Yes, you heard me right. Will took his first steps tonight. Actually, make that step. He took one step 5 times with his right foot. He hasn’t quite figured out how to do it with his left yet. It was truly an exciting night here (even more exciting than getting some Franke sinks). He did while Bill was here too! Like Madison, that means he started walking at 9 months.  I am hoping that we can get him to do it again tomorrow!

Today, I had to say goodbye to my trusty Airwalks.  It was a sad day.  I’ve had these shoes for about 13 years.  I think I got them in high school, so they may be a bit older.  I loved these shows.  They were comfortable and they lasted a long time.  The only reason I had to buy a new pair of shoes was because the heels on the shoes were wearing out and rubbing my heels.  I am happy with my new shoes (I think).  They too are a 4 1/2 (yes, my feet are that small).  They are New Balance shoes and when I put them on, it doesn’t feel like I even have shoes on.  I really wanted another pair of Airwalks, but we’ll see how these do.

Anybody else have shoes they hate to part with?

I spent today trying to find a new oven online. My oven has decided to have a mind of its own. Sometimes it is twenty five degrees below what I set it; sometimes it is twenty five over. The thing can’t make up its mind, and it is getting increasingly more difficult to cook. What does this have to do with Izea?

The Rankspank

Well, several months ago, many bloggers who get paid to write posts were RankSpanked. What this means is that we once had PR, and we no longer do. PR is the holy grail to most bloggers who do any sort of paid work. The higher your PR, the more money you were able to charge. You’ll even see this badge on a lot of sites out there:

PR and other measures

Up until recently, there really wasn’t a good measure of a blogs worth. PR wasn’t even all that great. Yes, blogs with PR had backlinks, but you never really knew what kind of traffic they were getting. Alexa is another service out there. Your traffic with them only counted if you visitor had the Alexa toolbar, so that was not too good of a measure either.

At this point, Google seems to be changing the rules as they go. It is getting to the point you need a degree online to figure out how they are designing their algorithm.  You use to need lots of backlinks to get PR. Now, it is anyone’s guess. At this time, you can have all the backlinks in the world, and if Google thinks you are doing any sort of blogging for pay, they will knock you to zero. They have knocked down sites that don’t do it. I have seen a lot of guilty by acquaintance. You mention one of your other blogs on a rankspanked blog — that new blog won’t get PR either. I know that because I have two sites that should have gotten some PR and didn’t. I’ll be honest, I hadn’t planned on including my cooking blog at all in any sort of blogging for pay. However, since I am not going to get PR anyway, I figured why not! Every so often you hear that people got their PR back and did nothing different to get it back. I wish I was one of those people. However, I am not.

How can you know what to do with the rules constantly changing and you have no idea what the rules really are?

The Answer

The answer to my stove problem is the thermostat. We either need to replace that or buy a new stove. The answer to the PR problem is that we either need to replace part of it or come up with a whole new ranking system. Since we have no control over Google, the best bet out there is the new measure IzeaRanks. IzeaRanks allows you to measure your RealRank, your pageviews, and your uniques. Something I have learned about bloggers is the last couple of years or so is that we are all stat junkies. We love to have multiple places to see where we rank.

How do I get it?

Getting it is super simple. You just go to IzeaRanks and fill out some information about your blog. You then are given a code to put into your footer. Now, you don’t have to do any sort blogging for pay to be involved in this. I think the majority of the blogs listed aren’t part of any service. To get your real rank, the system weights blogs 70% on daily unique visitors, 20% by daily active inbound links and 10% by daily page views. Here’s sneak peak of what the graphs look like:

Now, you will see 4 different lines on there. I used my 4 blogs to make the graph. You can use your blogs or any blogs in the system to compare stats. You can also graph pageviews and uniques too. Finally, a true measure of where you are at.

This is free to use, so you have nothing to lose trying it. What are you waiting for?

This Weeks Hero Was Suggested by Kathi

Soldiers’ Angels Living Legends Team
May No Soldier Go UnlovedLiving Legends began in May 2005 with a very small team of seven dedicated angels. The team’s mission was to let the families and friends of fallen heroes know that we were here to support them and to honor their loved one. At the same time, they had to make sure that they were sensitive to what the family was going through. While this team has grown tremendously, they have worked very hard to maintain that same level of dedication and sensitivity. This team is staffed with trained volunteers who carry out a very difficult mission for Soldiers’ Angels. Due to their dedication, Soldiers’ Angels is able to honor those heroes who have made the ultimate sacrifice for our nation and to pay their respects and offer their deepest sympathies to the families and loved ones grieving the painful loss of their son or daughter; husband or wife; brother or sister; mom or dad; aunt or uncle; their friend.

For more information on the Soldiers’ Angels Living Legends Team, you can visit their site.

TSometimes a hero is one who sacrifices everything in their life to help others. And sometimes a hero is one who sacrifices nothing more than their time.
We Should Not Only Mourn These Men And Women Who Died, We Should Also Thank God That Such People Lived

This post is part of the Wednesday Hero Blogroll. For more information about Wednesday Hero, or if you would like to post it on your site, you can go here.

Well, not quite now. I am calling to see how much it is to rent a dumpster, so we can start demoing the room in the basement. However, I don’t know how long we need it for or how big of one we need, so I sound like a moron when I am talking to these people. I know Bill would rather be playing Branson golf than messing around with the basement, but that room needs to be taken down before we can do anything.  We have a field supervisor coming out on Friday to inspect the basement, and then we will get the date of when they will install the drainage tile.  Once that is done, it is a mad dash to finish finishing off the basement before Will’s birthday.