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Starting to ban ip addresses for spammers

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I was just mentioning in my last post that I’ve been getting a lot of comment spam lately.

Have you found that you’re getting more comment spam lately? Has it really increased or is it just my sites that are getting a lot more than usual?

I’m getting hit on by spammers from Croatia, Russia, Turkey and India. Oh sure there are spammers from other countries too, but the four countries above are hitting my sites the hardest and they don’t just leave one comment … no they have to leace ten or twelve at a time, all saying “nice site” or something about diet pill reviews.

when will it end!

I’ve actually taken to blocking ip addresses or whole domains from many of my sites. I know that will make it harder for legitimate visitors to leave a comment, but if it weren’t for those people ruining things for the rest I wouldn’t have to do that.

How do you handle comment spam?

Out come the Vultures

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The last time Google did a Page Rank update (the beginning of April I believe) several of my blogs and websites went up in Rank .. not this one though I’m afraid.

Anyway … the increase in pagerank seems to have brought all the “vultures” out of the wood work. In the last week or two I’ve received several requests on most of my blogs for private sales ranging from links for things like the top rated diet pills to home decor, to requests for special blog posts and people offering their win articles for my blogs.

I’ve also been getting a lot more comment spam on my sites too – people looking for free links on websites with decent page rank … that game doesn’t work very well with me though as I move anything I think is from someone spamming my sites right into the Akismet spam box.

It’s always nice to know that companies and marketers think that your website is worth advertising on but there are so many scammers out there it can be hard to sift through all the offers and requests.

I used to accept a lot of private advertising offers but I’ve pretty much stopped that in recent months. It’s a lot of trouble and until I find some system that makes it easier to manage direct sales on my many many websites I think I’ll hold off for a while.

Do you accept private advertising on your site? How do you manage things? How do you take payment?

Do you ever go to open houses just to look around?

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This past weekend my husband and I decided to go to a few open houses being held at some homes that are up for sale in our neighborhood.

We aren’t thinking of selling our home or moving – not just yet anyway … but we were curious as to how the home owners had renovated and decorated their homes.

One open house we visited was in a home that’s very similar to ours in design. Like us – they had knocked down the walls in the entry hallway, and the walls separating the living room, dinning room and main hallway in order to create an open living room dining room area. The only big difference was that they hadn’t taken out hte stairway hallway as we did. We felt that our main floor looked a little bigger or more open than the home we were in.

Another house that we visited was totally modern – stark white walls, white furnishings and just about everything stainless steel in the kitchen – including the Hansgrohe faucet. The house was a little too modern for my tastes, but I enjoyed looking around.

My husband and I are still renovating our home. Actually our renovations are stalled … so visiting a few open houses might have helped motivate us to finish our renovations and gave me some ideas for how we might decorate once we’re finally done our renovations … well if we ever manage to finish!

Do you ever go to open houses to just look around and get ideas?

We just can’t seem to get motivated to finish our home renovations

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I vowed earlier this year that this would be the year that we’d finish our renovations. So far that hasn’t happened!

We’ve actually been putting off finishing our renovations for 6 or more years! Can you believe that I’ve been living in a house that has two by one strapping spaced about a two feet apart all across the living room and dining room ceiling for 6 years or so? All that’s left to be done to finish the ceiling is for us to put up the tin ceiling tiles that we purchased about 8 years ago.

My husband and I both ended up having some bad health problems about 6 years ago so it made sense to put a hold on our reno. We also had some bad family tragedies happen around that time too .. but now, even though I’m still sick with Crohn’s we should be able to slowly start finishing the renovations that we started.

I mean .. all we have to do is put those tin ceiling tiles up, cut and apply baseboards, quarter round and maybe some molding around the top of the walls where it meets the ceiling and we’ll pretty much be done our living room dining room renovation.

Then we can either start on the kitchen or the basement. We just have to get motivated to get started!

I’ve been trying to motivate myself by looking at decor websites and magazines …I’m really interested in the look of a stone sink for our kitchen .. but I’m not sure it’s quite as easy to care for as a stainless steel sink … it also might cost more … so we’ll see.

Have you ever done renovations on your home? If so did you kind of stall at some point? If you did, what did you do to get yourself motivated again to start working on your renovation projects again?

Ow my aching back!

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I’m starting to wonder if we need a new bed, or rather mattress.

When we moved into our house in 2001 we bought a new bed for our bedroom … we had a double bed in the apartment, but we treated our selves to a queen sized bed when we finally graduated to new home owner.

I can’t remember what brand of mattress we bought, but it was a name brand and I’d selected a firm mattress because they’re generally better for you than soft mattresses.

I’ve been happy with our bed for the most part, but I remember that the first month we slept in the bed my back ached almost every day, until I got used to the new mattress. Now, for the last year I’ve had a bad back – so bad that I can’t sleep at night unless I put pillows under my knees. I know I have back problems, but I’m wondering if getting a new mattress might help too. Maybe one of those memory foam ones … do they come in firm?

Have you ever wondered if it was your mattress that was causing your back to ache?

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