Stuart McHenry - My Internet World

Ok… I’m getting a little old sore for hitting the slopes as much as I have this month. Even though I have 19 years of snowboarding under my belt… it still can be difficult. Seven out of the last twenty days I’ve spent on the mountain, some of which was in Lake Tahoe (one week) and the rest in Big Bear.

The first day was cool… my son Andrew and I hit Big Bear after they got a couple inches of snow the night before. After that we spent some time at Kirkwood and Sierra-at-Tahoe and followed that up with another trip to big bear yesterday. My daughter (7 years old) went with us to Big Bear and did very well. (see pics below)

I want to say hello to our new friends Mindy and Andrea. (from Santa Monica) It was both their first day snowboarding and they spent a good amount of time with us working on there turns and whatnot. They didn’t snowboard in their bikini tops all day… just for a PIC to send to some friends. BTW… Andrew are you going to call Andrea??? (yep he got digits)

Mindy & Andrea

Lexy

Lexy

Andrew

Me - In Tahoe.. yeah it snowed!

Stupid Nature Shot

California Snow… yeah it happened and not just in the mountains… here in SoCal.

Well… I got woken up today by my daughter screaming “Dad… it’s snowing… it’s snowing!” The news said that the snow level would drop but you really never know. So as you can see we got a little bit of snow… even enough for it to stick a bit.

Backyard Completed

A little over a month ago I posted some pictures of our new house and now I want to add the backyard and custom cabinets. The backyard is good size for a California new home and is actually one of the reason why we liked the place so much. Most new homes in SoCal have small yards nowadays… this is due to the fact that land got so expensive over the past 5 years.

Anyway… here are some before and after PICs of the backyard and the custom cabinets we had installed.

Backyard Before: here, and here

Backyard During: here and here

Backyard After: here, here, here, here, here and my daughter’s teather ball. (removable)

Cabinet Before: here (no cabinet)

Cabinet After: here

*I forgot to take a PIC of the upstairs cabinet… so I will add it later.

Well 2007 is off to a good start for my company Site Sift Media, Inc. but I wanted to take a little time to reflect on 2006. One of our goals this last year was to diversify our income and I would have to say we did a great job in doing so.

Here is how 2006 broke down for us:

Sales/Services - 47%
Contextual Advertising - 10%
Affiliate Income - 43%

In 2005 the numbers were like this:

Sales/Services - 92%
Contextual Advertising - 8%
Affiliate Income - 0%

I’m very pleased in the direction we have grown and 2007 is off to a great start already. One of our main goals for 2007 is to increase brand awareness for our three main sites.

So I finally recorded my Christmas lights. The recording is poor quality but you can get an idea of how it looks. Please ensure your speakers are turned on and the volume is up… so you can hear the music.

My Christmas Lights:

Click Here to watch them

We hold the Unofficial World Record for Avatar Advertising

*most posts with an avatar advertisment in them - 247,877 posts* (as of 12/6/06 2:33 PM PST)

Avatar advertising… sound funny??? Sure it is but it can be effective if done on a large scale. I set out with a goal this morning. I wanted to have our holiday avatar for Site Sift Web Directory on over 100,000 posts on DP forums. It took me a couple of hours but now we have our avatar on 141,526 posts on the Digital Point Forums.

This advertising has resulted in a 99% market penetration on the webmaster forums.

Andrew said, “The avatars are everywhere I thought the forum had been hacked! I see that Site Sift is on every thread with the colorful avatars.”

I’m hoping by this time tomorrow we will be close to 150,000 avatars. If you would like to help out please use our holiday avatar found here: http://www.stuartmchenry.com/sitesiftavatarxmas.gif

I appreciate everyone’s help so far… maybe I will open up a new market for advertising.

*update someone has added us to digg

I finally got around to posting some PICS of our new place. I only took a few from the inside but you can see the:
-kitchen
-dinning room
-family room
-living room
-media room
-daughter’s room
-my bedroom (where the magic happens… I know I watch too many Cribs episodes)
-guest bedroom
-office
-laundry
-a few of the people that came to eat up my turkey dinner

We haven’t really been in too long and we still have some decorating to do as you can see.

I forgot to take some of the outside… but will soon. I got all my holiday lights up complete with music… so look for that posts in a few days.

Ok… everybody and there mother knows the movie “A Christmas Story” but did you know you can tour the house. Yep some crazy fan (aka Brian Jones) bought the house and restored it.

Jones has restored the three-story, wood-frame house to its appearance in the movie and will open it for tours beginning Saturday. His hope is that it will become a tourist stop alongside the city’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and other destinations.

He’s unsure whether he’ll make enough money to cover his $500,000 investment, but as sure as a kid’s tongue will stick to a frozen flag pole, he’s committed to the project.

BTW… I love the Christmas Story and this year I bought a Leg Lamp Replica which is life-size and stands 40 inches tall.

Black Friday

I spent most of my working life… working retail so I’m no stranger to Black Friday. I never go out shopping on that day.. once you have worked retail why would you want to. This year was an exception… after cooking (Thanksgiving) for 18 people my wife, sister, brother-in-law and mother talked me into it. (Shopping)

At 11:30 PM we decided to head over to the Outlet stores in Cabazon…. BIG MISTAKE! We thought *cool the outlet center is opening at midnight I bet they won’t be that busy* I couldn’t of been more wrong. About 4 miles before the outlet center we hit traffic and thought crazy must be an accident up ahead. Wrong again… the traffic (dead stop) was ALL for the outlet center. We waited in the traffic for about 20 minutes only going a few feet and then said *fuck it.*

We cruised from there over to Walmart to check out some of there deals. We didn’t have too much of a choice as Walmart is about the only store open in the middle of the night. I wanted to snag a TV they had on special about half off but when we got to the store they had a line. I asked one of the employees how many TV’s (specific sale model) they had and he laughed and said five. So I bailed….

Next stop was Circuit City where there were people with tents camped out in front of the store. At this point I was thinking *shit my wife is crazy for doing this every year.* My brother-in-law really wanted a TV and they had an advertised a 32 LCD” for $474.00 I figured since I was up I better try and get one. I own a lot of TV’s but figured one more in my office on the wall might be nice.

So after waiting in line for one hour (my brother-in-law saved our spot in line for almost 5 hours) I got a new TV for my wall. I also had to take everyone to two different Targets and a Toy’s ‘R Us. It was kind of fun being out with all the shoppers but I’m grateful I don’t work retail anymore. more info here

note: when I was at Circuit City they had a great deal on HDMI cables with a surge protector for $49.95… two days before I bought just an HDMI cable for $120.95 for I was happy to see this special.

I haven’t blogged in a while now… about two weeks I got the keys to my new (brand new construction) 3,000 sq. foot house. Moving always sucks… so much crap to do. I’ve been busy doing crap just about everyday. If I’m not meeting with some contractors then I’m out buying more stuff for the new pad.

Anyway… I will posts some PICS of the new place once I find which box my carmera is in.