Lee

This agreement is suggested to make the user experience on both of these platforms easier, faster and more personalized.

However, coming from both a user of these search engines as well as Google (which I affectionately term Big G) this gives Internet marketers an advantage as well. How? Well…

• We’re looking at a decrease in ad costs when there are more advertising mediums to choose from.
• Big G might have to re-evaluate their policies and stop being such asses to their advertisers. So you may see Google Slaps decreasing.
• Yahoo Search Marketers will get the benefit of Microsoft/Bing’s technology, which means NO MORE HAND CRAFTING duplicate campaigns. We will have a desktop client which will cut our work time by 60%+!

Actually, I had a very pleasant conversation with a YSM representative earlier last week and she DID say that Yahoo Search Marketing would have a desktop client before the end of the year, though I couldn’t pull out any more information as to when this might occur. Now it looks like this might be a fantastic result of the Microsoft and Yahoo merger?

At any rate, I say bring it on. The finality of this deal won’t come to pass until 2010 and I’m quite certain anti-trust laws will be addressed, but this is great news for us in the Internet marketing business.

You can read more about it here:

Microsoft, Yahoo! Change Search Landscape

Microsoft, Yahoo! agree on Internet Search Partnership

Let’s face it, no matter how great my wonderful boys are and as supportive as my husband is with almost everything I do, it was still nice to have someone who actually wanted to watch my favorite girly shows and could stomach a conversation about anti-aging methods and boob lifts.

So here’s to you my dear friend.

Congratulations on your beautiful home…and no matter what your Realtor says, your new stained concrete floors are super fab!

I’ll miss our Smoothie Sundays and thanks for kicking my butt into (yoga) gear. I’m now no longer a hater of Jamba Juice, and will remember you every time we juice up some carrots around here.

Thanks for not hurting yourself on the mess of toys (those damn legos will cut as hard as razorblades) since I would’ve hated for our homeowner’s insurance to rise because a bodily injury claim. Thanks for doing dishes after you’ve worked all day when you didn’t even dirty one up.  Thanks for staying up past midnight many nights when trying to help salvage one of our businesses after it was beaten to hell by our buyers.

Thanks for joining Facebook with me so I could have at least one friend.

Thanks for telling me about all the fun places Dallas has to offer up. You’ve experienced more places in 9 months than I have in 28 years here. WTF – I gotta get out more. I bow down to you and Gladys (her GPS).

Thanks for laughing (and not fleeing) when Justin would run a full circle around the house naked before each and every bath. Oh, and of course for acting like you’ve never seen anything like that even the 200th time.

Thanks for walking Donut. He loves you the most.

And many thanks for just listening to me rant. A lot. Actually, let’s say the internet thanks you for listening to me rant so they don’t have to (much). Jason thanks you for talking to me…it’s saved him many hours of engaging and intense conversations;-) But I’m wondering, who’s gonna greet him when he comes home now? He’s going to miss seeing a woman doing laundry in his home…

We’ll keep your room in the exact condition you left it, in case you are on this side of town and feel like a slumber party. We won’t even wash your sheets. I’ll even put the police tape up so no one even crosses into your room.

We’ll miss you…but enjoy that home and all your good looking, single, tool-toting guy neighbors!

New Passport Law

You’ve probably heard about the recent changes to the passport law.To cross the border by land, you now have to have at least a passport ‘card.’ If you are traveling by air, you MUST have a passport ‘book.’

Family Reunion

Well, we’ve been planning this trip to see my only living grandparent, my dad’s mom, for over 6 months now for her 90 birthday party and a family reunion that happens like once a decade. We’re coasting along and all of a sudden we’re caught up in a rush to get passport cards for our kids.

So what’s the big deal? Well try this:

1. They just changed this law just a few weeks ago.
2. Dad didn’t get his VC approval until Tuesday of this week (that would’ve nixed our trip if he couldn’t go).
3. My sister & I rush online to fill out paperwork online. This part was awesome.
4. I fill out the passport card info since it’s half the price, add the ‘expedite’ fee which is another $60 (per kid) though they can’t even tell you for sure how fast it will get here.
5. We get to the post office to turn in our application and you can’t expedite a passport card, only a passport book. So even though it gives you the option online to expedite the card and even tells you your fees, it’s not allowed. WTF. Really?
6. Now we’re paying double what we anticipated and all because it all happened so fast that even if we would’ve applied the same day they announced the changes, they wouldn’t have guaranteed it’s arrival in time. Ok, I know I’m cheap, but I hate to pay almost double for something that will only last half the time an adult’s passport will. Kids under 16 years of age only  have a 5 year life span on their passports.
7. I have made 4 trips to get passports for my kids & nephew. Don’t ask why 4 separate trips were needed or your computer will self destruct at the obscene obstacles. (Ok, to be fair, one of the extra trips was my own fault for not reading the fine print & having a birth certificate for one of my kids. Duh.)

Don’t Ask Any Questions

So of course you know me, I have to open my big mouth and ask the nice, overworked post office lady who could care less if our family makes it to our reunion, “So what happened to all those families who had their summer vacations planned across the border who didn’t have the time or resources to get their passport cards processed? Especially if it’s really taking a true 6-8 weeks to process?”

Now I get a disdainful, “Well, it’s been on the news for yeeeears. Haven’t you watched the news at all? So everyone should’ve been prepared for this…blah blah blah.”

Oh my God. Bullshit. Not the post office lady’s fault, but again, poor planning again by our government. I’ve stopped expending my energy trying to figure them out.

And then, when on my 2 trip to the post office to help my nephew, Darren, get his passport, the lady said that we had to have a notarized copy of this form when it clearly states and option for when:

You are the applying parent or guardian, and the written consent of the non-applying parent or guardian cannot be obtained.

So when I translate this into Lee-ese, I take this to mean that my sister could fill that portion out without a hitch. Well, we even went an extra step to have my Darren’s dad write up a letter and fax it to us, but this new post office lady said we needed to have  a notarized copy of the form.

Um. I have read that statement over and over again. Can anyone explain why I would think it was OK to just have his mom there and note from his dad. Where did I misinterpret “and the written consent of the non-applying parent or guardian cannot be obtained.”

You know the funny thing after writing all of this is that it’s sooo jumbled and that’s how I feel my life has been the past few days with my multiple trips and attempts to compete all of this in time. And it also feels like a crazy rant…so should I just delete this thing so you don’t lose 3 minutes of your life on this ridiculous subject? Apparently not.

PS – You can thank me later for not getting into the wait time at the post offices. Absurd.

Well, if you’ve been following on Twitter, you’ve heard far too much about how old faithful went to computer heaven after 3 years. So it’s been tough doing much of anything without any of my ‘tools’ on a temporary computer. But moving on…

First: I’m catching up. I’ll get to your DM’s and emails. Swear it. I also got a really cool email integrated plugin for the comments section, but it looks to be screwing up my design. The (free) Disqus commenting plugin lets me respond/approve/delete you right from my email so it’s much easier to work (especially if you manage several websites).

Ok, www, since it had been so long since my last post, I had decided it would be a super fabulous idea on my part to put up a video since I can talk way faster than I can type, edit and link. Well after wasting a whole day on that, I give up. For now. I’ve had this shitty little Lifecam from yep, Microsoft, for a couple of years and used it to Skype w/o any real issues. But when I tried this vlog, the picture quality was at best grainy & cartoon like, but the worst part it looked like I was in some sort of Chinese flick with a voiceover.

I’m not bashing that, but hell man, I speak English. Mostly.

So, even though I showered, did my hair & put on make-up for y’all, it sadly didn’t pan out. I’m on the lookout for good suggestions on webcams.

I’m splitting up the rest of this into mini posts because the topics deserve their own webspace.

See you in a minute…

California Transplant

I am a transplant from California. Like many life-long Californians I’d had grown dismayed as my beloved state became overcrowded, dirty and hopelessly expensive. I was driving around the parking lot of a family-owned video store one Saturday and I kept going in circles looking for a parking spot. Around and around I went. After almost 10 minutes, I gave up and decided I needed to move. This was not just a spontaneous decision. I had been growing restless and discontented for some time: the half-hour commute to travel less than one mile on Pacific Coast Highway, the endless lines at the movie theatre, the cost of booze – it all added up to less and less fun; more mind-numbing routines of waiting.

About the time I had steeled my resolve to move, I was seduced by a young Chinese woman from Carrollton who just happened to work for American Airlines. We met on the internet before it became the socially cool thing to do. Back then, you had to be married or ugly to be desperate enough to go looking for love online. Though, truthfully, I think we both wanted to just get laid.

She flew me out to Texas for about $20 bucks, forced me to drink alcohol, then got me naked and said seven magic words I will never forget (more on these words in a later post). Three days later I emerged from a hotel room not sure whether to call the authorities and report a kidnapping (and subsequent sexual molestation) or call my small circle of friends back in Long Beach and brag about my physical prowess.

It got me thinking: Texas might not be all that bad a place after all.

Everything IS Bigger in Texas

A year later I had bought a car, sold almost everything I owned, quit my job, gave my cat to my mom (which she refuses to give back), and moved to Texas. I remember thinking on the plane trip out that I didn’t care what I did for money when I got out here, I was just glad to be leaving California. I got a job through a temp agency working for TXU as a billing accountant with unlimited overtime. The first thing I noticed about the people of Texas is that they are fatter than Californians – much fatter.

I had always thought of beefy farm boys who do nothing but lug bales of hay and play football when I thought of Texans. As for women, I imagined bleach-blonde Jessica Simpson types and slightly older MILFS in expensive homes whose kitchens all have center-islands. Instead, I saw women with pale skin and puffy red cheeks taking small steps back into their cubicles, consoling themselves with their short walk with a bag of chips and a Diet Coke. The guys were no better off: huge, rolling pot-bellies under a set of soft breasts big and round enough to put my wife’s to shame. These guys had legs thicker than my abdomen and would sweat walking up a flight of steps, breathing out of their mouths with each thundering foot-fall.

I was horrified by this, not so much socially as by the prospect of what lie not so far ahead for these poor souls. Keep in mind that I had just come from California where I had immersed myself in a 2-hour-a-day, six-day-a-week routine of self-improvement at the gym that left my muscles punished but proud.

To be sure, such people existed in California. But back there, one simply didn’t seem them so much and there was always an emphasis on healthy living, despite the smog and frequent drive-by shootings. There were some 30 plus Max Muscle stores where a person could buy any dietary supplement his hardening kidneys could desire. In Texas, there were two such stores … and one of those went out of business six months after I moved here.

It is a stretch to link obesity to the culture of the South, though if I suggest the southern diet might be a cause it is less of an exercise… Given the multiplicity of Barbecue Joints, Mega-Sized Whataburger drive-thru chains, and a culture of home cookin’ and apple pie, the size factor fit my addled cliché of what I thought southern folk might look like. Sometimes I wish there was a Trader Joe’s out here: Whole Foods is 20 miles away…

Stupid Texas Hillbilly Laws

Not too long ago, a cop in one of the mid-cities (one of the innumerable cities between Dallas and Fort Worth collectively known as the Metroplex for those of you who aren’t local folk) pulled a woman over for erratic driving, noticed a box of funny looking toys in the back of the truck and promptly arrested her for – get this – possession of dildos with intent to sell – a felony. A felony!? Selling sex toys in Texas is okay as long as the toy is promoted as a novelty. But if you demonstrate how to actually use one, you run afoul of obscenity laws. Possess too many and that’s a crime, too. I can’t begin to fathom how backwater and anachronistic this kind of thinking is, not to mention the absurd zeal of a cop actually arresting someone for it. This type of law makes Texas a national laughingstock to just about everyone under the age of 75, unless of course grandma had an affinity for self-gratification.

I can see a rational basis for it from a social control point, though. After all, what is more revolutionary than a free expression of one’s self through sex? Control the masses at every junction – even, or, especially – in the bedroom, and China-style authoritarianism isn’t too far behind…

I like to drink. In fact if there weren’t so many social, economical, emotional, mental, physical, financial, and medical problems associated with it, I’d probably spend all my free time drunk (and writing here, of course). In California, there is at least one liquor store every quarter block or so and they are always open – at least they are open as late as I need them to be which is about BAC 1.2… Here in the Metroplex liquor sales are only allowed in a very narrow strip of geographically isolated areas. This requirement is part of Texas’s blue laws. A blue law is designed to enforce a moral code, usually restricting activity and commerce on Sundays to allow for religious worship. So instead of driving to the local 7-11 for a pint of Evan Williams, I have to drive to either Dallas or Fort Worth. And since it is such a far drive, rather than buy a pint I’ll buy a few liters and really stock up. Nothing like restricting alcohol sales to make everyone stock up. Stand around inside a barn-sized Metroplex liquor outlet and watch some of these customers. You’d think there was a war coming. Of course, while you are there you can get good and tanked sampling the latest vodka or whiskey from the attractive sales reps who are always available handing out booze samples with the same freedom of a matronly Sam’s club employee handing out turkey burger samples. On Sunday you can’t buy beer before noon and all liquor stores are closed. So are the car dealers. That lobbying group alone should be strong enough to purge the scourge of these laws from the Texas penal code, but so far Sunday is still all about God.

I bought my last Nissan on a Wednesday.

Racism in Texas

I sell real estate and on more than one occasion I had a client who said, “I don’t want to live around any niggers.” The first time I heard this I recited my ‘race-is-a-federally-protected-status-in-real-estate transactions-so-if-you-have-concerns-about-the-racial-make-up-of-a-neighborhood-you-will-have-to-investigate-it-yourself-I-am-prohibited-from-discussing-it’ speech. I was shocked. Not by the fact the woman was a racist. Everyone nowadays has had some exposure to this simpleton’s kind of sentiment. Even a lily-white guy like me who graduated from a high-school whose 997 students distributed across four grades consisted of only two black people had heard the n-word long before the OJ trial.

What shocked me was the unrepentant part. There was no attempt to parse or hide her feelings, as though this was not an uncommon request in finding a home. “You know, I’d like tile in the bathrooms, a two-car garage, a deck, a pool, hardwood floors and no niggers.” Now I know it’s not fair to assume from one person that racism has its roots in Texas, but I’m fairly certain the KKK was born in the deep south and at least in my mind it’s damn hard to attribute lynchings and white hoods with the anything other than a group of angry rednecks trolling through the backwoods of [pick your favorite southern state] looking for some unlucky black kid to hang from a tree. Honestly, have we not progressed at all in the last 50 years?

I worked with this woman or more specifically, her husband, for almost a year before I found a home large enough and inexpensive enough to make them happy. And wouldn’t you know it, right across the street working on an old Chevy truck propped up on concrete blocks was a homeowner wearing overalls who was as black as Wesley Snipes. No joke.

For all I know, the two ended up fucking each other.

The Truth

Don’t misinterpret my words. I like Texas. I’ve been here for seven years and in all that time I have not had a desire to go back to California once, not even for a day. This is my home. I live five minutes from a lake and anyone can buy a house for $100K. I write this because some of the biggest leaders of this state try to position Texas as a progressive, modern state that is not some backwater hickville mired in the misdeeds of the past…

This is not true.

Texas is a Deep South State, it always has been. And that’s okay with me. There are parts of this state that are as progressive as anywhere: from the confines of Austin to the explosion of lofts in downtown Dallas to the avante garde restaurants on lower Greenville Avenue, Texas has evolved beyond its clichéd history, but there are still hurdles to climb. I will be watching and writing and I hope the next time someone says he or she doesn’t want to live around niggers, that person will say it with a little less pride.

Susan Boyle’s performance on Britain’s Got Talent gave me CHILLS I tell ya! It is always so surprising to see how talented people really are – especially the ones that are walking so quietly around us. One thing I’ve found in my years of being in all types of bands and choirs – especially my show choir – is that looks are deceiving, and we should hold our judgements.

Susan Boyle is certainly one of these folks that humbly reminds us that greatness lives in us all. Simon Cowell’s face is priceless! Bravo Susan Boyle!

Still working on my challenge so my posts are still light this week, but this one I had to share!

So I have been tied to my computer and I have to apologize for taking so long to get it out. Thank you to you wonderful Tweeters who have reminded me of my neglect to you all and to light a fire under me to complete this post.

If you have ever wondered how to market your book or ebook on Craig’s List, I have compiled a FREE report that will take you less than about 10 minutes to complete your first listing and even less time for subsequent listings. You get a report as well as my video for you visual learners.

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It’s an amazing FREE traffic generator. You can check your Google Analytics for proof of activity 24 hours after your post. It works for me every time.

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I will create another more in depth report shortly that will show you how to get more traffic to your sites with Craig’s List.

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Please email me lee (at) TruthParlor.com for your feedback after you’ve used this. I really hope this helps your book/ebook sales![ad#in-post-links-only]

Yes, it’s sad and sappy, but that’s the way I like ‘em…Enjoy courtesy of YouTube!