astro | Croncast - From Cool to Cul De Sac

Season 19 Ep 22: Workahol, Collecting Pennies, Astro Van

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 08:50:33 -0500

Croncast - 2008-03-19.mp3
Show: #469
Length: 27:10
Size: 18.7mb
Format: mp3

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Taking you to the hospital was a bit comedic
You are such an ass
Listen, it had to be done
I asked you not to put that picture on the internet
You did and then 20 minutes later you said put it up
Technologically challenged isn't something you can plead
Sell all of your clothes and buy an iPod
That is the way it should be done
"We're going to have to start an IV"
No, no, no
It gave me a flashback to giving blood
Those self-satisfied, holier than though bloodletting freaks
Sitting around sipping orange juice and eating vanilla wafers
Even the dancing blood drop
He is the smuggest prick around
I've had two children the IV was the worst part
Just do it
Don't tell me about it
This was a serious deal
You couldn't let this thing fester
I was down here digging ditches for you
I am going to get you a bottle a Workahol
I gotta be here to support you
Waskily wabbit do I need to you to show up in a crisis
The tables were completely reversed
You give me
You gotta put the antibacterial stuff on on it
Clean your dog bite wounds right away
You should immediately go to hospital for wound
Can you scratch my butt with your tooth
Then you get bitten
Now it is trying to kill you
The other angle that is happening
No you are trying to work from your mobile phone
Betsy went off the deep end
You became party Betsy
I did like 30 minutes of stand up
Filling in the gaps for Betsy
Then you did the laugh
I can't stand the whole blood thing
She hit a good vein
The nurse goes "Whoah!"
"You don't feel that?"
They just cut you
You're gonna be ok though
I have it on video
I know, the nurse didn't think to stop me
That won't hold up in court when you say Macy's dressing room
There was blood everywhere
The blood pooled in your elbow pit
Yeah, and you were over there drinking your Workahol
The ball was in court
Yes, it was kind of humorous
You were twittering the whole time
I wasn't doing that
I will scroll through your twitter record
You got through it very well
As an outpatient they said, double the drugs
Bit by the meanest shihtzu on the planet
During the intake you have to fill out the dog attack form
The dogophilia love that you suffer from
I knew the answer would be . . . it wasn't the dogs fault, it was mine
You people are crazy
It is the abuse gene
There were other women at the hospital say the same thing
Two nurses said the same thing!
My 15 yo dog bit me too
I know it was my fault and you laughed with her
You domesticated a wolf and invited it into your home
It is not your fault that they bite you
It is part of their nature
Mostly subdued but it is inherent in their personalities
Speaking of 15 pound one toothed animals
I saw Billy Bob Thornton and his band play in Austin
Riding in a Lesbian's Astro Van to dinner
She has a huge freezer bag full of stuff
It is dried peppers and tomatoes
He starts to eat some
The convince some people to try it
She's got the sweet Astro van
I know not to eat strange food in a mini van with two lesbians
What is it season with?
It as a 0 point yeast
The guy next to me spits it out across my lap
A zero point yeast!
Billy Bob Thornton was playing at Antone's
Real pennies prior to 1982

The Resale Queen Podcast is now here! Every Saturday by 9 a.m. CST

Tags: astro van shihtzu bite workahol collecting pennies zero point yeast gum

Resale Queen Podcast Episode 3

Sun, 03 Feb 2008 09:42:21 -0600

Resale Queen - 2008-02-02.mp3
Show: #003
Length: 23:17
Size: 16.0mb
Format: mp3

This Week's Show: Dumpster Diving Checklilst.

Suburban dumpster diving
Location, location, location
Know the front end - don't want any surprises
Get to know routine
Scout for employees/cops/palette pickers
Leave a car running and ready with door open
Get your stuff and go
Get greedy get hurt
Picking from neighborhoods
Never look the home owner in the eye
How does it change for urban and rural environments?
You have to knock on the dumspter first to get out racoons and feral cats

Next week: Next week we talk eBay Feedback and Fees.

Links: Dawn Shumate sent these great dumpster diving resources. Thanks Dawn!!

http://dir.groups.yahoo.com/dir/Hobbies___Crafts/Hobbies/Dumpster_Diving
http://dir.groups.yahoo.com/dir/Hobbies___Crafts/Hobbies/Secondhand_Shopping

There is a specific dumpster diving group whose goal is to make a map of dumpsters in the Chicago area called garbage liberation.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/garbageliberation/

Most of you will know us from our podcast Croncast (every M-W-F)

Tags: astronaut reslae queen eBay dumpster diving bubble wrap

What good are 3 hits from Google search results?

Wed, 05 Dec 2007 08:56:11 -0600

I can tell you. It all depends on what people are searching for.

Painfully obvious, right?

Well, not so much when someone searches at Google for intitle:"chocolate" ext:rss. The odds are astronomically high that even chocolate experts weren't even returned as results. See for yourself.

So what does this mean? It means that someone searched Google for a RSS feed (ext:rss) with the word chocolate in the title (intitle:"chocolate").

Yes, the search is more advanced than a keyword or phrase based search but that isn't my full point. The reason that it matters is that not only did this individual search for chocolate but also culture and abba. Not quite sure what it says about the person searching for those topics . . .

So for me, these three hits matter. They are three more than I would have normally received for those topics and a chance for me to get them to possibly subscribe to those feeds, subscribe to my podcast, click an ad (yes, I like money) or get my brand in front of them.

I am able to do this with keyword feeds that I create dynamically from posts that get the same SEO treatment that a normal webpage would get.

The other plus for this type of search is the fact that they return so few results and Croncast happens to be ranked #1 for most of them including searches like, say . . . "CNN" or "Micorsoft" or "iTunes".

I've had conversations with a friend, Rick Klau, about RSS feeds being indexed in Google search results. Most of those discussions focused on my saying that feeds should show up in search results and Rick saying that they shouldn't.

My stance is that some people, like myself, benefit from these results the same way that we benefit from a normal click through to our sites. I am able to do this by checking where the individual who clicked through is coming from and displaying a web page instead of the RSS with the exact same data that was in the feed.

But I don't stop there. I also make sure to let the user know how they got to the page and that they can now subscribe to that feed. It's a soft landing for what traditionally has been a hard look at XML or ugly feed displays in browsers. Which is where you will end up with 99.9 out of 100 feeds if you click through them when returned in a search.

What is Rick's position? If 99.9 are bad then they should be removed. For the time being I will agree that he is right. But that doesn't mean that this is the way it always has to be.

A couple of things could change this:

1) The uptake of RSS since IE7 and and FireFox now display their own XSLT to prettify the XML. Sort of like FeedBurner does.
2) Publishers add their own XSLT for their feeds
3) Publishers using blogs, most of which are dynamically generated, are written with code that can check for referers like Goolge, Live and Yahoo and redirect the user to a page that has the same content as the feed
4) My favorite. Google could create their own XSLT document that loads the feed into it.

Maybe that was more than a couple but I believe there are a lot of ways to welcome feeds into indexed search results beyond having to type in a search like intitle:"Google" ext:rss.

By the way, I'm not number one on this one Google is with it's YouTube property.

Next up, how to create RSS feeds with keywords in the title, how to get the .rss extension added to your feeds and landing pages for feeds.

Tags: RSS search page rank Google search RSS XSLT FeedBurner

Betsy and her husband Kris Apr 13, 2007

Fri, 13 Apr 2007 06:53:41 -0500

Croncast - 2007-04-13.mp3
Show: #349
Length: 36:01
Size: 24.7mb
Format: mp3

Betsy and her husband Kris April 13, 2007

Triscadecaphobes, yes it's Friday the 13th
Does that mean you are phobic of triscuits?
Afraid of woven wheat?
No, it means that I am afraid of Sandy Duncan
She's creepy
Smack her on the back of the head and one of those eyes is coming out
She's old lady porn, one eyed porn a new genre
I don't think so Booba
Edison was shooting that porn way back when
Getting back in to small town mode
All over a golden plump
Maybe that's how they get so plump
I grew up really, really small town
My folks weren't farmers . . . just passing through for the rest of their lives
He was held back
Other people are telling this story about you, just differently
He had the 13 year old creepy boy stache in 3rd grade
The epitome of backwoods Virginia
He had tight curly brownish/black hair
Might have been the fact that they didn't have running water in the house
Sometimes it's like someone dropped you off on a journey from the center of the earth
My dad raced stock cars at the county fair grounds on weekends . . . I'm class all the way
We would go out to their house
Push the car off the property to work on them on the gravel road
Wild animals in all the junk they
You had wild ferel cats in your yard . . . different baby, I lived in town
He's come out in his underwear and run around
Half a mile from the compound
Of course we have to push it off the property
I don't want a cupcake from you
Farms are junk car magnates
That's what we near Bear, a some property where we can abandon our shit
Making me hold it till we got home
They had the 21st century green toilet paint bucket with sawdust like your friend
You didn't catch him that's for sure
I spied him with his junk in his hand
Enjoying himself in nature and chickendom
What is he doing now? It's a success story
He was an Edison savant
You don't need electricity to run a phonograph
Gotta get rid of your bear plug Betsy
That is so gross
Great day for me Mr. B
My sisters kids were sick and I didn't have to babysit
They just don't get my sarcasm it washes over them
She looked at me blankly
Maggie thinks her name is moo moo
Today was the first day of garage sale season
Twins and triplets sale was training camp compared for this
They were there . . . my people
The Mexican guy in his Astro van with his kids on a school day
The Blue hairs early in line
I'm here for a free bowl of soup or the sale
She goes off about resellers and waking up early
She's 97 Kris, she's so old that she doesn't have an old AOL address
She's grandma1@webtv.com
That man has his kids helping him out
Thank you Mr. B it's a business
You can't match this flow
And there it is Mr. B
I was put on earth to do this
The Madeline in Paris Doll house with all the stuff
Why Wednesdays show sucked
Betsy had Elliot's neuropsych evaluation on her mind
They were really arguing that it was his semen that caused the problem
The genetic crap
Kids with medical issues
At a kids party you can pick the parents based on their behavior
Haven't you been tested for bipolar yet? You're eight! Shit could be going on up there
Join up with the Croncast Cronies . . . thanks Kelly C.

Audience Survey, please fill this out for us
Look for the graphic on "Audience Survey" on the main page

Tags: Triscadecaphobes neuropsych chickendom garage sale season county fair grounds triscadecaphobia

Betsy and her husband Kris Nov 09, 2006

Thu, 09 Nov 2006 07:11:10 -0600

Croncast - 2006-11-09.mp3

Show: #299
Length: 30:55
Size: 21.22mb
Format: mp3

Betsy and her husband Kris November 09, 2006

LAST DAY TO ENTER 300 by 300th CONTEST - ENDS 11:59 p.m. CST
It's Betsy's two year Croncast anniversary!
She felt pity for me and my nerd type shows
Listen to our first show together
Booba wouldn't do it with me
Roping anyone and Betsy's desire to hear how much better it got with her
Doing all the shows in the last week
We'll send out the
Recognizing spousal work
Betsy got the ChildServ people on the horn and here's what we got
For now . . . until I am able to find time to make a cool donations page stuff here's the deal:

Send donations to - kris@palegroove.com or checks to:

Kris and Betsy Smith
P.O. Box 9690
Naperville, IL 60567

That is the skinny
Astronaut Dave my former college roommate
The busyness of life
Leaf sucking and not blowing
Life is show prep
Betsy needs a holiday learning session
QVC returns on palettes - Betsy's new nirvana
She wants a new raking outfit
The Queer eye shoosh
The Puffy Cuff shoosh

1) Fill out the appropriate form for you - *New* Listener or Get a Handle (current listener)
2) Verify your email address (Activates and qualifies those with a "Handle")
3) *New* listeners get activated and qualified by using their special RSS feed
4) 300th new listener and the person whose Handle they use win iPods AND
5) A drawing for 2 more iPods from everyone who entered!

Tags: QVC returns ChildServ iPod contest Puffy Cuffs Queer Eye shoosh

If it's not one thing it's three others

Sun, 30 Jul 2006 08:20:50 -0500

In the last 48 hours I've had a catastrophic hard drive crash and none of the data is salvageable. Meaning .wav files that I have retrieved sound like a mash up between Dr. John, Van Halen, intergalactic static and Betsy on meth. My ipod won't even turn on or power up or charge and a Mirra personal server that I bought to start backing up other data seems to be just crap on my little network. Arrrrgh.

Tags: karma broken stuff Mirra broken iPod broken hard drive crash

Croncast - Betsy and her husband Kris Ep. 56

Wed, 30 Mar 2005 11:52:28 -0600

Croncast - 2005-03-30.mp3

Show: #96
Length: 23:36
Format: mp3
Bit rate: 64 kbs
Size: 10.8 mb

Croncast - Betsy and her husband Kris Ep. 56

Look for a return of show notes in the next few weeks as I get back on track or some sort of schedule now that I am back at work. I need a routine.

And my blog is still down at kristophersmith.com. The debacle hasn't ended for the old hosting company. So those of you who used to use the feed from this site to get the shows should probably swtich over to the feed from this site.

Thanks to everyone who has been sending emails and words of encouragement!

And last but not least thanks to the handfull of people who have downloaded every single show. You know who you are. I'll be looking for you some time if we have a catastrophic failure of some kind and need some archives.

Enjoy them because new hosting has unlimited bandwidth and more storage than the average male life expectancy.

Tags: croncast site feed betsy back