Dad's Birthday

My dad turned 78 years old on March 25th 2007.

Happy Birthday Dad!

New York Trip - Part 3

Some more pictures from New York. A statue by Rockefeller Center.

St. Patricks Cathedral. I thought this was a cool shot.

Inside St. Patricks Cathedral. It's beautiful!

I had to go by Trump Tower. I love 'The Apprentice'. The building is very nice. We decided to get some ice cream at a shop in the tower. Expensive of course and not that good!

Madison Square Garden

Googles response - or lack of response!

Well they were prompt, probably because an automated system created their response and sent it out. I doubt a real person actually looked at anything.

Their response:

Hello Joe,

Thank you for your appeal. After receiving your response, we re-reviewed your account data thoroughly. We have reconfirmed that invalid clicks were generated on the ads on your site inviolation of our Terms and Conditions and program policies.

And they then repeated a bunch of text that looks like it comes from a template because it was in the previous email they sent me. They didn't really explain anything did they! I informed them that i did not violate their rules intentionally. People were just clicking on the ads for some reason!

Let me try to explain it another way. You tell me if i'm wrong. Your comments would be appreciated.

What if i went to a random site every other day for a couple of weeks and clicked on some ads a few times. Should the owner of the site be punished or have their account cancelled without explaination?

I don't think so......

Oh well, that's life i guess! It's not always fair!

Google disabled my Adsense account!

I received an email today that informed me of the following:

It has come to our attention that invalid clicks and/or impressions have been generated on the Google ads on your site(s). We have therefore disabled your Google AdSense account.

Please understand that this was a necessary step to protect the interest of the AdWords advertisers. A publisher's site may not have invalid clicks or impressions on any ad(s), including but not limited to clicks and/or impressions generatedby:
- a publisher on his own web pages
- a publisher encouraging others to click on his ads
- automated clicking programs or any other deceptive software
- a publisher altering any portion of the ad code or changing the layout, behavior, targeting, or delivery of ads for any reason

Well here's the thing, i didn't violate any of these rules. I've only been a member for about 2 weeks and i have noticed that on some days there were a bunch of clicks, but i didn't know who was clicking or going to my site. I assume people that know about my blogs have clicked on the ads. Sure i've mentioned to folks that i have a blog. What is the purpose of a blog? I thought it was to share information with others. It makes sense doesn't it.

People visit a site or a blog, they see ads, they may or may not click on them. Some people click on one, some people click on more than one. I've visited many blogs and sites and clicked on a bunch of ads just to see what they are all about! Is this wrong? I don't think so!

So, lets summarize:

1. I didn't click on my own ads.
2. I never told anyone to go ahead and click on all the ads on my blogs. In fact i told people i know that you are not supposed to tell friends or people you know to click on your ads. But i guess you don't have control over that do you.
3. I didn't use any automated programs or deceptive software and
4. I didn't alter any portion of my code except add the appropriate code to my blog to display the ads.

So the question is why has Google disabled my account. What did i do wrong except join a program that makes them lots of money. I knew nothing about this program called Adsense, when i started my blogs, until someone mentioned it to me. I put up ads on my blogs, and for some reason people are clicking on my ads. I didn't tell people to keep going to my ads and clicking them. But i guess i can't prove or disprove that can I.

Well, i put in an appeal (Thank you Google for at least allowing this). At least that's fair. My feeling is Google will just ignore the appeal and i honestly didn't do anything wrong.

If the appeal goes well and they enable my account, i would ask that everyone who visits my blogs to not perform any invalid clicks. If you need clarification on what you should or should not be doing on peoples sites or blogs, maybe ask Google, otherwise other people may be BANNED from Adsense. I know that if my account is not activated, i'm not going to be clicking on any ads by Google anywhere as i don't want the same thing to happen to others.

Thanks for listening or reading that is! By the way i had $13 in my account. Wow! I was on the verge of retiring with all that money i was making.

New York Trip - Part 2

We spent alot of time around Times Square. Here is a picture of us in Times Square.

There are so many big stores around Times Square. Toys R Us is huge. It even has a ferris wheel inside.

On our first night in New York we went to catch a Broadway Play 'Mamma Mia'. What an amazing show. The singing was outstanding and it was very funny too!

New York Trip - Part 1

What a busy time in New York! It was an amazing trip. The Average temperature during our stay was about 0, 1 degree. On Thursday it actually went up to 4 or so. We spent most of our time walking around to different sites. I'd say we walked 6 or 7 hours a day.

We went to Central Park.

We visited the Guggenheim Gallery (which is having it's exterior restored)

It is a mostly circular building with art pieces displayed on the walls as you walk up in the spiral. On each floor there are also rooms with art. We must have seen over 30 Picassos. Amazing!


We visited the Empire State Building. All the up to the Observation Deck over 100 floors up. What a view!


In the picture below, the Financial District is located where all the tall buildings are (top of the picture). The World Trade Center Towers were once located here.


This is the actual site where the two towers once stood. It is very eerie here and very quiet. There is alot of construction going on at the site. You can't help but feel sad.

We visited Rockefeller Centre, which was a few blocks away from us. We didn't have our skates with us so we didn't actually go on the ice.

I'll add more pictures tomorrow.

New York! New York!

Well we're heading off to New York tomorrow! I can't wait! We're hoping to visit many attractions including, Central Park, Rockefeller Center, Radio City Music Hall, Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Guggenheim Museum, Empire Statebuilding, Saks Fifth Avenue and so many other places.

I heard it was going to snow 1-3 inches, possible upto a foot of snow in up-State New York. I just hope Manhattan doesn't get alot of snow.

Susie can't wait to see the many galleries of course.

Look for pictures when i get back!

Happy Birthday!

Yup another year has gone! Which means I celebrated another Birthday on January 8th 2007.

My wife took me out for a nice dinner at a small Italian Restaurant called 'Big Papa' in Oakville.
What an amazing dinner.

I want to wish an amazing birthday to my niece, turning 17 on January 9th and my nephew turning 9 on January 10th!!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!!

Happy New Years!

Happy New Years! Another year has started and so many things to do.
Where did 2006 go. I have no idea. Like many others one of my resolutions this year (as it is every year) is to start running again. I hoping to run 2-3 miles every other day for the next 3 weeks or so and then start increasing the distance to 4-5 miles and so on and so on....We'll see how it goes :)

I've finished reading another book by Robert Ludlum, The Hades Factor. You can read a summary and my review of the book on my new blog -> Coming Soon!