Recently in Blogging Category

2008 Sep 30

Leadership seminars can also be interesting

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tildemark
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some times seminars can also be interesting at least for me most of the times i find them boring and a waste of my time. A recent seminar i joined made me think twice with some of the seminars i missed before. the last task we had from the seminar which i enjoyed the most is the testing the leadership skill you have learned from the seminar. The task is to solve the puzzle called traffic jam.

Setup
2 groups of five with each team having their own uniform color. All 10 individual setting in from of each other, each team facing the other team. an extra chair placed at the center of the last two persons. See illustrations below, ill name the first team as alphabet and the other as numbers. everybody is facing the empty chair.

  1 2 3 4 5
@
  A B C D E

Objective
The objective of the game is to switch places with the team by following some rules.

Instructions
  • a person can move in a space (blank chair) beside him
  • a person can skip a person or move around a person
  • a person can only move forward
  • only one person can move at a time

Well after an hour, i was able to crack this game. it was very frustrating not to be able to get the solution in time because the speaker place a timer on the board and it was just 45 minutes. anyway here's my solution:

The Solution to the Traffic Jam game
Team Alphabet moves first, Person A move to the blank chair.

A12ABC1234ABCDE12345ABCDE2345CDE45E


2008 Aug 20

Browser Based Games

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tildemark
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While looking unto my blogs categories, i have noticed the browser based category to be empty. I guess, i just can't update my blog about the event on the games i play. When i play, i usually spend all of my time on it, that's also the reason i may not be able to blog often.  There are a couple of browser based games i have enjoyed playing, in fact i prefer them to those installed versions whereby we could check my mails, chat, and at the same time surf the web while playing.

blogshares-logo.jpg
Blogshares - I played blogs shares for more than a year, got myself into the top 50 rich players but stopped then they changed some rules in the game which i think they made it to gain more money than by making the players enjoy. there was also a bug on the game which made a major roll back. that was enough to convince to stop playing. i still have my account though i think my chips are gone, i lost the interest in playing so every blog i moderated is approved.

250px-Neopets_logo.png
Neopets - I still play neopets from time to time. I dont find it boring, even if the target audience are supposed to be elementary kids but i think alot are adult players. Lots of built in games to choose from not to mention the battle dome wherein you could challenge neopets players to fight against your neopet.

adventure-quest-logo.gif
Adventure Quest - Its been almost 3 years since i last played Adventure Quest. I only played this game in about 4 months. the free version is very hard to login. it made me decide not to continue playing. My character just reached level 40 when i stopped playing.  

tribal_wars_logo.jpg
Tribal Wars - I was addicted to this game. it made me stop working, blogging, even skip meals, and other online activities. it was almost a year when i realised how i became and eventually stopped. i missed playing TW. I cant go back anymore probably because my villages may already be overruned. I managed to raise my points to 400k when i stopped playing. If i were to recommend which game i like the most, my answer would be tribal wars.

unification-wars-logo.jpg
Unification Wars - Its a game similar to tribal wars but its setting is in space. The reason i stopped playing unification wars is that its too hard to comprehend and is very hard to manage. I mean we could read the documentation but i cant bear its complexity as i could compare it to tribal wars.





2008 Jul 22

What is RSS?

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tildemark
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rss-dummies.jpgWhat is RSS?
RSS is a document format for reading frequently updated websites in the internet. Similar to other document format like the MS Word documents or the PDF documents, the RSS also needs an interpreter called the "RSS Reader" as the MS Word Application for your MS Word documents and acrobat reader for your PDF documents. Each RSS document is called a "feed" or commonly as RSS Feed. RSS feeds are seen with the icon having an orange background with arcs usually found on the side bar of a blog.

How can RSS feed help me?
RSS are designed to help us read frequently updated websites in just one neat and simple application called the "RSS Reader". I use these programs at home to read my favorite blogs or forum and at work to read the messages from my projects. With this, i do not need to go to each of the websites i often visit just to check for any update but instead the RSS Reader does this for me. RSS Readers really made my life more easier as RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication

How do i get RSS?
You will need an RSS Reader, there are lots of applications that enables you to read RSS documents. Personally, I use the Google Reader but you might prefer some other applications. Lets just use it because it the only reader use for now. If you have a Google account then you can use it to read RSS feeds from there. Just click on the "add subscription" link and paste in your RSS feed. Now on the blogs that you read look for the RSS Logo, copy and paste the URL to your favorite RSS Reader in my case its Google Reader. Some feeds are marked private meaning you will need a password before we could read the contents. Some readers accepts authentication, at the office is use Sharp Reader Software.

rss-logo.jpgHow do I know the link I got is RSS?
The RSS reader is written in plain text, if you will try to open an RSS document with a text editor, you can actually read it but you might have a little more time understanding because of the way its written. The format the RSS document is written is called XML. XML is like an older brother of the other common technical word called HTML. XML and HTML are not the topic here so lets just ignore them for now. You will know its RSS because every RSS feed has this somewhere at the beginning of the document: <?xml version="1.0"> and it has an orange icon with a arcs in it. You can try using Tildemark Blogs RSS feed to use is as a sample or maybe subscribe to it.


2008 Jun 18

Raining ang running without shoes

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tildemark
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Its rainy season here and it rains everyday. Downtown is flooded, i guess Davao needs a better sewer system. Yesterday, i wasn't able to go to the office on time due to the flood.

Anyway, i was in the office when the rain came. it was hard and noisy so took a glance unto the office window to see if its starting to flood.

Across the building i noticed 2 female high school students at Ateneo de Davao removing their shoes (still on uniforms). Then suddenly, they ran into the rain towards a nearby shelter. At first, i thought, they were just happy it rained and they try to take bath. But they were still carrying their shoes?

How come you are more concerned about your shoes than what could possibly happen to your feet? Getting hit by something sharp or maybe something dull with tetanus is much more costly compared to a wet shoe. I really doubt if those girls only have 1 pair of shoe considering they are enrolled in an expensive school. In the end, i closed the windows and said to myself, "those girls are just plain dumb".
2008 May 1

Removing google public service ads on adsense

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tildemark
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public-service-ads.jpg
You usually get this when you first added your adsense codes to your site. Its alright to get this during this time as adsense wasn't able to get a cache of your keywords yet. It may take some time to get revenue generating ads on your site specially if your content has less meaningful keywords in it. According to the google help center, it would take approximately 48 hours to remove the Gulf Hurricane Relief ad on your site. If its been there for weeks then your copy might have some problems in it.

Editing robots.txt
There are several ways to remove the PSA from appearing on your site, but the most efficient way is to change your content. First things first, your robots.txt might have been configured to disallow adsense crawlers from visiting your site. If you are able to edit your robots.txt file, you may add the following code below:

User-agent: Mediapartners-Google*
Disallow:

Avoid iFrames or Frames
If you have placed your adsense code in an iFrame then the crawler will have no way of getting relevant keywords thus displaying in the Public  Service  Ads. Google crawlers will have a hard time figuring out which content to get for the ads inside frames so its best not to place your ads in a separate frame or simply avoid using frames on your site just to be safe.

Choose  your content wisely
Content is the most important factor in determining the adsense ads that is displayed on your website. the more content you the greater chances of getting a relevant ad. Make sure you have enough content for the crawler to read. Also, the google crawler can't read images, audio files, flash content, java applets or anything except plain text. If you have a small amount of content and you have set your ads to display only images then this might be the reason for displaying only PSA ads. Try changing your adsense codes to display text and images ads.

Negative Keywords
Avoid negative keywords, this includes anything that is related to d%ath, sickness, p%rnography, dr%gs, etc. At anytime avoid mentioning these words on all of your content, but opps there you go i have just listed them here anyway.

Avoid automatic refresh
If yous page contains the HTML auto refresh code, it might also be the reason why your site is displaying public service ads. Remove the meta refresh code from your page and observe if the PSA ads have been removed. The meta refresh code looks like this one below, remove them:

<meta http-equiv="Refresh">

Adsense ad in a login page
Placing ads on a page that requires user access does not allow the google crawler to visit the page to get the relevant keywords therefore displaying public service ads instead. Avoid placing adsense code behind a login page.

Avoid Session Ids on URLs
Adsense also relies heavily on the URL to display relevant ads. Having a session id on the url confuses the crawler to ad a relevant keyword because your URL keeps on changing. You may use the input type hidden HTML attribute instead of placing the session id in the urls

Unsupported localization
If you site is displaying other language aside from English then this might be the reason why its displaying public service ads. Here's a list of country currently supported by adsense.
Arabic 
Bulgarian
Chinese (simplified)
Chinese (traditional)
Croatian
Czech
Danish
Dutch
English
Finnish
French
German
Greek
Hebrew
Hungarian
Italian
Japanese
Korean
Norwegian
Polish
Portuguese
Romanian
Russian
Serbian
Slovak
Spanish
Swedish
Turkish
2008 Mar 5

Error in Movable Type: No such file or directory

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tildemark
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I fell like posting a new blog post yesterday but when i tried logging in, i got this message: 

Got an error: Error opening file '/mt-config.cgi': No such file or directory
I was stunned, like being hit by Skeleton king's hammer. I haven't done anything to the installation and why this incident has happened? I begin checking the server hoping to find any problems, but there were none. I tried the forums and the documentation but there were no instance of the same problem recorded lately. Lastly i tried contacting my host to see if they have done something to the server. Well the only solution they have is to edit my cgi scripts manually and add a $ENV{'MT_HOME'} tag in it.

Here's is what i did before adding the lines above.
1. Check if your mt-config.cgi is really missing or what. if its there and you can edit it fine then it shouldn't be the problem. if its not there then edit the file mt-config.cgi.original, fill in the necessary fields and save it as mt-config.cgi.

2. If the error persists, check the file security of your mt-config.cgi. It should be 755. if its not, issue a CHMOD command.

3. If at this point the error is still there. Edit your mt.cgi script and the following line just below the use strict; line. Please note that this depends upon the location of your movable type files. In my case its at /cgi-bin/mt4 your might be different.

BEGIN { $ENV{'MT_HOME'} = '/home/username/public_html/cgi-bin/mt4'; }

your mt.cgi should look like:

use strict;
BEGIN { $ENV{'MT_HOME'} = '/home/username/public_html/cgi-bin/mt4'; }
use lib $ENV{MT_HOME} ? "$ENV{MT_HOME}/lib" : 'lib';
use MT::Bootstrap App => 'MT::App::CMS';

4. Do the same with your mt-search.cgi. Insert the line above just below the use strict; line

UPDATE:
There is a much easier fix to this error. Instead of manually editing your .cgi files, edit the Bootstrap.pm located at

{MT HOME}/lib/MT/bootstrap.pm

Insert this line right after sub BEGIN {

$ENV{'MT_HOME'} = '/home/userfolder/public_html/cgi-bin/mt';

Edit the line above to match to your settings. 
2008 Feb 13

Adding adsense to your movable type 4 blog

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tildemark
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Don't know which template to put in your adsense codes?

With movable type widgets, adding in new stuff to the side has become more easier. Its so easy, all you need to do is to drag your newly created widget and drop it into your installed widget set.

If you have your adsense code right now, follow this simple steps:

1. Lets save our adsense code on a notepad, just in case we might accidentally copy something to the clipboard.

2. On your blog template list, go to the quickfilters pane and click on Widgets

3. Create a widget template, assign a desired name, like (vertical ads, horizontal banner, etc)

4. Paste in your adsense code from the notepad we have saved previously.

5. Navigate to your Widget Sets, select the desired widget set

6. Drag and drop your adsense widget on the available widgets to the installed widgets pane

7. Save and publish your blog.

8. Repeat the above steps to create more adsense ads. There a limit of 3 adsense ads and 2 adsense list ads per page.

 

2008 Feb 12

Blog Statistics with Movable Type 4

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tildemark
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stats-widget.jpg The new version comes with additional tags. Although these tag s were not new t o Movable type using them together with the widget add in makes it easy play with movable type templates. Tracking the number of posts as displayed in the dashboard is very nice to keep us updated with our blog. It would even be better if its added to the blogs main page. We will be using 4 movable type tags namely:
<mt:BlogCategoryCount /> - Used to count the categories within a blog
<mt:BlogEntryCount /> - Used to count all the published entries in a blog
<mt:BlogCommentCount /> - the total number of comments
<$mt:AssetCount$> - the total number of assets uploaded

Lets start by making a Blog Statistics Widget:
1. Navigate to your blogs templates and on the quickfilter click on Widgets
2. Create a widget and name it Blog Statistics
3. Paste the following:
 <div class="widget-blog-statistics widget">
    <h3 class="widget-header">Statistics</h3>
    <div class="widget-content">
    Total Categories: <mt:BlogCategoryCount /><br />
    Total Entries: <mt:BlogEntryCount /><br />
    Total Comments: <mt:BlogCommentCount /><br />
    Total Uploaded Assets: <$mt:AssetCount$><br />
    </div>
</div>
4. Save your new widget
5. Navigate to your Widget sets
6. Drag and drop Blog Statistics from the Available widget to your Installed Widgets
7. Click on Save Changes
2008 Feb 12

Login Widget for Movable Type 4

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tildemark
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login-widget.jpgWhats good with Movable type 4 is its enhanced widget system. Without touching the core movable template, we are able to add a new features to it with just a little additional code. Adding a login field for my multi authored blog is necessary since some my co-authors are not familiar with the Movable Type and i don't think giving in a complete path like cgi-bin/mt/mt.cgi can easily be remembered..


Here's how made it.

1. Navigate to your Blog Templates
2. On the Quickfilters click Widgets
3. Click on Create New Tempate Widget link
4. Paste the following:
<div class="widget-login widget">
    <h3 class="widget-header">Log In</h3>
    <div class="widget-content">
       <form method="post" action="<mt:CGIPath />mt.cgi">
           <label for="username">Username:</label><br>
           <input id="username" name="username" size="20">
           <label for="password">Password:</label><br>
           <input id="password" type="password" name="password" size="20">
           <input type="submit" value="Login" size="20">
        </form>
    </div>
</div>
5. Place in Login as its widget name
6. Click on Save
7. On the main Menu, Select Design-> Widget Sets
8. Depends on how many sidebar you have, click the appropriate widget set. Im using the 3 column widget set, if your using the same, click on it.
9. On the Available widgets column look for the Login widget we have created and drag it into the Installed widget column
10. Click Save Changes
11. Rebuild and publish your blog.

2008 Jan 23

Sue me

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Jeedo
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Just wondering why its very easy to file charges in the most powerful country of the world (so they say) the US. I mean, its costly, its time consuming not to mentioning it can get be nerve-wracking but noooooo, I really have to sue this guy for stepping on my toe! (What a mentality). Perhaps its mainly due to the fact that there are a lot of lawyers in the US, not that I'm complaining, I mean if we go from state to state how many lawyers can we find. Heck perhaps in LA, I can find at least one los angeles probate attorney in every bar. Or perhaps its because its easy to pay for a lawyer? (If you can't afford one, one will be chosen by the government? How lucky). Regardless though, I think Americans should be a little more patient and not sue every single chap that crosses them. Its not impossible at all, all it takes is take to start with yourself (I'm suing comment trolls!).
2008 Jan 23

I'm planning to get a pet

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Jeedo
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My first choice would be of course man's best friend. A dog. I want to have an inexpensive dog that can guard my place as well and be playful too. German shepherd's I think are too large for my needs, poodles are definitely a no no for guys not unless you have a female tendency (just a tendency okay?). Ah, I think a chinese chow chow will fit me well. Not too big not too small either.

However since I live in an apartment on the second floor, I'll definitely need a dog litter box. Or perhaps a sandbox will do. I just don't want my pet too poo all over the place. That would be totally uncool plus it stinks. Wait a minute, I hate stink, I guess I'll have to convince myself some more to get me a pet, oh well.

2008 Jan 23

Experimenting with life

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Jeedo
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This is not a life hack, but sometimes its fun to experiment with life. No not the genetics stuff with stem cells thats so debated about thats so old school. I'm talking about taking chances, I mean can anyone walk to their boss' desk and with a straight face say something like "I want a raise."

I guess not, but here's some thought I want everyone to realize, if you are so bored with your work to the point that you won't mind getting fired, why heck do it! Experiment with life. Try doing something exciting with your girlfriend or your officemate (if that won't get you fired). You can think of your circumstance as your lab equipment, then mix and match and see if it goes boom.

2008 Jan 23

Rags to Riches or Not

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Jeedo
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Almost always its inspiring to hear people who've made it big you know the rags to riches type of stories where the protagonist always start off as a pitiful lad with almost nothing to start with. Perhaps its not totally true at all I mean others who may have not the money but have the brains, others who doesn't have the brains have the money. So its basically a fair game but then again life isn't fair (else I would be in the Bahamas right now).

But forget the guys who toil their earnest and do hard work to make it on top. There are just some people who have all the luck. I mean you've heard of stories where regular folks get millions because they are the ONLY relative of a dead millionaire. I mean, how lucky can you get? Its not like some inheritance cash advance, but I'm talking about pure luck.

And if luck isn't enough some people are just so lucky that almost everything comes their way! Take for example this man who won a lottery twice in two years! Odds against all odds, I'm already talking about the lottery and he won twice? This must be a fiasco or something. Honestly though I'm wishing I was that man, not that I bought any tickets yet.

2008 Jan 22

Category RSS with Movable Type 4

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tildemark
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Its been almost a month now since i moved into MT4, it's a new world of blogging with MT4's new features. I would suggest you do the same with your MT powered blogs.

During my move, i found out that my RSS category feeds were lost. Now, im looking for some ways to restore the RSS Categories. Im not really fun of hacking or messing with my movable type installation and im pretty new to editing with MT templates. With a little bit of help from old blogs posts and the MT4 documentation, i was able to successfully restore my RSS category feeds.

Making a Category RSS feed
Let us start making category rss feeds by going to your blog templates section:
1. On your blog templates, click on your RSS feed template, the one with the file name index.xml
2. Highlight all contents and copy everything inside the template into the clipboard.
3. Click on the shortcut List index templates link on the right.
4. Now you are back to your blog templates page.
5. On the quick filters menu, click on the Archive templates.
6. Create an Entry Listing archive template
7. From the content you copied to the clipboard paste it into the textbox.
8. Assign a meaningful name to your new template, everybody is using Category RSS
9. Save your new template.
10. Create an archive mapping of type Category
11. At the path textbox place in categories/<$MTArchiveCategory dirify="-" $>/index.xml. Please note that movable type will store all the rss feeds into the categories folder you specified. You can also rename it to another name if you'd like to. I'm using rss as my folder for the rss feeds
12. Save your template.
13. Rebuild your Index templates, by clicking on the Publish icon

You can check if your work by visiting your blog thru your favorite FTP client. If categories folder is created then its good to go. Now we can insert the code into our main index template right before the category name. As for me, i placed an image as my rss feed link. try http://www.tildemark.com/rss/

14. Go back to your blog templates root
15. Click on the Widgets
16. Click on the Category Archives link.
17. Navigate into the list item

<mt:IfNonZero tag="mt:CategoryCount">
<li class="widget-list-item">

18. Paste the following right after:

<a href="<MTBlogArchiveURL>rss/<MTCategoryLabel dirify="-">/index.xml"><img src=<mt:StaticWebPath />/images/status_icons/feed.gif alt="<MTCategoryLabel> Category RSS feed" /></a>
<a href="<$MTCategoryArchiveLink$>"<MTIfNonEmpty tag="MTCategoryDescription">
title="<$MTCategoryDescription$>"</MTIfNonEmpty>><$MTCategoryLabel$>
(<$MTCategoryCount$>)</a>

19. Save your template
20. Rebuild and Publish your blog. The output should look something similar with my category lists on my main page.



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2007 Dec 12

Saying Merry Christmas in Different Languages

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Philippines has so many dialects, xxx of them to be exact. Below is a compiled list local dialects of the Philippines saying "Merry Christmas and a happy new year". got it from flw.com

Aklanon - Malipayon nga Paskwa ag Mahigugmaon nga Bag-ong Dag-on
Atá - Maroyan na Pasko woy kaopia-an ng Bag-ong Tuig kaniyo't langon mga sulod
Bicolano - Maugmang Capascuhan asin Masaganang Ba-gong Taon!
Blaan - Pye duh di kaut Kristo klu munt ug Felemi Fali!
Bolanon - Malipajong Pasko
Cebuano - Malipayong Pasko ug Bulahang Bag-ong Tuig!
Dibabawon - Marayaw na Pasko aw Bag-ong Tui g kaniyo tibo na mga soon
Gaddang - Mangamgam Bawa a dawun sikua diaw amin
Hiligaynon - Malipayon nga paskua & Malipayon Nga Bag-ong tuig
Hungduan - Maphon au nitungawan. Apo Dios Kituwen baron di toon
Ilocano - Naimbag a Pascua ken Naragsac nga Baro nga Tawen!
Ilonggo - Malipayong Paskwa kag Masinadyahong Bag-ong Tuig
Mandobo - Mepiya Pagasaulog sa pagka-otawni Jesus aw maontong kaling Omay!
Mangyan - Mayad paq Pasko kag
Mansaka - Madyaw na Pasko aw malipayong Bag-ong Tuig kamayo, mga lumon
Pompangan - Malugud Pascu at saca Masayang Bayung Banua!
Pangasinan - Maabig ya pasko & Maliket ya balon taon
Sambal - Maligayang Pasko at Masayang Ba-yon Taon!
Subanen - Piak Pasko Pu Piag Bago Tawn
Surigaonon - Malipayon na pasko sanan bag-on tuig!
Tagalog - Maligayang Pasko at Manigong Bagong Taon
Tala Andig - Maayad ha pasko daw bag-ong tuig
Waray-Waray - Maupay nga Pasko ngan Mainuswagon nga Bag-o nga Tuig!

If you knew other local dialects we could add them here. ill even credit you name for it.

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Friday

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Today

  • tildemark tweeted, "some of my scipts are not working with godaddy. but works fine on the others. not mention their poorly coded admin page"

Thursday

  • tildemark tweeted, "so many pending tasks i need to finish. need more coffee !!!"
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Thursday

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Monday

  • tildemark tweeted, "i had a hard time removing the error messages generated by surf side kick. i ended up uninstalling most of my applications."

Today

  • tildemark tweeted, "i got hit by surf side kick and im getting numerous error messages on my screen. tskkkkk"

Saturday

  • tildemark tweeted, "check boxes, i didn't know they can also be complex"
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Friday

  • tildemark tweeted, "the seminar turned out to be leadership training. it was fun, learned alot. i have already attended numerous seminars but this is different."