Well I went to my parents house this weekend which just so happens to be out in the middle of nowhere at a pretty nice lake in West Texas. I was barely there for 24 hours and had some pretty decent entertainment while I was there.

First off was the 4 new kittens that my mom’s cat had recently. They are only a month old and not very coordinated yet so they are pretty funny to watch run around and play.

Next up was my mom’s other cat, not even these kittens mother. (she has 8 cats now, she is the crazy cat lady now) After we finished eating ice cream we gave her the melted part at the end. She couldn’t fit her head into the glass we were using so she would dip her paw into the milk and then lick it off her paw in order to get to drink it.

And last but definitely not least was the rattlesnake that we ran into. My mom walked out late that night to get one of her cats and bring it inside. When she did she walked right by a rattlesnake that was about 2 feet from her. So me and my little brother put our shoes on grabbed the snake catcher and the shotgun and we were able to get it off the back porch and shoot it a couple times with the shotgun.

Are you one of those guys that is always confused by women?

Does it seem like the harder you try the more you get confused?

Well have no fear, I have a secret trick that will lead you down the road to understanding women.

Until the past couple years I have always been of those guys that has always had more girl friends than guy friends. Having lots of girl friends like this, I was forced to watch lots of chick flicks/romantic comedies. At the time I just did it because I secretly liked those girls and thought by watching these movies it would help me out with them, (It didn’t) but now I make my girl friends go watch them with me because they are a great learning resource.

Now for the most part I’m talking about romantic comedies here rather than chick flicks, And I know what you are thinking, but they are not the same thing. Chick flicks are movies like the Notebook and Sweet Home Alabama. Romantic comedies are movies like He’s Just Not That Into You
or just about any movie with Matthew McConaughey.

The reason romantic comedies are better than chick flicks is because chick flicks have too much hollywood, happily ever after bull crap to sort through to any useful information. Yea we know that big grand gestures of our love and sending flowers are things that you want. That stuff is child’s play. That stuff just comes naturally when you already love each other and aren’t afraid to show it.

I guess thats a lesson there. If you love her don’t be scared to show her.

But romantic comedies on the other hand are much more like real life. Now don’t get me wrong there is still some hollywood, happily ever after bull crap to dig through but not nearly as much as there are in chick flicks.

So that’s the tricky part. Which parts of these romantic comedies is for real and which parts are the hollywood bull crap?

It’s actually pretty simple. It’s almost all real. The hollywood bull crap that you you have to wade through is the fact that every girl is into you. All those romantic gestures, playing hard to get, and cocky funny routines work. They just aren’t going to work on every girl you meet.

So what you can learn is the interactions of the people in these movies. Learn how be funny and nice at the same time, learn how to care about her feelings without being a total wimp, and learn to talk to women with some confidence. Just don’t ever forget….

NOT EVERY WOMAN WANTS YOU!

As crushing as that may be they can’t all like you. And that’s fine. Be a man and say thank you for your time and move on. Which, consequently, might actually make them more into you, but that’s not why you are doing this. You are walking away because you understand that not everyone loves you. Big deal their loss.

If you really want to learn how relationships work, watch He’s Just Not That Into You
. Every bit of that movie is true. Well except for the last 20 minutes when they had to give it a cheesy hollywood ending.

So what do you think. Do you have a favorite chick flick that can help men understand women better?

So I have recently been pretty interested in the Chevrolet Volt that is going to be coming out. If you aren’t familiar with it, basically it is a an electric car that can go 25-40 miles running purely on electricity and then after that a gas generator comes on to supply power. Once the gas engine comes on it gets comparable gas mileage to any other similarly sized vehicle, and is capable of going around 300 miles which is about what we expect from a typical car these days.

After reading all about this I saw that Nissan was coming out with a 100% electric car. The Nissan Leaf. This car has no backup plan once the electric batteries are dead, but it has a significantly better range than the Volt, at about 70-100 miles.

I think these cars are pretty awesome. I’m not an extreme environmentalist but I do believe we need to be doing what we can to save the environment without being crazy. These cars are a fantastic step in the right direction of helping the environment as well as reducing our dependency on oil.

Now when I see new technology like this my first thought is always, yea that’s cool but no one will use it unless it is convenient. If it’s not convenient people will not do it. Period. End of story. No on is going to take a Nissan Leaf and drive across the country. For one they will have a hell of a time finding a place to charge the car every 80 miles, but even if they could schedule that no on is going to wait around all day long to charge their vehicles. If they can’t do it in  time efficient manner then it won’t happen.

Yea yea I know that’s not what these cars are made for. They aren’t made for cross country trips. They are made for city driving. They are made for commuting to work every day, going to the grocery store, and picking up the kids from school. This is where my genius plan to make money comes in.

I don’t know what the average work commute for people in America is, but I don’t really care cause national averages are terrible ways to look at things. So let’s think about this. The Chevrolet Volt goes about 30 miles on an electric charge before it startes to use gas; the Nissan Leaf goes about 70 miles before it dies completely. I imagine that the vast majority of people could not use the Volt to drive to work and back from work with out using any gas. You could possibly do it with the Leaf but even then lots of people would be in trouble. Especially if you hit some bad traffic, have to take a detour, or run some errands on your way home from work.

So here is the plan. If you go to business, especially big business at first, and pitch the idea to them of installing a few charging stations in existing parking spaces. You could run electricity there so that people could have their cars charged while they are working. If people could do this I would be willing to bet that they could even take their car to lunch if they wanted to. You could pitch the idea by offering an all in one service. You could have the electricity run to the parking spots as well as putting up signs or a new paint job to indicate that those spots are only for electric cars.

This wouldn’t cost very much for business to implement. Minus the cost of paying you to install this for them, their only cost would be the electricity used to charge their employees cars, which is only a couple dollars per day, per car.

Companies that are building LEED certified buildings are already giving priority parking to people with hybrid cars, why not add a charging station for them too!

And don’t stop there. This would be slightly more complicated but I know there is a solution out there for this.

As long as it takes hours for these cars to charge I don’t think that conventional gas stations are the places where these cars are going to be charged. They need to be charged at places around town where people spend significants amount of time. Places like the grocery store, the mall, and sports arenas. If you could figure out a solution for being able to charge for this service then the opportunities to install these in $1,000s of locations becomes a real possibility. As well as the potential for a continuous income stream instead of just  a one time payment like it would be when installing them for a company that was going to give away the electricity for free.

Leave me a comment and let me know what you think. And don’t forget to sign up for my RSS feed to get regular updates as well as my email list for exclusive content in your email inbox.

Ever since I have started this website I have wanted a new logo. The only problem is that I am downright terrible with graphic design and I couldn’t afford to spend $100s of dollars on a logo either.

I finally stumbled upon a site that will design a logo for you for the low price of $27. LogoNerds.com.

I was afraid to use them at first because I wasn’t sure that I would get a quality logo for such a low price, but let me tell you it was awesome. I’m sure I’m not the only one that is skeptical of such a great deal, so I decided I would write a quick review of my experience with them.

First off they have 3 different price options.

$27, $47, $97. The more expensive you get the more sample logos that will be made for you, and you will also receive the final logo in more formats. For example I got the cheapest option so they only offer it to you in web ready formats, but if you get one of themore expensive ones then you will receive the logo in print ready formats as well.

So after you pick your package you fill in a few things for some contact information and then you get to the really cool part. They have a list of 15 questions that they ask you so that they can narrow down exactly what kind of logo you are looking for. Here are the list of questions they will ask you:

1. Exact name you would like used in your logo.
2. Website address if applicable.
3. What will be the tag line if any?
4. Specifically describe your field of business.
5. What/Who is your target clientele?
6. What colors would you like us to use in your logo?
7. Do you want the logo to be text-only, graphic-only, text and graphic together?
8. Please describe any special type of graphic/icon you desire.
9. Describe any ideas you have in mind for your new logo.
10. What should come to your customers mind when they see your logo?
11. Who are your competitors and what do you think about their logos?
12. Please provide reference images or links to logo styles you like:
13. Anything you do not want to see in your logo?
14. List 3 different items you see being used to represent your company (i.e. person walking, tree, house, etc.)
15. Your preferred font style

And after you answer all of these questions they have a place for you to upload any files you have that might help them get the best logo for you as well.

So after you submit this they promise they will have your designed for you to pick from back to you in 3-5 business days. My three concepts that were built for me came back in 4 days, right on time.

Once you get your concepts back it is super easy. You just tell them which one you want and they send it back to you with all the different types of files they promise for whichever package you purchased. Once I told them which logo I wanted they sent it back to me that same day.

So was I happy?

I loved it! Logo Nerds made it simple to get a professional logo. They listened to everything I had to say in the form that I filled out. And trust me I could not have been an easy client. I didn’t know what colors I wanted. I didn’t know what kind of font I wanted. I really didn’t know much at all but they took the information I gave them, visited my site, and designed an awesome logo that was just right for me.

This will be a very short post but it’s something I have learned lately that I is helping me write for my blog much more effectively.

I am very bad about coming up with a topic for a blog post and then not being able to put any great content in the post. I will generally write the title and then a couple paragraphs, but then I’m stuck and I don’t know where to go from there.

Or sometimes I will write more than that but there is no flow to my writing. I feel like every paragraph jumps to a new subject without a proper transition.

Well I have finally found a cure for this.

Pen and Paper.

I’m not saying write out the whole post on paper but you need to write an outline of you are going to do so that you can organize your thoughts.

All you have to do is write a few bullet points and then a few sub points beneath those and you won’t believe how much better your posts will become. This way you can organize your content in a logical manner and help you make sure you get all the great content from your head into that post.

Now I’m sure some of you are thinking, why would I make an outline on paper when I could use the computer? Well on a computer you will have the tendency to write too much in the outline. The purpose here is not to write everything out, just to organize all of your thoughts. Most people hate writing large amounts on paper, so that’s why I recommend the pen and paper over the computer.

That’s it. Make an outline on paper. Blog better.

What do you do to increase your productivity? How do you make your blog posts awesome? Leave me a note in the comments and let me know.

Did you know that the inventor of the Rubik’s Cube was an architect?
Via: FIXR.COM ]]> http://www.austinlhatfield.com/sunda-funday-with-a-rubik-cube/feed/ 0 http://www.austinlhatfield.com/7-ways-to-know-if-people-like-you-in-10-minutes-or-less/ http://www.austinlhatfield.com/7-ways-to-know-if-people-like-you-in-10-minutes-or-less/#comments Wed, 20 Oct 2010 14:54:26 +0000 Austin http://www.austinlhatfield.com/?p=223

When you meet that hot girl/guy do you have a hard time knowing if they are into you or not? Are they playing hard to get? Do they think I’m a dork?

Well I’m here with 7 ways that will help you figure out if that person thinks your hot stuff or super lame, and the best part it is these are subtle clues that will let you find out in minutes, not days.

Smile For Me Baby

Someone smiling at you is always a good sign. The problem here is that everyone can fake a smile. So you need to be able to distinguish between a real smile and a genuine one. A fake smile will often look like more like a grimace, it will seem as though the person is putting all their effort into turning the edges of their lips upwards.

When someone gives you a real smile it’s almost hard to miss. The biggest difference between a fake smile and a real one is that the real one is almost always accompanied by eye contact. Another big difference that is easy to spot is the person smiling will generally show at least a little bit of teeth with a real smile while a fake one will usually have all the teeth covered.

Use your best judgment here. As long as you are honest with yourself, you will know the difference between a genuine happy smile and someone who is just faking it.

Magnetic Attraction

Ok it’s not actually magnetic, but if you see this happening it will look as though the other person is magnetically attracted to you. People that like you tend to get closer to you than a person that doesn’t like you. When sitting down they will often lean towards you. If you are standing then they will normally try and stand close to you if they like you.

If the person doesn’t like you then the opposite is true of all this. They will normally lean away from you or stand further away from you. Now don’t be naive and think that because you are in a crowded club and the person is right at your side that means they like you. No that just means it’s crowded and there is no where else to go or they don’t want to get separated from you. Again use your common sense here and don’t lie to yourself.

Where Are Your Feet Going?

This one is a pretty easy one to spot. People that like you will unconsciously point there feet towards you.

On the contrary if the person has their feet pointing towards the door then they are probably just counting the minutes until they can get away from you.

Look At My Eyes

People that like you tend to look you in the eye for longer periods of time then someone that does not like you. If they are really attracted to you then their eyes might wander down to your lips as well.

I Want To Touch You

Well this seems obvious right? If that person is trying to hold your hand, hug you often, or trying to kiss you then the obviously like you right? Well yeah but that’s not what I’m talking about here.

When you are first trying to determine if someone likes you the touching might not be as obvious as holding your hand. Something as subtle as a pat on the knee or gently grabbing your forearm can easily be interpreted as an attraction to you. When we like someone this is something we do without even thinking about it. Things people do subconsciously are often the best indicators that someone likes you.

Take A Look In The Mirror

Another thing to pay attention for is when someone mirrors your actions. Often if you are sitting at a table and reach down to get  a drink they will see you doing this and do the same thing. This is another great sign that someone likes you, but it could also just mean that they are intimidated by you too.

Now the important thing to remember when trying to interrupt these clues is that just because they are doing one of these things does not guarantee that they like you. You have to be able to look at the whole picture and see all of the clues. If they are doing 2, 3, or more of these cluse then the chances of this person liking you are pretty good.

Even if the person is doing all 7 of these things even that doesn’t guarantee that they like you. Some people are just really good at faking it, but hey if they are doing all 7 the odds are in your favor. Get out there and take a chance. It’s time to make your move.

I recently wrote a review of Thesis, the theme that I’m using on my blog. I really liked using it so I figured I would write up a review on it and tell people what I thought about it. That post may have just changed my life.

In the post I included a couple affiliate links. So if someone that was reading my review decided that they liked thesis and they wanted to try it out on their blog I would make a couple bucks. It’s cool if I can help someone out and make some money, but I really don’t care about the money (ok I care a little).

Well I wrote the review and posted it on twitter and then went to bed. When I woke up this morning I checked my account and I made a sale! I actually sold something! For the first time in my life I made money on the internet, and to make it even better the sale came while I was sound asleep. For some reason that just makes it better!

So why am I telling you this? And what does this have to do with living anywhere in the world?

Well I want to share with you my inspiration for what I’m doing online. First off his name is Karol Gajda and he is the author of the blog Ridiculously Extraordinary. When I first found him I devoured every thing that he had made available for free on his blog (which is a ton of awesome stuff). Every week I was checking my RSS feed to see what he was going to write about that week. I’m telling you, he really is that good. Go check him out.

Not too long after I started reading Karol’s blog he released his first product. An ebook calle How to Live Anywhere-The Official Guide to Ridiculously Extraordinary Freedom. When he first released it I was a bit skeptical on wether I wanted to buy it or not. After all it is $97.

Let me tell you right now its worth every single dollar. It is jam packed with over 75 pages full of A+ content.

He covers everything from how to support this kind of lifestyle by making money online to what to do with your mail while you are out of the country, and everything in between.

If you are a person that struggles with taking action then HTLA anywhere was made just for you. Before I read this I struggled getting anything done because I would come up with all these ideas that I thought would be profitable, but I never took action. Karol is great at inspiring people to get off their buts and take action today.

Now if you are on the opposite side of that spectrum, the kind of person that is no good at coming up with ideas but have no problem taking action, then this ebook might not be for you. He doesn’t dive much into finding your niche or your passion. He just shows you what to do with those infant ideas and shows you how to run with them.

So if this sounds as awesome to you as it does to me you can buy it here.

I know that price might be a little steep for some of you. If you implement the strategies he uses you can definitely make that money back, but don’t worry he has tons of free resources on his blog as well.

If you have bought the ebook HTLA already I would love to hear what you thought about it in the comments. Also if you have any questions or anything else to add feel free to leave a comment as well.

Many people are against having a personal blog. They say it’s impossible to do anything with because it is associated with you name. You can never sell it. You can’t properly monetize it or narrow it down to a specific niche.

Well these people are looking at it all the wrong way. Here are the top 5 reasons why you should start a personal blog today.

1. Find Your Voice

When most people first start off blogging they have a hard time finding their voice. It’s important to have a good voice through your blog or you might come across as boring or more importantly insincere. A personal blog will help you do this by letting you experiment with different writing styles until you find what works for you. It’s different for everyone so just get out there and give it a try.

2. Find Your Niche

Maybe you have so many ideas about different topics that you could possible start a profitable blog from that you don’t know which one to pick from. If this is the case you can use your personal blog to write about all the topics you find interesting.

By doing this you can accomplish 2 things:

1. You can see which topics you think you can continually write about for extend periods of time. Trust me you won’t know this until you consistently try to come up with new content.
2. You will figure out what your real passions are. After writing about all different kinds of topics you will probably notice that you favor certain ones over the others.

3. Learn How to Blog

I don’t mean learn how to write, but rather the behind the scenes part of it. Unless you have some experience building websites there are lots of things to learn. You need to learn how to buy a domain, get you domain hosted, install wordpress, and learn to use wordpress. There are some great resources on the web that you can read that will help you to prepare for these things, buy you won’t REALLY learn it until you just do it yourself.

4. Make Connections With Other Bloggers

By starting your personal blog you are going to expose yourself to the blogosphere and meet other bloggers. This is great because lots of bloggers are willing to help you out and give you advice if you just ask for it. These connections will prove to be incredibly valuable to you as your blog starts to grow and even more so when you move to number 5…

5. Use It As A Launching Pad For Your Niche Blog

If you have been writing your personal blog for a while and been properly promoting it then you should have gained a few followers. So after you have learned everything you can from your personal blog you can then use it as a launching pad to jump start your new niche blog. This is great because you should be able to give your niche blog a little SEO juice from your personal blog. You can even tap into your connections you have made with other bloggers to get them to help you promote your new blog.

So thats why I’m using my personal blog. Why don’t you have one yet?

If you liked this article I would love you forever if you would retweet this or share it wherever you hang out online.

Let me know what y’all think in the comments.

So after dabbling around with tons of different crappy free themes for wordpress, I finally decided to take the leap and pay for my first premium theme. I looked around and did a little research and I found many people were talking about this them called Thesis. My first thought was ok, this thing is apparently awesome but why would I want it if everyone else has it. I don’t want my blog to look just like everyone else’s in the blogosphere. Well, after I researched a little more I soon found out that one of the reasons Thesis was so awesome was because of how much you can customize it. So here are my thoughts on all things thesis. I hope this helps you out if you are on the fence about wether you should purchase thesis or not.

Price

Alright first things first. How much does this baby cost? Well, there are actually 2 different options.

Personal Option $87
Developer’s Option  $164

Basically the only difference here is that with the personal option you are only allowed to install the thesis theme on one website. The developer’s option you are allowed to install the theme on an unlimited amount of websites that you own as well as have the option to install it on a client’s site too. Installing the thesis theme on a client’s site will cost you a little extra but to do this at all you have to purchase the developer’s option.

It’s important to remember that no matter which option you choose you still get access to everything that thesis has to offer, the only difference is where you are allowed to install the theme.

I decided that I would go with the cheaper personal option because for now I only plan on using the theme for this site. If I ever change my mind and would like to launch a new site I can always get a discounted upgrade price and grab the developer’s option.

Installation

The actual installation of thesis was not too difficult. Pretty much the same as installing any other theme. There is one thing you have to do after you install thesis in order to take advantage of its full functionality that can be a tad difficult if you are a newbie. Don’t worry thought it’s nothing too bad and they have tutorials on their site, and if you don’t like the ones they provide there are plenty of other bloggers out there that have posted tutorials as well. A quick Google search will find them for you pretty quick.

Basically all you have to do is change the “permissions” of some files on your server so that thesis can write to them. I’m not a genius with this stuff but I know enough to stumble my way through stuff like this. Basically you are just giving thesis permission to access a few files on your server so that it can perform at an optimum level for you.

Don’t let it scare you. It’s not a big deal, but I did think it was at least worth mentioning.

Customization

Alright you got it installed. Now what are you going to do? Actually, as soon as you install thesis, it is ready to go, but it’s going to pretty vanilla unless you add some of your own touches to it.

When you are at your wordpress dashboard you will notice there is a new button on the side that will say Thesis. In there you will be able to pick how many columns you want, background colors, text colors, link colors, text size, etc. You can literally change hundreds of things just with a few clicks of the mouse and strokes of the keyboard, and the best part is that it is designed in a way that you don’t have to know a single thing about HTML or any other type of programming.

This is awesome for us beginners because we can get a professional looking blog right away without having to hire someone to help us or spend hours of our valuable time learning how to do it ourself.

Although they make it super easy to customize thesis this way you can get even more creative even if you only have a tiny amount of programming knowledge. They use what are called hooks to be able to customize just about anything you want on the site. I’m not going to go into detail here because I really don’t know that much about them, but another quick google search will turn up lots of information on them.

SEO and Support

Here is where thesis really starts to kick ass. Their SEO is freaking awesome. You don’t even need to have the all in one SEO pack plugin anymore. On each individual post and page you can customize the title of the page, meta description, and meta keywords. It rocks. I don’t know anything about the programming part of it, but from the research I have done, the way the theme is coded is supposed to be kick ass for SEO as well. I have already noticed my site is getting indexed by google more as well as showing up more often for people’s search terms. So as far as SEO goes, I would say if it’s not the best then there is a tie for the best. I don’t see how it could get any better.

The support community also is awesome. Regardless of wether you get the personal or developer’s option you will have access to the support community. Basically it’s just a message board where people get on and ask/answer questions. Because thesis has become so popular there are many knowledgable people on there than are more than willing to help you out. So if you run into any problems when trying to make changes to your theme, you are sure to be able to find an answer there.

Should YOU buy it?

ABSOLUTELY!

This was the best money that I have spent on my blog so far. Ok it’s the only money I have spent so far besides my domain registration (I have access to a free server), but it was well worth the money. It saves me from so many headaches that I was constantly dealing with when I was using all of those crappy free themes.

So if you are thinking about getting a little more serious about your blog and you want to take the next step into making your blog more SEO friendly, easier to sue, more professional looking, and customize the hell out of it, then buy thesis right now. Trust me its worth it.