I thank you for your sympathy.  I am still here!  I am still recovering, though.  They stayed awake until after 1, and there was some “she’s being mean to me” drama, but it all turned out OK.  Then last night and tonight (it’s almost midnight Monday) I stayed up late writing Associated Content articles, for which I had deadlines.  So, I am pretty well beat!

Propeller.com is a social news site.  It’s similar to Digg and many bookmark-sharing sites.  Users can submit news stories that they like or think are important (or that they want to promote), and other users can vote for the stories.  Stories with the most votes come up on the Propeller home page for everyone to see.  Users who don’t like a story, or don’t think it deserves attention, can “sink” that story.

I submit most of my Associated Content articles to Propeller.  I started doing this when it was still netscape.com, but then Netscape (actually AOL) moved the social news to Propeller, and is just using netscape.com as a standard internet portal (like your Yahoo or MSN home page, if you have one).

I wrote about the history of the Netscape site here.   I also wrote about submitting my articles to Netscape; my articles get higher exposure in search engine listings and thus more traffic.  This still holds true with Propeller; its an easy way to promote my articles, and it works.

Ning.com is a social networking site.  Actually, it’s made up of several thousand social networks. Ning allows you to set up your own social network.  I belong to a few different networks on Ning; they are specific to certain topics or interests.  You can find out more about Ning here.

And since I do have a commitment to my family to pay the bills and buy them food, I’ve been writing some articles for Associated Content, so that we’ll have some cash flow during the next few weeks.

I’ve been taking a little time to relax, and some time getting ready for Christmas.  And I haven’t had any brilliant brainstorms for blog posts, so no blog posts here.  One of these days, I’m sure I’ll come up with something.

I like to have people actually reading my blog, though, so I have to choose post titles a little differently.  I’ve been picking this up rather slowly, but they key to getting people to find your blog or article is not to have a catchy title, but to have a title that people will find with a search engine.

I could call this post “Totally Terrific Titles,” but those are not words that people are likely to type into a search engine.  They may type in “How to Choose a Title.”  Therefore, my post is more likely to be found.

There’s more to it than that, though.  Lots of people are typing in “britney spears,” and in fact, my Britney Spears post is one of my most read posts.  However, if I type “britney spears” into a search engine, I will have to go through a lot of pages to find my blog listed, so as a title, that doesn’t really work all by itself (the actual title is “Me and Britney Spears,” which probably doesn’t generate great search results either).  If I can put something specific about Britney into the title (or into the article) then I’m more likely to be found by searchers.  For instance, one of my searchers used the words “britney feeds kids doritos” to find my blog.

My current strategy is to experiment with putting specific key words or questions that people might be using with search engines into my titles — both here and on Associated Content.   The titles may not be very exciting, but hopefully they will generate traffic.

I started writing on the web (other than on forums and discussion groups) a little over a year ago. I first signed up for a site that offered points for writing and participating in the site, and rewards for those points. The rewards were nice, but I left that site several months ago because I disliked many other aspects of it.

Shortly after leaving that site, I started writing for Associated Content. AC pays cash for what I write for them, although usually very small amounts. For some articles, I receive a small upfront payment, and for all articles I accumulate bonus money (paid monthly) based on how many page views they get. Again, it’s not much, but on my income, every bit helps, and it’s also good experience and a way to get publishing credits.

Now I’m on WordPress. WordPress doesn’t reward me directly in any way. I can’t even put ads on my blog here (aside from the occasional unobtrusive Amazon link). So why bother?

Well, I started a blog here originally because I sometimes have things I want to write about that aren’t really appropriate for AC, but that I would like to share with others. It’s also a way of promoting my AC articles (see sidebar and click, please) so that I can get more page views and more page view bonus. Mercenary, I know. I hope no one feels cheated.

It’s also just fun, though. Many of my internet friends have migrated to WordPress, so we interact here and have a great time.

It’s fun knowing that I’m being read, too. On the other site, I would obsessively watch my points grow until I had enough for a reward, but I think I was also watching them just know that people were reading my work. On WordPress, I’ve been obsessively checking my blog stats, even though there is no point value or cash value attached to them.

Does anyone pay attention? According to the stats, at least a few people do. Does it matter whether anyone pays attention? Well, clearly, to me it does. I like to know that someone is out there reading. I’m here for a number of reasons, but I think that’s the big one — just to know that someone is out there reading my stuff.

Well, I’m highly imperfect, so sometimes I do this and sometimes I don’t. It’s more likely that I’ll really turn to the pantry when we’re running out of money, and this is one of those weeks.

I decided to cook up a large bag of pinto beans that has been sitting around for a while. Sometimes I cook from recipes, and sometimes I don’t. Today, I didn’t feel like searching for a recipe and stressing about whether I had the right ingredients, so I decided to just wing it.

I boiled the beans for a few minutes and then let them soak for a couple of hours (no need to soak overnight). Then, I drained off the soaking water and replaced it with broth. I had one carton of beef broth, one carton of vegetable broth, and half a carton of chicken broth. I used them all. I added several spoonfuls of minced garlic from a jar, a couple of chopped onions, some cayenne pepper, and several dashes of hot sauce, and then let the whole thing simmer while I fried up some bacon.

After crumbling in the bacon, I let everything keep simmering while I made some cornbread. Oops! I had two boxes of cornbread mix, but no eggs, which are required ingredients on the box, and I know from experience that omitting the eggs doesn’t give a good result.

I decided to look up a cornbread recipe in my copy of The Little House Cookbook. Ma Ingalls’ cornbread recipes do not include eggs. I then decided to use the Johnny-cake recipe along with my boxed mixes. I used my two boxes of Jiffy corn bread mix in place of the dry ingredients, bacon grease for the fat, molasses sweetening, and regular milk with a tablespoon of vinegar in place of buttermilk. It turned out just fine — in fact, everyone loved it. The molasses was the perfect sweetener.

This was a highly successful shopping trip, and I’ve got plenty of leftovers for the week.