It’s 2010 and things have changed. I haven’t updated this blog in so long. I’ve been checking on all my domain names and social networks this week. I am planning on updating some and adding more features to others. I am liking that I can update wordpress automaticaly now. I hated updating it before because I would need to save all the plugins and themes I custom made and added it to the new update. Sometimes things would break. Just the time to backup everything and moving files all over the place made it hard to the point I hated updating.

Last year I lost some stuff I loved. I lost my favorite radio station, KLSX. I lost some podcasts I liked listening to also. My credit card decided to raise their rates which really is hurting me now. I need to ask for them to drop the rates. Sigh! The local popeyes I used to go to all the time has been closed. Arghhhh!! My non work computer decided to cause me problems so I had to reinstall windows due to a hard drive failure. I didn’t lose too much, though. Been worried about family health problems but things have seemed to be going well now. Had to go to jury duty twice. One federal and the other local.

Not everything is bad. Puente Hills mall has an Imax theater but not really a huge screen which is a disapointment. I have been experimenting with youtube videos with some accounts I have. I am getting good feedback, views and subscriptions. Some of those videos had enough views that I was offered a partnership but those videos weren’t family oriented so I was denied. I am going to try to do some videos on my personal account and see if I can get a partnership. Not sure what I want to do with it. I am not an actor, singer or comedian. I’ve been thinking of doing reviews for products or websites. Maybe making videos with second life or LOTRO can be interesting.

I don’t listen to radio anymore unless I am driving. I usually put on a music station. The only two talk radio stations I can listen to are, KFI and KABC. Recently Tim Conway Jr. moved back to Los Angeles and has his own show on KFI. If you haven’t listened to him before you really should! Frosty, Heidi and frank have thier own show on KABC in the mornings. They are hilarious!! I listen to their podcast as much as I can. I only listen to podcasts now. Here are the podcasts I love and recommend: PGP, Keri Kasem and FHF. There are some other podcasts which are good on Hottalkla but I don’t have the time to listen to them all.

This year I am going to push myself as hard as possible with my business. I really need to make more money from it or start looking for something else to do. I also want to make sure I am there for my family and friends. That is so important now more then ever to me. I don’t want to make any more mistakes or lose contact with friends again. I haven’t been playing online games as much as I used to. I love the freedom of doing what I want and being available for family and friends now. No more scheduling around raids or drama in an online world anymore.

 Wow I’m sitting here going through the deaths of some popular people and feel sad about it. Kind of wakes me up that life is something very important. I’m glad for the friends I have and the ones I got back in contact with. Plenty of changes in my life this year and things are looking up. Getting in contact with some friends from high school and grade school was important to make me feel better about life. I’ve always been a person who put friends and family over anything. I would do anything for my friends.

 Watching some of Billy Mays infomercials really brought back some great memories. His new show was actually interesting and good. Reading a letter from his best friend Anthony Sullivan really put friendships in perspective for me. Sorry to see him go. Michael Jackson’s death was a great surprise too and will be missed. Hope the scandals won’t make things worse for his children and family. Was a great artist and changed our lives for the better.

 I‘m still listening to all the podcasts which have started up from the demise of 97.1 radio station. Lot of changes there and plenty of drama. I still listen to Frosty, Heidi and Frank’s podcast. I’ve also started to listen to the Pretty Good Podcast which is actually pretty good. Might check out more if I can find some good ones. I want to have fun and laugh while I work. Thanks to all the fun podcasts out there! Check out Fake Leykis Podcast too. One of the funniest impressionist I’ve heard and I love his Rick Dees impression. Best of luck to you, Brian Whitman.

I used to play a game called Lord of the rings online every day. My friend and I would play together and share stuff in the game with each other for almost a whole year. I really got hooked with the PVP, Player vs Player, where I can play a spider and fight other people. That has changed with the last update. It made the creep side a bit too easy and the freep side is struggling now. Not much fun when there are no fights. Maybe in the future it will get better but I’m taking a break from it.

The PVE side of this game doesn’t give me much hope too. The kinship I am in lost some good friends I had so all I do is log in for the raids so I can help out. I already lost a great friendship to this game and I’ve lost some of my new friends as well. The Kinship I am in just isn’t the same without those people I got to know these past months. I never would believe a virtual game can be so emotional and make things so difficult in real life. A break from it will be good and lot of other people have decided to do the same. I bought a lifetime membership to the game so I’ll be back just hope everything gets better.

I found a new search engine that uses an interesting idea. When you first go to the website, msdewey.com, you are greeted by a woman avatar. When you search for terms she will say different things according to what you search for. Janina Gavankar is the model who plays the avatar and really makes this project unique and sexy! The search results come from microsoft live and it seems like it’s a test from microsoft to have some fun. This site isn’t very useful but it shows what can be done in the future. I still search with google. If you want to see some of the funnier stuff that this avatar will do then type in the following for your search terms [Updated 10/26/06]:

halo 2
murder
ho
Janina Gavankar
how to fight a ninja
what is your name
how to do the robot
george bush
storm
How old are you
dick cheney
what are you

[tags]microsoft,search,internet,Janina Gavankar[/tags]

Want to try out the new Yahoo Mail Beta? Wasn’t invited to try it out or don’t know how to try it? I found a post on makeyougohmm.com that explains how to do it for anyone outside of the United Kingdom. Just need to change your location to English: United Kingdom and get the invitation. Can always change your location back and still have access. If you don’t like the beta version then you can switch back to the current version. The new beta version is nice. Similar to outlook and can be used with the keyboard easily. Try it out and see what you think!
[tags]yahoo,mail,beta,yahoo mail,johnramirez[/tags]

If you ever found yourself trying to make a web page with matching colors then I found something for you. It’s called colorMatch Remix! Sometimes when I am building a web page or doing graphic work I find myself using weird colors together. I don’t have a good eye on what colors go with other colors. I constantly find myself going a bit too crazy with the colors. When I found this site I bookmarked it quickly and figured I should post it here for anyone else who needs this help. You just pick a favorite color and it will give you back 6 other colors that will match the original color. Really nice and I’ll be using it from now on!

These past months I have been playing games in a virtual world called Second Life. It’s not exactly a game because there is no goal. It’s mostly a platform where users can create anything they want with the tools provided. I signed up at the beginning of this year and have been satisfied with it. I am on their free account which allows you to log in as much as you want, use anything in the game except for owning land. If you want land then you must pay for their premium account which is $9.95 per month.

It’s hard to explain how much you can do inside the game unless you try it. Here’s an article from business week about second life. It will explain a lot to the new users. Some of the games I have played inside second life are, Slingo, Tringo, Blackjack, Slot machines, War and Quintzee. All these games have been created from regular users. There are plenty of other games that I haven’t played yet and more are being created all the time. You can also buy cars, planes, clothes, furniture and gadgets for your avatar inside the virtual world. The one thing that makes this world different than others is you can buy Lindens(game money) with real money and you can sell Lindens for real money. This brings in some business minded people. Some ways of making money in the game is creating objects that others would buy, making scripts for games or vehicles, buying lindens at a low price and selling them for a high price, buying land to place games on and making money from them when people play and escorts or stripping. Yes this is a mature platform and can be used for anything that is legal. No one under 18 can sign up and use second life unless they use the teen grid which is not connected to the mature grid at all. In  the mature grid there are PG places also so not all of it is adult.

I’ve been using second life for entertainment. There are some singers and musicians who play live in certain places. These aren’t wannabe singers. They are very professional and give a great entertainment value. I also play the games for fun too. I haven’t found a business plan for myself in the game just yet but still thinking all the time. I use the name, JohnnyRS Hoggard, in the game. Join up and have fun for free or pay for some nice privileges.
[tags]second life, games, gaming life, virtual world[/tags]

There have been a couple of times I needed to find stuff on my computer fast! The windows searching capabilities are terrible. Bad Microsoft! I tried Google Desktop a little while ago and I liked it but rarely ever used it. I keep forgetting I have it installed. So When I heard about the new Google Desktop I needed to try it. It now has a docking capability that has plugins that can add other benefits. I have a 19in monitor so I can give up desktop space. I actually have two monitors with two computers on my desk so I can easily give up space on one of my monitors.
I‘ve been happy with Yahoo’s [tag]Konfabulator[/tag] with it’s widgets. Some widgets from there are very useful like website monitor and a timer. One thing it doesn’t have is a way to dock them to the side of the desktop. I don’t like having to resize my windows so I can see the widgets. I don’t want to see a widget over something I am trying to read. Now if [tag]google desktop[/tag] had more plugins like the widgets from yahoo it would be perfect for me. So at this time I can see some benefits to [tag]Google[/tag] desktop but it’s not exactly what I need at this time. I will keep using Konfabulator and google desktop as just a searching capability for now.

[tags]yahoo,johnramirez[/tags]