A few wordpress plugins were deleted too (revver, top commentators, 404 notifier, social bookmarks, gregarious, post ratings) that were either inactive or unnecessary. Also, it seems that at some point the contact form stopped working so I’ve replaced it with a much better contact form. Also installed an awesome comments plugin called get recent comments. It has a ton of customization options and you can check it out right now in the sidebar.

Hopefully these changes make the site load quicker and improve readability. Next up is to get rid of the header image and replace it with something else. Also, the categories on this site need to be simplified and combined. All for another day though.

If you notice anything missing or errors or have any suggestions, drop me a line.

Have a great weekend everyone!

My company

My readers who’ve been here from the start, known that I started a company a while back with three of my friends. Well, that company never quite took off but in April of this year I started another company, The 42nd Estate, with three different friends and this time we’re getting things done and building momentum towards the launch of our first few web-sites. Over the coming weeks I’ll reveal more and more information about the company with all of you but for now let me tell you that I’m excited!

Bicycle Film Festival

As this company works towards launch more and more of my personal time will have to be devoted to making sure everything works. Now, I enjoy working and especially when I’m my own boss so it’s not a source of frustration or disappointment. Having said that, there are some social experiences I’ll miss out on over the next few weeks and months that I would normally love to go to. One such event was this past weekend’s Bicycle Film Festival, which I was scheduled to volunteer valet at but could not make it out on Saturday. Luckily, the people at MassBike had plenty of volunteers on hand and I can always attend next year’s festival.

My coach

A few weeks ago I announced a syndication deal with the Brazen Careerist site, where some posts from this blog will also be published on their site. Well, at the start of this month the Brazeen Careerist hooked me up with a few free hours with an entrepreneurship coach, Tom Volkar. Feeling that little bit of guidance was just what the doctor ordered I seized the opportunity. Over the past few weeks Tom and I have discussed a few of my goals and how to get past any obstacles preventing me from succeeding. It’s been a great experience so far and look out for a more detailed post about Tom and his coaching in the next few days.

My blog

The final note for today is an analysis of this blog. Though I’ve tried to post every day here, I’m beginning to realize that such a schedule does not really make sense for this blog. Especially over the next few weeks and months as I focus more and more on The 42nd Estate, updates to this blog will not occur so frequently. Tom and I also discussed that it wouldn’t be fair to my readers to simply post randomly though so I’ve decided to announce a minimum of two posts per week, though I’ve yet to decide if these posts will occur on the same day every week or simply two days out of the week. If you have any preferences let me know!

So to my long-time readers, if there’s a certain post or story that you’d like to see here, let me know! If you subscribed here hoping you’d read a lot more posts about a certain subject, send me an e-mail or leave a comment stating so and I’ll try to focus on such stories!

Otherwise, I’ll see you all again soon!

1. This blog now has better up-time than Google!

Check it out, I signed up for a web-site monitoring service called mon.itor.us and received my first weekly report recently:



Yeah! This blog had better up-time than Google last week! My host for this blog is bluehost. So far I’ve had very few to no issues with them and they are always quick to respond to my e-mails. For the low, low price of $6.95 / month it’s tough to beat bluehost. Note, those are affiliate links so if you do choose to purchase some hosting from bluehost it helps me out with paying for the hosting costs of this blog and you get great hosting for a low cost. A win-win situation!

2. This blog now features only one sidebar column.

I’ve increased the post text size and made the post width a little bit wider while combing the two sidebar columns into one. I’m going through a minimalist phase and will look to move or more of the sidebar deals into other places or simply remove them to give this blog a nice clean easy to read look. As always, let me know via a comment here or an e-mail how you feel about the new look.

3. This blog now lists less categories.

There are still way too many categories on this site and in the sidebar to the right but slowly I’m converting some categories to tags to decrease the huge list. Over time the categories list will be broken down to ten or less very high-level areas with the tags being used for specificity.

4. This blog now has a social network page.

Instead of listing the various social networks I’m a part of in my sidebar, I created a page solely to list any social networks I’ve joined so you can keep up with me in my dealings all over the intertubes.

5. This blog now used as a reference for college research papers!

I discovered a curious reference to this site today, the site, cheat house (which I will not link to due to Google Adsense policies), hosted a paper by a student and check out one of his/her references:



It appears this student used my paper comparing U.S. accounting standards to international accounting standards as a reference for his/her paper.

That’s all for today. Hope everyone has a nice relaxing Sunday.

Check out my author bio on the brazeen careerist. It’s a better description of me than my own about page!

That’s it for today, I’m off to see the new Batman movie, The Dark Knight, tonight. If you haven’t heard it’s apparently a wicked, wicked amazing flick. I’ll let you all know tomorrow if it lives up to the immense hype.

I love my readers and commentators, you all rock AND roll, so if there’s anyway I can make your viewing, reading, commenting or other experience here better let me know! Time to end this post before I drop another exclamation mark!.

To celebrate the day, it’s my esteem pleasure to introduce a true musical legend, Redbone, playing their uber-hit, “Come and Get Your Love”:

Yeah!

Come and get your commentluv!

Have a great weekend everyone!

Also, if you take a look to the right sidebar, underneath the RSS icon is this blog’s first sponsor, Radical Buy, a facebook application that hosts a marketplace where you can buy and sell any item. It’s competitive advantage is you can also set up a commission rate and allow other people to sell your item, or you can make money by selling other people’s items. Radical Buy is certainly a useful facebook tool, watch out for a more in-depth review next week.

During the month of April, 5,200 unique visitors traveled to this site and viewed nearly 49,000 pages. If you’re interested in becoming an official sponsor of Adam Pieniazek, please fill out this form. In addition to a 125×125 badge pointing to your site you’ll also receive a mention and an unbiased review in this blog.

Finally, Go Celtics! Great game last night!

After searching around the net, I decided to go ahead an upgrade the k2 theme this blog runs under to see if I could get my widgets back. No dice. Then, as a last resort I reverted this site to the old wordpress install and old database. Still, my sidebar widgets were not showing up. So then I went about the process of re-upgrading my wordpress and k2 files to the latest versions. And that’s how Saturday afternoon blended into Saturday night and now early Sunday morning.

Everything seems to be up and running now, but if anyone stumbles upon a bug I’d greatly appreciate hearing about it.

Also, check out the Photos Section I was able to add tonight with the help of this flickr plugin. Here’s a sample of the great images you can find there: