In the past I’ve gotten some inquiries about the Wordpress Plugins used here at AIS After doing some backend updating around this place I read an article in Website Magazine about a few awesome Wordpress Plugins and decided to add a couple new goodies to the site! I’d like to share them with you all as I’ve been very impressed with the newbies and of course I’d reccommend my old standbys to everyone so here’s what’s “plugged in” at AIS:

New Toys:

Sexy Bookmarks :: “SexyBookmarks adds a (X)HTML compliant list of social bookmarking icons to each of your posts.” Download this plugin from the WordPress site by clicking here.

I saw this in action and fell in love, it looks so facy and technical but is so easy to install and customize. This plugin is responsible for the nifty little “Share the love” buttons you see under each post. Very slick looking and extremely useful for blogs that have content that the author would like to have distributed to places like Digg, Facebook, Technorati and many many more!
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WP-Cumulus :: “Flash based Tag Cloud for WordPress.” Download this plugin from the WordPress site by clicking here.

This little plugin is just too freakin’ cool! If you look at my sidebar under “The Past” heading you’ll see this little guy in action. It creates a flash ‘cloud’ of your categories (and tags if you use those) that you can fully customize the design of to add to your blog. It’s neat to look at, super easy to install and edit and fully functional for use. I love it and have to admit I’ve sat here and just played with it non-stop since I installed it…I’m a nerd…I know.

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Oldies but Goodies:

Peter’s Custom Anti-Spam :: “Stop a lot of spambots from polluting your site by making visitors identify a random word displayed as an image before commenting. You can customize the pool of words to display.” Download this plugin from the WordPress site by clicking here.

Yaknow when you go to post a comment here and you have to type in some random dirty word or weird phrase to be able to post? This baby is how I do it! It’s so easy to use and works like a charm, my spam levels are so low it’s great and I love that I can use my own words instead of stupid defaults. Adds a little something extra to the experience I think
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Collapsible More Link :: “Allows you to click a link and instantly display the rest of your post instead of loading the ‘view more’ page.” Download this plugin from the creator’s site by clicking here.

Usually when I get on a rant around here the post ends up taking up a huge chunk of the front page, this little plugin gives you that handy “read more” link that helps you conserve space or even screw with your readers…like I did here. When this post hit the front page I simply had inserted the “more” link between the text and the picture at the bottom and it was a hit! Muhahaha!
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Text Link Ads :: “Text Link Ads Sell Ads on your Homepage or site wide. Join the Text Link Ads marketplace.” Download this plugin from the creator’s site by clicking here.

All of the text link advertising here at AIS is managed by Text Link Ads. I love this plugin because I just installed it and started to generate income via the sell of advertiser links, and everyone loves making money right? In fact most visitors never even see the links – you really have to look for them to find them on this site. I’ve also made a decent income from the referal of other bloggers as for every sign up that I send their way I get cash for it. So, if you do decide to give this plugin a try and sign your blog up to make some money with text ads please use my links from this site < / end shameless pandering of readers>

So, there you have it…the little list o’ Plugins that are running behind the scenes here at AIS. I hope they are useful to you on your blog. And if you have a plugin you love please tell me about it here in the comments so I can check it out Happy Saturday!

I woke up this morning thinking about beauty routines…weird I know. I count my lucky stars that my mother wasn’t a huge “makeup” mom so I never got into the warpaint scene much as a kid. My beauty regieme is pretty basic, I use oatmeal based bar soap on my face and body and sometimes an apricot scrub as an exfoliant when I get dry. The face stuff has been pared down to a basic Ponds moisturizer, a small jar of undereye creme, a tube of mascara and a tube of the cherry Chapsitck. Easy math. My skin isn’t perfect but I’d rather bare it all then spend precious time in the morning trying to cover up the freckles and random pimples that make an appearance once in awhile.

And I’m happy with it, I’ve lost count the number of times that guys have told me that the reason they find me attractive is because I don’t wear makeup. I always end up pointing out the mascara but the response is always the same – “Yeah, but you can’t even tell.” while they gesture to the lady across the bar who is made up with the same amount of makeup as Mimi was in Drew Carrey.

But I know that a lot of women both young and old spend countless dollars and tons of time applying makeup and creams and all manner of “gunk” to themselves in the name of looking ‘hot’ or even by their definition ‘normal’. I’ve recently become aquainted with a group of young ladies who fall into this category. They are all beautiful, have great skin and have the benefit of youthful vigor on their side, yet they wear so much makeup and hair stuff that even when I see them on a Tuesday afternoon they appear to be heading to a night club!

I had the chance to observe the bathrooms of one such of these ladies and all I gotta say is holy hell! There were more bottles and potions and just stuff around on the sinks and shelves than I’d ever seen. God knows what most of it was for but I couldn’t help but feel overwhelmed at the site of it all. It made me grateful that I had managed to simplify my routine, still look great and could fit all of my “girl junk” into a small basket on my sink.

“Beauty” like that is expensive and I always marvel at the cost that ladies go to for them to get the latest and greatest. In hard economic times such as these I can only hope that if women are looking for extra ways to save cash that they take a look at all the money they have on their face and realize that underneath all that money is a beautiful face that most likely doesn’t need to be covered up as much as they think. A clean bright face and a smile goes a very long way, and I have the phone numbers from guys to prove it. It’s nice to not stress about putting all that on and then carrying around all the touchup junk necessary to take a madeup face out into public.

I challenge you ladies, take a hard look at your vanity, learn to love your face without all the “extra” and you’ll be suprised at how much better you’ll begin to feel, how much money you save and how many more compliments you’ll get on the natural look you have because that natural look is hard to find these days and is greatly appreciated no matter what your age

I just noticed my Feedburner subcriber number has jumped from 72 to 85 in the last couple days! Welcome to the 13 new subcribers, I hope you enjoy my madness! I still can’t believe that even one person subscribes to this mess much less 85 so I hope I can at least keep you all mildly entertained if nothing else

Things are plugging away as usual here, the new healthy eating plan I’ve put myself on seems to be working as 5lbs. has already melted away! It’s amazing what eating more salads and less fried foods can do. I’m only getting to the gym once a week but that’s 100% more times a week than I had been going so I’ll keep looking at it in that glass is half full sort of way for awhile

Finances are still troubled waters, but there is light at the end of the tunnel. That end is a long ways off yet so I’ll continue with my little plans and spending analysis as I have been. I would really like to get back to using my Quicken program to track spending and whatnot but that’s going to require a couple of days where I do nothing but focus on updating and getting the information straight. I did manage to get one loan paid off in December which was a huge relief because it frees up almost $130 a month to put towards other debts. I know that I can get this all fixed and be back on track in time, right now things are tight but it’s good because it forces me to take a hard look at where I put my money.

My simplification process is coming along swimmingly, I spent two whole days last weekend purging closets and rooms in my house making boxes of things to offload at an upcoming yard sale. I still have a few more rooms to go through and then I’ll execute what I’m calling the “Final Sweep” where I take a serious look at what’s left after the purge and rid myself of even more. The dreaded task of sorting through years of papers and files still looms ahead of me and I’ll be getting to that very soon. I already feel more in control of my home and posessions thanks to the clean out, it’s been a liberating experiance for me and that motivates me to continue on in the removal of excess “stuff”.

The cleaning of the figurative house (my life/relationships/emotions) has been a challenge as well. I’m being faced with some new lessons on perception of situations and am now facing head on all of my trust issues. Sounds kinda sissy but it’s what’s going on with me. Coming to terms with not being in control of certain things and just having to trust they will work out is a hard lesson. But I’m learning. I picked up a great book by Dale Carnagie that is comprised of excerpts from many of his books and it’s been a huge help. I’ll continue to re-read it until all of the principals sink in…I’m slow like that

And finally the online world for me is starting to show signs of life…the much neglected housekeeping behind the scenes both here and at my other blog Fire Safe House.com has been done. A visual re-vamping of this place is still on the drawing board as I feel that with my new life I need a new look…but that will be a ways off…right now I’m just proud that I’ve managed to log my ass in and post with a certain regulairity.

Life is good, progress is being made and I’m happier now that I think I’ve ever been. Things are looking up and I thank my lucky stars every night that the universe hasn’t given up on me yet

“I have to name you in my blog.”

“What?”

“I have to give you a name, yaknow an online one. I don’t use real names on my blog and since you’ll probably be blog fodder for me at some point I have to find something to call you so the people that read my stuff know I’m talking about you. I can’t just call you “the new boyfriend” forever, it’s too long and not really catchy.”

“Um.”

“Seriously, you gotta help me out here…this is really important.”

“Ok, well my friends used to call me ‘Harold T’, would that work?”

“Uh, no, that’s not quite what I’m going for. See my ex was known as ‘The Hotness’ in my writings, it’s gotta be catchy yaknow.”

“Well what about ‘Ferrrari’ since I’m like so exotic and sporty? Or ‘Horse’ ha ha?”

“No, no that won’t work…you’re killin’ me here…this is serious bloggin’ business dude.”

“In college when I was playing baseball they used to call me ‘Kranker’ because of my hitting a lot of home runs…”

“That makes you sound like a drug addict. I can’t have you sounding like that…jesus…my mother reads this thing!”

“What about ‘Frank n’ Beans’?”

“Uh no, why don’t we just put this on the back burner…think about it some more and get back to me would you?”

“Ok. But I still think Frank n’ Beans is pretty funny…”

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So as you can see by the above conversation between the new boyfriend and I the jury is still out on naming naming him…but as soon as we can come up with something that doesn’t make him sound like a 90-year old drug addict, barnyard animal, or a cheap meal you eat because you’re broke before payday I’ll do an intro post so you all can meet him

Went through my blogroll a couple days ago and realized that quite a few of my favorite bloggers have closed up shop and moved on or just simply left their blog to die (kinda like me). I’ll be the first to admit that for the most part of a year I didn’t even give this thing a second thought, which is funny since it once meant so much to me. Hopefully some of my fave bloggers will come back soon…

But for now I want to find some great new bloggers to read and add to my collection of favorites…any suggestions?