Internet dating sites have now become a huge industry, with thousands of sites dedicated to either providing dating advice or dating related services. This particular industry though seems to be HIGHLY plagued by online dating sites that may in fact be craftily designed splogs (automated blogs created for the primary purpose of spamming visitors), and crooksters looking to score off your dating misery.

These type of sites can be very hard to detect sometimes, but if you have pretty good intuition, maybe you’ll get a feeling like I do that something just seems to be a little bit… off here.

That’s how I felt about the site Online Dating Tips. Upon my first visit it seemed innocent enough, tightly coded, aesthetic design, speedy load, etc.. However, it also seemed light on the content, and heavy on the affiliate links. I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say that apparently EVERY external link on that site was in fact a cloaked affiliate link to some of the biggest dating services on the Internet.

Hmmmm….

The content itself is split into several categories containing very short articles, which is easy to read and to be fair, really does offer some sound advice, BUT… you get the strange sense that you’ve already read it all before. Additionally, for a site that purports to be an authority on how to use online personals, it certainly comes across as a bit… impersonal. There are no personal testimonies, and no heart warming anecdotes to encourage the reader with. It all seems very bland and emotionless.

There’s a reason for this though: the content is not original. At all. My suspicions were confirmed when I copied and pasted a particular phrase from an article here and did a Google search with it. The phrase I copied was:

“Is it possible to find a soul mate online through a dating service? You bet it is…”

And lookie see here, I found another article that starts the same way. In fact, it’s the very same article. But wait! Here’s another copy of the same article. And another one here, and here, and here and…

Hmmmmmmmmm….

Could be this “dating tips” site isn’t interested in the slightest bit about helping you find your loved one, but it does seem very interested in liberating you of your money through affiliate profits. Look, I don’t begrudge anyone who does affiliate marketing since I do it too, but if that’s their only purpose and they have no intention of offering anything of value in return, then they need to get their boonie boons spanked silly.

Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m devastated. And here I thought I found a place where people cared. Where people truly understood my sad plight and heartfelt desire to find a snuggly tookie tums butter pot cuddle pie to call my own.

Alas, alas, it appears that such is not the case here, and I shall have to continue my search elsewhere.

Tags: advice, affiliate links, anecdotes, cloaking, dating, dating service, dating services, google, google search, internet, internet dating, intuition, love, matchmaking, misery, personals, related services, review, scam, soul mate, sound advice, spam, spamming, splog, splogging, suspicions, tips, tricks
Categories: Romance and Relationships, Tangled Webs
 
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Using the awesome and very promising OIOPublisher Direct plugin, I can now sell ads and other services directly to potential advertisers without the need for a middle-man, which means I’ll keep 100 percent of the profits I make. WOOOOO!!! I’m gonna be rich! Filthy, stinking, disgustingly rich out of my greedy butt, depraved mind! BOOYAH!!!!

Well maybe.

It’ll be interesting to see how I fare with this, but at the very least I’ll finally have total control over what gets placed on this blog. There’s a lot of bad hojos and jojos out there looking to bam-bam your jam-jams with their scam-scams, and advertising networks like Google’s Adsense have done very little to stop them. With this solution I’m hoping the quality of the ads and goods that get served here will be far better than what most readers and visitors usually see elsewhere, and will help to complement this site rather than detract from it.

Well, I can dream anyway.

If you’re interested, I’m offering rock bottom prices right now since my traffic and readership is um, *ahem*, not quite where I’d like them to be right now. You can choose from link ads to paid posting to video ads, and more.

Click here for details, and if you’re interested in installing OIOPublisher on your own blog, let me know and I’ll give you some pointers. Initially it was designed for WordPress 2.1 or better due to its native cron support, but after working with the developer for a few days, he was able to come up with a solution to run cron jobs on Wordpress 2.0.X blogs by using the WP-Cron plugin. Muy coolio.

Tags: ads, advertisers, advertising, bam bam, coolio, cron jobs, few days, google, jojos, link ads, middle man, middlemen, OIOPublisher, paid posts, plugins, pointers, scam, video ads, wordpress, wp
Categories: Blog Fog
 
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I recently got temporarily banned from a “conservative” forum after challenging one of the members for making disgusting comments regarding his lifestyle. He basically bragged about being a heavy drinker and for sleeping around with as many women as he could mathematically fit within a day.

Normally this would get a yawn from me. I am from New York after all. But here’s the thing: he called himself a Christian, and a devout one at that.

Say what now?

Since when did God start giving thumbs up for behaving like a drunkard and a sex maniac? Was there a footnote I missed in Revelation that said, “Oh by the way, all those commandments I mentioned earlier about living a sinless life? Just kidding!”

Dudes, seriously, what is this? It was so outrageous I initially thought he was just joking. When it became clear that he wasn’t, and even worse tried to defend it, I finally called him out on it. I wasn’t nasty about it (though I could have been), and even used Scripture to back up my points and explain why I felt he was wrong.

So what happens? The board starts coming after ME. Well one “Christian” in particular, who I’m sure had also expressed the same reservations and concerns about this guy behind closed doors, yet decided to take his side and attack me because of an unrelated post I had made a few days earlier that she thought was distasteful. So, my lacking tact was somehow worse than a guy who brags about smelling like the women he slept with the night before?

O-kaaay.

Then another “Christian” (who also happened to be a mod) starts blasting me in private messages (PM), telling me that I go too far, that I should have taken it to PM, yadda yadda yadda, blah blah bladdy blah blah. Not one person, NOT ONE, ever considered the idea that maybe, just maybe, I might have had a point. And I did have a point, but I was the only one who was actually willing to say anything about it publicly.

I’m not the kind of guy who likes to murmur behind closed doors. I’d rather bring things out in the open, that way there’s no doubt as to where I stand on things. And believe me, there was no doubt then when I made that post. But once again, because I said what I felt was the truth, I get my arse put in a sling. So much for contending for the faith once delivered to all the saints.

The cowardice and hypocrisy of that board astounds me to no end. They were perfectly willing to express the very same concerns I did behind closed doors, but to actually tell it to Man Whore’s face was another matter, and even worse, they pretend to be on his side through it all. These are Christians? Good grief, the word has lost all meaning.

Hypocrites, In-Your-Face Perverts, and Cowards. That’s what the church today is all about, and why I no longer want any part of it. Yet in spite of it all, I really do believe there are good Christians out there, some of who even frequent this blog, and while they’re not perfect, they’re still trying to do the best they can in a screwy, psycho world. I have nothing but heartfelt admiration for them. I only wish we weren’t so spread out away from each other in distant lands. Oh well. At least I know they’re out there.

And yeah, I admit I’m hoping that amongst them all, the girl of my dreams is still out there as well, waiting for me.

Tags: adultery, alcoholism, apostasy, christian, christianity, church, closed doors, conservative forum, cowardice, cowards, drunk, drunkard, drunkards, few days, footnote, fornication, forum, girl of my dreams, God, hypocrisy, hypocrites, lifestyle, message board, revelation, Scripture, sexual sins, yawn
Categories: Christians Gone Wild
 
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You know what I really hate? Humidity. I enjoy humidity the way I enjoy performing a hernia operation on myself using a wooden spoon.

Yesterday we had it really bad though. But come on, it’s close to October now, this heat and humidity crap should behind us as we look forward to cooler (and drier) weather. But nooooooo, summer simply HAS to hold on a little bit longer and vomit its digusting, oppressive moisture on us all. Sheesh. I think the bottom of the ocean has been drier than this.

I like temperate weather. I like seasons (minus summer), and I like being able to wear the kind of fashionable clothes that you can’t wear in hotter climates (especially a nice black leather blazer to impress the ladies). I like leaves changing colors, snow covered streets, and an excuse to snuggle down by the fireplace with my lovely during those cold, dark evenings.

If I HAD a lovely that is.

Great, now I’m depressed again. I think I’ll go to Blockbusters and rent a slasher flick. That always makes me feel better.

Tags: black leather, blazer, climate, climates, depression, excuse, fashion, fireplace, humidity, little bit, loneliness, mood, romance, sheesh, weather, wooden spoon
Categories: Lincoln's Personal Log
 
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Update: The contest has concluded. Thanks to all those who participated!

I’m forever looking for ways to boost my Technorati rankings, but without much success, so I’m gonna try something new here: if you create a backlink to my site from your blog, you’ll be entered for a chance to win a $100 gift certificate for Amazon.

Tags: amazon, backlinks, blog, blogging, comment, contest, dofollow, gift certificate, nofollow, technorati
Categories: Blog Fog
 
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Hearing aid fittings seems to be more of an art than a science, evidently.

I noticed a clarity right away to the sounds I was hearing after being fitted with my new aids, but it’s possible these aids might be a bit underpowered for my degree of loss, so the audiologist wants to fit me with a more powerful version of the same aids next Friday.

My previous aids were very powerful, but failed to distinguish the most important sounds I really needed to hear, and while I was able to hear a broader range of sounds, I usually couldn’t make any sense of it. It was frustrating, especially in noisy situations, so I had basically given up on the idea that I could ever be able to intelligently talk to people outside the home and workplace.

With the new aids, despite being a bit underpowered (maybe), I was able to have conversations I hadn’t been able to have for years, and I was understanding speech far better than I ever used to, perhaps a little TOO well. Like with this coworker of mine, she just loves to talk, talk, talk, talktalktalktalk, and then when she’s not talking I’m betting she’s thinking about talking too. After hearing one of her usual 45 minute monologues, I was starting to think, maybe ignorance was bliss after all.

Digital hearing aids by the way are designed to continuously analyze and filter out background noises, while attempting to leave in the vocal sounds that we need to hear. I could tell my aids were doing the same thing, and the results could get weird at times. Sometimes a sound will be really loud, and then suddenly it will get soft or disappear altogether, the result of the processor deciding the sound was irrelevant and actively squelching it. Normally I wouldn’t mind, but the worst offense is when it comes to listening to music. It thinks just about everything I listen to is noise, and actively tries to suppress it all. The more I cranked up the volume, the more the aids cranked it down. Excuse me, but Steve Perry is NOT noise.

Fortunately, there are musical programs or similar settings you can upload to the hearing aid’s memory banks to compensate for this, so when I try out the next set of hearing aids next week, I’ll see if I can have those implemented as well. I almost got into it with my audiologist last time though. He’s a good guy, but he is way too used to dealing with people 50 years older than me and adjusting hearing aids according to their typical needs. I was ready to tell the guy, “Look, I have a life, or at least I’m trying to. I need adjustments that will allow me to hear everything, including music and crickets and doorbells and the sweet, dewy sounds of beautiful women whispering sweet nothings into my ear. I don’t need you setting these things thinking the only important sound I’m ever gonna need to know is the voice of my doctor telling me when I’m gonna die, a’ight??”

Sheesh.

Tags: adjustments, aids, audiologist, audiology, bliss, clarity, conversations, digital, fitting, hearing, hearing aid, hearing aids, monologues, music, science, social, sounds, steve perry, talking, tongue, voices
Categories: Lincoln's Personal Log
 
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