Theres always so much going on with my blog that having a post for each update could lead to a series of posts about not-so-interesting things. The reason I did this post was to pick out a few of the very important things and shed some light on it, so here goes!

Thanks to Ms. Danielle, Ed Lau & Abdalla
I have a few Thank You’s to send out this week and first thank you goes to Ms. Danielle who was kind enough to mention my contest in its last days on her blog. Secondly, I want to thank Abdalla for mentioning me in his great guest post that he did over at JohnCow.com. Lastly, Ed Lau deserves a thank you because he actually entered my contest at his blog! Thank you guys!

EnkayBlog.com Awareness
It seems that a lot of people don’t know that I actually purchased EnkayBlog.com a long time ago. I still get a few emails that say that my domain is too long to remember. On the contrary, I agree that the forwarded web address is quite lengthy and it took me a few weeks to remember that one myself, but I do own www.enkayblog.com and its a much easier way to get to this blog. So if that was keeping you from finding me then I hope this clears it up!

Monitor Dilemma
Lately my 19″ Dell LCD that is about 4 years old has been acting up. It seems that dullness has settled into the monitor over years but that isn’t part of the problem in this case. The monitor has begun to actually flicker from dull to bright and that gets quite a bit annoying while i’m working. I figured the cables were loose but even after a little cable wiggling, it didn’t seem to fix the problem. Then, about 2 nights ago, the monitor decided that “turning off” was a bad idea. Instead, it turned from a black screen to nothing but complete white brightness. The fact that the monitor sits in my room while it acts as a permanent flashlight wasn’t appealing either. So anyway, I decided to get a new monitor and ended up buying the 22″ Samsung 226BW. It cost me a fortune, but I am hoping that blogging will help me pay for it over the next few months. The problem was around for a while and I was banking on winning John Chow’s 24″ Monitor Giveaway but that was not the case so I had to go out and purchase one. Just a note, the monitor is actually a lot more than I expected, so if you are in the market for one, you should definitely go check it out!

3rd Month Blog Birthday
This is my third month of blogging and you will get to see how much I earned this month as well as how well or not-so-well my efforts of increasing my blog popularity turned out. As I said earlier, for the upcoming fourth month, I will be concentrating more of my efforts on trying to increasing my Technorati and Alexa ranking rather than focusing on boosting earnings for the blog. I will also have a post as to why blog popularity and rankings can affect your earnings in the long run and that’s why I am trying to lean more towards trying to focus on my rankings more than the earnings.

Contest Ends
Last but not the least, my blog contest ends on Thursday the 16th of August at Midnight CST. On the 16th, I will try and post the last batch of entrants and will try to email all the entrants to confirm their entry into the contest to ensure that I am not missing out on anyone. I want this to be as fair as possible to all who entered and if you don’t see your name on the list on the 16th or don’t receive an email then please do not hesitate and email me so that I can get that corrected. All entries should be received by Midnight CST on the 16th and will then be printed on a large excel sheet and later cut and put into a hat. A lucky winner will be picked on the morning of the 17th of August and will be announced later that day. Hopefully you can get your entries in! Also, JohnCow’s contest ends a day before mine, so I am hoping to score that one! :)