Posts Tagged ‘nuts’
Parental Responsibility
People often wonder why kids are “so bad nowadays”. I really do think some of it comes down to parenting.
At both Madison’s school and Will’s school, I see kids coming out of cars with their coats not even zipped! Now, I live in Illinois where it has been hovering between 15-20 degrees all week. Not only are my kids zipped, they have hats, gloves, hoods up etc. Heck, they’d be in boots if there was enough snow for that right now. We aren’t talking eight graders here either — I’m seeing this will preschools and kindergardeners. You know, kids who don’t know better.
Another parent lets their kids out at 8:40 or earlier (this is preschool). The teachers don’t let the kids in till 8:50. Again, in 20 degree or less weather, are you nuts?
This isn’t engineering jobs or rocket science people! I just don’t get it at all. Another example of this is parents who go to Monday Night Football game and stay out late on Monday night, only to keep their kids out of school the next day because they were too tired to take them. The best is when these same parents tell their kids to lie and say they were sick. Seriously? What are we teaching our kids here?
Another annoyance of mine happens daily at Will’s school. We are suppose to line up (as parents) behind the orange cone that has your kids’ teacher’s name on it. Simple, right? Well, it’s now, what, December? Parents still aren’t doing this. They aren’t asking for engineering recruitment here. They are asking you to stand in line! You aren’t getting your kid any quicker than I’m getting mine by NOT listening. Most of the time, the teachers call the kids out who’s parents are doing what they are suppose to.
By no means am I a perfect parent. I’ve made a ton of mistakes along the way. However, if I don’t stand in line like I am suppose to, what am I teaching my kids? If I tell my kids to lie, what am I teaching my kids? If I don’t follow the rules of the road, what am I teaching my kids?
Kids learn by example. The watch what you as a parent does. If you don’t follow the rules, how do you expect your children too? Madison and I butt heads every single day. However, it’s for her own good (I hope she sees that when she’s older!). If I didn’t care, I’d let her do whatever she wanted.
And unfortunately I see a lot of that lately.
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Entrecard Changes
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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