Random thoughts on art, technology, stuff, and occasionally Real Estate: January 2010

Wayne Golliday left a comment on my post about OpenHook for Thesis.  I had not noticed his name before, so I clicked through to his profile and blog.

This post made me LOL LOL LOL!!!!!!

Are you using the Thesis theme on any of your WordPress(.org) blogs?  And you'd like to use "hooks" for custom styling, but you just haven't had time to get up-to-speed- on hooking?  :-)

The OpenHook Plug In is for you.

You can download OpenHook here:  http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/thesis-openhook/

After you upload and install OpenHook, it will add a function to your WordPress Dashboard, like this:

The OpenHook control panel looks like this:

The hook in the screen is moving the navigation menu from its' default location above the Title-Header to a position below the Title-Header.

The steps are:

At the "Before Header" section, check "remove Thesis nav menu" and click save.

Copy the little snip of code that is highlighted in the sentence below the checkbox.

In the "After Header" section, paste in that little snippet of code you just copied.  (In my screenshot, you can see I was playing around with some other things, too.  You can ignore those.)

Check "Execute PHP on this hook" and click save.

Check your blog, and the default manu menu will have moved to its' new location below the Title-Header.

Have you seen this scam yet?

You receive an email sent from one of your friend's own email addresses with your friend's own email signature at the end, asking for money because of an emergency.

Here are two variations I have seen so far:

1.  How are you doing? I am sorry I didn't inform you about my traveling for a Program called Science, Health and Environmental Reporting. It is currently held in Nigeria, Sweden and Kenya. I am presently in Nigeria. It has been a very sad and bad moment for me because i got robbed on my way to the hotel where i lodged. My ID, cash and other valuables i have with me got stolen, I contacted the embassy here to help me out but it will take some time to get back to me. I urgently need your financial assistance of $2,600 to sort-out my hotel bills and get myself back home. I will really appreciate your help and i promise to pay you back immediately upon my return. Hope to hear from you soon.
 
Regards,

 2.   How are you doing? I am writing you this message with
 sorrow because of what I am going through right now. Am in a
 great sorrow written you this note, I could barely type or
 think straight right now, I hope you come to my
 aid....something very terrible is happening to me where I
 am, I seriously need help from you urgently, I had a trip
 here in West Africa {Nigeria} for a conference.
 Unfortunately for me I got robbed on my way to the hotel
 where I lodged along with my Cell phone, bag where my
 passport was and since then I have been without any money, I
 am even owing the hotel here. So I have limited access to
 emails for now, I urgently need your financial assistance.
 The total sum of money that I would need would be $2,475 to
 sort-out the bills so I can make arrangements and return
 back, I'm in a panic now, the police only asked me to
 write a statement about the incident and directed me to
 the embassy, I have spoken to the embassy here but they are
 not responding to the matter effectively, I will return the
 money back to you as soon as I get home, I am so confused
 right now. I wasn't hurt because I complied
 immediately.  I'll wait to hear from you so I can
 send the Western Union information to use in sending the
 money.
  
 Hope to hear from you soon.
    
 Sincerely,

Number 2. is obviously written in spam-ese; but Number 1 could almost pass for a native english speaker.  If the bad guys ever learn proper syntax, spelling and grammar, we will be in big trouble.  But I digress.

Evidently the spammers hack someone's into email address book, and send out an email blast looking as if it came straight from that person.

If a friend replies to that email, I would imagine the hacker has the reply rerouted to the hacker's op center, where a response goes back out telling where to wire the money.

The person whose email was hacked never knows anything happened until one of her friends says something like "Gee, I didn't know you had traveled to Nigeria, but I hope the money I wired you helped."

Birth of My Grandmother - Mita Cuaron

Sunday, January 24, 2010 from 1:00-3:30 pm

Please join us for a "round table" discussion with the artists of our Testimonies Two exhibition as we explore and dialogue on questions of spirituality in art and thoughts on working towards a theme-based show.  You are invited to bring your questions, or just enjoy the exchange of ideas.

Yrneh Brown, Martin Charlot, Mita Cuaron, Ruth De Nicola, Pat Gomez, Yolanda Gonzalez, Mark Steven Greenfield, Lucy Hagopian, Cidne Hart, Wayne Healy, Heriberto Luna, Rafael Matias, Susanna Meiers/Peter Liashkov, Andrés E. Montoya, Toti O'Brien, Suzanne Siegel, Richard Turner

Light refreshments will be served

Avenue 50 Studio, Inc.
a 501(c)(3) non-profit art gallery
131 North Avenue 50
Highland Park, CA  90042
323-258-1435

Here's my current plan for moving to to a Virtual Dedicated Server.

Initially sign up for a short term plan.  Yes, short term is a little more per month, but I want to be sure I can manage this before making a long term commitment.

Leave all my current hosting account sites where they are.

Upload and import duplicate copies of two or three existing sites to the VDS.   Upload and import a few more; including Mu instalations.  Keep  uploading duplicate copies of all my sites until I've done all of them.

(Use FeedWordPress and/or Autoblogged plugin to keep content in the new VDS test location current)

Let everything exist in duplicate while I learn my way around.

As each exisiting hosting account comes up for renewal, let it expire (provided its twin is already living on the VDS of course.)

Here's the configuration I am planning:

Operating System:Linux

Bandwidth:1500GB

Hard Drive(s):30GB

Control Panel:cPanel Unlimited

Backup:Daily Backups, Stored for 7 day

Ram:512MB

((I'm placing this link here for future reference:  GoDaddy's cPanel Setup Guide ))

I plan on posting my notes here on Active Rain as I muddle along.  Suggestions or comments about your own experience in setting up a VDS are very welcome!

I have about 20 shared hosting accounts (5 of which are WPMu installations).  I am beginning to think it is time to pull them all into a Virtual Dedicated Server.

Anyone reading this using a VDS?  Any comments?  Advice?  Setup or administration headaches?  Please tell me!!

I am a real estate broker.  I know a little bit about buying, selling, and leasing real property.

When it comes to every other product or service in life, that is NOT real property, I am a simple consumer, and many times I am somebody's lead.

In fact, I have some pretty finely tuned radar that alerts me when I am being treated as a lead.

Here's a true life story:

Somehow, I ended up on a contact list for XYZ Communication Company.  The rep calls me once or twice a week; she faxes rate comparison sheets, and then calls me again to ask if I have any questions. 

I know she is just trying to do her job.  And it is quite possible that changing phone carriers would save me money.  But there is just simply not room on my plate to deal with it right now.   

If and when I am ready to look into it, I most likely will NOT contact XYZ Communication Company, because they have just plain pestered and annoyed me way too much. 

This is not the way to handle internet lead conversion, or any kind of lead conversion.

If I am not ready to purchase your particular product or service, no amount of badgering by phone, fax, email or snail mail is going to cause me to purchase.

If I am ready to purchase your product or service, I will make a decision to work with you based on my perception of how knowledgeable you are about your product or service. 

If you give me the impression that you know what you are doing, and if on top of that, you are personable and likable, you will most likely have closed the deal with me.  And you are gonna need to give me that impression of competency in the first few minutes of our very first conversation.

Is it possible that the people who are my potential clients have the same kind of feelings?

The First Impression is the foundation of any lead conversion system.  I believe that the First Impression trumps almost anything you can do in subsequent follow-up.

In that very first conversation, you must convey the impression that you know your stuff.  Your market, your neighborhood, the angles of financing, how the how process of purchasing works.

If you succeed with the First Impression, you can get away with ignoring the potential client for the next two months, and they will still remember you.

And in that same conversation, you need to explore the who, what, where, why, when and how of the potential client to begin to get an idea if the possibility of a strong working relationship exists.

In original 2009 edition of Gary Keller's book titled "Shift, How Top Real Estate Agents Tackle Tough Times" there is a chapter titled "Get to the Table - Lead Conversion".  Keller suggests some scripts for mining the client's who, what, where, why, when and how when having that initial conversation.

Although, truth to be told, I cannot see myself saying to a potential client "Thanks for sharing that" with a straight face.

For other methods of converting internet leads, be sure to check out giftofshift.com/activerain where you can purchase a limited edition hardcover of Gary Keller's book SHIFT, which comes with a free version of the eBook Soci@l: Attract Friends, Followers and Connections to Your Business, written by Ben Kinney and Jay Papasan (in which Ben shares his 'ten days of pain' lead conversion method) as well as free audio versions of Millionaire Real Estate Agent and Millionaire Real Estate Investor all for $19.99.

Disclaimer:  This is an entry in Bob Stewart's most recent contest for which I may or may not receive Active Rain Bonus Points. :-)

You know how you sometimes have a really large PDF file, and you need to send it to someone by email, but that person's email provider has a limit on file sizes?

One of our associates suggested using Windows Live SkyDrive as a large file sharing solution, and I'm finding that was a very good idea.

To give SkyDrive a try, go to http://home.live.com/ and sign up for Windows Live

After you sign up, you can find SkyDrive on the dropdown menu under "More"

Or you can go directly to http://skydrive.live.com

Click Create folder

Name the folder, and list the people who will have access to the folder, click next

Browse for, and add the files you wish to share, click Upload.

Click "Let people know".

Type a message for the people who will have access to the file.  Click Send.

The recipients will receive an email notice to view the file.  The email notice looks like this.

To view the file, the recipient first clicks on the file icon

Then the recipient clicks Download to open the file

Notice the Comment area.  People can ask and answer questions, and have a discussion of the file contents within SkyDrive.

Windows Live SkyDrive is a free service.

Today, January 8, 2010, would have been Elvis Presley's 75th Birthday.

UPDATE:

It is also Professor Stephen Hawking's birthday.

What an interesting juxtaposition! Both men, so completely unique, both made an indelible imprint on our times.