Tuesday, November 30, 2010

I have the greatest leaf blower: Stihl BR 500 low-noise backpack blower

best backpack leaf blowerI never never thought I would EVER have a leaf-blower because I was a raking snob. However, now that I'm in my 50s the prospect of raking a whole lot of grass is just depressing and it makes my wrists hurt. So I broke down and bought a low-noise backpack blower from Stihl and I just love it. I wrote about why I have gone over to the dark side and gotten addicted to this wonderful lawn tool: here's my review of the Stihl low-noise backpack blower.

It would make somebody a great Christmas present!

Monday, November 15, 2010

My New "Sponsor A Child" Charity


Several years ago I had, what I consider to be, a disappointing experience with a "Sponsor a Child" Charity. Soon after agreeing to sponsor a child with them, I discovered that the CEO of the charity was making nearly half a million dollars a year. Now while many people are fine with this, I was devastated. I had signed up to help hungry children not to help executives to live in luxury. However, I felt that I had made a commitment to the child and decided to continue. Some years later, my sponsored child made a decision to leave the program. I immediately stopped and began a search for a sponsor a child organization which worked in a way that I was comfortable with.

This time, I did my research before chosing a charity to sponsor a child.

I discovered a charity called the Nepal Youth Foundation. The Nepal Youth Foundation was founded by an amazing woman named Olga Murray. Olga is so renowned for her work in Nepal that in 2001 she was a recipient of Dalai Lama's "Unsung Heroes of Compassion Award". Olga and her work with the NYF have also been featured on Oprah Winfrey. Olga lives part time in Nepal and to some she is known as, the "Mother Theresa of Nepal". Unlike the head of my previous charity, Olga does not take a penny from the Charity. In fact, Olga donates not only most of her life, but also much of her personal wealth to the charity. NYF is rated a "four star" charity, the highest rating possible, by Charity Navigator, one of the most important Charity Review organizations in the USA.

I knew quickly that the Nepal Youth Foundation was for me. Read more about why I have chosen to sponsor a child with the NYF.

Now I am working on getting the NYF to become a Squidoo Charity so I can donate my lens earnings to them....one step at a time.

Saturday, November 6, 2010

The Problem With Snipsly

I am always on the look out for simple ways of giving my websites and lenses "DoFollow" links. So, I like sites like SheToldMe and Snipsly. There are very minimal requirements and in a few seconds you can easily give work a link. You even can give these sites your adsense code and earn some money. In theory that is.

My first post with Snipsly was in August 2010. In total I have 4 posts with Snipsly. My Google statistics show me that since then I have had 8 ad views and have earned NOTHING on my 4 posts. Worse yet, two of my posts are not even indexed by Google. Ok, one of the non-indexed posts is only about two weeks old so there is still a chance. But one of the posts is about 2.5 months old and I doubt it will ever get indexed. This means that my links there are probably worthless.

The good thing is that Snipsly allows editing. So, I have added text to one of the posts and I hope that someday it will get indexed.

That is one of the advantages of giving a link from a blog like this one. Like Smipsly, there are few writing requirements. But you can almost be assured that your blog post will get indexed and thus your link will matter. In fact, I am coming to think that the BEST links you can give your website are from a blog with some PR.

So, becareful on those quick links. They may require little time, but they may be worthless too.