MikeFolan.com

Back at in Sept of 06 I bought a brand new Grande Punto 1.4 16v Sporting. I loved the car at the time and I still do. It has many great features such as Blue&Me, handsfree wireless bluetooth technology for the phone. A 6 gear box, sporty features such as spoilers, side skirting, sporty exhaust, leather steering and handbrake covers and lots more besides. It is just in the last few months that it has taken a wrong turn for me somewhere. It is sarting to look like Fiat are living up to there name that they are trying so hard to shake, Fix It Again Tom!!

So what has brought me to this? I got my car serviced, the second time, first time with the dealer two weeks ago yesterday, Tuesday, and already I have been back to them four times!! Before the service I spent 4 months waiting for a part to be ordered from Turin. They get that part in, a steering rack, and fit it, along with a switch that I need replacing, for the wipers. I take the car out the day that it is “fixed” and drive out the gate of the garage just to find that they have broken the switch on the other side, for the indicators! I turned right around and back into them. They couldn’t fix it there and then and I had to bring it back to them again the next week so that they could fix that, and that was only the begining.

Last Thursday evening I was leaving a local shopping centre which exits onto a round -about and as I was approaching the round about, my brakes decided that they wouldn’t work! I was lucky that the oncoming car was going slow as I was able to get back onto the accelerator and get out of the way. I brought the car back to them the following morning and they had the car for the day and found nothing wrong!! They wanted me to drive it for the weekend and see if I had any problems, i.e. see if I kill myself!!. I didn’t do much driving that weekend. I didn’t experience it over the weekend again, thankfully.
They found an issue with the clutch and it had to brought in yesterday morning to get the nesscary work done.

Over the weekend the car developed more issues grinding and buzzing noise in the steering column and a knocking noise from the suspension. I got a phone call from them that evening saying that they car would not be available for me until Thursday as they had to order a part for it and that they would not release the car to me in it’s current condition. What I got from that is the fact that they let me drive a car that is potentelly dangerous for the weekend and now decide that I can have it for that reason.

I have a four year warranty on the car and it is fast approaching the end of its second year. I wonder what route I can take from this? As with any other product that you purchase that is under warranty, if you have a problem with it you can get a replacment. Is it the same for cars? I know it would be for a certain lenght of time, but after nearly 2 years of ownership does this still apply?

I love my car still and don’t really want to get rid of it, but it is going to keep causing me this much trouble it is not worth keeping, what happens when my warranty runs out, it will cost me a fortune to keep getting things fixed on it.

I’m at a loss really.

Mike

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The Future Of Blogging.

Blogging for me is a past time and I do enjoy it. Although sometimes it may take time that I don’t have or I don’t get time to blog about some thing. That’s why I have decided that I am no longer going to go out of my way to blog everyday, not that I have for a while now, keep reading to find out why.

I want to keep it to posting every second day, failing that I will post as often as I can. These next few weeks are going to be busy for me. I have assignments and exams in college over the next weeks and I need to concentrate on them as they are the end of the year exams and will dictate weither I will be able to go to onto a course that I want to do in Sept.

Once the exams are done I want to get going with some projects that I have in mind, both offline and online. I am looking forward to this summer as I will have a lot more time to dedicate to things that I want to do. I want to blog more, but not at the expense of my other projects. I will be posting about what I am at and I will still post the odd post about blogging, internet marketing and other usefull things that you may want to read about. For the moment I am concetrating on other stuff.

One of the things that I want to concentrate on more is internet marketing. I did orginally start this blog to try and make money online, and I have, be it a small amount. When I started blogging, as I suspect a lot of bloggers out there may have also thought, that blogging was the easy way to make money online. How wrong we all where. There are other ways that I need to spend more of my time concentrating on, as I need to increase my income and get all of my loans paid off.

So for now, keep checking back if you are interested in how I am getting on. I will be posting regularly about how my projects are going.

Mike

The Future Of Blogging.

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Overcoming Problems

After my recent experience of viruses, changing host and updating some essential software or maybe better put as, “IT Failure” I thought that it would be a good idea to write a post on what steps I took and just how I managed to survive.

The first thing that people are most likely to do when something goes wrong is panic and think, “oh shit”! A few words of advice, don’t panic! It may seem like a bad terrible thing has happened to you and that your world has come to an end and things will never again be the same as they once where. Not true. All problems have a solution. Be they short and sweet or long and arduous.

Fixing the PC.

When I first encountered the problem with PC, the first thing that I did was a reboot. 9 out of 10 times that is all that you need to do. You might have left something on the keyboard that was pressing the button or a disk left in the disk drive. Just clear all debris from around your PC, remove any disks and simply restart your PC. Sometimes just restarting for a few seconds may not be enough, leave it for five minutes then come back to it as some things take time to reset.

Failing this read what error is being displayed on the screen. This is the computers way of telling you what is wrong. Not always will you get an error message, but when you do, read it and see if there is any thing in the message that makes sense to you. The message that I received was “X300 SE 128MB BIOS P/N 113-A33406-100″. That may look like double Dutch to you, and indeed it did to me. But if you see something in it that you may have seen somewhere before or recognize some or the terms used, you are half way there. The parts that I recognized were X300, 128Mb and Bios. Some parts are specific to each computer and may appear different on your error message. Below I have outlined what parts I recognized and how they helped my to solve the problem. You could follow the same method.

X300

This part I recognized from my graphics card. This is part of the model number of my graphics card. This was one avenue that I could have explored but thankfully I didn’t have to as it could have been expensive. You may not see X300, if your graphics card has a different part number.

128Mb

This made me think that it could be my RAM. My PC has 512 Mb of RAM and each stick of RAM has 128Mb. It turned out to be my RAM, which is not too bad as my PC can still function without the stick of RAM, although at a slower pace. I explain more later on how I discovered that it was the RAM

BIOS

As far as I’m concerned it is never good to see BIOS in an error message, as for me I don’t have a great lot of experience with the BIOS and this could have gotten messy.

Trouble Shooting.

One thing I always do before I work on any PC is to try and see if there is anywhere online that can help me. I agree with Tesco’s “Every little helps”. If you can find somewhere on the net, or even in a book, that somebody has experienced the same issue or similar before, you could follow their steps. I usually go to forums.techguy.org and can find an answer there. If not, I post a thread outlining my problem. This I did do and it helped me solve the problem. I both, posted a thread and found another thread where someone had a similar issue.

The Solution.

In these threads it was highlighted that it was my RAM or my graphics card that was the issue. I decided that I would trouble shoot the RAM first as this was probably the easier option to go with and I didn’t have another graphics card to use as a replacement. I took out each stick of RAM at a time and tried to reboot the PC. I removed the first stick and left the other three there and rebooted. The PC started. I though that I had the problem solved. I reinserted the first stick and removed the 2nd stick and left the others where they were. The PC started each time I removed one. I decided that I would remove all the sticks of RAM and only have one in at a time. The first 2 worked fine, the third one came to a grinding halt! I had sorted the problem. Reinserted the rest of the sticks of RAM and the PC works perfectly now. I didn’t have to go down the graphics card route.

What it all boils down to is to keeping a cool head and don’t panic. Sit back, have a good think and look at the problem. Sometimes just opening the case can really help, you may see a cable or a card has come loose, problem solved. If you can’t find the solution, don’t be afraid to look for help. There is plenty out there. Now I know some of you may not have the luxury of a back up such as laptop. Pay for an hour or so in an internet café or find a friend that is willing to let you use theirs. There is always a way.

I think that I have gone on enough here about the PC and I was hoping to cover the virus, software issues and the changing hosting with you also but I think that I will post on them another day. I want to outline to you what software you could use and how to prevent an attack from hackers, viruses, spy ware, malware and any other un-wantables. In another post I will probably go through the steps need to change hosting.

Mike

Overcoming Problems

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Laptops, PCs and Hosting! Oh My!

I may as well explain my reason for the lack of posting. There are two main culprits for my absence. They include both my laptop and my PC. I went to log on to my blog one day on my PC and when I started up it just displayed text on the screen which read “”X300 SE 128MB BIOS P/N 113-A33406-100″”. So I was kind of baffled, but after reading it a few time I soon began to wonder was it my RAM. I didn’t want to just dive in and start removing parts of my PC as I sure as hell didn’t want to cause anymore damage, other than what was already done. I decided that I would take a look on a forum that I visit every now and then and ask some of the knowledgeable people on http://forums.techguy.org. I started my thread explaining what was happening and what my thoughts where on the issue. All done on my laptop of course.

While I was waiting I looked around the forum and read some of the other threads. I did come across someone else who had the same problem and they thought that maybe it was there graphics card. I checked back on the thread that I had started and had gotten a reply. We soon worked out that my first hunch was correct and that a stick of my RAM is now caput!! So not only was my PC getting slower lately, probably to over abuse, but what PC isn’t, it now has less RAM than before. After removing the stick of RAM my PC booted with out any further issues. Thank god!!

While my PC was acting up my Laptop was not far behind it. It had slowed to an unreal rate, considering that it is only a year old come this May, which is not very good. I have to put my hand up for this one. When my antivirus subscription ran out I didn’t renew it! It wasn’t a case of not renewing due to laziness; it was more due to time constraints. I downloaded Avast! and installed it. It ran and found a few Trojans. Once cleared, it still had a few problems, so I used the Viao Recovery Utility. My laptop is now like new and ready to go.

Just before all of the above happened, I had decided to change hosting from yahoo to blacknight.ie. As I was transferring the domain both, the PC and Laptop went down. This did not help matters, as I’m sure some of you noticed that the site was down for a few days. The whole reason that I changed hosting was due to my permalink structure. Those of you who may have noticed in the past, and there are a few that did and even suggested to me to change my permalink structure from the default www.example.com/?p=123 to www.example.com/date/postname I was not able to do this as my original hosting did not allow it. As now as you can see I now have “Pretty” permalinks.

All of the above happened over a few days and I fell behind in studies while trying to set things right on-line. Due to that I will now be spending the next few weeks concentrating on my studies as I have a few exams and assignments due over the next 2 weeks, so wish me luck.

Mike

Laptops, PCs and Hosting! Oh My!

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Hi guys,

I know it has been a while since I posted, but life got in the way, plus a few computer glitches that just did not want to go away. Anyway this is just a quick post to let you all know that yes, I am still alive and still very much want to get back to blogging.

Talk to you all again later,

Mike

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What Does It Take To Be A Blogger?

If your thinking of starting your own blog, do just that first. Think! There are plenty of bloggers out there that make it look easy, but if you ask them they will tell you it is far from easy. It takes up a lot of your time, it takes a lot of effort and it takes a lot of research and learning. What does it take to be a successful blogger?

Time

IF you are going to start a blog make sure you have the spare time to dedicate to  it. Blogging is a very time consuming activity. Your time is taken up by researching and writing your articles, participating in the blogosphere, updating your blog, keeping up with the latest trends and news, etc, etc, etc. Blogging is by no means a part-time task. Be prepeared to spend plenty of time at your PC, especailly at the beginning.

Participation.

Participating in the blogosphere is a must. From commenting on other blogs, writing guest posts or being active in the forums, these are all requirements in the blogging world to be successful. You can blog to your hearts content but if your getting out there and letting people know that you are there, there will be no one to read what you have to say. Through this you are creating relationships with other blogs and sites and they come to read what you have to say.

Knowledge

Knowledge is key. You need to know your niche and know what you’re talking about. If you have the knowledge and the know-how of your niche, you have half the battle won. There are a lot of people who bluff their way through and give a lot of bad info. Be sure to be in the know.

Persistence

This is the hardest one of all. You may go for months blogging and not get much traffic to your site, not get much reaction to your posts and not getting the satisfaction that you hoped to get. It takes time to build a blog and gain a stable readership. Stick with it.

Some bloggers have been able to make their blogs successful in a relatively short time, but it did take them a lot of hard work and a lot of time. Blogging is not easy so don’t jump in head first.

Mike

What Does It Take To Be A Blogger?

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Taking Your First Steps On StumbleUpon

Today I’m going to take you through some of the first steps that you will need to take to try and get the most out of StumbleUpon. The following steps that I have taken today are meant to help both me and you to get the most out of StumbleUpon. This will include bringing traffic to our sites/blogs and also find sites that can may be of interest to us and that we may also get something out of.

Join and Download the Toolbar

The most obvious first step that is to be taken is to join StumbleUpon and create your account. When you create your account you will need to download the toolbar, which is available for both IE and Firefox.This toolbar is a must and an essential part of your StumbleUpon experience. This toolbar gives you all of the short cuts that you need to get the most from it.

Once you have setup your account, upload your picture. When you upload your picture to your profile, your profile is displayed in the different sections of the site that are associated with your profile. Lets say that a lot of your stumbles are blogs, when someone want to see who else is stumbling blogs your profile picture is displayed.

Start Networking

Next the step you want to take is to make friends with other stumblers. This is an easy task as all you have to do is search for people with the same interests as your self and may be interested in your blog and visit their profiles and click on add as friends. When you are adding someone as a friend, check out what they have stumbled and see if any of the stumbles are of interest to you and if they are related to your site. Add them as a friend. Don’t go adding people just for the sake of having more friends. Just add the people that you would be interested in returning to their profiles and looking at what they have stumbled. If you just keep adding friends it just gets too spammy.

Once you have made a few friends you will need to check if your site is already on StumbleUpon. You can do this by clicking this link. If your blog is already there then someone has either stumbled it before or reviewed your site. If not then you need to go to your site and click the “I like it ” button. Which will turn green once you do so. This will let StumbleUpon know that your site exists. You will be presented with a pop-up window that will ask you to give details about the page that you just discovered.

The next step you should do is to do a review of someone’s profile. This will get their attention and will hopefully bring them to your profile and possibly do a review of your site and profile also. When you are doing a review, do an honest review, tell them what you think of their profile and what they have stumbled. Tell them which stumbles you liked the most and why. Don’t make it spammy by just saying “Great stumbles”, you are not likely to get a reply, or any kind of reaction. Only review ones that you like and keep it to doing either one or two reviews a day. Otherwise, once again you run the risk of becoming spammy.

Start Stumbling

The next to do is start stumbling sites with your toolbar. Just click on the “Stumble” button. It will bring you to a site and you can either click “I like it” (thumbs up) or “I don’t like it” (thumbs down), depending wither you like the site or not. You can keep click the stumble button and visit as many sites as you like.

When you are surfing the net and come across a site that you want to come back to later, you can click the “I like it” button. When you click on a site that has not been discovered before you will be presented with a pop-up box looking for the details of the site.

These are the steps that I took today to start my StumbleUpon journey. I will post again tomorrow with what else I do and also to tell you if these few steps had any effect on my blog.

Mike

P.S don’t forget to stumble this post too.

Taking Your First Steps On StumbleUpon

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How Do Social Networking Sites affect Traffic and How To Get The Most From Them

My next task for the promotion of this blog concerns social networking sites, such as Digg, Stumble upon, Mybloglog and so on and so forth. If you follow the many guides that the “Probloggers” post about claiming that they had X amount of traffic in X amount of days or hours, will it actually work and just what is involved?

I have not really used networking sites for my blog and the odd time that I have it did create some traffic, but this traffic only passed through and didn’t stay and certainly did not create any returning visitors. So just how do you make them return?

So over the next few weeks I will post about what I did and how did it and you can follow me with a step by step process and hopefully this will help us to create an established readership for both of our blogs.

Mike

How Do Social Networking Sites affect Traffic and How To Get The Most From Them

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Goals Follow-up

10 days ago I wrote a post entitled “How Posting Frequency Affects Traffic“. In this post I had set goals of reaching 250 visitors in the remaining days of March, 21 March to the 31 March. I was going to achieve this by commenting on other blogs and being active in the forums. Well the results are in.

I reached 204 visitors for the few days. This is up from 146 for 1st to the 20th of march. This is a significant increase. Unfortunately I didn’t reach the 250 visitors, but this does not deter me. It is a testament to the fact that being active in the blogosphere does make a difference.

I am currently working on other ways to promote my blog and want to have things ready before posting. On Thursday I will post how I am next going to promote my blog, that will a big difference to my traffic and will make a target of 250 visitors a joke.

Mike

Goals Follow-up

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John Chow Is Full Of Shit!! There, I said It.

John Chows latest attempt to bringing traffic to his site is through viral videos. He has posted a video on his blog, and written a post, which you can visit here. His attempt is pretty bad though and he is receiving a lot of criticism for it. Have a look for yourself.

Did you even watch all of it?

Mike

John Chow Is Full Of Shit!! There, I said It.

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