Happy New Year 2014 From The Cortes Family

2013 has come and gone and I am happy to say good riddance. While 2013 brought some great tech and happens to be the best year I had on Google+ based on the +CircleCount 2013 statistics they were so great to provide us, it was also one of the worst ones I had in my personal life.

Still, I won’t let one lousy year ruin the rest of my life and so 2014 will not only be the beginning of a new year, it will also be the year where Chuck Cortes pushes back against negativity and makes a better man, father and husband of himself. 2014 will be my year because I am gonna take it and make it mine.

Why not do the same? Lets make 2014 an awesome year so that when it ends we can strive to make the next year even better than before. Here’s to an awesome 2014. Happy New Year everyone, may God bless us all. And if you don’t believe in God well may you existence to a fruitful, awesome and very happy. Because your happiness is my happiness.

“Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin.” — Mother Teresa

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Google+ Pages, I got mine. Do you have yours yet?

 

Have you gotten you Google+ Page yet? What are you waiting for? I just got mine and linked it to my Chatterbox Chuck blog. Maybe now I can put this blog to more use. Although Google+ allows for more wording than Twitter, the formatting is limited on Google+. With my blog I can make the post look any way I want. Now I would be happy if I could just get comments to be posted on both the blog and G+ at the same time but you never know right?

Here’s my G+ Page, please feel free to follow, I look forward to putting it good use. Also please share you Pages so that others can follow you as well.

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Lisa Reviews Giveaway – a great site, a great contest

Let’s be honest here, everyone loves free stuff. Contest are great because it gets people involved, it gets them active and it gets them to do all kinds of things depending on the prize. Well, Lisa Reviews has a great contest that had me going all crazy spreading the word as this contest deserves to be known. Enough that here I am writing an article about it.

Lisa Reviews , as described on her site, is a website where you can find “reviews on the things you want to know about”. She has some very interesting review articles mostly on kids pet items but her most recent article is by far the coolest.

Milson Road Review and Giveaway

This article is a review on a really cool gift idea about an commemorative portrait  called The Daily Portrait that can be designed to celebrate different themes such a anniversaries, weddings and maybe even a new addition to the family like a boy or a girl and in a front page newspaper style or as the website describes it:

The Daily Portrait™ — a PERSONALIZED, COMMEMORATIVE, FRAMED PRINT that captures and celebrates a milestone or special occasion within the context of the news of the day. A one-of-a-kind gift that only gets better with time…

The commemorative portrait is a beautiful gift idea that, like Lisa, I also recommend.

But Lisa Reviews does not stop at the review. She is actually giving away one of these The Daily Portrait frames as part of  contest. Simply go to her website at www.lisareviews.com and look for her article Milson Road Review and Giveaway (<--- or click this link) and follow the instructions on what to do to participate. You have nothing to lose and all it takes is to share her article (and mine too, why not?) in as many ways as possible and even do what I just did, blog about it on your blog. The more you do to share the better your chances to win. Give it a try, maybe you might stand a chance at beating me. LOL.

Lisa Reviews rocks. Go check it out.

All Comments are subject to this blogs Comment Policy. Did you like this article? Please remember to share this article with family, friends and the rest of the world thru the links below. Follow me on Twitter for updates on my blog. Thank you for reading and commenting on another excellent article by yours truly Chatterbox Chuck.

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The Famous Bloggers ComLuv contest may be over, but the fun has just begun.

A contest where everyone wins

So I didn’t win any prizes from the Famous Bloggers ComLuv contest; actually I did. I was not one of the 20 winners who will receive a cash prize but what I won is almost as valuable. Considering I had just decided to venture into the world of personal blogs I was able to make an article good enough to qualify for the contest. That alone made me a winner. But what really made this contest worth participating were all the extra perks I got just for entering.

It was simple. I just had to follow the rules by signing up on both sites, providing some details about myself and then submit an article based on a set of topics provided by the contest holders that I could not submit anywhere else. Once I qualified my article would be posted for the members to read and comment. That’s it. After a few weeks of exposure the judges would check each article and score them based on a certain criteria's and such and eventually decide who wins what prize. During this time my blog and I were exposed to a large number of readers who could easily find their way to my blog by simply clicking on the backlinks the site provided with every comment you made and every post you submitted. This was probably the best exposure my blog has gotten so far thanks to these 2 sites alone.

But how did you find this contest?

As I started researching how to build my blogger blog, pick a theme, add some plugins and stuff and eventually find ways to promote it, I came across some comments about a contest on a site call www.FamouseBloggers.net on some blogs I came across. I followed it and found a community dedicated to helping people learn how to create and promote their blogs. This site was exactly what I was looking for but what I didn’t know was that I had found more than just a source of information to get my blog started. This site, in combination with ComLuv, introduced me to a system that allowed me to grow my “following” list on Twitter and even cooler was that my “followers” list also grew exponentially. On top of this I was also able to find the blogs of the many members of both sites allowing to start an incredible list of blogs I know follow thru Google Reader and FeedReader. The amount of stuff to read is incredible; my previous blog home pales in comparison.

As I spent more time on the site, I found the the owner, Hesham, was a really nice person who actually spent time on the site talking to his members. He even acknowledged me several times which made me feel like I was one of them, a real blogger. Famous Bloggers makes you feel at home, the members relate to you as if they’ve known you for a long time and the tips you get from the articles posted by the members are priceless. The more I read, the more I realize I am in over my head on this whole blog venture, but I have decided to take the challenge and work hard till I create a blog where I can provide interesting content from several topics I like talking about so that people can come, read and comments on them. And I cant deny that although it’s not the reason I decided to start blogging on my own, the fact that I could make money of this blog is a nice bonus.

The end of a contest, but the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

The contest may be over and the 20 winners announced. But this is just the beginning for this Blogger Novice as I will put the knowledge that I gained from this contest to good use and make this blog one of the best blogs out there.

Let’s get the ball rolling and the articles flowing. It’s time to “kick it up a notch” as Emeril Lagasse would say. Stay tuned. This blog is going into overdrive. See you in the comment section.

All Comments are subject to this blogs Comment Policy. Did you like this article? Please remember to share this article with family, friends and the rest of the world thru the links below. Follow me on Twitter for updates on my blog. Thank you for reading and commenting on another excellent article by yours truly Chatterbox Chuck.

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Hey Chuck, where are your new articles?

After long summers like these (no, we don’t get pregnant every summer) I look forward to Christmas at the end of the year. All the lights, decorations, Christmas movies every day for 25 days straight and Christmas music on certain radio stations 24/7 truly make my winter holidays great, even if I’m broke before or during The holidays.

I have looked at my blog everyday for the past 2 weeks and realize I have done so little on it and I find this a bit frustrating. I started this blog with the intentions of posting articles as often as possible, at least 2 per week, but sometimes life just does not cooperate with how you want things done so you have no choice but to go with natures flow.

There are a few things that have kept me busy these past few week, some not so important, others very important. My wife is nearly 9 months pregnant so not only is her mood constantly changing on an hourly basis but she is also at that point where she is constantly tired and in pain which I understand. Poor woman is always laying down in pain as the baby seems to love to position himself in places that give her pain. he’s not even born yet and already being a pain.

Then there’s the new school year which is about to start and I have yet to get any of my kids uniforms or supplies; this weekend will be murder for me. I’m not even sure if I have enough to buy 5 days worth of uniforms for 2 kids, their supplies and their shoes. You know kids these days, Payless stores are off limits when it comes to school shoes.

On top of all of this the apartment is a mess. I had (and still have a bit) a roach infestation in the kitchen which forced me to remove everything from every cabinet, do an extermination job of my own and then clean every shelf and every dish before putting them back. I still haven’t finished this project which I started a week ago. Oh, but lets not forget that now I have to do all the laundry, dishes, vacuuming, picking up the messes my kids do, fighting with them to pick up their stuff, making sure they take showers and go to bed early, cleaning the bathrooms, cooking most of the time and moving or carrying anything that weighs more than a gallon of milk. While I’m sure some of you out there (probably all of you) reading this think I should be doing this anyways, I am only human and my wife doesn’t do all these things by herself when not pregnant. But, it’s my duty and although I may have to endure this for at least another month as she recuperates from the surgery after the babies birth, hopefully things will get a whole lot better when she’s feeling better and when my mom finally moves in with us for a few months to help us out a bit.

I wish I could say this is the end of my list but there are still things that follow such as due to our work schedules and the locations when the kids are staying during summer vacation we don’t make it home till after 6:00 PM and then we have to start cooking. By the time I am done I’m exhausted, frustrated with my long day of work and my kids constant fighting and nagging. At this point I need some me time so I get on the computer, not to blog, but to play my online games and drown myself in the sound of machine guns shooting, helicopters flying above, grenades exploding and the voices of my online buddies yelling “I need help” , “die you bastard”. or “that is BS”. Talk about the best way to relieve your daily frustrations. Best therapy I get every night or so.

But, I promise once the baby is born, my mom is here, my wife is feeling better and my house manages to stay clean for more than 2 days, I will be dedicating more time (mostly while the baby sleeps) to create and post more articles for you to either enjoy, comments and debate or ignore, criticize and move on; either way I get noticed.
Who would have thought blogging would be so much work for a guy who is called a chatterbox.

All Comments are subject to this blogs Comment Policy. Did you like this article? Please remember to share this article with family, friends and the rest of the world thru the links below. Follow me on Twitter for updates on my blog. Thank you for reading and commenting on another excellent article by yours truly Chatterbox Chuck.

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The Blogosphere, it’s bigger than I imagined

  Although I have been blogging for several years, I was blogging within the confines of a particular website call Joeuser where my first blog lived and my readers were mostly the members of this site. I wasn’t exactly a big hit but most of my articles did get at least a few comments. Oddly enough the company that owned the blog site was a software company and they had about 3 different forums based on the software they developed which were connected but at the same time separate. 1 for games, 1 for the Windows skinning software and the blog site. It really all depended on what topic you picked as to which members you reached. Eventually the site got slow and there were very few people either blogging interesting stuff or commenting on them, so I moved on and made my own blog on a blogger account I already had but only used once about 3 years ago more or less.

As I migrated to my new blog, the first this I was aware of was that I no longer had the benefits of that other site. Posting articles on my own blog meant I no longer had all those members seeing my post and commenting. I was pretty much on my own at this point. So, I did what any smart person would do and started looking for ways to promote my blog, to get my word to the Internet masses. I had no idea what I was getting myself into as I took a leap of faith and started the research on how to get my blog started, promoted and liked.

Never did I think that it would be so hard and overwhelming to have a blog if my own. This gives a whole new meaning to hard work. But there are several factors as to why I find myself overwhelmed with this new undertaking of mine.

Under Construction – the making of a blog site

After checking out how Blogger worked, I checked out the basic template provided by Blogger to get me started. Considering my previous blog was limited to the “one size fits all” look the site owners gave it, my uniqueness could only be found within the articles themselves. Ironically the search for a proper theme for my new blog was long, frustrating and almost disappointing as every template I found had many of the features I wanted but didn’t always work the right way and most of the time the features that were lacking made me continue to search hoping to find all of them in a single template. This is what happens when you’re picky like me.

I eventually came across this current theme you see now. I actually like this one a lot as it had just about everything I wanted for my blog and more. All the cool scrolling features and the newspaper style look made this theme almost perfect. But of course nothing is ever easy for me. Because of all the extra cool features I spent several days filling in the “YOUR-URL-HERE” and “YOUR-IMAGE-URL-HERE” codes in the template to make it look like a real blog and not a test page of some sort. Bare in mind my HTML knowledge is less that amateur but with all the resources on line and my ability to learn fast I have managed to figure out how to tweak the template out.  And since my blog is new and I am only starting to get to know other bloggers I don’t have a lot of people to feature which would be kinda cool to do. But I move on and so far things are looking good but I still have work to do.

The “what to write about, when to post and how often” planning of articles

Although creating and setting up the site has not been easy, it’s been a piece of cake compared creating the articles to post. Although I have been blogging for a while, my previous blog was based mostly around politics and technology so I never really did serious blogging. It was more like writing a few words about my political opinions and what i thought about certain gadgets and tech but that I didn’t really have any “hands on” for my articles. Just opinions about what I thought after watching the stories online.

I wanted to start anew and make my articles more professional, more interesting and more attractive. Picking better topics, better styles and links wasn’t too hard but writing the whole article, much better and longer than I was use to is a challenge. Then on top of this I also got to be consistent, I need to write articles as often as possible so that my readers can get use to having something to read when they check on my blog. Failing to provide interesting and entertaining content will kill my blog. I should know as I have several blogs I follow and notice how some of hem are not very consistent. It’s gonna take some time and some planning but I have some ideas on how to provide good content on a constant basis.

Where and how to “Spread The Word”

This was one of the first things I started doing when I decided to venture in the world of personal blogs. I knew going alone meant losing the viewership the previous blog gave me so I had to find new ways to get the Internet worlds attention and get my blog noticed. On my old blog I has started adding my own social network links by finding the HTML codes for as many as I could and add them in to my articles as I posed them. At first It was not easy to get them to work and I had to settle for the ones I could find that worked as tat site had some restrictions on scripts. Still I managed to find some nice images and some interesting HTML codes to use and was able to make a pretty decent social networking set of button of my own. As a matter of fact i think  was the only one on the site that had them. makes me wonder if they would eventually incorporate them on the site.

But this was just the beginning, not only did I have to search all across the Internet to find these social network buttons, but I also had sign up on sites such as Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit and Delicious in order to get my articles published in as many places as possible. Then I came across Famous Bloggers where not only was I able to make comments and expose my blog and myself in the process (that didn’t sound right did it? LOL) but also found new people to meet, new blogs to read and more tips on getting my blog off the ground. From here I have also found other sites such as Blog Engage which also helps expose my articles, meet new people and find even more blogs. I also came across a site called SeedBuzz. To be honest I don’t yet understand how SeedBuzz works as I just found the site but it’s suppose to help share my articles as well. I’ll give more details in another article as I test this site.

My search continues as I have a strong desire to make my blog a place where people want to come as often as possible and read what I have to say about anything and everything in life.

So many blogs to read, so little time

Even though creating my new blog, writing and choosing how to post my articles and using every tool and site I can find to expose my articles have been and continue to be very time consuming, stressful and challenging, the hardest part is following the huge and still growing list of blogs I have. I usually spent my time reading stuff on the site where my old blog was (and still is) and was completely unaware of the Blogsphere that existed outside that site. All of a sudden I have a long list of site of which many post articles daily, every few days or weekly and sometimes it takes me days to get to some of them.

I want to read as many of them as I can and respond as often as possible because I like talking, debating, learning and teaching new things in the process. The crazy thing is the more time I spend on Famous Bloggers, Blog Engage and now SeedBuzz and others I am sure to find later on, the bigger my list will be on my FeedReader program I use to download all the feeds for my blog list that I follow. Although Google reader pretty much does the same, Feedreader makes it easier to read most of it if I happen to not have an Internet connection. I discovered I could also use it as a portable software so this makes it even easier to use at work during my breaks and lunch time. I am amazed and impress with the amount of blogs I have found so far but I am sure I am only looking at a fraction of the blogs out there and I loom forward to finding more of them and reading more interesting stuff and hoping they will eventually read mine.

The road to getting my blog started has been probably the hardest road I have ever had to ride on. But I’m a firm believer that hard work, consistency and great content can lead to a prosperous blogging experience. I won’t deny that the end result I am looking for is to make money off my blog but that will not be the main reason or the driving force behind the desire to endure this hard work and make this blog work. But it doesn’t hurt to make a profit in the process. Now I sound like a Ferengi. No I am not a Trekkie but I do like the Star Trek seriesand their movies from The Next Generation forward.

Now to continue this long, hard but worthwhile process of making my blog famous.

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How often do you “Share This”?

It’s kinda ironic how hard I worked to add social networking buttons on to my old  blog at charles.joeuser.com, a site that is very restrictive about scripts in their articles yet I myself don’t normally click on these same buttons when I visit other peoples sites. Well, that was until recently when I realized how useful they could be, which is why I wanted them, yet how could I expect anyone to want to click on my buttons and share my articles with the rest of the Internet world when I didn’t do it myself. After all I tend to believe that if I would be willing to do or not do something that it’s likely that the average person is also willing to do or not do something.

This is when I started to wonder just how often do people click any of the “share this” buttons found on just about every website I have seen so far. I mean, not until this past few weeks did I actually use these social networking buttons to share articles on blogs that I have been discovering lately. I can only assume that the reason I didn’t use these buttons before was because although I had the accounts, I never actually used my Twitter or Facebook and I didn’t even have accounts on Delicious, StumbleUpon, Digg, or Reddit. Heck, I didn’t even know how to use Google Buzz even though I had access to it thru my email.

But as I started doing research on how to expose my articles to the masses, I started understanding how these buttons worked and how in order for my stuff to get exposure I had to also expose things that I found as well. It’s kinda like the guy who gets to eat from food everyone else but him bought. He benefits from the food but does not contribute. But if less and less people contribute and more and more benefit without contributing, then the end result changes and everyone loses. That’s why we all have to work together and help each other out. A similar concept should be applied to politics but that is more of a pipe dream.

Although my Facebook friend list is pretty big in my opinion (considering I am not good at making friends) I am not one of those people that gets followed often, probably because I don’t do Facebook much. To be honest my life is not actually exciting enough right now to have some daily update to post, not to mention this is not something I actually look forward to doing, so the people on my list don’t actually see my picture and comments on their Facebook feed or walls often so I am sorta one of people that gets lost in the endless “what’s on your mind?” post. Still, every time I post an article I use sites like TwitterFeed to advise those on my list a new article has been posted on my blog in the hopes someone gets interested. This in turn may get then to “Retweet”, “Buzz”, “Digg”, “Share” and/or “Submit” my articles for others to find.

Still, I can’t help but wonder, the people who do visit, read and maybe even comment on my blog, how often do any of them hit the buttons? I do have a stats widget that allows me to keep track of how many people visit my site and how many people view particular articles and most of my social networking buttons have a counter so I could get a general idea but it doesn’t tell me if the same person either clicks everywhere they go, don’t click any buttons at all or clicks on the buttons depending on his or her feel for the article. All these curiosities are probably pointless to some but I am a very curious person and sometimes I just need to about know that which I find curious.

My blog is fairly new and my readership is at a minimum right now but the more I read, the more I learn and if there is one thing I have learned is that, like in everyday life, helping to spread other peoples words on the Internet by clicking on their social network buttons will be beneficial to my mission of exposing my words to the Internet masses. So please, if you find something online you deem worthy of other peoples eyes, share it, click those social networking buttons. Be part of providers not just the users.  Share the love, share the articles, but most of all, share my words with everyone else by clicking on the social networks button to the left that have been following you as you read. Thanks.


All Comments are subject to this blogs Comment Policy. Did you like this article? Please remember to share this article with family, friends and the rest of the world thru the links below. Follow me on Twitter for updates on my blog. Thank you for reading and commenting on another excellent article by yours truly Chatterbox Chuck.

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The Contest that’s making me a Famous Blogger

You never know what you’ll find until you start looking

To make a long story short I had just started my new blog about a month ago and I needed some exposure in order to start and grow a readership. In the process of researching sites that could help expose my blog I came across this site called Famous Bloggers, a site where the owners are trying to make the site “a place for our members to find all high quality resources that will help you to start your blog and make money blogging” according to their about page. Famous Bloggers has tons of articles posted by bloggers from all across the Internet providing incredible tips on how to start, create, expose and grow you blog site and blogging skills. The coolest thing about Famous Bloggers, which is also the best thing about it, is that every article anyone submits to them and every comment made on any article gives the creator of the article and the people commenting (not to mention Famous Bloggers themselves) a chance to expose themselves and their blogs to everyone who visits the site and reads the articles and comments with links to their blogs and even links to their Twitter accounts.

As I browsed the site looking for new ideas and advise on how to make my blog and blogging skills better, I came across and article called The Biggest Internet Cash Contest in the History of Blogging, a Famous Bloggers – CommentLuv contest where members would submit an article based on specific topics in the contest rules and if approved would be posted on both sites so that members could read, learn and comment on the articles and eventually these articles would then be judged and the winners would earn prize money.

A leap of faith against all odds

I have to admit that when I first saw the article I was drawn in by the cash prizes which I have to assume Famous Bloggers were counting on. I was hesitant to actually submit an article and actually took me a week (I submitted my article just before the first deadline) to finally participate. The fear of rejection is what first kept me from participating but after reading some of the articles on the site I wasn’t so sure my blogging skills were good enough either. After much debate and watching the deadline date get closer and closer I finally decided I had nothing to lose and everything to gain. Playing it save always kept me from getting hurt but it also kept me from getting better and learning new things.

Once I was convinced I started working on my article and submitted it to Famous Bloggers as per the contest rules instructions.  To my surprise I was looking thru my emails a few days after I submitted the article and found an email from CommentLuv stating that someone had made a comment on the article I had submitted for the contest titled Creating Articles That Encourage Comments. At first I was in shock my article had been accepted, I was participating in a real contest, I had a chance to win.

A Win-Win Situation

I quickly went to check the article to read and reply to the comments. I was excited to see my article was being exposed for people to read and comment on a site with a huge audience and that I had a chance to win some prize money in the process. This is when I realized that although my article had just been posted, that the contest had just started and that the winners would not be announced till mid August, I had already been declared a winner. How, you ask? Simple. Having my article accepted and posted by Famous Bloggers basically stated I had good enough skills to be a blogger. The comments made on the article show that some people found my article interesting enough to read and comment on it.

Having my article posted on Commentluv and Famous Bloggers gave me a chance to expose myself and my blog to hundreds of readers. It also game me to opportunity to find other peoples blogs where I have found some great articles. having participated in this contest has given me more exposure in just a few weeks than I would have in months of posting articles on my blog and hoping it gets noticed. Although it would be nice to win the prize money, no matter the results this is a Win-Win situation, I have already won as I was able to accomplish more for my blog simply by participating. The learning experience, the tips I have found, the people I have met and the blogs I have found are worth more than any prize money this contest has. Of course winning the money doesn’t hurt either, I would see it as a bonus.

Come on ride the Famous Bloggers Train

If there was ever a site that I would recommend to anyone starting a blog or already having one, Famous Bloggers would be it. Thanks to them this Blogger Novice is a rising star on his way to becoming a ProBlogger.  So what are you waiting for? Hop on board and ride the Famous Bloggers train with us. If it worked for me, it can work for you. Like me, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain. Check it out and give it a try. You just might become one of many Famous Bloggers.

Oh, yea, one last thing. Visit my article Creating Articles That Encourage Comments, read it and comment on it. Help me win the contest. Thank you.

Contest Sponsors

This is the FamousBloggers ComLuv Contest Sponsors, feel free to check them out, also check the Online Contest page for more information. Special thank to Gail our Social Media Marketing Strategist for the great work.

$300 SPONSORS

The ComLuv Network

Claims.com specialists in road traffic accidents Claims and Compensation

$150 SPONSORS

• FamousBloggers ~ Group blog about how to start a business, making money blogging and blogging for business.
• Brian Longest ~ GoDaddy Coupon UKTop10 30% Off
• Executive Gift Shoppe ~ Personalized gifts including Money Clip
• Social Implications - Exploring the impact of Social Media ~ Social Media
• Local Proud ~ Start Your Own Discount Card Business

$100 SPONSORS:

• FiddyP. Personal blog of Andy Bailey
• FiredWok Chinese Takeaway & Delivery ~ Chinese delivery in Lancaster
• GoodMillwork ~ Florida Based Architectural Moldings
• Andrew Rondeau Ltd ~ Blogging Guide
• Marc Duquette ~ Scribnia Blogging Directory
• The Happy Guy Marketing ~ Professional SEO services
• The Online Recruiters Directory ~ Search Firms
• Monster Auto ~ Car industry news
• Bill – ANS Gear ~ Paintball Guns & Gear
• Cori Padgett- Big Girl Branding ~ Business Marketing Strategy
• NowRelevant.com ~ Google alternative search
• The Internet Time Machine ~ Trends and new product ideas
• Joe & Colleen ~ Richland Wa Homes For Sale

$50 Sponsors

• DiTesco ~ Home based business resources
• DennisEdell ~ Direct Sales Marketing Coach
• Firas ~ WP Worx - Wordpress Services
• Kiesha ~ Blogging Tips & Tricks
• Melinda ~ Simple Home Organization
• Dan Keller - TycoonBlogger ~ Promote Your Blog
• ProjectCenter ~ Club Flyers
• PPI Claims ~ PPI Claims
• Free Gifts ~ Free Gifts
• Zoomit Canada ~ Social Bookmarking just for Canada
• Fence Houston ~ Houston fence contractor
• Fence Philadelphia ~ Philadelphia fence company
• Location Villa Espagne ~ Location Villa Costa Brava
• Lube Oil Sales ~ Buy Amsoil Motor Oil
• Olympic EyeWear ~ Designer sunglasses
• Miss Wise Law ~ Law & Legal Information
• Michelle Mangen ~ The Social Media Virtual Assistant
• Chris Guthrie ~ Make Money on the Internet

All Comments are subject to this blogs Comment Policy. Did you like this article? Please remember to share this article with family, friends and the rest of the world thru the links below. Follow me on Twitter for updates on my blog. Thank you for reading and commenting on another excellent article by yours truly Chatterbox Chuck.

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The Road from Blogger Novice to ProBlogger Chronicles – Grammar & Spelling woes

Sometimes I think I can be considered the least likely person to be a blogger. Why? Well, let’s see:

• I’m not much of a reader – When it comes to books, I’m not a reader. I was somehow able to get thru Middle and High school without reading more than a few pages in the beginning, middle and end of any book one of my teachers gave us for some kind of book report. I do enjoy some magazine articles and now find myself enjoy blogs all across the Internet, but even the Harry Potter series was read to me thru an audio book.

• I’m not much of a writer – If I have written a couple of letters to anyone in my life it’s a lot. I rather make phone calls then write a letter. Ironically you would think emails being so much easier would make a difference but I use emails as often in a week as the average person showers in a week. With the exception of my job which I have no choice in the matter but 98% is work related emails. Oddly enough I like writing my articles and also enjoy commenting on other peoples blogs. Strange isn’t it?

• My typing skills are funky – I’m a 2 finger writer. I use my Index Fingers for most of my typing and have gotten pretty good at it, but at the same time it has made learning to type properly almost impossible. Not to mention I tend to make mistakes a lot because I write letters in the wrong positions as oppose to misspelling. For example I tend to write “atxes” a lot as oppose to “taxes” on my job emails. Don’t know why but it happens almost every time. Thanks to the spelling feature on Outlook I catch it every time but still. I also have issues with capital letters; because I only use 2 fingers I can’t cover the entire keyboard without moving both hands at the same time so by the time I press the letter i want capitalized I may have already moved the finger that was on the shift button and so the letter fails to be capitalized which I then have to fix later after reviewing. Maybe someday I’ll learn to type properly.

• My spelling can use some improvement – I am so totally dependent on spell check software in all the websites and software I use. My 2 finger typing doesn’t help either. English was not exactly one of my favorite subjects in school so in all honesty I still have issues spelling certain word just by hearing them. I sometimes have to read the words in my mind the way I see the letters just to remember how to spell certain words. Ironically I am really good at catching spelling errors in other people’s comments and articles. Of course it’s not my business to point these out as I have seen and learned myself that people don’t like to have their spelling errors pointed out.

• My grammar is barely existent – Like my spelling, my grammar is just as bad if not worse. Punctuation is like Chinese to me. I often struggle to figure out when to use a semi-colon or a comma even though I understand the difference. Or how often to use comma’s in a sentence as oppose to a point and start a new sentence. This is why I am so picky with my articles and although I am not perfect I still try to avoid making grammar mistakes and making my article seem like certain parts don’t make sense when reading it. I have seen this happen a lot on other peoples articles but tend to believe they probably have similar if not worse problems understanding English grammar. It’s actually a bit embarrassing to admit it as I was born and raised in the US and always had good grades in most of my classes with the exception of History which I found boring as a teen but am now more interested in it and am forced to research stuff I should already know.

Although all the points above give me the impression that I might be the weirdest blogger out there, somehow I am able to rise above these “short comings” and create some pretty interesting articles. Articles that make me wonder why I have these short comings at all. The good thing is the more I get involved in blogging, the more articles I write, the more research I do and the more I “measure twice and cut once” the more I improve on these short comings and perhaps someday I can see them as minor issues barely noticeable.
I doubt I will become an avid book reader eventually; I don’t think even a Kindle or Nook can change that; but at least audio books can fill some of that gap and I will have to settle for movie versions of some books which will always lacking compared to the books can still be pretty fulfilling.
That’s why I advise anyone who dedicates a lot of time to blogging and creating great articles to truly take your time reading, re-reading and feeling very comfortable with every article you create before posting. While most people may ignore these “minor errors” it can still take away a little bit of flare from the blog entirely if done too often. People may not voice it out loud but they might use it as a a con when talking about your blog to others. I know because I have been the victim of “grammar and spelling error police” of the blogging world.

So, are you picky about your grammar and spelling? Do you take your time creating and posting articles or do you write and post on the fly? Tell us your stories or success and not so successful postings where grammar and spelling was good or bad.

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It’s the 4th of July, Happy Independence Day America

Ah yes, the 4th of July, a day where we get to stay home and get paid for it (most people anyways), a day to grill some awesome burgers, juicy ribs and sizzling hotdogs. Yup, the 4th of July is a great day to find great bargains at the big stores that are making their employees work.

But…, the 4th of July is more than just a free day from work, a day to grill and shop for deals. The 4th of July is an important day to Americans, or at least it should be. The 4th of July is the day we fought back an alien invasion that came unannounced, quite and prepared but thanks to Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum we were able to get our Independence Day. Just kidding, the real story of the 4th of July or Independence Day, as it’s what this day means, is as follows:

• On July 4, 1776, the Second Continental Congress, meeting in Philadelphia in the Pennsylvania State House (now Independence Hall), approved the Declaration of Independence, severing the colonies' ties to the British Crown. Link
  
• During the American Revolution, the legal separation of the American colonies from Great Britain occurred on July 2, 1776, when the Second Continental Congress voted to approve a resolution of independence that had been proposed in June by Richard Henry Lee of Virginia. After voting for independence, Congress turned its attention to the Declaration of Independence, a statement explaining this decision, which had been prepared by a Committee of Five, with Thomas Jefferson as its principal author. Congress debated and revised the Declaration, finally approving it on July 4. Wiki

While I’m not a big fan of Wiki, this particular piece describes in short the history of our Independence pretty well. This is a special day for Americans, a day that helped move this nation forward to the “Land of the Brave and the Home of the Free” nation we have today. While our history does have it’s dark moments, it was the will of the people of this nation to not only declare it’s independence from Britain but also to fight against all kinds of moral issues that plagued this nation as the decades went by such as slavery, child labor and women’s rights. Our dedication, hard work and sacrifices was seen by the world as they declared us the home of “The Leader of the Free World” and to this date the term is still used.

So stand up citizens of this nation, be proud to call yourself an American, never forget the sacrifice of those who fought to give us the documents that give us the freedoms we enjoy today and those who gave their lives to defend them (The Declaration of Independence, The Constitution & The Bill of Right). Fly that flag, show it with pride, for we are Americans and we are the Leaders of the Free World.

 

God bless the United States of America.

All Comments are subject to this blogs Comment Policy. Did you like this article? Please remember to share this article with family, friends and the rest of the world thru the links below. Follow me on Twitter for updates on my blog. Thank you for reading and commenting on another excellent article by yours truly Chatterbox Chuck.

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A fresh new start on an old hobby

Welcome to Chatterbox Chuck’s Blog. Thanks for reading my first article, I look forward to your comments.

I love blogging, there’s something about being able to express your thoughts in a way that you can say what you want and not have to truly deal with people on a face to face basis. Blogging allows you to say what you got to say without any interruptions and then you get to see how others respond to your comments. It also forces people to do more than just BS their way thru a debate since blogging gives you the ability to research opinions and either admit you were wrong or bust them up with proof to the contrary all on the spot.

Blogging is also a great way to not only tell people what you like and dislike but also find people who like and/or dislike the same things. It’s a way to make connections with people all around the world thru topics of interest, even if you opinion is not always in line with theirs. That is the fun of it; imagine living in a world where everyone liked the same things. There wouldn’t be much variety now would there? That is what I love about blogging the most, to be able to not only know what you know and believe what you believe, but to also know what other people know and what they believe. Sharing each others opinions and ideas is how things happens and that is one of my main goals when I blog. I want things to happen.

We can’t simply sit around and wait for the world to come to us, sometimes we have to go out there and get it ourselves. There’s no way of really knowing what lies thru that door if you don’t go thru it yourself. And you won’t be able to take in everything that lies past that door if you go thru by force, it has to be by choice.

Let’s take advantage of the freedoms we still have available to us and use it to shape the world the way it was meant to be shaped, the right way, thru our words and actions. Let’s show those who dare to take our freedoms from us that we will use the powers of blogging to fight back, to make a difference, to stand against tyranny and abuse, be it from our Gov’t, another country or even businesses. Let the power of blogging push the boundaries to their limits.

Let the blogging begin.

All Comments are subject to this blogs Comment Policy. Did you like this article? Please remember to share this article with family, friends and the rest of the world thru the links below. Follow me on Twitter for updates on my blog. Thank you for reading and commenting on another excellent article by yours truly Chatterbox Chuck.

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