I ordered the beef & broccoli and feel compelled to talk about it.

The broccoli was very good.  Fresh, green, not overcooked or over-saturated with sauce.

However, the beef was inedible.  There wasn’t a single piece that I put in my mouth which wasn’t an intolerable mushy/chewy/fatty/rubbery texture.  Geee-rrrosss!!

I would never order the beef & broccoli again.  I would however, order something else with BROCCOLI.

The pork fried rice is ok, a little buttery tasting and actually there’s too MUCH pork for me, but it’s otay.

I’m about to eat the egg roll too because I’m hungry still, since I had zero beef.  I think I swallowed one piece, and that was one piece too many.

Delivery time was super fast, they did follow my note regarding “include chopsticks but no sauces please!” since I hate accumulating duck & soy sauce, there’s no fortune cookie, and I wish I’d had the option to get a wonton soup instead of egg roll.

*Bit into eggroll*  Soft & warm, fresh, not a nasty eggroll with too much red stuff.  It’s not bad.  Never really been a fan of that bitter cabbage taste in Chinese food egg rolls, I prefer Korean mandu.  I ended up scooping out the insides and eating just the fried wonton skin.

In conclusion, Xing Wong = Ok, 2.5 out of 5

Broccoli=Good

Beef=bad.

Goal for September is again to try to double this month’s earnings of $20. (so $40)

I did some work on my sites, mainly FantasyChris – my NFL fantasy football blog, as my draft was last week and games start next week.

I also started to park some of my un-used domain name on Sedo, which I should have done YEARS ago (stupid, stupid) but better late than never.

And here’s the Custom Channels breakdown:

Additionally, I started more work with CJ (Commission Junction) – figured out how to use “Smartzones” which allow you to rotate banners on your sites.

I have yet to ever receive a commission for a sale on CJ or Amazon, though I haven’t put much work into it.  Hopefully, will re-start my virtual administration outsourcing on Odesk soon – as the effort on FreeFilmResources panned out.

Here’s my August report thus far, across available custom channels (I have 40+ domain names but haven’t set them all up)

As you can see, my sites PhotoshopYourFace, Asian Gift Ideas, I Love Big Dogs, Headshot Photographer List, and FantasyChris could all use some help. FreeFilmResources seems to be doing well on its own, but I want to add some new content and features.

Found this great site online while searching for a FREE website analysis for my sites. Pear Analytics is awesome.  You don’t have to login or sign-up to use the tool that is easily found on the homepage.  Simply enter the URL you would like analyzed and click “Analyze my site”.

Pear Analytics will give you information on key things that you need to fix on your site, such as making sure your Google analytics code is found, as well as a sitemap.

The site will also tell you what you’re doing Right!  It gives you your Google PageRank, your Alexa ranking, and counts the number of inbound links.

The first time I had a really serious conversation about Feng Shui was in 2001.  I was modeling in Singapore, my first time traveling alone overseas, and one of my ex-coworker’s/friends happened to be from there.  He hooked me up with a couple of his chums to show me around town, since I didn’t know anyone.

One of his friends took me to a club that he himself owned.  Then he told me the story of how his last club had failed, but that with this club he had retained the help of Feng Shui consultants prior to building and decorating.  And it was obviously a very successful and happening club (at that time, at least).  Additionally while in Singapore, I visited another friend’s house who was also using many Feng Shui principles in the design of his house, including water elements and live coy fish swimming around.

Over the years since then, I’ve tried loosely here and there to learn and instill some of the principles & practices of Feng Shui, at least the ones that make sense and are easily applied.

What makes sense in Feng Shui?  Well, for example; the rule about never hanging anything above your bed = eg; anything that may fall on you in the night.  This can cause “un-restful” sleep.

So here is my list of Feng Shui principles that I’ve accumulated in my (memory) archive, and possibly I will add to this as I learn more.

Basic Feng Shui tips for practical use in your home:

Bedroom Feng Shui:

• Place the head of your bed against a solid wall & NOT under a window or beam
• Make sure you can see the main door (& hopefully all the windows) of your room from the bed, eg. so no intruder could “sneak up” on you
• Do not hang anything above your bed
• Do not have any mirrors reflecting your bed, or at least you should NOT be able to see yourself/the bed in any mirrors while IN bed (so, mirrors on the ceiling above bed = definitely BIG no-no).  Ideally, no mirrors in the bedroom at ALL.

Office Feng Shui:

Bathroom Feng Shui:

Mirror Feng Shui

I was given an Excel spreadsheet of locations, many of which I could eyeball and know in my head which area of Manhattan to group it in, but I wondered if there were a mapping tool where I could just plug the entire list and have it mapped out for me…

Ta daaaa! BatchGeo is pretty much that.  You just copy & paste your data from Excel into the box on BatchGeo and wait for it to process.  Then just validate your columns (pretty self-explanatory when you look at the pull-down options) and wait once more.

My overview map of the entire assignment looks like this:

And then if you zoom in closer, you can view street by street, care of Google Maps.  Stay tuned for my blogging on the NYC attractions we hit!

]]> http://www.chrissites.com/free-mapping-batch-geo/feed/ 0 http://www.chrissites.com/looking-for-free-press-release-sites/ http://www.chrissites.com/looking-for-free-press-release-sites/#comments Thu, 04 Aug 2011 03:34:32 +0000 chris http://www.chrissites.com/?p=99 Continue reading →]]> I was searching for free press release distribution sites and found this great article / blog with a very clean list of many press release services, as well as the author’s personal reviews on each.  The article is entitled “The Best Free and Paid Press Release Websites and When to Use Them”

Considering a few months ago – it was exciting to just make $1-3 per MONTH on Adsense, it’s cool that I’m 1-on my way to my first $100, and 2-doubled last month’s earnings w/minimal work.

Now to set some GOALS.

I did double my Adsense earnings from last month, from $10.55 to $20.38 this month.

Next immediate goal is to get that First $100 check from Google… cool!

But the master goal is to continue the pattern of DOUBLING my Adsense earnings every month, by that rate:

• in August I should earn $40 = achieving goal of hitting $100 mark
  September $80 = achieving goal of earning enough via Adsense to pay for monthly costs (& then some) of web hosting / domain renewals
• October $160 = pays for hosting, domains, AND Internet access Time Warner Cable!
• November $320 = I hit this goal and we’re having a nice Turkey dinner
• December 2011 $640 = perfectly in time for Xmas shopping!!
• January 2012 $1280 = wow, I just nearly paid my rent in Adsense money!

Ok, so that’s the hypothetical / dream scenario – but Tony Robbins says to Dream BIG, small goals have no effect on a person’s blood flow!

My dad was in town for a few days so what better to do with pops than to hit a baseball game.  It was a chance afternoon day game, started @ 1pm.  This was the first time for me, my father, & my boyfriend at the new stadium, CitiField.

Here’s the view from our seats of the ONLY highlight for the Mets of the game (how lucky I happened to have my camera out) – when Jose Reyes hit his triple.

And here’s where the Cardinals’ center fielder misses it.

We bought 4 tickets (via TicketKing) in Section 425, behind the third base line for just about face value $30ish/per.  Me & my dad had sat in a similar area at a Yankees game a few weeks ago, and I liked this viewing angle – I could actually see whether a pitch was a ball or strike!
It was a scalding hot summer day with a deceptive haze yet there was no mistaking the humidity which stuck us to our seats… the temperatures were 100+ but me & my buddy Rick (above) stayed put the whole game, while my dad & bf took “breaks” in the shade.  (wusses!)

Even though the Mets lost, it was an enjoyable day out in the sun, and live baseball games are always fun.  Here’s one more view of the field from our seats, MY view of the last inning when the tall guy (ahem, my bf) sat directly in front of me!  lol

]]> http://www.chrissites.com/view-from-section-425-at-citifield-mets-stadium/feed/ 0 http://www.chrissites.com/rhode-island-quahogs/ http://www.chrissites.com/rhode-island-quahogs/#comments Sun, 24 Jul 2011 06:45:01 +0000 chris http://www.chrissites.com/?p=52 Continue reading →]]> So unless you’re from RI or have spent some time there (or possibly watch Food Network), you’ve probably only ever heard of Quahogs from Family Guy.  Still, you could also be Rhode Island born & raised and yet while you may have heard of quahogs, you’ve never actually tried one. (Like Me!)

Well, here you have it… a photograph of genuine Roe Dyland quahogs driven down to Brooklyn by my father.

These are some baked quahogs.  The texture is about what you’d expect from the picture, sort of a seafood stuffing but a little pasty, these had a little bit of spice but went down pretty easy.  I’m not sold on why these are so “popular” in RI or RI culture, I much prefer our clamcakes ‘n chowda or good ol’ fish ‘n chips.