Home Improvement Tool and Toy Reviews

Well as you can tell things kind of stalled out a little while ago on this blog. I was really hot and heavy talking about anything and everything under the sun. While that can be cool everyone comes to that point in their life where they have to have some definition to their lives.

That time has come to this blog.

From here on out I will be concentrating more on the world of Home Improvement as that seems to be a very big part of my life. Expect to see tips and tricks that I have learned that make my job as the handy man on th house easier.

Don’t worry though - it won’t be all work - there will be some play in there also. After all, I am still very much into “toys” and must have a place to share them with others .

So look for some more focused blogging here in the future on items that will make your life easier and more enjoyable .

Technorati: Home Improvement, Blog News, Tools, Toys, Gadgets

I see the RSS feed from digg.com several times a day due the the fact that I have it setup on my Netvibes homepage that is my browser home page.

It is funny to see an interesting article that someone had dugg and then try to go to the actual site itself. Almost 50% of the time the site is down due to all of the traffic that it is getting. This is known as “The digg effect”. The have a service called the digg mirror that usually takes a snapshot of the the site and stores it on a different server in case the original site goes down.

That got me to thinking - what if I got dugg? If that happened there is not doubt in my mind that this site would go down - and quick. The reason for that is that I have budget hosting and it just cannot handle the type of traffic that a dugg site will get.

I have looked around at other hosting companies and have checked out their forums to see if their service is any better. I see the same thing over and over again - web server outages, MySQL outages, DNS issues - it is not pretty. I was looking to switch until I saw this at so many other places.

Isn’t there a good hosting company out there?

Technorati Tags: Web Hosting, Jodo Host, VIP Hosting, Reseller Account

Wow, it has only taken me 5 months to reach this point but I am about to make my first $100 from Google Adsense.

That’s right, back in July of this year I started putting the goofy little code in my site to try to make “Big Bucks”. I found out like most that it is easier said then done.

The last couple of months have been the ones that have really gotten me to this point as my traffic has really increased during that time. It is well know that the more traffic you have the more clicks you will get on your Adsense ads. (more…)

Believe it or not I have posted over 200 times to this blog now (this post is # 201).

It is amazing that this blog has not even been up for 6 months yet but that I have so many posts. That must be the reason why Google likes this blog so much (Page rank 5 in less then 6 month baby!).

Anyway, I want to give a thanks to all the readers. I hope the information is helpful.

Blog on!

Technorati Tags: Dan Masters, dan.idano, Blogging, Blog

It is almost a weekly routine now. My son will be squatting down poking at an ant on the ground and saying bug, bug, over and over again. So there I go out into the garage to get the ant spray and hunt for the stream of ants coming into the house.

Well lucky for me Austin Pest Control is only a call away.

Not only do they take care of ants but they also take care of rodents and termites too. I know that once I get them out here I am not going to have to worry about seeing the little critters around any longer.

Technorati: Austin Pest Control, Austin TX, Ants, Bugs, Exterminator

Unless you are as lucky as the people in these commercials you need insurance.

Technorati: Insurance, Commercials

I have never been around so many people that are hyped up about football, but this is Texas. Anyway, the big thing going around the office is all the fantasy football jargon about who is where.

While I am too late to get in on the action here at the office affl.com has a Fantasy Football league that I can join for cash and prizes.

Maybe it’s not too late for me after all.

Technorati: Fantasy Football, Football, Sports, Entertainment

What she forwarded is a link for a micro site for State Farm Insurance, which is my insurance and rocks (I am rockin’ out tonight). The site is called nowwhat.com and is a cool flash site that asks questions like “Now what” after an air conditioner falls through the back window of your car.It is obviously a ploy to get the younger crowd into thinking about using State Farm for insurance - which is cool. I thing companies need to start looking to the younger crowd because 1.) they are up and coming, and 2.) old(er) people can be too set in their ways and not want to change (sounds like I have old people issue huh? so what ).

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I know that there has been a lot of hoopla about Voice over IP in the last few months concerning the ability to dial 911 but I think it is unfounded. The problems have been fixed so there is no reason not to switch to VoIP.

Personally I think VoIP is great and have it through 4 different companies in the last year. 2 of the companies were at my house and 2 were at 2 different jobs that I had.

In both home and work the setup was a whole lot easier then brand new phone service. They gave you ability to check your voicemail through you computer. Also, the quality of the calls is excellent especially at my current job.

Finally the thing that I like the most is that currently with my home service I have free long distance throughout the whole US. That is pretty sweet especially since my wife and I still have a lot of family in California. I could only imagine what my phone bill would be like!

Anyway, VoIP rocks and is here to stay.

Technorati: VoIP, Phones, Long Distance, Technology

I had a sudden burst of traffic yesterday from people searching for “Steve Erwin”. Unfortunately for my information and the information of my visitors the correct spelling of his name is Steve Irwin - with an “I”. Sorry.

Anyway, I got 2500 unique visitors yesterday from MSN.com and 12 comments on my post - Steve Erwin - The Crocodile Hunter - Dies.

It seems that his death has really affected a lot of people around the world.

Unfortunately the crocodilehunter.com web site has been down due to overwhelming traffic so people have been searching for other avenues of information.

Anyway, my heart goes out to his family in this time of loss.

Technorati: Steve Erwin, crocodilehunter.com, Crocodile Hunter