It was going to be the typical pseudostress from Aunt…Unc lost his glasses, so she went to look for them.

Soon came the familiar “Ooh! Ooh!” that usually typifies some utter nonemergency she’s hoping to get people to react to. So I’m ignoring that, trying to keep on reading the NationStates General forum…

But it didn’t stop. Also I caught an expletive plunked into the Oohs. And something didn’t sound quite…right.

So I looked out the window.

There she was, sitting on the ground and OOH!-ing while holding onto her ankle. I don’t know where I’ve heard it, but a sound clip comes to mind. “Uh-oh, this is bad…” So I sound up the alarm and let those whose muscles aren’t stiff from 6 years of sitting at the computer do the running to see just how bad, BAD is.

As soon as Ma hits the door she gets the report that “it’s broken! My ankle!” And I’m thinking, OMG, but of course a broken ankle doesn’t negate a person’s personality. So of course, it turned to MY WHOLE FOOT!

Anyway, off they went to the hospital once she could be convinced to lean on me and Unc and hop to the backseat of my car on the intact foot. Fortunately, I was just wearing my robe, giving me a ready-made excuse to bug off from that emergency-room sitting without looking like a HUGE boor… They went off so fast I didn’t have a chance to ask which hosp. they were going to go to!

Update: I just got a call, Ma says that Aunt broke her LEG (not ankle or foot) just above the ankle. There’s 2 bones. They’re both broken. So it was definitely bad. I had been half-hoping that she was mega-exaggerating and it’d turn out to be a sprain, but, no such luck.

Now they’re waiting for the orthopedic surgeon(!!) to set it. Last time there was a broken bone in the family, it took until 7AM for a bone doc to show up (it’s a bit after 9PM now)!

I did find out what hospital it is, though…I had to ASK!

Well, nothing for me to do now except put away the dinner and play Silent Storm. Aunt would think it was callous of me to play a game now, but there’s really nothing else to do! It’s not like *I* can set broken bones!

Here’s hoping the bones heal well.

Yesterday I got an email complimenting me on a site of mine. Which is cool, but I was surprised that anyone even saw that long-ignored that site!

So, I checked its main keyphrase, and found that, after 2 years of ignoring it completely, suddenly ALL 3 major engines decided to rank it in the #1 spot!

So what could be wrong with that?

It’s a content site. An UNMONETIZED content site *ca-rinnnge*. A site I almost deleted this year, precisely because it is an unmonetized content site. The reason it had stayed unmonetized was because the engines had been ignoring it to such a total degree that it wasn’t worth bothering to put ads on.

Now I have a quandary. They ranked it up, despite at least 2 years of being unchanged. But to monetize it, to redeem it and make it a respectable Capitalist, I will have to do an update.

Which will probably re-kill the ranks. After all, they like it the way it is now.

But an unmonetized site just isn’t “proper.” It’s like it doesn’t have any clothes on. It shouldn’t be out in public Like That. Plus, sites without ads are like little commies or socialists. It’s like it’s shooting baskets for the wrong team! It must stop. I have to get it properly clothed in ads, so it is a respectable Capitalistic knight and proponent of the Commercial Interest.

Sometimes I think the SEs have found my server and are messin’ with me for sadistic kicks. Oh if only they’d rank my MALL SITES up like that! Or my merchant sites! But Nooooo, they find the one stinkin’ site I have that has no ads–the one stinkin site that, from a commercial perspective, is a waste of disk space. And rank THAT up.

Well, at least now I know where to link to *this* site from…

I finally came up with a name for this blog, so the “working” moniker “What Ever!” is a goner.

My merchant-side adventures will probably be the subject of a lot of posts, so…
It is now The Capitalist Chronicle.
*breaks wine bottle for christening*

Plus, the name should also give clues as to my opinions of rot like communism and socialism, both of which are blighted as well as being no fun.

Argh!

Lately I have had the misfortune of dealing with companies who really don’t have any clue train tickets when it comes to doing business online.

Think about it: The point of doing business ONLINE instead of in-person is:

1) To NOT have to bother with a bunch of bureaucratic falderal–just punch in the order
2) To NOT have to wait for some joker to show up for work, or hope to hit him before he beats it for the day–just punch in the order
3) To NOT have things get hopelessly screwed from faulty transcription–again, just punch in the order!

But lately I keep hitting idiot companies where I not only have to suffer with molasses-like “manual review” (aka “we couldn’t code a decent automated system”), but one of them doesn’t even have a way to PAY online! I had to FedEx a *gasp* CHECK! A piece of paper check! (Oh they offered the option of using PayPal IF *I*, the customer, paid the PayPal 5% processing fee! Yah right as if I’m going to pay some place’s merchant fees. Forget it! They should either eat it or hide it in the price, that’s business 101 stuff…)

For Pete’s sake and cryin’ out loud. A week and a half, and I’m still not done with what should have taken ten minutes total!

If they weren’t providing an internet-related service (the horrors that such places are actually in the INTERNET industry~!) I’d say they had absolutely NO business being online at all and recommend them to close their sites and wipe their hard drives of the indignity of having hosted such dinosaurish operations.

Oh, in case you’re wondering, the worst offenders have to do with advertising sites. I think they must be crossovers from some ancient Madison Avenue place that’s trying to get into the new market.

Bah. I hate the dino way of doing business. Such obsolete methods have no redeeming factors.

I thought I had a good item in scales, and I was right! So far it’s showing a rock solid conversion ratio (amount of sales vs. traffic).

Picking a product to actually sell is a lot more involved than picking one to merely promote as an affiliate. Products I sell myself, are also products I’ll have to eat if they don’t move! Products I just promote, if they don’t sell, will sit in someone else’s warehouse irking them. So needless to say I have a lot more invested in the whole endeavor, both financially and mentally.

So, well…

Yesss!