January Watch Party Reminder
Posted on January 2, 2008 by Ching under Life, School.
I got a reminder email from the WSU alumni association today about the January watch parties coming up. I don’t know if I can go to one of these things. Over the years of attending classes at WSU, I’ve learned to loathe basketball fans because they take up precious parking space on campus. They are the reason that I have to walk several miles to class on game nights. They are the reason for the blisters on my feet. They are the reason that I arrive in class not just late but grumpy as well.
I think it’s funny that come May, after I graduate, I’ll be on the other side of the fence. No longer will I have to attend classes. Instead, I’ll be attending games (if I can drag Brian to some) in support of my alma mater. As the world turns…
Anyway, here’s the scoop on the watch parties this month:
Come out and show your Shocker colors during the month of January as WSU men’s basketball travels to Bradley, Missouri State, Illinois State and Southern Illinois. There will be fans, friends and great Shocker action during the game at a location in your area!
The Games:
WSU vs. Bradley
Saturday, January 5 @ 7:05 pmWSU vs. Missouri State
Tuesday, January 8 @ 6:05 pmWSU vs. Illinois State
Wednesday, January 16 @ 7:05 pmWSU vs. Southern Illinois
Saturday, January 19 @ 2:05 pmWhere:
Hutchinson, KS
Anchor Inn
128 S Main St.
Hutchinson, KS 67501
Hutchinson Alumni Contact:
Rudy Rodriguez
rrodriguez60@cox.netTopeka, KS
Hatfield’s
1935 SW Westport Dr.
Topeka, KS 66604
Topeka Alumni Contact:
Alan Cobb, 785-608-3570
alan.cobb@afphq.orgWichita, KS
Fox and Hound
1421 Waterfront Parkway
Wichita, KS 67206
Wichita Alumni Contact:
Holly Thompson, 316-978-3874
holly.thompson@wichita.eduFor additional information, contact Holly at the alumni association at 316-978-3874.
Go Shocks!
To be perfectly honest, I doubt Brian and I will ever turn into Shocker basketball fans. But for those of you (like Jenni who was using the MBA Meet & Greet and the YPW events as dating services) who might be interested in these things… For whatever purpose you might have for attending… Well, now you’ve got the scoop. LOL.
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LawMax Litigation Funding
Posted on January 2, 2008 by Ching under Sponsored Post.
I’ve heard of cash advances against your credit cards but I’d never heard of cash advances against your law suit before. LawMax specializes in litigation funding. In a society where you can sue for just about anything, I guess it was only a matter of time before such a service began.
LawMax helps you avoid financial distress by offering you an advance on your law suit settlement. So you can start spending today what you will be awarded tomorrow. As with anything there are pros and cons associated with this strategy. For one, you get to pay your bills and avoid the possibility of foreclosure, eviction, bankruptcy, or ruined credit. On the other hand, you may have spent every single penny of your settlement before you even receive it. So you might not get a dime. That’s the sad part.
It’s a viable service, though, and it’s good to know that this option exists for those emergencies. You’ll never know when you’ll need an advance against your litigation. When you do, LawMax is there for you.
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I Am Legend!
Posted on January 1, 2008 by Brian under Flickr.
I took advantage of the holiday to go see a movie that I have been anxiously awaiting. “I Am Legend” is about Robert Neville, a brilliant scientist that could not contain a terrible virus that is unstoppable, incurable, and man-made. Somehow immune, Neville is now the last human survivor in what is left of New York City and maybe the world. The story unfolds three years after the holocaust with Neville faithfully sending out daily radio messages, desperate to find any other survivors. However, the virus that was supposed to be the cure for cancer has Mutated the remanding members of humanity, turning them into hyper aggressive night stalkers. Mankind’s last, best hope, Neville is driven by only one remaining mission: to find a way to reverse the effects of the virus using his own immune blood. But he knows he is outnumbered… and quickly running out of time. This movie is based off of the book “The Last Man on Earth” written by Richard Matheson back in the 50’s. In 1964 the book was adapted to a movie by the same name directed by Ubaldo Ragona. However, this adaptation was more of a zombie movie set in the future rather than a sci-fi flick, with people coming out of there graves at night and returning to them by day. In 1971 “The Omega Man” was released and was yet again a slightly altered version of the book. Directed by Boris Sagal and starring Charlton Heston. In this adaptation the fall of man was due to a biological war and Heston’s immunity due to an experimental vaccine. I liked the new version better because it was more plausible. It showed not only the depth of or destruction but is gave us a glimpse at how one man can make a difference. The action and writing were top notch and Will Smith played the character superbly as always. In my personal opinion this movie was worth the price of admission and I will most certainly purchase it on DVD when it’s released.
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A Look at 2007
Posted on December 31, 2007 by Ching under Blog, Web.
Kurt asked me a couple of weeks ago how many visitors we get on our blog. I truly had no idea as I hadn’t been keeping track. I guessed probably only a handful since it’s mostly just family and friends that visit here. Besides that, I’ve been blogging about less controversial (and more and more boring stuff) lately unlike in years past so that doesn’t really do anything to build your readership. Brian says I have no internal censor, but I beg to differ. If I didn’t, I’d be blogging about my usually unpopular opinions about all sorts of things (which I have prudently kept to myself lest I get Dooced, and I wouldn’t wish that fate upon anyone including myself) and making people mad. It’s great for web traffic, but not so great if you actually want to keep your day job.
Anyway, Kurt’s inquiry got me to thinking about our web site statistics. How many people actually come here? Much to my surprise and delight, Life After Marriage actually gets a lot more visitors than I initially thought. Here are some of the more interesting stats:
We had about 400,000 hits in 2007. These hits were by 41,558 unique visitors who visited our blog 108,684 times (this equates to about 2.61 visits per visitor according to Awstats) throughout the year. The visitors looked at nearly 250,000 pages (or 2.25 pages per visit).
Altogether that’s approximately 3,500 unique visitors per month or 115 unique visitors per day. Not too bad, considering I thought I had a following of five: my mom and dad, my in-laws, Cannady Girl, Multitasker Girl, and myself. This is good news for me because it gives me hope on generating ad revenue. The only downside is that these visitors are not sticking around. For 2008, Brian and I will need to figure out a way to not only increase our reach (we are pretty much non-existent and do not matter according to Alexa; then again, very few of us can come even remotely close to the astronomical success of the extremely viral “Elf Yourself” site) but also keep our visitors coming back. Even if we can’t do much about the increasing pages per visit, I’d like to at least see the number of visits per visitor go up. To me that would be a sign of customer retention.
In marketing class this sem we learned the importance of building relationships with your customers (my customers would include you, dear reader). We talked about the Get-Keep-Have (GKH) model and how most people take the “keeping” function for granted. Get + Keep = Have, so without investing resources in the “keeping” function you can’t expect to sustain your customer base. I know this is important. The challenging part is knowing what it is that I’m supposed to do to keep you guys coming back. That part, I don’t know.
I guess Brian and I will just keep at it. We’ll try different things and see how they work. For instance, one of the things I’ve decided to try is a monthly newsletter. If you’re not currently on the distribution list and would like to be on it, just shoot us an email at newsletter@brubakers.us and put SUBSCRIBE in the subject or body of your message. We’ve got a few other things we’d like to try, but we’re just going to roll these things out gradually so as not to overwhelm you all. 🙂 Around this time next year, we can check the results to see if we’ve made any progress.
Before I close, allow me to leave you with some more interesting data about our regular visitors:
- Generally based or located in the US
- They stay for about 5 minutes on average
- 62% use IE, 10% use Firefox, 20% some other unidentified, and the other 8% use Netscape (RIP), Opera, Mozilla, Safari, Konqueror, Lynx, etc.
- The visitors who arrive at Life After Marriage through a search engine usually arrive by way of Google (which comes as no surprise to us because Google is our favorite search engine, too)
- The top five search phrases that have led visitors to our blog this year are
1. life after marriage (obviously)
2. download
3. crack (don’t ask, I have no idea why people looking for “crack” end up on Life After Marriage; I can assure you, Brian and I are both 100% drug free even to the point of avoiding legal drugs unless we absolutely, positively have to get medicated)
4. bang bang sauce
5. first night after marriageIncidentally, “myspace swingers” came in 8th on the tally. LOL. I find it funny that people looking for lifestylers end up on our blog when the blog entry (if I’m thinking of the right one) that is triggering the search hit is the one where I wrote about Brian’s anti-MySpace sentiment. To this day, Brian is convinced that the people on MySpace who are looking for “friends” and “activity partners” are really swingers. To this end he has deleted his MySpace account. Although, he is still on Facebook and I’m pretty sure there are swingers on there too. Don’t tell Brian, though. LOL.
Anyway, I hope you found this foray into our web statistics as interesting as I did. Thank you for your continued patronage and support. Please remember to click on the ads now and then. Every penny helps!
Have a safe and happy new year!
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Out with the Old, In with the New!
Posted on December 30, 2007 by Brian under Life.
Thats right folks, the New Year is upon us, for those of you that have Resolutions that they are going to try to keep to in 08, I wish you luck! Mine were pretty much decided for me, thats what happens when you get married! Everything is divided right down the middle, 80 – 20, 80 percent that she makes all the decisions and 20 percent that you will disagree at some point and sleep on the couch!
All kidding aside, I have a few resolutions that my wife and I have agreed on. First and most important is that we get this dammed house remodeled and on the market by the time she graduates. I told her that starting Tuesday we were going to be working on this house everyday after work till it was done. She agreed and wants out of here as bad as I do. I just wish she would quit looking for houses that are outside of our agreed upon price range. She seems to have it in her head that we can afford a three hundred thousand dollar home just because one of her coworkers can. I am the voice of reason here screaming that its not going to happen. Plus, when we go to look at houses next year, I’m the one that’s driving! So obviously the next thing on our list is to get into a new house next year. We are hoping to have it set up so that by Christmas we are in the new home with the old one behind us. It’s going to be a lot of work but it will be worth it in the end. The last and final thing that my wife is trying to instill upon me is that I stop drinking so much Pepsi! She doesn’t understand that I am not going to be able to just stop, I have been drinking Pepsi since I was a little kid. I have not gone longer than a few months without caffeine in my system. Plus, if I was in the desert and I was given the choice between Pepsi and water, I was choose Pepsi every time. I am a Pepsi addict and I have no problems with that. I know of course that it is bad for me and that I would probably live a longer and healthier life if I stopped, but who the fuck wants to live forever. I don’t smoke, I don’t drink alcohol, I am trying to get us to the point that we don’t eat out so much (thats more of a financial thing) and I think that I am ok in life having this one vice left to me. However, I am going to try! I told her that I couldn’t make any promises and she has said that I am already setting up myself for failure. I wish she could see my side of the subject. Its going to be painful for me to quit, physically painful! The caffeine withdrawal and the headaches from quitting are going to drive me mad! But we shall see what the outcome is for the future of my Pepsi addiction. Stay tuned, my next post might be from the county Jail because I went on a withdrawal induced killing spree!
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