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Well its Mothers day so I thought we would take the time to pay tribute to all those special mothers out there…LOL

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All my life I really never concerned myself with eating healthy or living a healthy lifestyle. I have never been overweight, probably because I have a high metabolism. Over the past 2 years I have noticed myself becoming very tired easily and not having as much energy as I used to. I wondered why since all I was doing was sitting at the computer and doing work. I was so tired because of my lack of activity and I was not eating that great either, so a few months ago I started to change things around.

Food
I would usually eat whatever I felt like, it didn’t really matter to me, but now I really watch what I eat. First I try to make a full meal, not just 1 thing. If I’m making a steak I will make a salad and have fruit or something like that. Also I have been eating a lot of organic food, which is supposed to be better for you. Another thing that I have eliminated from my diet is fast food, I rarely get fast food anymore. It is just bad for you. Also making your own food is much more cost effective than eating out everyday.

Caffeine
I used to live on caffeine, I would drink pop (or soda to you non Pittsburgher’s) like it was nothing. I would have probably 5 cans of Mt. Dew a day if not more. Also if I felt tired I would drink energy drinks all of the time. I have pretty much eliminated caffeine from my diet. I don’t drink pop at all anymore, now I just drink vitamin water and Gatorade. The only time I may have caffeine is when I go to Starbucks, but that is not that often.

The Gym
I really never thought I would join a gym, but I had to do it. A while ago I bought weights and decided to start working out, but that lasted about a week. Even when I lived at a place that had a free gym I would rarely go. So I decided to pay to join a gym, knowing that I’m spending money to go there is motivation to keep on going. I’m not looking to get big or anything, but I plan on staying in shape. Also working out seems to make me less tired and gives me more energy throughout the day.

Sleep Schedule
Before I would rarely have a good sleep schedule, I would stay up late and end up sleeping through most of the day. That is no way to be productive! Also if I would sleep too long it would make me even more tired. Now I am on a good sleep schedule where I’m not sleeping my day away, but still getting enough sleep.

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I haven’t talked about hockey here on the blog for a while so it is about time. It’s May why am I talking about hockey? Well for most teams the season is over, but for 4 teams the season is still going strong. One of those 4 teams is the Pittsburgh Penguins! Yesterday they eliminated the New York Rangers to go on to the Eastern Conference Finals. I was lucky enough to be able to go to a playoff game and man was it crazy! I had never heard Mellon Area so loud in my life! You can check out photos from the game on my Flickr page.

So it’s on to the Eastern Conference finals where we will play the Philadelphia Flyers. People are saying this is going to be the best series of all of the playoffs. For one it’s an inner-state rivalry and two the teams hate each other. All of the games we have played against them in the regular season have been brutal and have had fights in them. Honestly I think we are a better team then the flyers with players like Malkin, Crosby, and Hossa, but it is going to be a tough series for sure. The Flyers always have a way of beating us, but that was the case with the Rangers too, but we were able to take them out in 5 games.

Last year everyone thought the Penguins were going to make it all the way. We won our division and everything, but the thing we lacked was experience and we got knocked out in the first round. This year we have the experience and have gone through a lot with Crosby and Fleury being out for extended periods of time with injuries. All of that brings a team together and makes them want to win even more. With that said I think the Penguins can take the Flyers in 6 games. Game 1 is on Friday in Pittsburgh so LET’S GO PENS!!

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In the world of blogging or any writing medium content is very important, but sometimes it is hard to come up with something to write about. This happens on this blog a lot, sometimes I cannot think of something useful to write about. Even though this is a personal blog I do try to keep a good schedule of postings. But when I cannot think of anything to write about this becomes a problem. Here are some tips for finding things to write about.

E-mails
I don’t receive a bunch of e-mails asking about the internet or making money online, but I know there are people that do. They usually make a post with a few questions they have received in an e-mail and they answer the questions. This is informative to their users because they are the ones that submitted the questions. If anyone has any questions feel free to contact me.

Comments
Comments are another great resource of finding topics to write about. If you write a post and someone asks a question about the post you can easily do a follow up post. Also many times comments bring up other great topics to write about. If you don’t have comments on your blog you really should.

Other Blogs
Reading other blogs is a great way to find something to write about. I have a long list of blogs that I try to read each day. If someone writes a controversial post you can write a response to it, or you can write about the same thing the other blogger is writing about.

Social Networks
Places like Digg and other social networks make it easy to find something to write about. If you just look at their top stories, there will probably be at least 1 or 2 stories that you can write about.

I’m sure there are a lot of other resources for finding topics to write about, but these 4 are the ones that I use the most. If you have any suggestions on finding topics please leave a comment and let me know.

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As I said Ad:Tech was the first marketing event that I have been to. Even so I had heard of most of the companies that were exhibiting there. One name I heard a lot was XY7, funny thing was I had never heard of XY7 at all, weird because they seemed like they were the talk of the show, maybe because they had a party Monday – Wednesday! Anyways when I went over to talk to them they were very receptive and more than happy to tell me about what they do. Here is Auggie telling everyone what XY7 is all about…

As Auggie said XY7 is an affiliate network, but what sets them apart from other networks out there? Well the first thing that I noticed was customer service. As I said when I went to go talk to them they were very receptive and were more than happy to talk to me, even though I was not currently an affiliate. Also when I got back from Ad:Tech I e-mailed Auggie and he had my account approved within minutes. It’s always good to have a close relationship with the networks you are dealing with, not just be a number like you are with so many other affiliate networks. Since I’ve only been an affiliate for a few days I have not been able to try out any of their offers, but they do have a wide variety of offers and their control panel is very easy to navigate. I will definitely be using them in the future and if you do affiliate marketing you should too!

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With any conference there are dinners. It is a good way to catch up with old friends who you only get to see a few times a year. Also it is a great way to network and meet new people. Ad:tech is only 3 days long so there was not that many dinners to attend, but I was invited to 2 dinners. The first dinner, held at Asia de Cuba was sponsored by AdValient. Asia de Cuba is inside of the Clift hotel and has a really cool atmosphere. I was joined by Ian Lee, Missy Ward, Lisa Picarille, Connie Berg, Geofferson Marcy, and Ms Danielle. Asia de Cuba’s menu is sort of an Asian Fusion, something I told everyone you don’t find in Pittsburgh. I didn’t break out my camera until we were served our main courses; here are some pictures of some of the dishes.

The second dinner was a blogger dinner put on by Ms Danielle. It was held at Annabelle’s Bar and Bistro, which is right by Moscone Center. We were joined at Annabelle’s by Ian Fernando, Greg Morgan, Garret Gee, Wes Mahler, Ian Lee and Gloria. I decided on the rib-eye, which Ian and Danielle got also. It was cooked perfectly, I also ordered the French Onion soup, but they served it in a large bowl with cheese sprinkled on the top. Usually you get it in a crock with bread and cheese on the top, but it was still good.

Both dinners gave me a good chance to network with people and tell them about what I do. A lot of people were surprised that I have been doing ThinkComputers for so long and that I started it when I was in high school. In any business networking is very important so dinners like these are perfect for meeting new people and making contacts, regardless of the industry the people may be in.

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Since this was my first time going to an event like ad:tech I did not know what to expect. The show is sure a lot smaller than CES and other tech related events that I’ve been to. There were speaker sessions and an exhibit hall. The exhibit hall is where all the networks and companies were showing off their services. Rather than write a long blog post about what each company I talked to offered I decided for them to tell you! Today we will start with CPA Empire, who is an affiliate network. Here is what they had to say about what they do…

As Shane said they are a 1 stop shop for affiliates, they have a domain registrar Dynamic Dolphin and parking company Parking Empire. I have been using CPA Empire for a few months and have had success with them. Their control panel is easy to use and through their website it is easy to find offers that fit your niche. It was great meeting them at ad:tech and I hope to work even more with them in the future. If you want to signup for CPA Empire you can do so here.

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Since I was in San Francisco for ad:tech I decided I would stop by the Justin.tv office and say what’s up to the Justin.tv staff. It is really cool being able to go to the offices of a website or service you use. The Justin.tv staff was more than happy to let us come and hang out for a little while. Since Krystyl lives in San Francisco her and I headed down to the office and met up with Patrick (lifedoc). The office isn’t anything great to look at from the outside, but it’s a startup, so you can’t expect something amazing.

When we came into the office everyone introduced themselves and we were able to hang out for a bit before Michael took us out to lunch. During lunch Michael talked about the future of Justin.tv and what they have planned and asked our opinion on what they have coming out. He also asked us what we would like to see on Justin.tv and anything that we did not like on the site. It was nice being able to discuss our issues with Justin.tv with the actual staff. It is not often you get to do that with any company or service that you use. I like that Justin.tv was so open to suggestions and criticism from its users.

We went back into the office and hung out for a bit longer. Although the office is old it is quite big, there is more than enough room for everyone to work. Thinking about it I would love a space like that for ThinkComputers, it would be perfect for day to day work and product testing. The Justin.tv crew was very busy, but the atmosphere there seemed very relaxed.

Justin of Justin.tv

The day I left to come back home we all stopped by the Justin.tv office and we talked with Michael about ways Justin.tv could make money, and even how even broadcasters could make money. It was great shooting ideas back and forth. Also during that day Phil was giving a tour of the Justin.tv office on the help channel and included us in it.

If you want to watch my Justin.tv channel you can check it out here.

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Day 2 in San Francisco gave me a lot of time to explore the city. I went walking around with my friend Jack, who is from San Diego so SF is new to him too. We first headed down into the city on the BART train. It is cool that even if you live far away from the city you can easily get into the city without driving. This is great for people who have moved out to SF and don’t have a car, it also is good for people who just want to save time and money. After getting into town we headed to the big mall. The mall is HUGE and has almost every store imaginable. Nordstrom’s takes up the top 3-4 levels and the way it is designed is really cool.

After eating at the mall we decided to explore the city a little bit. We checked out Yerba Buena park. It was really cool that it was right in the city. It would be a great place to go and get some work done on a nice day. We kept on walking and discovered China town. I had never been to any China town before so we had to check it out. China town was very interesting, there were all types of crazy stores and restaurants. It was really cool to see all of the different herb and tea shops and the buildings looked really cool.

Once we were done exploring China town we met up with some more friends and went out to eat. We went to a place called Gordon Bierch, which is a brewery as well as a restaurant. Since it was a brewery I decided to try one of their beers, I went with the Blonde Bock and it was really good. The food was pretty good too. Gordon Bierch is right by the bay so I finally got to see some water!

Since my friend who lives in San Francisco is originally from Pittsburgh he decided to take us around and show us some sights. We went over to golden gate bridge but it ended up being to foggy to even see the bridge! The fog comes in really quick here, it was really surprising. Since we didn’t get to see the bridge he took us down Lombard street. Lombard is the street with all of the curves in it. You can only go down it like 5MPH! All of the houses on the street are really nice too, although pulling your car out of the garage on the street would be a pain in the ass.

Day 2 in San Francisco was awesome I can’t wait to venture out today, I will be going to the Justin.tv offices and checking out fisherman’s Warf.

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Well flying from Pittsburgh to San Francisco was not that fun. My flight was at 9:20AM, which was to Vegas (a 4.5 hour flight). For one I hate long flights, but I really did not get much sleep the night before since I was excited about the trip. I tried to sleep on my first flight, but that just gave me a sore neck. Getting off in Vegas I had about 2.5 hours to kill so I got some food and jumped on my laptop to get some work done. If you have never been to McCarren international Airport in Vegas they have slot machines all over the place and if you hate the sound they make, like I do it is quite annoying. Finally I got on my flight from Vegas to San Francisco. I landed about 3:30 western time.

I was met at the airport by friends who live in San Francisco. Instead of going right back to their place they took me down to check out the city. We took the BART into the city and when we came up from the terminal I was extremely surprised! There were people everywhere and tons of stuff to. In Pittsburgh the downtown area is mainly offices and things like that, not many people go down there to go shopping. Well in San Francisco it is a lot different, there are stores all over the place. We went to Union Square to relax and that gave me a chance to take a few photos of some of the buildings.

We ended up going back to my friend’s house and just hanging out the rest of the night. The weather here is awesome too. When I left Pittsburgh there was ice on my windshield, so 70s is a nice change! The rest of the week should be a lot of fun!

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