Wayne W Walls

 This is my 100th blog post on this blog! That feels like quite a milestone. I know that compared to most other websites, only 100 pages / posts isn't really that many, but when I think about how much time and effort went into creating 100 pieces of content, it does feel like an accomplishment. It took a while to get here, but at least I made it. I wanted to do something different for this 100th post, something which specifically notes the fact that it is the 100th post. I wasn't entirely sure what I wanted to do, so I did some browsing of other bloggers' 100th/200th/300th milestone blog posts for inspiration. It seemed like a lot of them were basically thanking the readership of those blogs for reading, and explaining how much writing the blog has meant to them. I like both of those things, so I'll include them in this post. Thanks to all who have visited my blog! This blog is not very popular (yet!), and so not all that many people have visited. But to those who have,...

 Bloggers want to have their sites rank well in search engines. Not only because it is pretty cool to type something into Google and see your own website show up, but because it means an increased number of people will read what you write. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) advice for how to improve your website's rankings in search engines comes in many shapes. The most commonly shared strategy is to increase the number of backlinks to your content, because the more backlinks to your site, the better your site will rank in Google. Another strategy is to post regularly on social media , and include links to all of your new blog content. The thinking is that people will discover your posts on social media, then click through to your website. Also, having activity on social media platforms that references your site may be a ranking factor that Google considers. A third category of advice involves posting content to your blog consistently and more frequently . The more posts you hav...

 I started this blog and continue to write for it in the hopes that it would someday generate significant traffic. I also hope that it will generate an income for me which is at least as much as I currently make from my job so that I can quit my job and focus on building this blog. Currently, those are still just hopes for the future. This blog does not attract many readers, and it does not make me any money. I think that lots of people who start blogs have roughly those same goals. They are sick of their jobs and hope that their side hustle of a blog will allow them to quit. But I think that's about where it stops for most people. They want to use their blog to replace their income. And if the income from the blog grows, great, its just more money to spend, save, or invest. But there isn't really a bigger goal. But I hope to use the money from the blog to do something more. I have written about my plans for what I would do if this blog ever takes off in another post, and this...

 As I have written in other blog posts recently, I struggle to find the time to write blog posts because of my job, family, and other time commitments. If I could choose the ideal time to write , it would be in the mid-morning, but that time is taken up with work. When I look at my day realistically, the time left available to me to do discretionary things such as writing is at night before I go to bed. Roughly 9:30pm onward is the time I can sit down and punch the keys to produce a blog post. The trouble is that I feel very tired that late at night. Not so much physically tired, but mentally tired. As if I'm just not operating at peak creativity. And I really need to feel at least a little energized and creative to be able to write. If it were some routine physical task, I could do it while exhausted, but something like writing takes more of you to do. But I really want to write more , so I need to find a way to make that time work.  At first I looked into taking a quick nap ...

 When you search the internet for information about how to increase the traffic your blog gets, you find all kinds of suggestions.  Do whatever you can to attract or create backlinks. Write guest posts. Write comments on other blogs with links back to your own blog. Use email outreach to ask other bloggers to link to you. Use linking to control the link juice on your site. You can link to other high authority websites to indicate to search engines that your own site is high quality as well. Using internal links to direct readers to other posts on your site can help keep people on your site longer. Post on social media regularly to find and attract an audience on those platforms, and gradually send them over to your blog. Post links to all of your blog posts as you publish them. Perfect the non-written content aspects of your blog. Use photos, videos, and infographics to create appeal. Improve your site speed. These are just a few of the ways that are typically suggested that y...

 I started this blog because I wanted to share my thoughts and ideas. And when trying to come up with blog post ideas, I usually want to pick topics suitable for essays. I want a thesis, claim, or topic, and then use the blog post to fill out the idea. That is the goal. But writing that sort of article can be very time consuming and take a lot of effort.  I struggle to find time to write blog posts, and the time I usually end up with is late at night before bed. And by that time I am mentally pretty exhausted. And not feeling overly creative. So an essay-type topic is pretty tough to work on then. But that doesn't mean I just want to throw up my hands and not produce any content. I might sometimes just want to curate content, and add a little commentary. I wrote about that desire in my post about acting as a recommendation engine . But as much as that is something I want to do, and even something I committed to in that post, I haven't done a whole lot of it. I've tended to ...

You have to be 21 years of age or older to purchase alcohol in the United States. And most liquor stores will not just take your word for it, they will require seeing a state identification card (such as a drivers license) to prove your age. The best practice would be to just carry your drivers license with you when you go to the liquor store, but you might be wondering if you really need it. Or maybe you are on your way to the liquor store and have just realized you don’t have your ID with you, and are wondering if you need to go home to get it first. I can tell you from experience that, yes, you will need your ID . Total Wine is very strict about checking for IDs. I have never had a time where Total Wine did not check for an ID. Total Wine’s own website says they have a policy where they will check for ID from anyone that appears to be under the age of 30. However, in practice I think the cashiers at Total Wine just ask for IDs from everyone of any age. Total Wine also has a policy ...

I took an Intro to Philosophy class in college and one of the biggest assignments was a final paper. In the paper, we were supposed to follow the philosophical method of argument to answer one of several question prompts. This post is just the paper I submitted. “Is Democratic Government Necessary to Achieve an Ideal Society?” Definitions The terms used in this question have the potential to be quite nebulous. Before I attempt to provide and support an answer to the question, I will present my own definitions and distinctions to ensure that you, the reader, and I, the author, are seeing in our minds the same things as we move through this work. An “ Ideal Society ” is that community of people who can provide for all its members the highest possible standard of living. Absolute economic equality is not necessary to have this ideal society, but it is required that some reasonable or even generous standard be made for what poverty is, and no person can exist below that standard.  ...

I am a fan of the podcast Planet Money . As the title would suggest, the podcast discusses issues related to money and economics . And sometimes they take listener questions and turn the answers into entire episodes. And at the end of the episodes, they ask for listeners to send in their questions. A few years ago I sent them an email with a question I had. They did not reply. A little while later I replied to that email just to basically try to get them to see it and respond. They did not ever reply. But I thought my question was pretty good, so I am posting it here for anyone to read. My Question About Investing It is common good advice that to plan for your future and work towards a happy retirement you should save some portion of your income and invest that money. When you invest your money, the plan is that the money works for you, so that even when you are not working, you are still making money.  If the rate of return of your chosen investments is sufficient, and you are ab...

I bought the CDs for Age of Empires 2: Age of Kings and the expansion Age of Empires 2: Conqueror's Expansion many years ago. I installed them on the desktop PC my family had at the time, and the games installed and worked just fine. No issues. Those games were a couple of my favorites. But life gets busy and I kind of forgot about them. Many years later, I remembered them again, and so installed them on the computer I had at the time. The games still installed and played problem-free. This year, I again remembered I owned these games, and in order to play them again I would need to install them on my current computer. I figured since it went well in the past, it should go well this time. I also thought that as technology advances, computers just naturally get better, so if my very old computer from over 10 years ago could handle playing these games, surely my newish computer should do just fine. I loaded up the discs and clicked "install" on the installation wizard tha...

I love the internet. I love the possibilities the internet offers to allow people to share things with the world. No matter who you are or what you are passionate about, you can put something out there, and other people in the world can find it. That is so extremely exciting to me!  I have heard lots of people (mostly on podcasts ) talk about how there used to be gatekeepers which would control what the public was allowed to see , hear , and read. Lots of people might have interesting, uncommon ideas to share, but the gatekeepers (such as publishing company executives or broadcast television managers) would choose what would be published, and therefore what was available to the public. It wouldn't matter the value or merit of an idea, if the small number of gatekeepers didn't want it out in the world, it would not get out there. But now, thanks to the internet, the gatekeepers have lost much of their power, and anyone can share what they want with the world. Information is now ...