I can’t believe it is time to get back to school. The summer just flew by. Will started school on Monday, and Madison starts tomorrow.  We just made a few tweaks the last week or so to get the kids ready for school.  The first thing I did was take the kids in for doctors appointments and eye doctor appointments.  It is very good that I did that because that’s how we found out Will needed glasses!  We also picked up new clothes for school (or for Madison – uniforms).  We made sure everybody’s shoes fit — Madison went from a 13 to a 2.5 in gym shoes!!!!  Her dress shoes I had to buy with about 1 month left of school, so thankfully they still fit.  We’ve also moved their bedtimes earlier and have gotten them up earlier in the morning.  Another thing is school supplies.  I luck out that I can order them right from Madison’s school in May, and we picked them up 2 weeks ago at Book Bill Day.  However, for those other things you need (like emergency contact cards, allergy cards, play date cards, academic planners, etc), you can check out Tiny Prints.  They have such great quality items, and I’ve loved everything I’ve ever ordered from there.

How do you plan for back to school time?  Any tips you’d like to share?

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Before I leave for California to go sleep on some memory foam mattresses, I had to show you the birthday cards Madison made yesterday. The pink one is for Bill’s sister Christy. The blue one is for Bill’s brother Nick. I took a picture of them before I put them in the mail.

Aren’t these super cute?  I didn’t take a picture of the insides, since you all know how to spell her name.  Though she knows how to spell her name and write it without any help from me!

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This is probably only exciting to me, but Madison can write her own name without me spelling it for her! Obviously, this is something they have been working on at preschool, but I had no idea she could do it. We were working on some birthday cards and I told her to write her name. Normally, I have to spell it for her and help her with the letters she can’t remember how to make. She did it all by herself! I am super proud of her!

The other kind of cool thing that she did tonight was name her rock. I know that sounds funny, but she refuses to name anything. However, she painted a rock at school today to look like a turtle. Before she went to bed she told me his name was Tommy the Turtle. She also asked to sleep with it. Madison right now is sleeping with a rock in her bed.

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I know I have talked about how much I love Entrecard.  They are a great way to drive traffic to your blog and have a great community.  Today, some cool changes took place and some not so cool changes too.

First, the cool changes.  Now, you can see how many times a person has dropped their Entrecard on you.  It also lists your last 5 posts that you have done on your blog.  Both are very cool changes that I think are great.

Now, onto the not so good changes.  The change that I absolutely hate that happened today (without any warning) is that you can only drop 600 cards per ip.  Now, if you have one blog this is no big deal.  However, if you have more than 2 blogs in the system (I have 3), this royally screws you.  How?  Normally, you can drop 300 cards per account you have.  Since I have 3 accounts, I was dropping up to 900 cards a day.  Yes, I actually do read the majority of those blogs I was dropping my cards on (not everybody updates daily or weekly).  It would take me several hours a day to do.  However, the traffic that I received from that made it well worth me doing.  By looking at my entrecard stats, I can definitely see the difference in my traffic depending on the number of cards I dropped.  More cards = more traffic.

Now, this not only effects me.  This effects every person who has more than 2 blogs in the system.  If I drop evenly between my blogs, I will drop only 200 cards per blog.  I am losing out on potentially 100 more drops (if everyone reciprocates).  If this is the case, this blog will never make the top three spots nor will my other two blogs since I won’t be able to reciprocate everyone who drops on me.  I am also going to assume that the top three blogs are people who only have a single blog in the system.  If that is the case, they will be dropping 300 cards to my 200 on a daily basis.  Tell me how I ever catch up to the lost traffic.  The top spots got there by dropping 300 cards daily.

This change effects anyone who uses a shared computer and/or ip to do their drops.  Husbands and wives won’t be able to both have accounts and not effect each others ability to drop.  People won’t be able to drop (or be limited) from work if anybody else in the building does Entrecard.  And heaven forbid, if you have to use an internet cafe or library to drop.  Who knows if somebody already used up the 600 drops off those ips?

What’s the reason for this change?  Well, according to Phirate (one of the head guys of Entrecard):

It’s not a penalty, it’s just our only real rational response to people creating multiple “spam blogs” and going nuts dropping a thousand + per day. Unfortunately, some legitimate users will get caught in the cross-fire.

Well, go after the spam blogs.  Set up a system where the blogs have to be 30-60 days old and have 10 posts or so.  That should weed out a bunch of them right off the bat.  I would think they would rather be able to say that they have 7,000 good blogs in the system instead of 6,000 good and 1,000 not so good.

Another issue with this is that it is pretty easy to change your IP.  If you use AT&T like I do, it is simple (just a pain in the butt to have to do everyday).  I won’t go into how you do it, but if I know how to do it, the spammers definitely do to.  Also, another way around this is to use a proxy.  Again, if I figured this out, so can the spammers.

Entrecard, I love your system.  It does exactly what it is suppose to — it drives traffic to my blogs.  However, you are hurting the very people who make the system great.  I would think that you would want your best users to be able to put more of their quality blogs into the system.

If you agree, please let them know.  From the few people I have talked to like Jenn, I am not the only one who doesn’t agree with this change.  Entrecard has made tons of changes based on what the users want.  I am hoping that the users can bring about change again.

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March is an interesting month in my house. First, Bill and my anniversary from when we first started going out is this month. This year, we will have been together twelve years (we’ll be married 7 years in June). The other event in March is my birthday which is on the 20th of March. I am still young enough that I will tell you all my age — I will be 31 this year. Since I was pregnant last year over my 30th birthday, we didn’t get to go out and celebrate it. I think we got Chili’s-To-Go that night. I know, real exciting. To be honest, I am not sure if we’ll do anything this year either. Going out drinking isn’t as fun when you have to get up with kids early the next morning. My new laptop is my birthday present, so I won’t be getting anything from him. I will be lucky if I get any birthday cards. I am still waiting on my Valentine’s Day cards (which I know he bought and just never gave it to me). I’m not picky at all.

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