One of the series I’m writing on my lifestyle design blog is about logical fallacies. I love the mental rigor of analyzing what is said for accuracy, clarity, and truth. And fallacies abound.

When I see a logical fallacy come up in the media or discussion, I like to use it as an example of real fallacious reasoning. And in a political season, this is far too easy. I have a lineup of fallacy posts just waiting to be completed.

Yesterday I set about to complete my post about the ad hominem fallacy. I had written a post about the tragedy of the presidential election — in response to another post that employed the relative privation fallacy. I only had to wait for comment number two for the ad hominem attacks to kick in. So I decided to finish the ad hominem post with this very timely example.

I wanted to link to the ad hominem comment in the political post from the new post, but for the life of me I couldn’t figure out how to go about it. I know there are plugins that add a comment permalink button — which would give me the needed info. But I didn’t want to add a plugin. I know that if you have been to a post with comments and read the comments, your next page load will jump to the last comment you read — assuming your cookies are in place and all that — and the URL will include the last comment number. But I had read past that comment and there were other new comments elsewhere on the site, so I was unsure how to find the correct number for the comment I wanted to link to.

After that, I looked in the comments section in the dashboard and couldn’t see anything. I searched the web for some time. Without inserting php into the site — which I thought was overkill — I couldn’t see an easy way to grab this needed number.

Finally I gave up the quest and, instead, decided just copied the text from the comment and refer to it. Here are the steps: 

1. Copy everything in the comment from the commenters name, date, and through to the bottom of the comment.
2. Paste the information into the Visual post editor.
3. Save as draft.
4. Switch to the HTML post editor.
5. Find the comment permalink and copy it.

As an example, what I viewed the pasted material, it looked something like this: 

<ul id=”comments”>
<li id=”comment-245498″><a href=”http://www.win-with-1.com/” rel=”external nofollow”>Alison Moore Smith</a> <a title=”permalink to this comment” href=”http://pix2brix.com/happiness-advantage-5-easy-steps-happier-life/#comment-245498” rel=”nofollow”>August 9, 2012 at 5:04 pm</a>
<div id=”comment-body-245498″>

DiNaRa, so glad this was helpful to you. There is so much good info, I ordered his book,<em><a href=”http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0307591549/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=0307591549&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=pix2brix-20″ target=”_blank”>The Happiness Advantage</a></em>. Reading it now. Will report! (It comes in a <a href=”http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003F3PMYI/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=B003F3PMYI&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=pix2brix-20″ target=”_blank”>Kindle version</a>, too, which is what I ordered.)

</div>

If you look right after the words “permalink to this comment,” you will see a URL. This URL (I have highlighted it in blue in this example) is the permalink to your comment.

Unfortunately, this trick doesn’t work in all configurations. I can’t see a pattern for when it does and does not work, but it’s worth a try to see if your installation allows the permalink to come through.

Looking forward to working from home? Here are some tips to get you out of the office and on to better things.

Structure Your Day

Working from home is a dream come true for many. Just saving the commute time can be a life saver. But avoiding office politics and time wasters put you way ahead of the game.

But there is a downside. Without someone looking over your shoulder, the temptation to fiddle the day away can be strong. Too many snacks, too many bathroom breaks, power naps, office futzing, television, and even social networking can take a huge bite out of productivity.

While working with your moods can be a huge advantage of the autonomy working at home provides, most people still find having some sense of structure gives a push to actually get things done.

Take some time to make out a work schedule for each day. First add in any regularly scheduled meetings or events. Then add a lunch or break time to eat, stretch, and rejuvenate. Last, add in the big blocks of time to work on your projects. 

Depending on your personality, you might write in specific tasks or you might just leave an open-ended designation. I use “projects” on my schedule for these work times. That leaves me the flexibility to choose a project I’m motivated to do at the time, while reminding me it’s not time to read a novel or paint my nails.

Take Advantage of Technology

Working from home can be particularly efficient, because you can make use of your time however fits your lifestyle.

If you have a cell phone (who doesn’t these days?), you can make calls while running errands or waiting to pick up your kids from class. If you have an iPad (my current favorite gadget of all time), you can easily (and without squinting at your tiny phone screen) do research, answer emails, write blog posts, etc. If you have wireless internet, you can work wherever you are most comfortable: on the couch, sitting on the porch, at the dining table assisting with homework.

Act Like a Boss

While working in slippers is one of the most touted benefits of working at home — and I do work in my slippers almost every day — there are some things about this slacker lifestyle that don’t necessarily promote productivity.

Like it or not, our environment impacts our work. Hang onto the slippers, but get up, shower, and dress. Comb your hair. Clean up your work area and organize it to function well.

Working from home is one of the best lifestyle choices coming into popularity. As you become a pro blogger or do other work from home, make it work by being productive.

Working from home has many advantages. But dealing with a health issue while keeping your business inning smoothly can be a huge challenge. Working for long hours, sitting at a desk and banging away on a keyboard can be hazardous to your health. Yes, pro bloggers, your slippers and cocoa lifestyle might not be the best for your health.

One way to protect your business, reputation, and livelihood is to look for the root causes of pain and difficulty so that you can correct them and get on with the business of your business.

Inflammation is a leading cause of pain. If you suffer from inflammation related health problems — arterial, digestive, muscles, or joint problems — consider trying Nopalea. It’s a wellness drink derived from the fruit of the Nopal cactus.

Nopalea contains a rare antioxidant, called Betalains. They have been scientifically proven to help the body to reduce inflammation and relieve related problems, cleanse your body of toxins, and promote optimal health. And we can all use a good dose of optimal health!

You can try this product free by calling 1-800-203-7063. You’ll just pay $9.95 for shipping and handling and you’ll get a sample from a company that has been in business 12 years and sold over 3 million bottles. See if it helps your inflammation problems.

On April 7th, my husband and I found ourselves in the emergency room of Utah Valley Regional Medical Center with our 11-year-old son, Samson, who was gravely ill. Unbeknownst to us, his appendix had ruptured “some time ago.”

Two days earlier he had come in from the playing soccer in the backyard to tell us he didn’t feel very good. What looked like the flu was much, much more serious.

I spent nearly two weeks living with him in the intensive care unit. Then he came home for a couple of days and ended up back in surgery for a partial bowel obstruction. He finally came home (hopefully for good) on April 29.

After the first, very long night, I ran home for a couple of hours (while Sam stayed with him), to shower, change, and grab some things. One of the first things I packed was my computer. I’m blessed that, as a professional blogger, I can work anywhere there is an internet connection. So, other than the overwhelming concern for my boy, my work wasn’t really impeded. I could attend to him whenever he needed anything, and still setup blogs, provide consulting, complete customization, and keep up with correspondence when he was sleeping.

This worked remarkably well, but reiterated to me the importance of multiple streams of income when running your own business. If your entire business is built on selling your own time, you have a serious problem if you’re too sick to put in the hours.

Creating lots of venues for passive income with your blogging business gives you the freedom to spend your time with more important things — like spending time with your very sick loved ones.

Another reminder came as I saw so many sick people day after day. Now, of course, many people are hospitalized through no fault of their own. My son didn’t cause his appendicitis, but he was still in very serious condition. But so many people are chronically ill because of their own bad choices, habits, and behavior.

Smoking, abusing drugs or alcohol, having poor eating and sleeping habits, obesity, etc., make a huge impact on our health.

As I watched to many people struggle with pain and disability, I became more determined than ever to have my own choices have a positive affect on my health. While I can’t prevent all illnesses, diseases, accidents, I can make sure I don’t contribute to them.

This is particularly important for those of us who work for ourselves.

Watch for even small things you can do for good health. If you’re consuming gallons of coffee to stay awake, consider a better sleep schedule and foods that won’t cause an energy spike followed by a drop. If you’re sedentary while blogging at your desk, get up early for a good workout every morning and schedule some activity during the day. If you have inflammation because of repetitive movement (a problem with lots of computer workers), try Nopalea, a wellness drink that contains Betalians, rare antioxidants that have been proven to reduce inflammation. If you spend lots of time in the sun, use a quality sunscreen to protect your skin. Eat lots of fresh vegetables and fruits. Drink lots of water.

There are so many simple changes that can make a big difference in your health and quality of life. And keep you out of the hospital. Trust me, it’s worth the effort for your business an your stress level.

In January I had a life-changing experience. OK, so that’s an overstatement. What I really had was a blog-setup-changing experience.

For a number of years now, I’ve worked at setting up websites for the almost do-it-yourselfer. Win-with-1 is for people who want to own a blog and have control over the basic functions, but don’t want to do the most technical parts of setting up hosting, purchasing domains, loading software, FTPing, customizing, etc.

This has nicely filled a need for a particular niche of bloggers.

But in January, I had an online conversation that changed everything. I learned that there is an entire class of bloggers for whom any technical work is an overwhelming barrier. They don’t want to go up the tech learning curve to setup a blog, but they also don’t want to manage the themes, plugins, and features.

What do they want? They want a blog that is incredibly easy to set up, that has all the bells and whistles ready to go, and that they can use to start to blog today — not after a few weeks of studying and researching and futzing. And they want to do it on a blog they own — understanding that building a business on a free blog that someone else has control of (and can shut down on a whim) is very unwise.

When that need became apparent, PopCred.net was born. It’s a blog network with ready-to-go blogging sites and tools and where an entire blog community works together to make money blogging.

But what if neither the PopCred model nor the Win-with-1 model suit your needs? What if you are a true do-it-on-my-own blogger? What if you want to own your site and you want to take control of all the technical aspects of setup and maintenance? What if you want to add your own HTML and CSS and PHP? What if you want to customize everything to the hilt?

In that case, you’ll want to secure your own website hosting, your own domain, and then proceed to install WordPress software and upload the themes and plugins you want to use.

If you don’t know which company to choose for your server space, check out some web hosting reviews. From my own experience, these are my suggestions:

GoDaddy

We used to use GoDaddy as our domain registrar. Then they decided that utterly disrespecting women and using skank as a major selling point has everything to do with web services. I moved all my domains to another site and will not patronize them in any way. We don’t need more smut in the world.

FatCow

In theory, I love FatCow. Their interface is clean and easy to navigate, and they have this green wind thing going on. The only problem is that there service is seriously lacking (and their customer service supports the lousy service, rather than solving problems).

As I write, this site is hosted on FatCow. And if you’re a regular reader here, you’ve probably noticed how often the site is down, or slow, or ornery. And when I get my dander up and ask why the heck my sites are down again, I get a variety of responses including, but not limited to:

I can see them just fine
We have some server problem that we are fixing
Form letter

Form letter? Yes. Last week all my sites on FatCow were shut down and replaced with a page that said they were suspended. Wow, that’s professional. When I went to FatCow to ask why — no, they didn’t precede the shutdown with a letter, they didn’t even follow up the shutdown with a letter, they waited until I asked what heck was going on — I was told my sites were overloading the servers.

My traffic has stayed constant for about a year. The files on the server are the same kind that have been used for ages. Nothing has markedly changed.

When I questioned repeatedly, asking for specifics, I was told it might be something like large music or video files. Even though no music or video files are stored there.

Again a few days ago, I got another we shut you down for violating some unknown term of service letter. Strangely, the letter said that the sites were shut down because shutting them down restored the usual server function.

But here are the two problems this this assertion:

Their statement is circular. How would they know the server returned to function upon shutdown unless they shut them down before they knew the result? (In other words, they couldn’t have shut them down because of the return, since they couldn’t have known it until after the shutdown.)

They actually did not shut down my sites in the time period suggested by the latest letter. So any resumption of normal server function had nothing to do with my sites, because that time they were always working.

After all this time, I’ve got huge beef with FatCow. And I intend to transfer my sites as soon as I’m able.

HostGator

So where am I taking my new business? HostGator. I’ve heard many good things about HostGator from a variety of reliable sources, so I’m taking a chance.

I built PopCred.net on HostGator and will begin transferring other sites there in the near future.

I don’t like the interface nearly as much as FatCow and I find the use of various URLs for purchase, maintenance, and billing to be odd and cumbersome. But, so far anyway, the actual hosting service has been great. And the customer service is at least passable. The wait on live chat tends to be long, but the responses are cordial and accurate.

Other

For years and years, we actually provided our own hosting using an at-home server. We only decided we’d rather have someone else support the servers a few years ago. The three companies we have used are listed above. Other services to consider are InMotion hosting and GreenGeeks.

Having reliable hosting is imperative. If you want to be a successful bloggers, readers must be able to reach your site without any problems.

The reason I love being a pro blogger is that it’s a model than turn into passive income. You work up front and leave a stream of income behind.

For most people, however, this goal is still in the future, with most of our income coming by selling our time. And really, whether you are an hourly worker or salaried, you’re really doing the same thing. You put in your workdays and you get a paycheck.

For those who need to show up to work in order to make a living, staying healthy is more important than ever. Having just spent nearly two weeks living in the pediatric intensive care unit at Utah Valley Regional Medical Center — with my 11-year-old boy and his terrible case of a ruptured appendix — I learned first hand what a benefit it is to have a business that can be run virtually anywhere. And I really came to have empathy for those who deal with chronic health problems of any kind.

If you’re working from home and have any issues dealing with inflammation that make work hard, you might want to look into a product called Nopalea. It comes from the fruit of the Nopal cactus and helps neutralize toxins. It contains rare and potent antioxidants (betalains) that are scientifically proven to reduce inflammation.

If you think Nopalea will help in your situation, you can try it free (only paying $9.95 for shipping). Just call 1-800-203-7063. See if it makes your work at home time more productive.

The summer after sixth grade, a family from Sugar City, Idaho, moved in with their cousins on my street. They had survived the Teton damn disaster, losing their home and all their belongings. Through this experience, we hear, first hand, the things that were most difficult about such a situation.

Natural disasters hurt not only families, but can devastate businesses. In 1976, protecting all this data was extremely difficult and time consuming. Today, most of our business files are (or can be) digitized. So backing them up and protecting ourselves is just a matter of setting up a reliable system.

There are myriad data storage systems offering services in all price ranges. Take the time today to make sure your invaluable business files (and all the associated work!) are safely archived.

If you have anything in your business that would be difficult or impossible to reproduce, it should be backed up offsite. If the unthinkable happens, you’ll have peace of mind knowing that the rebuilding process will be as smooth as possible.

Guest post from Sylvester Campbell

My husband has to travel a lot for his job. I don’t really like it that much because sometimes he is gone for a whole week, if not two. Most of the time, I feel pretty safe when he is not home. But sometimes if I watch something kind of creepy on television or watch the news that is not that pleasant right before I go to bed, then I hear all kinds of noises while I am laying there and scare myself to death.

So far though, it hasn’t amounted to anything but my imagination. On my husband’s last business trip, he was commenting to a co-worker about how I get afraid being by myself so much. He told my husband that his wife used to be the same way until they got a security system through Security Choice. Now all she has to do is turn on the alarm when she comes in and doesn’t worry about a thing anymore. If anyone tried to break in, the security company would be notified and call the police. Also, he is notified on his cell phone if anything is opened while the alarm is set. That makes him feel like he is contributing to keeping his wife safe even though he is not there.

My husband has now decided that he is going to get us a security system too. I am beginning to feel safer already.

Years ago, I entered the public speaking market. My first event was a homeschool convention at Salt Lake Community College and the second, the next day, another homeschool conference in the Salt Palace.

I was excited and anxious and untested. I prepared the best I knew how. And I bought a couple of nice dresses with jackets to wear — thinking that was the kind of thing people wore when they spoke to big audiences. (Aside, of course, from Steve Jobs, who thought jeans and turtle necks were the style of the day. Every day.)

When I got there, I seemed decidedly overdressed. The attendees were mostly moms, some with babes in arms, in very casual attire, with a sprinkling of dads, also in very casual attire. Still, being on stage seemed to indicate a more formal appearance.

As I wandered from class to class between my presentations, I noticed a number of other speakers. Most were dressed in accordance with the general population. It surprised me. I still remember one speaker, who donned jeans (“mom-jeans” to be exact), a tee shirt with a wrinkly open oxford over it, tennis shoes, and a wild, unkempt mane of hair.

Being my first conference, I thought quite a bit about it until a woman came up to me and said, “Your presentation was great. Thank you so much for dressing the part of a professional. Being homeschoolers does’t mean being slovenly!”

Working from home can make it easy to get sloppy. I work in slippers — always and without question. But I make a concerted effort to shower, dress, and fix my hair and makeup — just as I would if I was going to a job elsewhere. And I always wear a watch, so I can stay on track with my goals for the day.

You don’t have to wear Rolexes or a diamond encrusted Citizen Eco drive watches with stiletto heels to walk to your home office down the hall. But making yourself presentable and looking professional tends to go a long way. When we are dressed and ready for the day, we work harder. When we see others (particularly clients!) we look like we’re worth our fee. When we take our home businesses seriously, others will as well.