time to end Entrecard participation?

If you haven't already heard, Graham Langdon, entrecard.com's number one douchebag, banned leading blogger Turnip of Power from the Entrecard system after Turnip posted a mildly rude tweet on Twitter. The tweet intentionally Mentioned Entrecard, in order to show the apparently Clueless Langdon why it's Not such a Good Idea to post to your website Everything that Everybody tweets about you, particularly not when you have spent a lot of time pissing off a lot of people. And the reaction to that tweet, arbitrarily and immediately banning one of the site's Top Users over a silly and not very important tweet on another social network, is just so over the top arrogant that I am Utterly disgusted and find myself contemplating a departure from Entrecard.

On the one hand, I hesitate to give up the traffic. I'm certain if I stop dropping (even if I keep the widget) my traffic will drop and my Alexa will go back up and my Google page rank (4 last I checked) may go down. In terms of selling ads, I am getting decent but not spectacular results from Project Wonderful and CMF Ads. I'm not making a lot of money, but I am making money from my site and I have every hope it will grow. But after reading a couple of post (s) I forced myself to really think about whether the time I spend dropping cards (all too often on crappy blogs where my only reason for visiting is to get a drop credit and maybe inspire a return visit and drop might better be spent creating quality blog content and marketing that content through other avenues.

Much as I really have enjoyed getting to know so many great bloggers through Entrecard, I have to admit that my time would be better spent building a better blog and doing more to market it beyond a social networking web site that clearly seems to be on the wane and, much more importantly appears to be run by a meglomaniacal asshole who feels that the normal rules of courtesy and concern for ones customers somehow don't apply to him. And that is just Not the kind of company I really want to be associated with, let alone depend on for a large share of my traffic.

For now, I am leaving the widget up but am not accepting new advertisements at this time. I have nine or ten ads sold so it will be more than a week before I am in a position to pull the plug on Entrecard altogether, and I am not 100% sure if I will remove the widget or not. But my drop 300 per day days are Done and I suspect my time as an Entrecard member will soon be Done too. My sincerest thanks to all of my advertisers and visitors, many of whom I met through Entrecard. I will certainly continue to visit my blog friends and will be working on other ways of marketing the site and hope that I will continue to see you around the blogosphere and over at CMF Direct. If you haven't already go list your blog on CMF Direct. It's free and allows you to accept any kind of advertising and is a great place to find new blogs and connect with other bloggers. It may well be what comes along to Replace Entrecard once Graham drives it over the cliff, so be Sure you are listed.

this seems to be

my week for publishing about review copies. Yesterday I panned Thirteen Reasons Why, a book I wanted to like but just didn't. Tomorrow I will rave about In The Land Of Invisible Women, then on Friday I have to review Mark LaFlamme's Dirt, which I REALLY didn't like. Haven't yet decided just how negative I am going to be, but it will definitely be a Not Recommended.

Part of me worries that if I continue to pan books I've been sent free copies of the publicists will take me off their lists (which would be okay, I suppose) but it seems to me the only thing I really have to sell are my honest opinions and I am not about to recommend a book I don't actually like.

My vacation is passing all to quickly and I am painfully aware that come Friday morning it will be back to work for me. Thanksgiving was nice, though in the end we didn't prepare all of the side dishes. Then Sunday night Bob came over and spent the night and that was fun too. Now there is just Christmas to be dealt with.

vacation

was a long, super busy week at work, but I have made it through and am now off for a bit of vaca. I do not have to return to work until Friday December 5th. Ron and I had seriously considered driving over to Boise to spend Thanksgiving with Staci and Clint but at length our worries about our 10 year old car going through the passes in winter, combined with our own tight finances caused us to cancel. But I am taking my personal holiday the Sunday after Thanksgiving and a vacation day the Monday after. Since we are closed for paid holiday Thursday and Friday I have a full week of paid time off.

I am hoping to get some rest and to get caught up and posted ahead on the books blog. I have read three books that I need to blog about, including one from a publisher that I have to post about on December 5th as part of a publicity campaign. my blog earnings are still quite small but they are real and are growing. And now with a year and a half of book reviews published I am starting to be taken more seriously as a reviewer and receive free reading copies from publishers and their publicists. It's a nice perk, and I still enjoy publishing the site most of the time, though it is really hard on work days and particularly if work is really busy.

Our friend Bob is coming over for Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday. I got a 20lb turkey from Safeway, though we will need to make another grocery run tomorrow. Tonight I am just chilling and unwinding and will try to get into publisher and writer modes tomorrow.

the blog gods and godesses...

....seem to have it in for me this week. I did not manage to post on Monday because work was hellishly busy, then we had company all evening. Tuesday, I managed to write a clever book post, even working in a bookish meme I was tagged with. I put in lots of links, proof read and checked everything twice. I clicked publish and Shazaam-- an Earthlink configurator screen. moved back in my browser and found a completely blank Compose New Post form. Feh. Today I managed to get up a great post about an extraordinary new book, and the post looks great on the front page. But if you try to visit the full post page it somehow is Not There. No clue at all what's up with that or how to fix it. I suppose I'm going to have to ask for help but I sure don't Want to.

with being more or less offline and not dropping for several days, I am back down to number three in Books. I stayed up all night and dropped cards from the time Earthlink came back online around 2 am until nearly 7:30 am. My connection is sooooo sloow it took me that long to drop 300 cards. Yikes. I have read and am ready to post about Thursday's and Friday's books, but am almost afraid to try at this point.

I want a Peek!

I just saw something online that I REALLY want to get, just as soon as I can afford it. A million years ago when I had a Good Job at a big ISP, I used to carry a little pager size device with a full qwerty keyboard and tiny screen that allowed me to receive all of my regular e-mails by pager any time, any where. And I dearly loved it. But years later after my jobs were offshored and things were tight I had to drop the 25 dollar a month service.

But now there's Peek, which is said to be a stylishly thin, smart sized device that allows you to read your email any time/any where. And it only costs 80 bucks, then 20 a month service charge. I paid about 150 for that pager way back when. If anybody is wondering what to get me for Christmas....

I've rarely been

more happy to be wrong. I was absolutely shocked that McCain graciously conceded and the presidential election was firmly and clearly decided before midnight eastern time. When I went to bed last night, the word was that Arizona's same sex marriage ban had passed but California's had failed. It was a huge disappointment this morning to learn that California voters did in fact vote to deny a basic right to many of their fellow citizens. Closer to home, I was not surprised that the Washington governor's race was still up in the air. This morning's surprising news that Republican Dino Rossi has conceded was a relief.

Even more of a relief is that we have for now reached the end of the endless string of negative political commercials that have dominated tee vee for the past I don't know how long. I'm watching the noon local news and it is so nice to no longer be hearing all those horrible ads. Our long national nightmare will soon be over.

Be Sure To Vote Today

It's a bit after midnight on election eve. I have dropped my three hundred Entrecards, posted my election day post and have about 8 Entrecard ads running today. I don't really care if I get up to first place (and Puss Reboots sure is getting a lot of drops!) but staying in the top three is crucial.

Meanwhile despite being tired, having worked all day today, I find I am not sleepy and am guiltily watching a bit of CNN, where the ticker helpfully notes that the first polls will close in just over 14 hours from now. The best prediction I've heard so far comes from Nicole at Inspire Emotion who says to watch Virginia, where polls close at 7pm EST (4pm West Coast). If Obama wins in Virginia Nicole predicts he will win the election. If McCain takes Virginia we may be in for a long night.

My personal prediction, after chatting with some friends on Twitter last night is that we will not have a clear winner and resolution of the election on Tuesday night, but will have what it seems to me is now becoming the usual post-election theft of the prize, which will of course play out over Weeks of bickering news coverage.

Here's hoping Wednesday morning will not feel like a time for angry blogging.

a