From Debt To Dollar$

Sunday, October 12, 2014

It Hasn't Been A Good Year

Well, I've got good news and bad news. Which do you want first?
I'm going to go with the bad news, because it came first chonologically and also so I can end on a positive note.
This, for the most part, hasn't been a good year. I moved out of my son's apartment and into a house with an alleged friend of mine who used my name to scam people out of money and started a paypal account in my name and screwed up my bank account by passing bad checks to me. The result is that I can no longer have a bank account and can only cash my paycheck at check cashing stores (like Cashland, that charge high rates on check cashing.) I finally moved away from there thanks to an intervention from friends and family. I moved into a homeless shelter and stayed there until July 4th. Then I stayed with a friend for about 2 weeks until I finally had some good news.
A few days before I moved out of the homeless shelter, I finally got a temporary job with the Salvation Army. They were doing a Christmas in July donation drive and I was ringing the bell for them 3 days a week (Thurs,Fri,Sat) for the month of July and a few days in August. While working for Salvation Army, I got a call from an apartment complex and got an apartment with subsidized rent (which means that most of my rent is paid by the government.) I also currently receive food stamps and have medical coverage, which I didn't have before going to the homeless shelter. And I also have a part time job now and I spend weekends with my kids.
So my needs are met now, but my dreams and desires are still unfulfilled. I am not dating anyone and not really interested in dating anyone, but it still would be nice to not be alone all the time. I'm trying to do things to satisfy myself creatively, such as playing music or drawing or creating a TV show, but none of these things are happening as well as I would like. I am trying to start a band, but planned rehearsals have so far not happened. I am trying to create an internet TV series called White Trash Heroes, but we have yet to film any usable footage. I have several unfinished pictures that I have started and I have a tattoo machine that sits in a tacklebox collecting dust.
But, now that I am working, the portion of my rent that I pay is increasing, so I need to find additional sources of unreported income. In the past I have done things that may not have exactly been legal and I may have to do them again. I am not going to repeat mistakes from my past and spend all of my available time and energy on things that don't produce results. I have yet to actually see any money from any of my online stores (although we actually made a few bucks, it is far below amazon.com's payment threshold) or online dating sites.
But overall, I guess the good outweighs the bad for now. I have my own place and my future ex-wife rarely calls or comes around. And I'm a grandfather now.

Friday, December 6, 2013

Elf on a Shelf is an NSA spy device

Top secret documents leaked by former contractor Edward Let-It-Snowden reveal a previously unknown NSA program code-named SANTA (Securing America's Noel Toy Allotment). A key component of the SANTA program is the use of hidden recording and transmitting devices in Elf on the Shelf dolls. The Elf on the Shelf dolls allow the NSA to secretly monitor citizens from inside their own homes.

Via the SANTA program the NSA has been able to collect highly personal data about millions of America's children, including but not limited to

1] When they are sleeping

2] When they are awake

3] Whether they've been bad or good

Additionally, the children are asked to name each Elf on the Shelf, which serves as a subversive psychological exam. Although the details of the NSA's criteria are not fully known, examples in the leaked documents indicate that naming an Elf on the Shelf "Bob" or "George Washington" or "Eagle" results in a rating of "nice." Naming an Elf on the Shelf "Osama" or "Saddam" or "Death to America" will result in a household being flagged as "naughty" likely leading to a drone strike.

Since the program has become public many have criticized SANTA's spying as a violation of civil liberties, an example of unlawful monitoring, and a gross abuse of power. Others, however, feel the scope of the SANTA program is too limited.

"The biggest weakness of SANTA is that it only monitors families who celebrate Christmas," said one Republican lawmaker. "It turns out a lot of people don't even celebrate Christmas. At all. Can you imagine? Those are the people we should be watching."

The best way to avoid being monitored is to boycott the Elf on the Shelf product. If, however, you already have an Elf on the Shelf in your home you can wrap it in aluminum foil to prevent it from transmitting data to SANTA.

Monday, November 4, 2013

Comic Book Geek

In addition to the work I've been doing on my online stores, all the advertising, learning new songs on guitar, writting episodes of White Trash Heroes, making WTH shirts, and everything else I've got going on, I've been slowly making my way through watching all 10 seasons of Smallville. Honestly, I wasn't a fan of the series when it first came out. It focused too much on the romance lives of the characters and the "Super" of Superman seemed to be in short supply. But later episodes had a better balance of action and romance. So several months ago I started watching the series from the beginning.

Well, tonight I watched my favorite episode "Absolute Justice". I have never seen this episode before, but I had a pretty good idea that I was going to like it. It was a 2 part episode that introduced the Justice Society of America to the Smallville universe. Most characters brought to Smallville are brought to life with a minimum amount of spandex ( Green Arrow being the first character to really have a costume ) but when doing the JSA, you just can't avoid it. Originally planned as one episode, producers decided to expand the story to 2 parts because of the amount of new costume designs that would have to be made, particularly in the case of Hawkman. Preproduction and costume design was started early in the season, much further in advance than usual.

The episode focused mainly on Hawkman, Dr Fate, and Stargirl, but also featured Star-Spangled Kid and Sandman, and in flashback sequences uncostumed versions of the golden age Green Lantern and Flash, Wildcat, and more. There are tons of small details in the set background and I'm sure I missed some things watching for the first time. The Luthor mansion set was disassembled and used for the JSA headquarters, but you would never know to look at it.

Saturday, November 2, 2013

Learning Is Fun !!!

I'm setting today aside to work on my learnin' and stuff. I'm looking at videos on youtube and learning how to play a few songs, like "Hair of the Dog" by Nazareth, "Paranoid" by Black Sabbath, "Sunshine of Your Love" by Cream, "Touch Too Much" & "Sin City" by AC/DC, and more. The nice thing about youtube is that there are so many videos on there that you can find some guitar player that has uploaded a lesson video (or "how to play..." video) for most any popular song. Unfortunately, I don't always go for what's popular. 2 songs in particular that I am trying to learn --"Stick It In" by Broken Teeth (featuring Jason MacMaster former lead singer of Dangerous Toys) and "Old No. 7" by Big C**k -- don't have videos teaching how to play them. They do, however, have live performances of those songs uploaded. It's a little more difficult trying to learn from a live video, but at least there are visual clues that at least narrow things down for me.

The reason that I'm trying to learn these songs, and more, is that I'm trying to put together some kind of a music project. Not nessessarily a full band, just 2 guitarists each taking their turn singing stripped down versions of great songs, and throwing a couple of original tunes in too. It's less of a headache to have to deal with just one other person instead of a full band. Fewer egos make my life easier, and I have enough of an ego for a few people anyway.

I'm also trying to get my debut cd finished. I've done a few songs here and there, and I've done some recording on my own, but I'm looking to finish enough songs for a full length cd in the next few months. Because, like so many people like to keep telling me, I ain't getting any younger. I also may be starting my own online music label.

The only thing that was done this week for my internet tv series is that we designed and printed our first White Trash Heroes T-Shirts.

We will have a wide variety of choices for the shirts, such as the 3 to the right here --->

We also have a censored version of the Xmas shirt, in case you want to wear it to church or something.

Well, I guess that's about it for now.

I've got to go work on the music blog for a little while before I get back to playing some more guitar.

See ya soon.

Monday, October 28, 2013

More Issues Than Tissues

Last night I tried to get quite a bit accomplished, but my internet connection was being very problematic.

I was working on blogs for my "Between A Rock And A Hard Place" blog, but I was unable to get anything to post properly. I did however back up all my work on microsoft word 2007. Now I just have to go in, edit the material for about 6 or 7 posts and enter all the links so that people can purchase the music that I'm talking about in the blog posts.

I thought that I would've given myself a tattoo by now, but I haven't done it yet.

I ordered some smaller shading needles and I hope that I can find someone to teach me shading this week.

If not, I'm going to do the outline and have a professional tattooist do the shading/coloring.

And on an entirely personal level, someone very special to me has come back into my life via facebook. A lot of things have changed since we last spoke and I don't know what the future has in store. One thing that hasn't changed is that I still have very strong feelings for this person and I probably always will.

(I am not posting her name out of respect for her privacy.)

Tonorrow is another busy day and I'm looking forward to it.

Hope I can catch the elevator.

Friday, October 25, 2013

Advertising Headaches.

In trying to keep my businesses seperate in my own mind, I use several email accounts. Most of these accounts are thru Google's gmail. I tried to learn as much as I could before signing up for all these things, but not knowing what I would need to know beforehand, I missed a couple of pieces of information that could've made my life a lot easier.

The area of problem involves Google's adSense. I have ab adSense account associated with gmail address (A) but not with account (B). I host blogs with both of these accounts and wanted to place adSense ads on the newer blogs. I thought I would need to sign up for another adSense account using (B), but it turns out that I could just add them to the adSense account associated with (A). Then it just gets too confusing to explain. I am having trouble linking the accounts because (B) is associated with a pending account and I can't find a way to directly contact the wonderful folks at Google to try to deactivate the pending account.

And then an adSense ad showed up on one of my sites from account (B). Not all of the accounts I put in, only one ad always on the same page. Maybe the rest will show up later. I'm taking a break from it now and I'll see what it looks like later.

I used up a ton of advertising credits on traffic exchange and safelist sites, so I'm surfing ads today to earn more credits. It's pretty boring but at least I can sit here and listen to music while I'm doing it.

Well, back to work.

Wednesday, October 23, 2013

Another Amazon Affiliate Store

I've been pretty busy today working on a new online store.

Not that I'm a master at affiliate marketing, but I have studied a lot of marketing programs and I decided to use what I learned. Studies show that if you have too many products on your site people become overwhelmed. By developing smaller sites catering to a certain audience, I can capture that market. And I can build 100 online stores, each with its own niche.

We are still keeping our main site, where over 6 million items are available for purchase, but I have started a new site today. Doing a online store dedicated to music, specifically hard rock and heavy metal (and classic rock) is a no-brainer given my knowledge and love of music.

I started with a long blog about a band I've been listening to since the 70s, KISS. I have seen KISS almost 20 times in concert over the years, and I've even taken my 3 children to see KISS.

Over the next couple of weeks I will be developing more online niche stores, so if you have a niche market you would like me to address feel free to drop me a line. I'm certain I will be doing an Electronics online store and possibly a site selling musical instruments (if I can sell quality name brand instruments.) I may even talk my son into doing a store selling roofing and construction material and tools.