Sorry for the spotty updates, but school took over completely. Maybe taking three courses over the summer was not such a good idea; but I figured it was better than taking them in the fall semester when we have our plans to go to Mexico.

There were several contests that I wanted to make posts about in order that people might enter, but most have ended now. This is fine, however, as more have started and I’ll post some soon.

Additionally, I still need to work on my blogroll. Regular readers will know that in rebuilding my blogroll, I am currently adding the local blogs to which I subscribe, starting with my post about Darren Barefoot. The next blog I had planned on writing about was Michael Kwan’s blog, entitled Beyond the Rhetoric. Michael’s blog focuses largely on making money online, which is the theme of a number of bloggers in Vancouver. Many bloggers around the world seem to be making (or trying to make) their money online by simply writing blogs about online money generation, relying on advertising in their blog to generate revenue. They then visit each other’s blogs in the niche; which creates a giant cycle that I think advertisers will not fuel too much longer. To me it makes about as much sense as buying a “How to make money in Real Estate” course off of someone who makes their millions not by buying real estate, but rather by selling real estate courses.

In contrast, the top “how to” bloggers in the making money niche usually have proven their skills elsewhere online; and their blogs are now just an additional source of income. Michael is one such blogger in that he earns much of his online income through freelance writing.  He is paid to guest blog on some major blogs, write articles for various websites, and write copy for projects; among other things.  If I am going to take advise from someone as to how to make money online, I’ll take it from someone who does rather than teaches.  Michael has the potential to become one of the top bloggers in his niche.

I tell you this as a description of the major focus of this blog; but of course this makes little difference to me as I am not attempting to make money with this blog.    I follow Michael’s blog for the same reason I follow other local blogs; I was attracted to check him out because he was local, and then stayed because of the good writing and interesting articles.  He includes local events and geeky items in his blog, both of which will keep me around.

While Michael was sure to be mentioned within my next few posts since I am now covering the local blogs, he was being pushed to the front because of a contest he was running to win a USB TV Tuner. Unfortunately his contest ended while I was too swamped to blog.

Unfortunate for you, that is. I’m fine with it, because I was the winner!

A few months ago I won a Canucks jersey, and now I have won again. That is pretty good, considering I have not entered that many contests.  I am motivated to seek out contest blogs to pass along for my readers to enter, because they seem to have great odds.  Perhaps I’ll even have to start a contest page to keep track of them all.

I’ve been so busy that I haven’t even been able to send Michael my address so he can send my prize out to me. I had hoped to save him the cost of shipping, but it looks like it will be a while before I’m in Vancouver, and so I will have to get him shipping info this weekend. Once I collect it, I’ll have to check out it capabilities. I already have a TV tuner card in my ancient computer, and Karin has been jealous and would probably like this prize. However, we also will both need to replace our beasts in the near future and had planned to both get internal TV tuner cards at that time. So after I check out my prize’s capabilities versus what we had already planned, I’ll see if we’ll be keeping it or if I might run my own contest!