The Good News ... and the Bad!

(No, of course that's not me in the picture! It's Trent, taken about a year ago in El Campo at Muldoon's.

I was younger then ...)


First, let's get the bad news out of the way. No less than FIVE of my friends have died in the last month (I just heard about one today). To put it in perspective, only two of them were older than me. I remember my father saying that that one of the sad things about growing older is that all your friends keep dying ...

Now for the good news.

A couple of years ago I had a diagnosis of "possible" non-Hodgkins lymphoma. (A more complete story of that is on one of our web sites -- see My Story.) This week, after another visit to my oncologist, I had another CT scan, and today I got the results.

Guess what?

No sign of lymphoma!

In fact, after a full CT scan, his only recommendation is that I follow up with my urogolist because my bladder wall is slightly to moderately thickened (which it was a year or two ago). I knew I felt healthier than I have for several years, but it's great to have the confirmation.

In other good news, Billie's son, Trent Willmon, has started working in the Texas Hill Country on the movie Palo Pinto Gold. They are shooting early every morning for a couple of weeks and we hope to go out there to watch a shoot sometime soon. Trent's playing the lead, and has also written the music for the movie. Other members of the cast include Mel Tillis, Roy Clark and Kinkie Friedman as the Governor of Texas! Check it out on Trent's web site.

Maybe we'll have a film star in the family!

New Year's Resolutions

The picture shows Alan and Billie with their New Year's Day coffee at dawn on Galveston Island.

We are having such wonderful weather here! I just came back from a run and sat outside for a while in the shade wearing tee shirt and shorts. It's in the 70s!

One of my goals is to run my first marathon in the spring of 2013, so I've started training for it. Today was my long run -- 90 minutes -- and I managed to increase my pace from staggering to shuffling! Instead of an 18-minute mile I cut it to 17 1/2 minutes.

(I try not to remember the day I saw Roger Bannister run the world's first four-minute mile -- it just reminds me how slow I am! I wonder if he's still running? I do know that last year they had a special celebration for him at the Iffley Road track in Oxford where he set the record, and he was in attendance -- but not running.)

My short term goal is to run the Capitol 10K in Austin this March. Before then, I hope to speed up a bit and increase my pace from shuffling to plodding. My intent is to finish within my age (i.e. no more minutes than my age in years), as I did in my first 10K when I was 55. One benefit of growing older is that I can extend my times and still reach that target!

Another New Year's Resolution for me is to lose weight. Apart from anything else, I don't need to be dragging all that fat around with me when I'm running. Two years ago I used the USANA RESET program to lose thirty pounds, but over the years between I gained back twenty. So my goal now is to lose between twenty and thirty pounds before the summer. So far, after five days, I'm ahead of schedule after losing seven pounds.

In case you're wondering about all this activity, I plan to live to 120, with an option to 130! My children will all retire long before they get their inheritance (if I don't spend it all). Like somebody said, age doesn't matter unless you're a cheese.

One thing I have discovered is that the reason New Year's Resolutions generally fail is that I start from the wrong end. By this, I mean that I need to start from my dream, then work that into goals. My dream is to live a long, healthy life: to achieve that I need to take action now. So I set goals to reach that dream, rather than setting them just for their own sake.

Feel free to comment on this blog -- it's starting to look more like a journal now!

Second web site up!!!!!

I'm stoked!

I now have a web site promoting the First Step Internet Marketing program -- the one I used to learn how to do it! It's a much simpler, less cluttered site than the previous one, and I started work on it yesterday. Took me all of two half-days.

It turns out the hardest part is figuring out the content I want -- building the site is a snap. I imagine that it will get easier with each one now that I know how to do it.

You can see the site here.


In other news ...

I hope you all took some time off for the holidays -- I know we did. Scott and Rusty came by and visited on Christmas Day. Sally brought Michaela, Christian and Michaela's boy friend Juan to visit on December 27th. And we joined Scott and Rusty and several friends in Galveston December 29th.

We left Galveston in 70 degree plus temperatures New Year's Eve in time to experience the cold front that came through that night. It's a shock when we now get temperatures in the 20s at night and no more than 50 or so during the day. With a c.o.l.d wind blowing, too!


(The photo was taken New Year's Eve just after sunrise in Galveston -- we went to the beach to see the sun rise!)

The good news is that the weather should warm up over the weekend. Great, because we plan to go to Fort Worth to see Trent perform at Billy Bob's Saturday night.

Have a wonderful 2008!

First Web Site is Up!

Today I got my first web site up and running and it looks powerful!

I'm excited that the whole process was much simpler than I thought it would be, and, of course, the next one will be easier still. Just take a look at some of the offerings I have found -- many of them free -- which make the whole process a lot easier than I could have believed. Yes it helps to learn a little HTML, but that's only because sometimes it's quicker to code stuff directly than to use a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor when it's small stuff.

Like they say, don't sweat the petty stuff and don't pet the sweaty stuff.

The interesting decision now is what do I want to do with this. I have several choices:

1. Become a professional web site builder.
(I don't think that's where I want to go, but it's a possibility.)

2. Become an affiliate marketer.
(I'm doing that -- it's a great way to started with low cost and the potential for good profits. Just look at some of the deals on my site, and you'll see how they could be very profitable for anyone who wants to take advantage of them.)

3. Develop a web site to link to my USANA site.
(I think that will be my next project.)

4. Develop and sell my own products.
(That may be the project after next!)

5. More things that I'll think of later!

The best news is that I can start making this all automatic, so that when I'm off traveling the business will still carry on. There is so much help available from the people that I'm teamed with that I don't need to be there personally.

It doesn't get much better than that, does it?

Oh yes, the web site is currently at
http://www.alanjenkin.com/ja/

My First Home-Grown Web Site!!!!

I'm excited!

I've finally finished putting together a five page web site.

Tomorrow I plan to have it uploaded and ready to go. It's been an interesting few weeks getting it together, and I've learned a whole lot more than HTML. It sure ain't perfect, but one of the things I learned was that if I wait for it to get perfect, it won't happen.

When I get it uploaded, I'll post the link and wait for the comments -- the good, the bad and the ugly.

One of the best things I learned is that there is SO much information out there on how to do this that the problem is finding the good stuff. Fortunately, I started with good stuff, but found it easy to get led astray into other areas -- but for this, I would have finished sooner. I'll know better for my next site, which I plan to start on soon.

If anyone is interested to know more, put in a comment on this blog. I can show you how to get a site up in an hour or two, if that's what you want, or how to get help to set up something more complex. Just let me now what you'd like -- I'm an expert on getting started and will probably forget that experience in a few weeks!

One of the benefits of being retired is that I now have time to play with some of the new technology and can even use it to earn some money if I choose to. Sure beats working for a living!

Happy Holidays 2007!

Well, I'll be durned! It's that time of the year again already, and Billie has sent out her annual Christmas letter. Every year, we try to pool our ignorance and dig out all the addresses we can remember (why does it get more difficult each time?) and every year we get Christmas cards and letters from people whose addresses somehow got left off the list.

As often as not, they're people who could be mortally offended by the fact that they've been forgotten.

So if your name fell through the cracks, please forgive us! It was certainly not intended. Most likely Billie and I each thought the other was handling it, which means that you SHOULD have had TWO Christmas card from us. There, now, doesn't that feel better?

On the other hand you may just be one of those people like me, who doesn't even notice when they don't receive a card from someone. In that case, you are beyond hope.

(The penultimate sentence above should have read "... doesn't even notice when he or she doesn't receive ...". I think I'm going to avoid the PC trap in future by using the neuter form, so that the sentence would read "... doesn't even notice when it doesn't receive ...". But that looks just as ugly, so I prefer to use the grammatically incorrect and possibly non-PC form "they", even though I secretly believe that anyone who advocates Political Correctitude deserves to be referred to as "it". But, of course, I'd never admit to that.)

Read on ...

Dear Friends,

“They” say time speeds up as we age. If not for our digital assistant,

it might be impossible to recall the joys of this Mach 3 year, which

now races to its close.

Our electronic memory, though, reminds us that we spent January and

February on Roatan, where we relaxed, snorkeled in the sea, and

prepared Alan for a Honduran root canal. Just as the dentist injected

the anesthetic, Roatan’s famous electricity went out! The project was

happily aborted until we got back to Texas!

Spring and early summer took us to Mexico for health assessments; two

trips to California for seminars; a trip to the Smoky Mountains for

recreation; and a trip to Nashville’s “Fan Fair” and Trent’s first

“Ropin’ Pen” party. In July, Chris’s daughter Andie, Trent’s daughter

Montana, and her little sister entertained us for a week, following

which we enjoyed a month in the UK, France, and Spain - visiting

friends and family; exploring bits of Spain and France (including a

French country music festival. Yes! Texas and Nashville music in the

escargot land!) In August, a “TB scare” prodded us to our own research,

resulting in a retraction of the diagnosis and Alan’s avoiding

dangerous drugs. (Yes, Virginia, “false positives” do exist).

In September, to celebrate Alan’s 75th birthday, we visited Chris and

Kristie (who also celebrated birthdays that week) in Corpus Christi,

TX. A beach party in October lured us to Puerto Aventuras, Mexico,

where we had vacationed our first three Christmases together. A few

days later, Alan headed to Roatan to begin maintenance on our house

there, while Billie followed a week later (using the interim time to

visit family and gather repair items unavailable in Honduras). A

three-week working holiday left the house looking great! Next time,

though, we’ll plan to play!

Even if days and months seem to blur, this year has brought

re-evaluation of who we are, what’s important, and what we want to do

with our lives. To live with unforgiveness toward self or others, to

retire to a rocking chair, to declare we’re too old to learn and be

challenged – none of these suits us. Life is so precious, so short,

that we want to experience as much as we can. Though we’re not likely

to be accused of “acting our age,” we’re enjoying new adventures,

meeting new friends, and sharing a moment, a day, or a beer with the

sojourners along our paths.

We are thankful to have crossed paths and walked a few – or many –

steps with you. Thank you for the special warmth that thoughts of you

create in our hearts!

I found it! --and why I have so many e-mail addresses.

Remember those bumper stickers?

Well, I lost my blog -- duh! Now I found it again.

What happened was this:

A few months ago we (Billie and I) became dissatisfied with our ISP. Sometimes the service was great and sometimes it sucked. (This, of course, is the U.S. ISP. The one in Roatan always sucks.)

So we decided it was time for a change.

If you've ever changed ISPs (and who hasn't?) you'll know that we now faced the agony of e-mail address changes. It would be nice if we could just tell everyone in our address book (via a blast e-mail) our new address, but spam filters would block the blast even if we could get it to go out!

By way of history, another reason for the change is that our ISP had changed its domain name twice in the previous year. So people who were writing to a year-old address were getting dumped and people who were writing to a six-month old address were also getting dumped. Meanwhile, we had three inboxes for each e-mail address, to correspond with the three different domain names!

So, in a stroke of brilliance, we decided to create our own domain name and forward from there. If you're keeping up with this, you may remember the domain alandbill.com, as in alan@alandbill.com and billie@alandbill.com. Now we didn't EVER need to change our e-mail address again, and we were freed from the tyranny of ISPs.

Alas, it didn't work out that way.

From time to time e-mails would be bounced from our own domain without our knowledge. And sometimes messages would just disappear into that great bit-bucket in the sky. What had promised to be a solution became a bigger problem!

But to get back to the ISP story, we tried a different ISP. So we now also replicated our previous e-mail addresses on the new ISP. And probably told some people those addresses -- are you confused yet?

But wait -- it gets better (or worse, depending on your point of view!) When we found out that alandbill.com was losing e-mails, we decided to try something different -- Gmail. And we also found that we could use our Thunderbird e-mail client to send and receive from Gmail.

So far, apart from sometimes selecting e-mails as spam which should not be, Gmail seems to have been 100% reliable . It even saved me yesterday when Thunderbird starting acting up, because I could use the Gmail webmail account.

What has all this got to do with the blog, you ask? I was coming to that ...

When I set up the blog, I used a Gmail account and password. However, by the time I came to make a second entry (several hours later) I couldn't remember how to get there! Today, it dawned on me that I can link to it from my Gmail account, if only I could remember which Gmail account it was!

The rest is history.

Except that I forgot to mention that after running two ISPs in parallel for a few months it became apparent that the new one is too slow for us and cannot give us more bandwidth. So we're planning on dropping it and reverting to the old one. The good news is their bandwidth seems to have improved and is now streets ahead of their competitor.

I just hope they don't change their domain name again.