Wednesday afternoon I received an e-mail “Link Exchange Request” from another website.  That website is for legally related services, but really has nothing to do with what this website is about:  California workers’ compensation, nerdy technobabble, and random silliness.

This other website proposed that I put up a link to their website here.  Incoming website links are one of the primary tools search engines use to rank web pages, which is why people are always offering link exchanges.  Google’s PageRank system ranks a website on a scale from 0 to 10, with 10 being the best.  Like the Richter scale for earthquakes, PageRank scores require exponentially more energy to reach the next level.

Bad Link Exchange Offer
Bad Link Exchange Offer

These links to my site can be “high quality” because they are from a website that also deals with California workers’ compensation, nerdy technobabble, or random silliness.  Or, they can be “low quality” because they have nothing to do with what my site is about.

In order to find out whether they were offering a high quality linkback, I checked out their website.  On the right is a screenshot of their website.  It has nothing whatsoever to do with workers’ compensation.  The green circle is where they had the link to their “resources” page.  The green box at the top is the only part of their page that’s visible when you go to their page.

So, not only were they offering me a low quality link, but they were offering me a low quality link that no one would ever look for, let alone find.

While they were clearly making a terrible offer, the idea that they looked up my website in order to solicit a link was amusing.  My website’s gotten so big people want links from me!  Blog bigtime, baby!

Panic ensued at 9pm on August 27, 2008.  My website was down after it had been operational all day.  For some reason, my e-mail accounts were not working either.  I hadn’t touched any settings whatsoever.  All the files on the server were fine – the server just wasn’t sending information.  An hour later the website problem resolved all by itself.

My e-mail is still down, but at least the website is back up.

Technical Difficulties

Update: E-mails back too!  Yay!

WorkersCompensationInfo.com posted a great update on the proposed EAMS regulations. The Board website shows the new proposed regulations and forms. The comment period closes on August 21, 2008. You can download all of the EAMS Proposed Regulations at once here.

There are new forms for:

  • Compromise and Releases
  • Stipulations with Request for Award
  • Minutes of Hearing
  • Declaration of Readiness to Proceed
  • Disability Evaluation Unit (DEU) forms and regulations
  • Retraining and Return to Work (RRTW) forms and regulations

Those wishing to comment can send their thoughts as follows:

There’s a physical mail address as well – but with EAMS around the corner, shouldn’t you get used to e-mail?

This jet
This jet

Mostly because its so flipping cool.

I’m one of those kinds of people who likes to customize their things to suit them better. My junky cell phone has a custom ringtone I created, custom welcome/power-on message, my e-mail and word processing programs have tons of little shortcuts to make my life a little easier in a multitude of ways. My dictaphone has a sticker on it. ((A sticker of a jet.))

The great thing about WordPress is that the entire program is SO customizable. You can change how it looks with “Themes” and how it acts with “Plugins.” I’ve been using it since March or so, even though it wasn’t publicly launched until July. I’m still finding all of these cool little features.

My current favorite feature: The ability to schedule a post. I can draft a quick post and then schedule it to appear on a particular day or time. Brilliant!

Its the little things in life, you know?