I’m working on getting my site up again, but I can tell I’m already getting noticed. Maybe not by real people.. but by the system. What is the system? Well, there’s what I like to call a society on the internet that judges the worth of your website based on many different things. They decide this based on the age of your site, the amount of visitors you receive, the quality and quantity of your content, and many other factors SEO/SEM experts like to pretend they’re hip on.

Checking my WHOIS today I saw that my Alexa Rank has gone down (which is actually a good thing) 894,468 ranks over the last three months.

If you’re looking to make money on your website, the places you want to impress are Google PageRank and Alexa. For some strange reason, people put a lot of stock into what these two say. I understand Google, because everyone wants to be at the top of Google and the higher your PageRank, the more important Google thinks you are. I’ve never been very clear on Alexa, but I do know you want to be as low on their ranking as possible. I believe the Alexa rank is based on people who have the Alexa toolbar going to your site.

When it comes to Google PageRank, however, popularity rules. The key to getting a high page rank is to have a lot of quality sites linking to your site. So what you need to do is create relationships with other popular sites with content like yours and link with them. Do bad links hurt you? Yes. If there are enough of them. But it takes a lot. The best thing to do is just let others link you, but really try and create relationships with sites that you admire. Isn’t this what we all try to do, anyway? It sounds as though I’m telling you to use these people, but I’m not. But what I am trying to say is that if you’re trying to make money from your site, you need to pay attention to which sites you’re associating your site with.

I used to have a PageRank of 3, back before I disappeared, so I’m going to see if I can get that back up there in the next few months. I’m starting here, and you should too. Curious where you stand? Check your PageRank.

I’ve been going to the beach all my life and today was the first time I have ever been stung by a jelly fish! I was sitting there, minding my own business, then all of a sudden my butt hurt so bad! It felt like it was on fire!

Now I have huge red welt on my butt and it looks like someone took 20 rubberbands and just kept snapping them on me in the same spot.

Oh, the horror!

All I can think to say about this movie is.. “What the f*ck?”

The movie is like so many I’ve seen before. A large group of people hold up in a building together to try to wait out a disaster. About an hour and a half into the movie, I started thinking “Is this all there is?” Basically, it is. And through the entire movie it’s rather boring. Some of the special effects are choppy, too. But that’s not the part that makes me want to say that I’d be happy having never seen this movie.

But it’s a spoiler, so you’re gonna have to click more to find out.

The movie starts out with a man painting. Then a storm starts and he brings his family downstairs. In the morning they wake to find a tree has fallen through the window where he was painting and another tree has crushed their boat house. He decides to go into town to buy supplies.

When he gets into town, he starts shopping. In the checkout line a man (one of the many Stephen King cast members from The Shawshank Redemption, The Majestic, etc that are included in this movie) comes running down the street screaming. He runs into the store and yells about the mist taking his friend. Then there’s an “earthquake” and they all decide to lock down the supermarket and stay there. And they do, for over an hour (days in movie time). Over the next days they see huge flies with stingers, dragons, and spiders with acidic webs.

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I went with a few friends to see The Dark Knight, which is the new Batman movie. My friend was seeing it for the third time and told me Heath Ledger made an awesome Joker. I don’t know if it was all the hype or if I really prefer the originals, but I had to disagree. That spawned an hour long conversation about Jack Nicholson and Heath Ledger and their respective rolls as the Joker, where I thought it couldn’t truly be compared because they were really different types of movies (one as a comic, the other more realistic). It ended with an asshole saying “It’s like arguing with a woman. Oh, wait..”

Anyway, the movie itself was pretty good. It wasn’t as wonderful as you might expect, having heard that my friend was going for the 3rd time, but I liked it. I think I would have liked it more if they weren’t remaking a movie I absolutely loved as a kid.

Some things have changed. Rather than Bruce Wayne being a mture business man, he’s more of the “Oh, daddy’s company is making me rich” type. I don’t know if that’s supposed to be a cover or what. And he has people working for Wayne Enterprises making his suits, toys, and vehicles for him. I never knew much about where they came from in the original, but I’m pretty sure only Alfred knew about the opperation. And in this one, Batman doesn’t make Joker. Joker’s just a psychopath that has scars on his face and paints it up like a sadistic clown.

I never read the comics, so I couldn’t say just how much the new plot strayed from the original, but I do know it was far enough from the original movie to make me think “That’s not right” on several occasions.

It was a pretty good movie, but I’m glad I only paid the matenee price.

I’ve been working on the content, I should have it up very soon. I’m having fun with it. One of the things I’m working on is color swatches. Colors that look really nice together. I hope someone can find a use for that. Sometimes I have some colors and I just need one more to go with it, but I can’t find anything that works.

I’ve been working on all this on my laptop, but I’m having issues with it. I’m going to have to wait until my new RAM chip comes in next week. I’ve been waiting for it for so long. I ordered it from NewEgg, but it rejected my card over and over. Finally yesterday I had a stroke of genious and used my Paypal account. So now, it’s on its way.

I’ve never had a problem before, but I guess the new Photoshop is troublesome for my little 512 memory, so my brother suggested I get more. I’m adding 1 gig, so it should work a whole lot better. Maybe I’ll even be able to open another program the same time as Photoshop. Is that too hopeful?

I’m really hoping I’ll be able to because I’m looking forward to making glitters again, and I need Animation Shop open at the same time. One day I’ll scan the page I made to plan out the content for this site to show you all the thought I put into it. You’ll probably call them scribbles of madness..

I have to admit, I’m pretty taken with Hayden Christensen (ever since Jumper), so when I found out he had a movie out I had never heard of, I ran to blockbuster to check it out.

Awake is about a young man who has all the money you could ever want. He still lives at home with is overbearing mother and runs the multi million dollar corporation his father created before he died. The young man has a weak heart and is awaiting a new heart so he can get a transplant. Because his blood type is O it takes longer to find a heart for him.

He also has a secret he’s keeping from his mother. He’s been seeing a beautiful girl (played by Jessica Alba) who doesn’t have the kind of money he does. In fact, she’s his mother’s secretary. Most of the movie both the girlfriend and his doctor friend push him to tell his mother that he’s engaged to this girl. Eventually she talks him into telling his mother, who is extremely unhappy. She tells him that she doesn’t want him to marry so young, but he ignores her and they elope.

Once they get back to her apartment to consumate their marriage, his pager goes off. There’s a heart ready! This is where the twist begins.

I’m not going to spoil the movie, I don’t like when people do that. But I will tell you that the movie gets kinda stupid and I can see why I haven’t heard of it before. I’m glad I didn’t pay anything to see it, like $9 for a ticket and $30 for snacks. I think Hayden’s acting was much better than Star Wars, and Jessica’s was very good as well. The story line was just a little lame and maybe just went on a little long.