Most people don’t know what I do for a living. Many people have a hazy idea, but the idea that someone writes everything that find online is just foreign to people who don’t use the Internet, understand SEO or visit websites other than Facebook. Apparently, nearly everyone I know falls into those categories.

So, yes, I write. I write content that winds up on websites. More often than not, these are linkbait articles that exist pretty much solely for SEO purposes. If that makes no sense to you, that’s okay. I rarely get a byline and almost never know what sites my written content writes up with. I don’t follow up after I get paid.  Sometimes, I write product descriptions. The reviews that I write on Reviews by Cole are a hobby and are in no way related to my job.

I prefer to write about tech topics. SEO is okay, but it does get old quickly. I hate having to be repetitive, which is why I feel drained when I have to write 800 words or more about a specific topic. In the beginning, I wrote many articles for DMS about smartphones, tablets, iPod and website maintenance. These are probably among my favorites. When I enjoy a topic, writing comes so much more easily. However, I don’t always get the choice.

In the past week, I have written about these topics:

• WordPress and SEO
• Kitchen and bathroom remodeling
• Fashion that flatters your figure
• Roofing
• Pedispas
• Urgent care facilities
• Used Dell servers
• Online Casinos
• Mobile slot games
• Sciatica
• Concussions
• Comic inspired movies
• Interview mistakes
• Day trader computers
• Lingerie
• Sex toys
• Dressing in business casual
• Rebuilding a relationship/trust after an affair
• Acid reflux disease
•  Pulmonary arterial hypertension
• Jennifer Lawrence’s awards show fashion
• Live music in Torontio
• Legionnaire’s disease
• Maplestory hair styles

As I finish this post, I will head to work on a program review/description.

So, you know. I do what they pay for. It’s at times pretty unglamorous. The reason why I write articles (people want to manipulate search engines) is sometimes disheartening, and I often fear that this content is just created for robots and not human consumption. However, I do sometimes have fun and learn something along the way.

For a while, I’ve jokingly talked about an analogy that sex (and masturbation) and video games are pretty similar. As I was thinking about it tonight, I became more convinced of my rightness. Grammar FTW. So I decided to sit down and blog about it because, you know, funnies.

In an effort to make this awesome, I asked a friend for ideas. This is the ensuing conversation?

“What makes video games and sex alike”

“I’m usually just playing with myself?”

So that’s a thing, FYI.

How Sex and Video Games Are Alike 

• Sometimes you just want to watch someone else play.
• They’re both better when you make noise.
• It sometimes takes longer than it should to finish.
• But, sometimes, you finish and wonder what the hell just happened.
• You blunder through it your first time and hope you’re doing it right.
• It’s all about finding the right angle.
• Your hand can cramp up after a while.
• You often forget to stop to eat or drink.
• Sometimes you look ridiculous doing it.
• The  Internet is fully of videos of it.
• Sometimes you just know you’re not going  to finish.
• The world likes to view  both as a man’s world — and double standards run rampant in both cultures.
• Men are constantly creating fantasies in both, and these fantasies typically revolve around unrealistic portrayals of women.
• Sometimes you just need to stop and shower.

And the most important reason that sex and videos are alike: they’re both better when I play with you. ;)

Welcome to 2014. There’s a new WordPress theme, so it must be a new year. That aside..

I thought I’d go over my 2013.

Over so soon?

The year started on a high. Maybe because I’d sort of met someone. It didn’t work out but it gave me confidence to look for more possible romances. There were also several people interested in me over the year, and I returned the interest with someone. We spent some amazing time together, but it just seemed like it wasn’t the right place or right time. Truthfully, I’m hopeful that will change but realistic enough to realize that it probably won’t.

Because I felt invincible, I wanted to reconnect with some friends who I’d “broken up with” in 2012 or earlier. Honestly, I felt as though the frustration they had caused before was something that I could deal with better last year. This was true.. for a while. I am currently re-evaluating whether all those people need to be in my life. It’s difficult.

However, I wound up making several new friendships through that decision, so I do not regret it. Fate seemed to be on my side when it came to reconnecting because several other people came back into my life. All in all, I was a whole lot more social in 2013 than the previous years. This involved a lot of trivia nights, game nights, parties and drinking. It felt right for a 27 year-0ld. I guess I felt like I’d never quite gotten to be that person before.

Work has remained mostly the same. I don’t talk about this. It’s annoying.

My family dynamics have also remained the same but moving last year meant I was much closer to my mom and sister. So I’ve walked there many times this year. In fact, walking took on a lot more significance and I walked hundreds of miles this summer which led to some weight loss that’s probably all coming back since it’s cold and I’m cooped up inside. Oops.

In terms of material goods, 2013 was really good for me. I beefed up my wardrobe, especially for winter. I went through many shoes due to all the walking, but I have both an awesome pair of Chucks and boots that I recently bought. I bought both a PS3 and a Nintendo 3DS with a slew of games for them. I outfitted my living room with an area rug and an ottoman. Things have definitely come together. I enjoy the spending money.

In the process, I got a new hard drive for my laptop and installed it with a little help from Ben. I also finally rooted my phone even though I’m planning on getting a new one as soon as possible.

2013 was as geeky as ever. I went to two large conventions — Convergence in Minneapolis and Chicago Comic Con. It wasn’t my first time in Chicago, and I really enjoyed seeing some of the panels. I tried out Sci-Fi speed dating. It sucked. I purchased all the things, including some new art. I didn’t blog about either con, I guess. However, I posted lots of photo on Facebook. If you’re my friend, you can see the album for Chicago and the photos from CONvergence in my mobile uploads. CONvergence was really something else. It a fan run convention that’s outgrowing its current state but allowed me to get drunk with bronies. Really, it was such a different experience and some of the things I was able to do — attending the drinking for geeks panel, drinking, eating at some awesome restaurants in Minneapolis, Rocky Horror shadow casting, are like none other. It was too hot for me to costume, but I did make some Facebook friends. I don’t know if I’ll go next year but I will likely go again.

I dove into Reviews By Cole more than I have lately. I’ve reviewed more and joined many more group giveaways. I’ve been posting in more communities; although, not all are a good fit. I think I feel a greater sense of community. This has led to all the tutorials I’ve been posting lately. I’ve been much more active on Facebook. Give us a like, will ya?

Things have changed a bit on Her Realm, too. I moved hosts and am in the process of really cleaning things up. Things like the site section have been condensed to a single page, and the navigation has changed up a bit. On the whole, I feel good about losing some of the excess.

Personally, I’ve found a lot more release by writing on Lyrical Musings. Maybe you don’t even know what this is or have forgotten about it. I have a blog dedicated solely to writing — mostly poetry — in a cathartic way. As you’ll see, romance was on my mind in 2013.

I threw some big parties last year. There was a lot of stress. Memories, sure, but I think I need to keep things smaller than that in the future.

So what now? I definitely want to keep up my friendships and make things happen romantically but I have no arbitrary goals for 2014. In fact, I have no resolutions at all, really. I think this is because if I continue doing what I did last year, I am okay with that. Perhaps this is a sign of a year well done.

aaaand it is a doozy.

I’ve been pestering her about her belief in Kris Kringle for a while. She’s ten. Its expensive for Mom. We’re all surprised that she still believe in any way, but she is a naive little girl.

My pestering has led to me admitting that I do not believe in Santa and her response about how she’s not sure. I get a response like “half and half” or “I sorta believe.” I want to tip her over to nonbelief of her own accord, so we don’t have to break her heart.

I was attempting again tonight in the car and got a response that I didn’t expect at least.

Sam said that Santa was just “superstition” and that mom wraps presents and “doesn’t hide them very well.” She elaborated that Santa sends mom presents in advance. Santa and Mom meet up. So I asked where.

Sam’s reply? Rib Mountain. I asked if they get coffee to talk it over. She said that they go to Wal-mart where Santa doesn’t give mom presents. No, he orders them. Then, the presents come in and Mom gets them. She hides them (not very well!) and wraps them, placing labels from Santa on the gifts.

This is a very specific story, and it certainly derails from the classic theology of Santa. It takes a lot of justification to find hidden Christmas presents and continue to believe in Santa in any form. That’s how most of us stop believing.

Anyway, I just thought you would all enjoy the story and if I don’t post before then, Merry Christmas!

In the first post about understanding the WordPress database, I described the basics and how to change options and your password directly from the database. This post will be all around shrinking your database. The other day, I logged into mine to see that it had suddenly jumped to 70 megabytes. I had just done some maintenance, so I began to investigate because I was moving dangerously close to my storage limit with my host.

Why is it important to shrink your database?

1. Because you pay for the space you use on your host, and the database uses that space.
2. Because tables can become so large that you won’t be able to move them if you get a new host.
3. Because large databases that aren’t optimized may cause your site to run sluggishly.

WP Commentmeta Table full of Akismet Artifacta

Check out Akismet’s damage

This may not affect you, especially if your blog is younger than mine. Akismet is a decent spam blocking tool. You probably use it. It it is intended to keep two weeks worth of spam comment data then delete that data from your database. Older versions didn’t always delete correctly, however. This means you could have junk entries in your database for years.

I did. In fact, my “wp_commentmenta” tables were upwards of 10 megabytes. This became an issue when I was trying to move to my new host. I went into browse mode and quickly saw that almost all of the rows were related to Akismet. My next step was to Google whether this was necessary data, and the answer was a resounding “No!” I could delete that information manually, but I had thousands of entries.

The easiest way is to run a query to look for data in that table that doesn’t correlate to data in “wp_comments.”

So I logged into PHPMyAdmin, and clicked “SQL” Then, I entered this query:

DELETE FROM wp_commentmeta WHERE comment_id NOT IN (SELECT comment_id FROM wp_comments)

You may have to edit the name of the tables if your installation uses a prefix. Click “Go.” If prompted, click “Ok” to continue. This shrunk my tables by dozens of megabytes, so it was a good start.

Delete Unused Tables

When you delete plugins, the actual files disappear, but developers rarely code plugins so that they remove unneeded tables. The first step to remove this data is to look at the names. As I did this for one of my blogs, some tables quickly stood out as created by plugins that I no longer use. These include “fssstats” and some for YARRP, a related posts plugin that I had swapped for another. When you see tables like this, check them and select “Drop” from the drop-down menu. You’ll be prompted to continue.

As long as you’re no deleting the twelve tables that WordPress creates, which I talked about here, you won’t do irreversible damage. You could break something that you want but likely nothing that you’ll need. I simply spent a lot of time Googling table names. This frequently brings up threads in the WordPress forums. I repeated that process quite a few times, but the tables I wound up dropping entirely were really much smaller than the wp_commentmeta tables that contained all those Akismet artifacts.

If you’re curious about whether you can delete a table, go ahead and leave the table name here. I’m more than willing to do what I can to help.

Optimize your database

I recommend doing this after you delete any large chunks of information because there will be a lot of “orphaned” data. This is data that is no longer attached to anything in your database. After deleting dozens of megabytes of data from Akismet, I used WP Optimize to get rid of a few more megs. This plugin does a few things, including some new features that clear up space in your database:

• Delete revisions
• Clear spam
• Remove trackbacks and pingbacks (I keep mine)
• Remove post drafts
• Delete transient options
• Clear orphaned postmeta

Even if you’re not deleting large chunks of data, optimizing on a regular basis is a good idea, especially if you frequently save posts. You could have dozens of revisions per post. This plugin now allows you to automatically optimize. I have mine set to optimize on a weekly basis but, to be honest, I manually do it every day.

You can also optimize your database directly from PHPMyAdmin. After logging in to PHPMyAdmin, click on the database name. Select any tables that you’d like to optimize or simply select “Check All.” From the drop-down menu in the bottom of the page, choose “Optimize Tables.” This doesn’t delete all the extra information from your installation, but it’s handy to know.