited to show her and the class that we were able to contribute. Have a great day!

Best Wishes,

Jessica Lowe

WOW!!!!!!!!!

I am not ashamed to disclose that I choked-up with emotion while I was reading that email to Arlynda.  For it completely blew out of the water all of those negative comments and emails sent my way during days past.  Furthermore, it adds another layer of armor around my heart for when I run across another [proper English lady] and much, much worse.

No, I am not able to add Nicole’s bird-watching link to SiteHoundSniffs, but that does not take anything away from what a helpful article it is, nor how astute Nicole is.  Hey, she reminds me of what a wonderful kid I used to be!

Oh how I wish there were many, many more teachers like Ms. Lowe.  At least we can be confident of the children she teaches having a distinct advantage over others.  For practical application of what is in school textbooks is truly invaluable.  Hey, it was not until after I had been on the job at a machine shop for several weeks manually laying out the drilling pattern for [combine] wheel-flanges that it came to me that I was actually using trigonometry, which I had taken a class in during high school a few years before.  Ms. Lowe’s students are learning such lessons before having to fight for survival in the real world (naturally-speaking, of course).   

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Wednesday, March 22, 2017

Nick V's Hedge, Site Badges/buttons and Nasty Bugs


If you are wondering about the new background to [SiteHoundSniffs], it is rows of [Nick V’s Hedge].  The rest of this mess is an attempt to connect the dots.

I have been fairly open about Grayson not being all that impressed with the appearance of our site directory.  Quite obviously, my best efforts have not been making his tail wag.  So, it especially stung when I received a reply to an email I had sent to a particularly-proper English lady about displaying her linked site badge/button.  She started off with saying that I really did not need to ask for permission, and then she went on about the fact that she would not normally want a link to her site on such a woefully outdated and homely site as SiteHoundSniffs.com.  To be perfectly honest about it, I was a little miffed and removed all traces of her site from our site directory.

As I was trying to go asleep a little later, the thought about using a high-definition image of mowed grass (in honor of Reenie, Arlynda’s long-gone love of her life, who needed a patch of grass to go on) crept in.  The first thing I went to do after getting out of bed six hours later was find such an image.  I quickly found a suitable one and made it the new background.  When Grayson saw it, he gave me one of his looks and pranced out of the room to leave me a present in a strategic place (he has never required a patch of grass to go on).

Plan B had to formulated, but my best efforts were getting in the way again.  Miraculously (I am really not joking about that) the solution was already in hand.  For after I read the emailed reply from the particularly-proper English lady and took action, I sent an email to Nick V about displaying the linked badge/button to his [Floral Friday Fotos] site and asking permission to display the linked headers for his [Melbourne Fresh Daily], [NixPages] and [NixPixMix] sites.  In his reply, he suggested that I might want to also include his [My Desktop Daily].  While going through this site to determine which categories it should be listed, I came upon his high-definition photograph of a hedge, and Grayson did his [Whirling Dervish] dance (he is always lurking about) to signify his delight.  For Yorkies feel right at home around hedgerows.
   
Linked site badges/buttons?  It was brought to my attention that I had been ignoring the fact that site owners with a linked badge/button wanted backlinks to bolster their search engine rankings, and displaying them avoided having to always obtain permission first before displaying a linked site header.  This made me literally grunt, “Duh,” to myself.  For I had already been clued in on the absolute truth of the matter truly being that most could not care less about whether or not their linked headers were displayed on SiteHoundSniffs, which included not caring enough to actually give permission.  So, site owners with a linked badge/button are sent an email informing them of what I have done and given the option to have their site removed.

If you are wondering about backlinks bolstering search engine rankings, there are several things that go into getting to the top of the results list when you search for something with Google, Bing, Yahoo and the other search engines.  One of them is the amount of quality backlinks a site has, and according to the research I have done, SiteHoundSniffs is a quality backlink site.  What determines a quality backlink is whether your link seems to belong on a site, such as links to other pet sites on a pet site, and since SiteHoundSniffs is a site directory, links to all legitimate sites most definitely belong.

Another thing that was recently brought to my attention is that I have been lax at making as sure as possible that a site is safe.  For a little notification thingy shows up on our Google Chrome address bar when an unauthorized script or Adobe Flash Player tries to download something onto our computer.  Our BitDefender anti-virus program also gives a notification when something funky is going on, and the image below is a screenshot of this.


In all fairness, one has to be looking for these notifications, and I have been focusing on other things.  Therefore, I am now going back through all of the sites listed to see how many I may have missed for the benefit of visitors with lesser anti-virus protection.  I am sure that there are not many, but it only takes one nasty bug getting through to make for a really bad day.  Yeah, most of the nasty bugs out there these days only seek to steal your information—not shut down your computer, but those are the kind that can stay on a computer for a long time before being detected and removed.  When you have one, you can change your passwords to sensitive sites all you want and the bad guys will still know what your passwords are.  Sigh.

P.S.: Nick V's hedge proved to be a little too dark to make for reading ease of the text to the [Home] and [Littermates] pages.  So, a high-definition image  of a New Zealand cloud formation from [WallpaperCave] now serves as the site's background image.  I hope you like it.

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Tuesday, March 7, 2017

Littermates, Bi-Petuals and Kidney Failure


[Littermates] is a new page added to SiteHoundSniffs.com, which can be accessed through the link on the left of the footer.  Contained on it is a message about the dream being to eventually attract advertisers and share 90% of the revenue with those who have allowed their site header(s) to be displayed and that they are considered to be littermates by Grayson.  It also addresses that we have decided to invite into the litter those without sites, who will say something (preferably good) here and there throughout cyberspace about SiteHoundSniffs.com and the great sites listed in the directory.  To be clear, they will receive an equal share of the advertising revenue (if there ever is any) and I posted about it on [my Facebook page].  Be assured that it was made clear that we do not want any spamming going on.

Speaking of spamming, I was attacked again by a cranky old man, who considers my requests for someone to give permission to display their header on SiteHoundSniffs left in a comment on their site to be spam.  Oh no, he did not do so directly.  He left a comment after mine informing the site owner that he had already ran me off from his site.  I then replied directly to him about there being a difference between an unsolicited ad and a sincere request made for the benefit of all involved.  He did not respond, and the owner of the site deleted all of our comments.  No, she has not given permission via email, either.  In order to avoid this very unpleasant situation in the future, I will endeavor to make the requests via email when an address can be found.


I also ran into some trouble after releasing an earlier version of that new video ad.  For the owner of one of the co-starring sites took exception to the wording and that I had not received prior permission to include her site.  Not only did she want the ad pulled, she wanted her site completely removed from SiteHoundSniffs.  So I had to produce the current version (and replace the old one with it on YouTube, Facebook and Google+) and remove her site from the directory.  I understand where she is coming from, but I certainly do not agree with it.  For in my mind, no one publishes a blog or website without wanting people to see what they have to offer, and they should want all of the free promotion they can get.  Yeah, it would be wrong for me to use their property in a bad way, but is it really so wrong that some love both dogs and cats?  Now, I consider even a public Facebook page or something like it different, but it utterly baffles me when I run across someone who acts like I am some sort of Peeping Tom Provocateur for daring to offer my help with others finding their site.  Therefore, I will endeavor to obtain prior permission for also including a site in future video ads, and I was given a way to do so.  For videos can be uploaded to SiteHoundSniffs, and I will keep the page private until it looks like the coast is clear by sending a link to it to the owners and asking for them to grant permission in a timely manner (within two weeks) before I go ahead and unleash the beast upon cyberspace.  [Video Ads] contains links to all of the SiteHoundSniffs video ads in order of release, and it can be accessed through the link next to Littermates on the Footer.

Before I move on to a more personal matter, Littermates contains the HTML codes for the new SiteHoundSniffs.com badge (in three sizes) that site owners can add to their sidebars.  Be assured that it does not include a tracking code.  In fact, there is no way for SiteHoundSniffs to affect a listed site other than to help attract more traffic to it.  Grayson has made me learn some new stuff about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and being listed on SiteHoundSniffs is most definitely NOT a bad backlink.  To save you the trip over, the badges and their corresponding codea are as follows:

<center><a href="https://sitehoundsniffs.com/"><img border="0" src="https://sitehoundsniffs.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/SHS100.jpg"/></a></center>

<center><a href="https://sitehoundsniffs.com/"><img border="0" src="https://sitehoundsniffs.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/SHS150.jpg"/></a></center>

<center><a href="https://sitehoundsniffs.com/"><img border="0" src="https://sitehoundsniffs.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/SHS200.jpg"/></a></center>


In any event, my primary care doctor thinks that I may not be around much longer to bother people, anyway.  For the last two blood tests show that my kidneys are failing.  It is not to the point of requiring dialysis to remain alive yet, but that does not matter.  For I ain’t doing dialysis because of how extremely difficult it would be for me to have to go to the hospital 1-2 times a week.  Even though I do have a much, much, much better place to go after my time as a part of this world comes to an end, be assured that I really do not have what would be considered to be a death-wish in the eyes of this world—certainly not to the point of me doing things to hasten my own physical demise.  For suicide is absolutely not allowed for anyone in their right-mind, and refusing to reasonably care for one’s health is suicide.  Of course, it all comes down to what is reasonable, and an ethical ping-pong match for the ages could be waged upon establishing a correct definition in our sight.  Quite honestly, I do not believe that the blood tests were done correctly, and even if the results are accurate, our Heavenly Father can easily fix what is wrong if He wants me to remain incarcerated in this prison of world for a while longer.  Be assured that Arlynda fully understands, and she even asked a doctor if it would be a painful death, He said that a person would simply go to sleep, fall into a coma and quickly expire without being hooked up to a life-support machine.  No, it cannot go that easily for me.  Sigh.

P.S.: A tornado passed over the top of the house last night.  I am not aware of any serious damage being done, but our neighborhood lost electricity for around three hours.  The lights came back on at 1:45 a.m. (Central) and despite despising the management, we are most blessed with utility workers willing to go above and beyond to serve the public.

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