Moving Back Home

After some time away, I have brought MODU’s Musings back home to WordPress.com.  After not being able to use my private site as often as I’d like, I determined it wasn’t worth paying for the hosting fees.  (Real life has a way of taking away your free time.)

Jets win without Sanchez or Tebow!

As you know, I’m a NY Giants guy. I love me boys in blue, but I also like the Jets. Not because of who is on their team, but because Bill Parcells use to be their head coach. Even though he’s been gone from the team for years, I still keep hoping they win, especially if it means that we could see a NY Giants/NY Jets Superbowl!

With that aside, I think the worst game of the week has to be today’s game between the Arizona Cardinals and the New York Jets. Not because the score was only 6 to 7 with the Jets winning by a lone touchdown, but because the Jets had to pull Mark Sanchez after throwing 3 intercepts (and possibly the season). Tim Tebow was out due to a rib injury, so the Jet’s had to bring in Greg McElroy to lead the team to victory. The rookie threw for only 5 completions for 29 yards, but that was enough to score the winning touchdown in the fourth quarter.

The Cardinals are no better off since they are playing rookie Quarterback Rindley behind center in his second start trying to keep the team out of the basement of the NFC West. Starting Quarterback Kevin Kolb is injured, and backup QB John Skelton has been benched because he couldn’t help stop the losing streak of the Cardinals started in Week 5.

With both teams playing their third-string rookies, they totaled 101 yards combined; 198 if you include the yards by Mark Sanchez. 198 yards is what you would expect from a single QB after four quarters, not from three (with one being the starter). Injuries suck, and I never want to see a player go down, but I would expect that with all the money being paid to the players out there, the back-ups would at least be able to break 100 yards.

Let’s see what happens next week.

artificial grass phoenix

Where am I?

It’s odd how time can fly. You blink twice and the next thing you know half the year has flown by. Sorry for being silent lately.

So where have I been? Well, there was Vacation Bible School (VBS) this past Summer. I spent six weeks designing and building an 8-foot by 3-foot HO-scale train layout for the kids. They loved it! (It is currently sitting behind my chair as I type this.) I will have to upload the photos for you.

There was also my experiment with Neobux. I ended up cashing out $8.76 for only clicking on simple little ads. For the amount of “work” involved, it was a relatively easy $8.76 I’ve made in recent years.

Then of course there was the Presidential Election. Regardless of your political affiliation, Presidential Elections are always fun and exciting. With this being the prime season for my political site, most of my free time was directed there.

So what’s left? We have the holidays coming around, meaning free time will be consumed with either preparations for the holidays (and holiday shopping) and end-of-the-year work at the office. Plus there is all the work at the new house, so I think all my vacation time will be spent scrubbing walls and ceilings rather than enjoying the skyline from Chicago rooftops or nature from mountain camping. Maybe that is what awaits in 2013.

Until then folks, I hope you have a very special holiday season, and may 2013 bring you many good fortunes!

Product Test: Exploring Neobux

“Where have you been?”

Sorry everyone.  I know I haven’t been too chatty on here lately, and I apologize.  As far as where I’ve been, the answer is “everywhere”.  One of those places is the service I want to introduce to you.

Neobux is a PTC – a paid to click – service where you click on ads in exchange for payment (between 0.1 cents to 2 cents per ad).  It doesn’t sound like a lot, but I have seen users who have earned a few thousands of dollars through this service.  But before I encourage you to sign up, I wanted to try it out first.

I registered with Neobux on 5/30/2012, and after my first 11 days, I have:

Advertisements seen:  321
NeoPoints received:  341
Money earned:  $0.722 (an average of 0.25 cents per ad)

I know $0.722 doesn’t sound like much, but the real money potential comes from having referrals.  With most advertising sites relying on referrals, you were forced to go out and ask your friends to sign up and/or rely on third-party individuals blindly signing up under your referral link.  Neobux is different.

With Neobux, you can “rent” referrals to earn money for you.  Starting at 60 cents, you can rent as few as 3 referrals at a time.  As long as they are clicking on ads, you are making money.  Unfortunately, sometimes you have referrals that are inactive.  Don’t worry.  You can “recycle” these referrals for new ones that are more active.  Can you recycle your friends that register as a courtesy to you but never actually use the service?

I’m not going to recommend you signing up for Neobux yet.  I’m a waiting to save up $1.00 (probably by Friday at this rate) before I rent my first referrals.  After two weeks, I’ll reassess how much money I have made (or lost) to see if it is worth to continue using the site for another month.  So check back each weekend to check out my progress.

2012: The next six-week challenge

It’s 2012, so I’m due to start working on my next six-week challenge.  I’ve managed to keep the weight off that I lost last year while training for the Tough Mudder, so the new challenge would take me down near 190 pounds.  A year ago I thought getting down to 195 pounds was almost impossible since I wasn’t successful in prior challenges, so to think I could get down to 190 pounds back then wouldn’t have ever crossed my mind.  Now that I know losing weight is possible, 190 pounds is definitely reachable.

My friends have asked if I would do the Tough Mudder again this year, and I’m not 100% sure that I would.  It was fun, but it was brutal as well.  We’ll see.  But in 2012, I think I want to get away from the running aspect for something that’s easier on my knee and hip (issues that I had problems with last year).  I’m currently leaning towards retiring my 20+ year old bicycle for a new one that better fits my body.  There are plenty of hills around in my area, so it wouldn’t be an easy ride by any means.

Of course, there’s another way I could lose five pounds, and that would be by changing my eating habits.  While I eat well, there are things that I could change in order to easily shed some weight.  My friend that did the Tough Mudder with me always said “Just think of how much lighter you’d be now by eating better!”  I’ve been working on that as part of my New Years resolution, but not a major change.  Another  thing I could do is one of those clean detox programs.  Some are done by following a strict diet for a few weeks, while others are done with supplements.  While this is a good process to clean your insides and lose weight, it doesn’t fall within my exercise concept.  Maybe I could consider trying this after the six-week challenge to see which of the two had the better results.

I don’t have a date yet as to when I’ll start the challenge, but I will keep you posted.