All Over The Map

1st Battalion 25th Marines Bravo Company Homecoming in Londonderry, NH

The 1st Battalion 25th Marines Bravo Company arrived home in Londonderry, New Hampshire on April 9, 2009. 53 Marines from Bravo Company augmented the 2/25 out of New York for the past seven months at Al Asad Air Force Base.

WMUR in Manchester, NH covered the homecoming but I haven't found a clip online yet.

The Nashua Telegraph published an article here: http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090411/NEWS01/304119957

FoxNews 25 video clip:
http://www.myfoxboston.com/dpp/news/local/Marines_return_home_041009

We're are overjoyed to have them all home again!

Wordtracker Unauthorized Credit Card Charges

This blog entry is to spread the word about a bad experience I'm having with Wordtracker.com  As a result of Wordtracker's poor customer service and unwillingness to communicate with customers by phone to resolve issues as quickly as possible, I do not recommend this service.  Here's why...

Wordtracker.com is a web service used to perform research on the frequency of keywords used in search engines. I haven't used Wordtracker in several years since I started using a competitor's service - KeywordDiscovery.com by Trellian.

I recently discovered that Wordtracker charged me the monthly fee in January and February of $59 per month. I found some old account login information, but there is no way to manage your billing within your account. The only way to cancel your account is to send email to Wordtracker. I don't have active account billing setup!  I immediately called my credit card company to dispute the charges. They suggested that I contact Wordtracker first as it will be faster if they will just credit me the unauthorized charges.

Wordtracker will not communicate with anyone by phone. There is no physical address information on their web site. The copyright indicates Rivergold Associates Ltd, but you can't find any phone number for this company online. You can only communicate with Wordtracker via email. Makes you wonder why they don't want to be contacted. This is the email response I received from Wordtracker:

It is regrettable but under the terms of our agreement with the credit card companies and also United Kingdom data protection legislation we are not permitted to assist with this.

You must report this activity to your credit card company as fraudulent. They will contact us and we can then provide them with all relevant information. We will of course do this promptly.
I am sorry we cannot help further at this time.

Kind Regards
Anne Curtis
Customer Service Manager
Wordtracker

I have now filed a dispute for these charges with my credit card company. This will take some time, but it's worth the effort.  I'm concerned about a company that does its best to prevent from being contacted and is not concerned about customer satisfaction - especially when it's related to unauthorized credit card charges.

The one good thing is that I had to cancel my credit card on February 23 and issue a new number because of suspected fraud.  Wordtracker will be unable to charge me any further as the number they have on file will be declined!!

I highly recommend Keyword Discovery by Trellian.  Not only is their tool for keyword research better, but they offer live support on the web site as well as many local phone numbers worldwide and a physical address.

Indoor cycling spinning: how to perform a cadence check

Perform a cadence check by holding your hand over your knee while riding your bike.  Count every time your knee hits your hand for ten seconds. Multiply by six to calculate the RPMs (Revolutions Per Minute). Cadence ranges from 60 to 110 RPMs depending on the training affect you are trying to achieve (endurance, strength, interval, race day, recovery).

Spinning.com has an excellent chart of target heart rate zones associated with the five different training zones along with their respective cadence ranges.

I highly recommend wearing a heart rate monitor to monitor your heart rate and calories burned for any aerobic training workout.  Polar is the leading brand of heart rate monitor.  Timex Ironman is a good brand as well. Wearing a heart rate monitor allows you to easily determine if you're working too hard or not hard enough to reach your fitness goals.  Here's how to calculate your heart rate using the Karvonen formula.

Creating a Google Sitemap is Easy!

Creating a sitemap makes it easier for search engines (Google, Yahoo, and MSN) to crawl and index your site.  It's so easy; you have no excuse not to have one.  Here's how...

• Create your Google Webmaster account here:  www.google.com/webmasters/tools/ 
• Follow the easy directions to verify that you are the webmaster for your site i.e. at a meta tag that Google gives you. 
• Go to www.xml-sitemaps.com to instantly create a Google Sitemap. 
• Post your sitemap.xml file created by xml-sitemaps.com in the root of your site.
• Point your Google Webmaster account to the path of your sitemap file for this site

Et voila, c'est fini.  Wicked easy!

Barbara's Baubles - handcrafted beaded and dichroic glass jewelry

I just launched my friend Barbara's new e-commerce web site http://www.barbarasbaubles.com/.  Barbara handcrafts beautiful beaded and dichroic glass jewelry and gift items.

Each item is uniquely made - no two are alike. She offers barrettes, bracelets, earrings, necklaces, pendants, and a variety of jewish jewelry and other judaica. New items are added constantly as each jewelry piece is one of a kind.