Recently in Administrative Category

I had one of those 24 hour health care appointments last night and today. Unfortunately, no internet was available. This was the first chance I had to get online.

Barring nuclear armageddon or similar disasters, there will be an article tomorrow

I had this morning's article ready at 6:30, but the power went out at about 6:45, before the 7:00 publish time. Sorry for any inconvenience

For those who emailed me that the archive pages were broken, it now appears that I have finally found a workable although not perfect fix, and they are now readable again.

It isn't perfect as the bottom part of one side column gets turned a blue color that isn't according to design, but since there's nothing there....

No, I'm not an HTML wizard. But it appears as if I figured out a workable fix

(This will remain on top through Veteran's Day. Scroll down for daily posts)

I think that one charitable fund raiser per year is both reasonable and an absolute limit, so I have to be very picky as to which one I choose. I could choose the San Diego Zoo, American Red Cross or many other worthy charities.

The one I have chosen is more important than that.

Project VALOUR-IT helps disabled troops who have lost the use of one or both hands in action. It can't replace those hands; what it does is enable them to connect to the internet and use a computer, both of which are becoming ever more essential parts of daily life. They stepped up to the line to defend you, your family, and even the jerk who runs this website, and for the rest of their life they are going to suffer a disability that is becoming more important to all aspects of living a normal life. I believe that helping these people live a life that is as normal as practical is the absolute minimum we can do.

There are NO ADMINISTRATIVE COSTS to this program. Every penny goes to buy these laptops, which the manufacturer sells at cost or even a touch below.

Prevent this shame from happening to us. Please.

There were thirty million English who talked of England's might,
There were twenty broken troopers who lacked a bed for the night.
They had neither food nor money, they had neither service nor trade;
They were only shiftless soldiers, the last of the Light Brigade.

They felt that life was fleeting; they knew not that art was long,
That though they were dying of famine, they lived in deathless song.
They asked for a little money to keep the wolf from the door;
And the thirty million English sent twenty pounds and four!

They laid their heads together that were scarred and lined and grey;
Keen were the Russian sabres, but want was keener than they;
And an old Troop-Sergeant muttered, "Let us go to the man who writes
The things on Balaclava the kiddies at school recites."

They went without bands or colours, a regiment ten-file strong,
To look for the Master-singer who had crowned them all in his song;
And, waiting his servant's order, by the garden gate they stayed,
A desolate little cluster, the last of the Light Brigade.

They strove to stand to attention, to straighten the toil-bowed back;
They drilled on an empty stomach, the loose-knit files fell slack;
With stooping of weary shoulders, in garments tattered and frayed,
They shambled into his presence, the last of the Light Brigade.

The old Troop-Sergeant was spokesman, and "Beggin' your pardon," he said,
"You wrote o' the Light Brigade, sir. Here's all that isn't dead.
An' it's all come true what you wrote, sir, regardin' the mouth of hell;
For we're all of us nigh to the workhouse, an, we thought we'd call an' tell.

"No, thank you, we don't want food, sir; but couldn't you take an' write
A sort of 'to be continued' and 'see next page' o' the fight?
We think that someone has blundered, an' couldn't you tell 'em how?
You wrote we were heroes once, sir. Please, write we are starving now."

The poor little army departed, limping and lean and forlorn.
And the heart of the Master-singer grew hot with "the scorn of scorn."
And he wrote for them wonderful verses that swept the land like flame,
Till the fatted souls of the English were scourged with the thing called Shame.

O thirty million English that babble of England's might,
Behold there are twenty heroes who lack their food to-night;
Our children's children are lisping to "honour the charge they made-"
And we leave to the streets and the workhouse the charge of the Light Brigade!

Rudyard Kipling

Please help if you are in a position to do so

By the way, I almost forgot, but today marks four years since I started this site.

Since then, we've had roughly 3.3 million visits and over 13 million page views.

Thank you all for stopping by

(This will remain on top through Thanksgiving. Scroll Down for newer entries.)

This cause means a lot to me. It seems the absolute minimum I can do for these wonderful people who are essential to this country.

Project Valour IT helps injured service people reconnect with the internet by furnishing voice activated laptops to wounded service folk who have lost the use of one or more limbs. This is critical because it allows them to do things everyone else has come to take for granted while they're going through treatment for their wounds, and afterwards.

These folks stepped up to the line to defend you, me, our friends, family, and even that jerk who runs this website that everyone hates, and it cost them one or more limbs. Seems an awfully small measure of appreciation to help them be able to surf the internet and send email while undergoing treatment and afterwards, because I've yet to meet any of them who really got their hands back.

Please, give what you can if you can. These men and women deserve a lot more than this, but this is what I'm asking you to help with. I know it's rough; I understand if you're not in a position to do so. But please help if you can

(PS the manufacturer sells these laptops at cost or even a bit below. They don't make a penny)

Here's the Soldier's Angels page that tracks the overall progress. (if you have a website, join there!)

Prevent this shame from happening to us. Please.

There were thirty million English who talked of England's might,
There were twenty broken troopers who lacked a bed for the night.
They had neither food nor money, they had neither service nor trade;
They were only shiftless soldiers, the last of the Light Brigade.

They felt that life was fleeting; they knew not that art was long,
That though they were dying of famine, they lived in deathless song.
They asked for a little money to keep the wolf from the door;
And the thirty million English sent twenty pounds and four!

They laid their heads together that were scarred and lined and grey;
Keen were the Russian sabres, but want was keener than they;
And an old Troop-Sergeant muttered, "Let us go to the man who writes
The things on Balaclava the kiddies at school recites."

They went without bands or colours, a regiment ten-file strong,
To look for the Master-singer who had crowned them all in his song;
And, waiting his servant's order, by the garden gate they stayed,
A desolate little cluster, the last of the Light Brigade.

They strove to stand to attention, to straighten the toil-bowed back;
They drilled on an empty stomach, the loose-knit files fell slack;
With stooping of weary shoulders, in garments tattered and frayed,
They shambled into his presence, the last of the Light Brigade.

The old Troop-Sergeant was spokesman, and "Beggin' your pardon," he said,
"You wrote o' the Light Brigade, sir. Here's all that isn't dead.
An' it's all come true what you wrote, sir, regardin' the mouth of hell;
For we're all of us nigh to the workhouse, an, we thought we'd call an' tell.

"No, thank you, we don't want food, sir; but couldn't you take an' write
A sort of 'to be continued' and 'see next page' o' the fight?
We think that someone has blundered, an' couldn't you tell 'em how?
You wrote we were heroes once, sir. Please, write we are starving now."

The poor little army departed, limping and lean and forlorn.
And the heart of the Master-singer grew hot with "the scorn of scorn."
And he wrote for them wonderful verses that swept the land like flame,
Till the fatted souls of the English were scourged with the thing called Shame.

O thirty million English that babble of England's might,
Behold there are twenty heroes who lack their food to-night;
Our children's children are lisping to "honour the charge they made-"
And we leave to the streets and the workhouse the charge of the Light Brigade!

Rudyard Kipling

Please help if you can.

I informed Zillow and their Mortgages Unzipped site that I was withdrawing as a contributor more than 24 hours ago, and that they no longer have my permission or endorsement to use my image, my name, or anything about me upon their site. I gave them a more than reasonable amount of time to remove my name from their site.

In my opinion, their content and lack of control of content and lack of policing the accuracy of content reflects unfavorably upon me in a professional capacity, and I no longer desire anything to do with them.

As of this moment, they still have not complied with removing my name as a contributor, thus invoking appearance of authority to use my name and image, an authority they no longer have. I have saved the emails and screen capture image (among many other things) from several points this week.

If there are any attorneys reading this willing to take the case on a contingency basis, I am interested in pursuing legal remedies.

(This message will remain on top thrl Veteran's Day through November 12. Scroll Down for newer entries.)

UPDATE: Thus far, the drive is a miserable failure. I just got this email:

ValOUR-IT will run thru MONDAY @ midnight, 11/12/2007

We're still struggling to get to $100K overall, despite Mrs G's lurid
attempts at getting others to donate to the USAF.

It's time to sprint. Don't forget to push the auctions!

If 5% of my usual traffic over the next three days donates $5 each, that will be over $1500 - two and a half laptops. Come on! Show that you're one out of twenty!

Once per year, I engage in fundraising activities, but not for me.

Project Valour IT helps injured service people reconnect with the internet by furnishing voice activated laptops to wounded service folk who have lost the use of one or more limbs. This is critical because it allows them to do things everyone else has come to take for granted while they're going through treatment for their wounds, and afterwards.

These folks stepped up to the line to defend you, me, our friends, family, and even that jerk who runs this website that everyone hates, and it cost them one or more limbs. Seems an awfully small measure of appreciation to help them be able to surf the internet and send email while undergoing treatment and afterwards, because I've yet to meet any of them who really got their hands back.

Please, give what you can if you can. These men and women deserve a lot more than this, but this is what I'm asking you to help with. I know it's rough with the fires having just happened; I understand if you're not in a position to do so.

(PS the manufacturer sells them at cost or even a bit below. They don't make a penny)

Here's the Soldier's Angels page that tracks the overall progress. (if you have a website, join there!)

Prevent this shame from happening to us:

There were thirty million English who talked of England's might,

There were twenty broken troopers who lacked a bed for the night.

They had neither food nor money, they had neither service nor trade;

They were only shiftless soldiers, the last of the Light Brigade.

They felt that life was fleeting; they knew not that art was long,

That though they were dying of famine, they lived in deathless song.

They asked for a little money to keep the wolf from the door;

And the thirty million English sent twenty pounds and four!

They laid their heads together that were scarred and lined and grey;

Keen were the Russian sabres, but want was keener than they;

And an old Troop-Sergeant muttered, "Let us go to the man who writes

The things on Balaclava the kiddies at school recites."

They went without bands or colours, a regiment ten-file strong,

To look for the Master-singer who had crowned them all in his song;

And, waiting his servant's order, by the garden gate they stayed,

A desolate little cluster, the last of the Light Brigade.

They strove to stand to attention, to straighten the toil-bowed back;

They drilled on an empty stomach, the loose-knit files fell slack;

With stooping of weary shoulders, in garments tattered and frayed,

They shambled into his presence, the last of the Light Brigade.

The old Troop-Sergeant was spokesman, and "Beggin' your pardon," he said,

"You wrote o' the Light Brigade, sir. Here's all that isn't dead.

An' it's all come true what you wrote, sir, regardin' the mouth of hell;

For we're all of us nigh to the workhouse, an, we thought we'd call an' tell.

"No, thank you, we don't want food, sir; but couldn't you take an' write

A sort of 'to be continued' and 'see next page' o' the fight?

We think that someone has blundered, an' couldn't you tell 'em how?

You wrote we were heroes once, sir. Please, write we are starving now."

The poor little army departed, limping and lean and forlorn.

And the heart of the Master-singer grew hot with "the scorn of scorn."

And he wrote for them wonderful verses that swept the land like flame,

Till the fatted souls of the English were scourged with the thing called Shame.

O thirty million English that babble of England's might,

Behold there are twenty heroes who lack their food to-night;

Our children's children are lisping to "honour the charge they made-"

And we leave to the streets and the workhouse the charge of the Light Brigade!

Rudyard Kipling

Please help if you can.

Dan Melson, Realtor and Loan Officer
Action Realty Inc/ E Z Home Loans

9143 Mission Gorge Road Suite A
Santee, CA 92071

Phone 619-449-0723
Fax 619-258-3526
email danmelson@danmelson.com

For Real Estate Buyers and Sellers, as a Realtor®, I specialize in the area around La Mesa, CA (Zip Codes 91941 and 91942), Santee, CA (Zip Code 92071), El Cajon, CA (Zip Codes 92020, 92021, and 92019) and adjacent areas of San Diego, CA (Zip Code 92119, with parts of Zip Codes 92120 and 92115). I was born here, I grew up here, I've watched the area grow and mature. I know the neighborhood markets. Sorry, but I do not engage in sales work outside of San Diego County. There are only 24 hours per day, and I do not believe I can maintain the level of market knowledge necessary, nor provide the level of service necessary.

I am able to do loans anywhere in California. Quotes Guaranteed at time of lock. If it costs more than I say it will, you don't pay the difference - I do. Ask for details.

Go to http://www.danmelson.com/ for more information

I believe that I have now fixed all of the internal links over on the danmelson.com website, and added tags.  Since there are less than half as many posts over there, I figured I'd start with the smaller site.  If you're looking for something mortgage or real estate related, it's likely easier to find over there for right now.



I'm now going to start the same work on Searchlight Crusade.  I'm also going to add tags while I'm at it.  Appears to serve the same functions as chains did, only better because they can be multi-relational.  In the meantime, Google search appears to have re-indexed the pages, and using a browser's Find on Page function on the Archive page is a good way to find articles relevant to what you're looking for.



If anyone's willing to give me a hand with html, I've got a long blank space on the left sidebar of the main page that doesn't appear on any other page I've found on the site.  I know there's always a reason computers do the things they do, but I've been unable to find that reason.



There should be some new original content here next week, and there will be a Carnival of Consumer Focused Real Estate, as well.  We'll be completely back on track as quickly as I can find the time.  Of course, if you have paying work you want me to do, I might be able to afford to pay someone else to fix the website!

This site (and my other one) have been experiencing service interruptions of late.



Furthermore, I've been trying to contact my hosting service for several months to send them money and upgrade my service plan, without response.



It's time to consider other hosting services. Actually, it's probably long past time, but the hosting service used to be so darned good I've been trying to stay with them - not to mention I'm going to have to go through a data port when I move.



My apologies if you are having difficulty accessing the site. I am trying to get it dealt with.

Sunday night, I got an invitation to join a site that gets about 15 percent of this site's traffic level. Well, I'm actually still interested in co-authors here, but other than the strict real estate and mortgages for San Diego site I just started at http://www.danmelson.com/, I'm not really looking to spend more time online. But this guy wanted to know how I had gotten to getting an average of 3000 plus visits per day over the last week in just under a year from start up, and here's what I told him.



Reasons to which I attibute part of the success, in no particular order:



1) I hang out with a couple political groups as well as the money folks. A lot of the folks who find me for one stick around for the other. But I link them and they link me. The point is is that cross-fertilization of traffic works. (pr0n probably works better than politics or money, but that's not something I want associated with my site)



2) I write regularly. Minimum of three good articles per week on money stuff, and I try to do regular political stuff also.



3) I try to always write something worth reading, and tell the folks something that the commercial drones won't tell them. Deal with more than one viewpoint. One of the reasons I get traffic is I'm not afraid to tell folks what professionals are good for, as well as what to watch out for in a professional.



4) I write on the "nuts and bolts" level, and I don't pull my punches.



5) I am not afraid to haul out the calculator or spreadsheet and let the chips fall where they may. My article that will publish Thursday is a good example of this.



6) Carnivals are your friend. People find you through carnivals. They seem like they were better a few months ago, but they still help.



7) I get very good search engine rankings because of how I write and how the site is set up (Kudos to Chis at Powerblogs). Probably half my traffic on any given day finds me for one article. Every time 100 people find you, a certain number are going to come back. I try to give them reasons to come back.



8) Don't try plonking the conversational elephants in the backside after they've passed on by. I got a link from a larger site for something I said on Haditha yesterday, but that's just plain dumb luck. Get out in front and dig a hole for those conversational elephants to fall into. Think of an angle or something original that nobody else is covering. If you don't really have expertise in the main subject of a topic, hit a related concern you do have expertise in. When Katrina hit, instead of talking about the damage and all of the issues with FEMA's response, I wrote an article on the insurance issues that would be raised. That article isn't anything like my most popular, but because I was out in front of the crowd, I got a lot of hits on it over the next few months. It still gets hits today because it has broader applicability, as well.



9) I try not to get bigheaded. I get decent traffic on the typical site's scale, but Dean's World gets over 10 times my traffic, Instapundit and Kos 100 times my traffic, and the big commercial sites 1000 times or more (Drudge is showing 12M today as opposed to my paltry 3k). The way I usually put it is that I'm trying to fight my way onto the B minus list. On the sphere's scale, I may be as high as C plus, or I might be a lot lower down. All depends what you think is worthy.



10) Writing a good article on an enduring subject beats the same quality article on a topic du jour. In the latter case, you get traffic for a week if you're lucky enough to get noticed. In the former case, you get search engine traffic forever, or at least until the underlying dynamics that cause it to be important change.



Not to mention all the usual stuff like Trackbacks, trying to be generous with links (folks will link you back), feeds, etcetera.

I've been doing this nearly a year now, and I'm happy to say my daily visits have gone up to the point where they are hitting 2000 visits per day more often than not. For everyone who drops by, thank you.



However, it is a bit more of a time sink than I had really intended, and to less personal benefit. I need to show my wife some positive gains from the time I spend here. So I'm going to make a few changes.



This will still be a consumer education website, first and foremost. Nothing will change that. But I think I'm going to have to start accepting advertising in order to justify the time I spend here.



Also henceforth, the real estate and mortgage posts will also be appearing at another site, Dan Melson's San Diego Real Estate and Mortgage Website, URL http://www.danmelson.com/. They will still be here also, but I am splitting the purposes I had in mind when I started this site. Searchlight Crusade will be where I speak my mind about whatever subject takes my fancy in addition to the consumer education. http://www.danmelson.com/ will be a website where I am explicitly trying to attract business, and will have a sharply focused commercial "voice". If you like the extra stuff, stay here. If you'd rather read something strictly business, go there. If you want a non-commercial forum, stay here. If you want local San Diego information, go there. Of course, you're also welcome to read both sets of posts, if such be your desire.