A Little Button Buck

Sean and the little buck

Sean McClellan has been coming over some afternoons to hunt. We have way too many deer in the back yard. Sean was on the phone and saw this deer out the window. He ran to his car, grabbed the rifle, and within just a few minutes had this little guy. It's small, but the meat should be really tender!

Income and Other Un-Quality Topics

The problem with separating "My Quality Day" from this blog is that it will only tend to make me bi-polar, Jekyl and Hyde, skitzo.

Nevertheless this is the place for the stuff that I don't think the whole world needs to see. A lot of you have asked how my quest for income is coming. In October, I really got a gift from God... a temporary full-time job. I worked about 3 1/2 weeks at $10 an hour, so that has given me a small cushion back from the edge of sheer panic. Of course, the car insurance is due, and they finally got my car to stop coughing, so that has to be paid for... so I'm scrambling again to make the coming month's bills.

Shared Reviews is temporarily in an income holding pattern. They are experiencing the realities of being an internet startup. But instead of going belly up they are working to get people paid off, and then they will let us earn more new dollars again. So... nothing there right now, but I need to stay active and ready to pounce when the money starts to flow again.

Associated Content continues to be an option; income depends on views. I need to get a LOT more articles on there if I want to make much. Currently getting about $4 a month from them.

The column in the Ludington Daily News continues to give me $20 a month.

I have another source of small writing assignments that are worth about $10 each. They come sporadically.

I have found a site called Textbroker that does just what the name implies. They match clients who want stuff written with people who can write. I just started there 10 days ago and have made $70. It's really just a job... they give you a topic, a number of words, keywords (it's writing for the web), and you write. But that's good... there is no reason for me to feel creatively possessive about any of it.

I'm trying really hard to make Get Off The Couch News, and Get Off The Couch pay for themselves better. The first one needs lots more readers, since income there depends on clicks. The second needs for me to sell ads... several didn't renew... bad economy and all.

And I got one new website job that should pay in Dec. That will help!

The house is a total wreck... what else is new. Thanks for stopping by, but I don't blame you if you like My Quality Day better! I do too.

Acobox.com review

Acobox.com is an image hosting site which boasts that it is extremely easy for bloggers to use. Instead of downloading, resizing and uploading an image, you simply choose the one you want from acobox and with one click it can be added to your blog, with appropriate sizing.

However, if you want to use your own pictures, acobox is frustrating. All pictures submitted must be approved. Pictures submitted may take 2 or more days for approval. They only want high quality pictures, so it's not useful to host family shots. Photos must be submitted with the longest side 500 pixels and no more than 100KB, so a picture with any detail must be cropped to a non-standard aspect ratio.

Most seriously of all, any pictures submitted are no longer your own property. You can select one of four levels from public domain– where the photographer no longer has any control of the picture, to display only– where a user may only display the picture with no changes. But in all cases, you grant to Acobox the irrevocable, but non-exclusive, perpetual rights to your photos. These are transferable and sub-licensable without paying you, for any use, public, commercial or not. You will not receive any monetary compensation, and photos may be altered or re-formatted.

What they advertise most is that you can insert images on your blog with one click. This is close to true. You just select the picture and size, left or right alignment, and with just using Control+C and Control+V you can copy the code and paste it into your own blog. Of course many blogs support HTML templates so that you only have to copy the image location almost as easily.

In addition, the number of pictures available at acobox is extremely limited at the present time.

The Following is a Paid Announcement

As part of a writing job that I get paid for, the next entry in this blog will be a review of a photo hosting site. We have to put a review of the site in a blog. So if you are actually following this blog, don't wonder too much why I suddenly seem to pause for a commercial message! I've been doing quite a lot of on-line writing. It doesn't work out to very much money per hour, but every little bit helps.

I'm ba...a...a...ck

seed pod of the Liriodendron tulipifera

Took a short hike today on the Orchard Beach State Park Nature Trail. Passed a tulip tree covered with seed pods. I've never seen one before that was completely bare with all the little upraised bells of the pods. Quite extraordinary.

I haven't been here much lately, because I've been putting entries that are less personal on another blog called My Quality Day. This blog will still have entries that may be more personal for close friends.

Too sleepy right now to add much more. I'll try to do some catch-up here soon.