I just created a new website for a local auto mechanic who owns a successful full-service automotive shop. You can visit the Pavy’s Auto Service new website at PavysAuto.com.

If you are interested in having me help you develop a website or blog, please contact me and let me know how I can help you.

Technorati Tags: site, website Pavy, websites

Spaghetti. I like fresh spaghetti. I enjoy spaghetti best right after I pick it fresh from my orchard. I don’t even bother drying first.

Flying Penguins. One of the top 10 things I want to see in my life is the migration of this amazing breed of penguins.

Rumors. I’ve created some fun rumors and jokes through the years. Several years ago when I worked at Novell, I started a rumor about NetWare for Macintosh. We were still developing it and had not even made any public announcements about it. So I wrote an article that prematurely “leaked the news” about our upcoming product. It was believable at first, but as the story progressed, the claims became more and more ridiculous. I printed my story and glued on top of the “Mac The Knife” rumors column of a popular Macintosh magazine. Then I photocopied it and I placed copies on several managers and VP’s desks. I went back to my office and silently chucked as they read it. The surprising thing is that none of them got to the part where it became obvious that it was a joke. Instead, they came to me to figure out how this leak could have happened. Needless to say, I won company’s April Fools’ day contest! Otherwise, I wouldn’t be bragging about it here.

Check out The Top 100 April Fool’s Day Hoaxes of All Time (As judged by notoriety, creativity, and number of people duped.)

A collection of The Five Best Office Pranks Of All Time

¡ʎɐp ,sןooɟ ןıɹdɐ ʎddɐɥ

Technorati Tags: Humor, novell, penguins, spaghetti, story

My life story is being featured on StoryOfMyLife.com this week, along with my wife, Tanda’s story. It was serendipitous how this came about! I had seen the website and had an impression of how it could be a great resource for grandparents. So I planned to write a review for my GrandparentsTLC.com blog. I was going to contact Story of My Life for more information. My goal was to share with grandparents how they could use the site as a tool write their life stories, then share them with their family. Their stories are stored forever as a legacy for future generations.

Then one day a couple of months ago, one of the head people at Story of My Life contacted me saying they would like to feature me and my wife on their website. Well, needless to say, I was thrilled! So they had a professional storyteller interview us and write our stories. When the stories were complete, we reviewed them, and requested a few minor changes.

To get information for my review, I had a phone call the lady that originally contacted me. I also suggested that we coordinate the date to feature our stories to coincide with my review. It worked out perfectly!

I have to say that the experience was very enjoyable. Tanda and I are impressed with how professional and courteous everyone is at StoryOfMyLife.com. We feel honored to be featured by Story of My Life. It is an well engineered website, and so easy to use. And it’s free! They are doing wonderful things there.

Now that the stories are published, I’ll confess that I didn’t quite know what to expect for the number or readers. I wondered how many readers would click one of the links to my three websites that are listed at the end of the articles. Well, I am totally amazed at the results so far! They really know how to make a story go viral!

• Views so far on Shayne’s story at Story of My Life: a few thousand in the first 24 hours. 110, 000 in the first 48 hours.
• Views so far on Tanda’s story at Story of My Life: 16,000 in the first 24 hours.
• Views for the most popular story there: 548,664 after 255 days.

My story was published Wednesday, Feb. 4th, 2009, and Tanda’s was the next day. Please read my review of the Story of My Life website on GrandparentsTLC.com. It also has the links to our stories on their website.

Enjoy – Shayne

Technorati Tags: blogging, family, Internet, personal, review, story-of-my-life, viral, website

What is twitter? Twitter can be a fun way to keep in touch with your family and friends. Here’s the description from the twitter home page: “Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?” So twitter is like a personal blog, only with shorter and more frequent entries. It’s a microblog; a communication tool you can access on the web. It can also integrate with text messages (SMS) on your mobile phone.

Take two minutes to watch this easy to understand intro to twitter by CommonCraft.com.

I’ve been active on twitter for about a year now. It’s becoming more beneficial to me in several ways, such as connecting with new folks, and promoting my GrandparentsTLC.com site. But it took me few weeks to figure out what the big deal was with twitter. I’ve seen several new tweeple struggle to learn how to successfully build their little community of friends and followers. Many of them go about it in an ineffective way. I recently tweeted about this -

I see folks joining twitter – some of them famous. Someone should write a guide of things to do before promoting yourself on twitter. Dec 6th from twhirl

When I see someone new following me, I want to learn about them. So I check out their twitter profile, read their bio, and click on their website. Sometimes I get a follower that is new to twitter, who has not taken the time to set up their profile information. Some of these people are following lots of other folks, but not too many follow them back.

One problem is twitter’s recommended steps for setting up a new account. It’s missing a very important step: setting up your profile information. This should be done before following anyone, and before your first tweet. Your profile needs to include your photo, bio and your website.

I usually advise people to use their real name and photo. To make your name more readable, capitalize your username, as in ShaynePacker. (If you already have a twitter account, you can fix the capitalization in your account settings. As long as you only change the capitalization and don’t add or delete characters, you won’t hurt anything.) If your twitter ID is your company name or product name, you should capitalize it.

Here are the steps you need to take. Even if you have a twitter account, double check each step to make sure you’ve done it completely, as they are all important.

1. Create a twitter account.
2. Set up your information for people to see.
3. Create your first status update.
4. Find your friends and new people to follow.
5. Start engaging followers in meaningful conversation.

(Tip: right-click or command-click the links below to open them in a new tab so that you can refer back to this tutorial.)

✔ Step 1. Create an account at twitter.com using these guidelines.

• On the signup page, capitalize your first and last name, as in ShaynePacker.
• Skip the next invitation page, Are your friends on Twitter? You’ll do it later in step 4.
• Skip the next page, the home page. You’ll update your status in step 3.

✔ Step 2. Set up your information for people to see.

• Click on the Settings link at the top of your twitter page.
• Fix the first text field (Name) so it is First name, space, Last name (with capitals).
• Set your time zone, URL, bio, and location. (Make your bio interesting.)
• Click on the Devices tab if you want updates to come to your mobile phone. Enter your phone number. (You can decide this later if you want.)
• Click on the Picture tab, and upload your photo.
• Click on the Design tab, and select a theme you like. (You can change this later.)

✔ Step 3. Create your first status update.

• Click on the Home link at the top of the twitter page. It asks, “What are you doing?” Update your status so your future followers will know you are real. You can type anything; perhaps “Signed up for twitter. Setting up account.” Enter one or more updates.

✔ Step 4. Find your friends and new people to follow.

• Click on the Find People link at the top of the twitter page. 
• Then click on each of the tabs to find your friends by their name or email address, your address book, etc.
• Another tool for finding people you know or want to follow is search.twitter.com. Try typing their name or nickname, their website, or some other identifier.
• Now go searching for other interesting people. Read their profiles and check out their website before deciding to follow them. Then click follow, and send them a tweet that lets them know who you are or why you’re following them.

✔ Step 5. Start engaging followers in meaningful conversation.

• Ask them for advice. Ask questions. Ask how their family is doing if you know them.
• Offer tips and advice when you see others asking for it.
• Be open in your conversation. Go with the flow.
• Talk with people, not at them.

So now your twitter profile should be complete and people will be able to get to know your quickly. Enjoy twitter! And don’t forget to follow me on twitter. I’ll follow you back. Please let me know if this tutorial was helpful by commenting below. Be sure to include your @TwitterUserName. You can also tweet about this article to your followers. And bookmark it below. Any of these things will be appreciated.

There are several good blogs and articles about twitter. Twitip.com by @ProBlogger and friends is one I highly recommend, particularly some of the beginner’s articles.

Technorati Tags: beginners, getting-started, Internet, quick-start, social-networking, tutorial, twitip, twitter

My brain is calculating the concept that it is my hopeful aspiration — yes, even my yearning desire — to become a famous blogger, since I have intentionality and deliberately given the theory of the notion a considerable amount of forethought, preplanning, and formulated contemplation. Paradoxically, I have often musingly pondered, meditated, and introspectively studied upon the puzzling cogitation.

I reckon what I think I’m trying to say is that I am attempting to articulate the hypothesis, and surmise the supposition that anything is possible if I prudently impart enough foresight, farsightedness, and premeditated vision of become a famous blogger.

I mean, there is nothing inherently wrong with me if I anticipate, dream, or even expect to become a famous blogger, is there?

So, it is my opinion to remove any hesitation, uncertainty, or indecision on the matter. Therefore I am herby announcing the proclamation that, yes indeed, it is my ambition to become a certified, bona fide, indubitably qualified famous blogger! Yesiree, true-blue, died-in-the-wool through and through.

Now that I have made that decision, I need to figure out which of these two paths to take.

Oh no! I think I’m in trouble!

Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.

Technorati Tags: blogging, cartoon, famous, Humor

When I last checked, there were over 12,000 sites blogging about Blog Action Day 2008. This is awesome! What an excellent reminder of what is important on this planet we all live in. This is a worthy cause I support.

My personal feelings

My childhood illustrates how caring individuals can really make a difference in a child’s life, even in the small things they do. My father was a good man. He got sick and died when I was 9 years old, leaving several children for my mom to raise. So I grew up in a poor family, although I didn’t know it at the time. We had what we needed. I really appreciate all the things our neighbors and church friends did to bless our lives while I was growing up.

It is important for me now to help less fortunate children, to be their friend, to teach, encourage and inspire them. My wife, Tanda, and I are always looking for ways to share with others. She is such a wonderful example of a loving, compassionate, Christian woman. We are currently working to make our businesses successful so that we can generate enough surplus to contribute on a larger scale to help alleviate poverty. We also look forward to the time when we can serve a full-time mission. We are hoping to go to a country where we can really make a difference.

Tanda and I want to encourage you to find ways to share what your have with those who are in such desperate need. 

I wrote a short post about Blog Action Day on our GrandparentsTLC.com blog. Several of my friends have also written excellent articles about it, which I recommend to you. Please show your support by commenting and submitting their webpages to your favorite social bookmark sites like Digg, StumbleUpon, and Mixx.

• Blog Action Day by Cory Huff at AGoodHusband.com
• Blog Action Day-Poverty-All of These Things-Need Not Be by Write On! at HubPages
• Blog Action Day-Providing the Lord’s Way-Christian Service by In The Doghouse at HubPages
  
• It’s The Water: BAD08 (Blog Action Day) by Willis Whitlock at WilliSays.com

Please let me know if you have an article about Blog Action Day so I can add it to my list.

Thanks, Shayne

Here’s a fun site you oughta try. Next to being a grandma, it’s one of my wife’s favorite pastimes.

Technorati Tags: blog-action-day, blogging, charity, humanitarianism, philanthropy

Don’t you just love ‘em? Homemade gifts from grandchildren the best! :-) Wear them to church with pride! (That’s me on the left.)

Technorati Tags: gifts, grandpa, ties

- Shayne Packer

Technorati Tags: welcome