Apparently I’ve been tagged.. More than once.. Huh, who knew??

So, 5 things about me..

1. I really am a jeweler.. My primary job is designing jewelry and ocassionally I get to make a few pieces.. I love the job.. I mean come on, I get to make women cry and get men laid!!

2. I am a serial entrepreneur.. I don’t work well for others.. To date I’ve started, managed, and experimented with more than 10 companies.. Some of them quite successful.. Others not so much.. My favorites?? The architecture studio (I have a BA in Architecture from UNM) and the comic book store.. But others that were fun include the resteraunt, magazine publishing, obviosly the jewelry thing I do now, and sometimes the old web company that I still help with from time to time..

3. I used to play keyboards in a Mexican band.. (I’m as white as they come) Spent a summer touring the greater South Bend, IN., area with a group of friends playing quincinatas and ther things.. Didn’t know any of the music.. Couldn’t understand a word that was said.. Just played fast and loud and kept the beat.. But it was fun..

4. I am easily bored.. Probably why #2 is up there.. I am all about the excitement of the startup and getting things organized.. But once it becomes a step by step job I’m ready to hand it off and move on to the next big thing.. It’s probably also why I tend to unload on people in the forums.. It spices up my day and lets me exercise a part of my brain I have to keep under check in most situations..

5. In a former life I really was one of “those kinds of hackers”.. I grew up with a soldering iron in my hands.. My first computer was a CoCo 1, and my second was a Heathkit that I built myself.. I wrote most of my own software and even a few games.. At my peak I ran one of the more popular 0 Day BBSs out there.. 4 nodes, 14.4k, and literally hundreds of megs of software “before” it was released.. Who would have figured I’d switch sides so dramatically??

Next!

Let me start off by saying, yes, I know that the data collected by Alexa is only slightly better than useless for determining anything about ranking or positioning when it comes to Search Engine placement.. That said, there are a lot of people that use Alexa and it’s worth taking even a couple of minutes to verify and correct things listed there..

A couple weeks ago I got a call from the guys at ForTheWeb letting me know that they got a call from someone wanting to advertise on one of my websites.. Advertisers are cool, but why call my ISP, and how did they even get that number?? It seemed to me that hunting down an ISP and calling them when the contact info is right on the website was rather tedious.. Well, it turns out the guy uses the Alexa toolbar..

You can click on the info button on the Alexa toolbar and it will spit out names, addresses, and phone numbers for the website you are on.. The problem is that they scrape that info from the domain registration.. Which in many cases is your ISP, your registrar, out of date, or whatever.. The folks at Alexa, realizing that their semi worthless data is constantly made even more worthless with misleading data like this has also provided a way for you to update that info yourself.. It’s pretty straight forward actaully..

Head over to Alexa Site Information Editor and enter your URL.. Then upload the info.txt file they provide and let them crawl your site.. A few days later your site contact info should appear properly in the Alexa toolbar..

Is this going to have huge repurcussions on your website?? Probably not.. But it would have made it easier for at least one advertiser to get a hold of me.. And for that alone I think it’s worth the 5 mintues to check and update your sites in Alexa..

~Fey