The SamuraiMarine

How I was banned from Google AdSense…

Posted on November 9, 2010 by SamuraiMarine

This is a story without a happy ending, having to do with a large company with no customer service, and it started in March of 2009.

It is about a company that seems to have grown so large and become so successful, that it can no longer afford to put people in place to help others. What I plan on sharing with you is not so much that I was banned from Google’s Adsense program, but the processes through which I tried to resolve the problem and the results of that. I will discuss a little about the process of being banned and what, I am pretty sure, was the cause of my being banned.

Monetizing my site.

After my site, this site that you are visiting right now, had been up for s few years, I decided that I would like to see if I could make a little money from it. Not being sure how to go about it, I was told about using a service like AdSense, that would allow people to click on content relevant links on my blog, and send them to other sites. I, in turn, could recieve a small stipend from AdSense for people doing this if they were good clicks.

I am sure I do not need to explain the process to you folks reading this. Pay-per-click has been around long enough at this point and there are enough of them out there, that this should all be common knowledge to even the greenest of surfers at this point, So I will not bore you with THOSE details.

Shortly after the site went live, I received an email that, for anyone who runs a site and has AdSense, makes the blood freeze in your veins. The notice from Google that my account had been suspended because of invalid clicks. Through some investigation, I finally determined that was happened was that my wife had, without knowledge of the consequences, followed several links on my pages to advertisers. Because of the fact that these clicks came from the same IP as my home, even though it was a different computer, they determined that I was attempting to defraud them, and closed my account.

This is where the issues I have with Google start.

Customer Service (or the lack there of.)

When I first received the email for Google explaining that there was a problem, I panicked. I did not want to have a mark against me with something like this, so I sent in a request for more information. This is when I discovered that Google has a policy about not sharing the the details of HOW they know that you may have been the cause of the invalid clicks on your site that cause the Ban. They appear to have a proprietary system that they cannot tell you how they know, for then, I am assuming, you might learn how to defeat it.

I had, during this time, start my own investigation online to see if other people had suffered this fate and what they had done to overcome it. I was not disapointed, and I discovered that I was part of what appeared to be a very large family of people that had been banned by Google for thing that they considered to be violations.

I will not say that everyone that I met on the Google AdSense forums was innocent. Quite the opposite, in fact. There were a great number on there that, when you visited their sites, were in clear violation of the TOS for the AdSense program. Some of these were sites that I cannot understand how or why they were accepted in the first place.

Then there were many that were banned for very minor issues, the most common of which is not having a privacy statement. Some of these sites were also guilty of have two or more Monetizing services set up to work on their sites. Then there were yet others that I, no matter how hard I tried, could find nothing obviously incriminating about them. This left me to assume that they might have been in the same boat as I was myself.

During this time, I had submitted my first Appeal to the Adsense team and waited to see what the response would be. I wrote a detailed explanation of what I think was the cause of the erroneous clicks and informed them that this would not happen again. After I sent this I decided to spend what I thought was going to be a few days looking at the other people and seeing if I could offer advice on the forums.

Within a matter of hour, or so, I received a reply from them stating that they replied stating that they reviewed my request and my site and decided that my site, the one you are reading right now, represented to much of a risk to the Adsense advertisers and they would not allow me back into the system.

Thus started my crusade.

I continued to putter around on the forums and answer questions here and there. I also made it a point to try and corner a Google employee, on the rare ocassions that one posted something there, but always met with defeat. They would either not answer any of my questions, or they would refer me to the TOS.

This served as nothing more than fuel for my ire. I was not content to just sit and not do something about it. Yes, a mistake was made on my part, but it was just that, a mistake. We all make them and they are meant to be forgiven at least once. I can understand it if you make the same ones over and over again, then there is a time to cut a person loose.

So I continued to try and reach someone, anyone, that could help me out. I found numbers to call within Google and those got me nowhere. It seemed that when I reached a person, they knew nothing or did not know where to direct me. I sent letters to any address I could find, even being so nice as to include self addressed, stamped envelopes with them. All explaining my situation and then asking them to reconsider their banning me. I never received a reply.

Conclusion.

Google has still not contacted me, and I am still banned from their Adsense program, but I am still working on them. I am not going to just let this go. This draconian attitude that they have of only giving a person a single chance just does not make sense to me. One and your done, I think is what someone on the forums told me.

Google needs to really rethink this program if that is the attitude they wish to keep. Or, if they plan on playing that way, at least do us all the honor of not even pretending and eliminate the whole “Appeals” process. It is all just smoke and mirrors anyway and only seems to serve the process of making people THINK they have a chance to get back into the system.

I have since moved on to a company called InfoLinks for my site advertising. Granted, I am not getting rich and I do not expect to break the bank anytime soon, but that was never what it was about. All I ever hoped to do was make enough to pay for some of my operating costs for this site. Anything more would have been icing on the cake.

They just do not get it!

Posted on November 8, 2010 by SamuraiMarine

Have you ever been walking through a parking lot and happen to be looking in the windows of some of the cars parked there, and see a car with a woman’s purse sitting in the open. Sitting there for the whole world to see, just asking for someone to come along with ill intent and bust out the window and take it?

This is what I saw tonight as the wife and I were getting a little ice cream at a local place called Dewar’s, and when we went back out to the car, there was a nice BMW parked next to us that had what looked like an expensive purse sitting on the seat. Worse that this by itself was the fact that not only was the purse open, but you could see money in it. Granted… it was only what looked to be a few singles, but if someone was looking for an excuse to bust out your window and steal a purse, then that would have helped them make that choice.

In this day and age, I have never understood why people do foolish things like this. Opening themselves up to loss like that and then putting on the “Oh woe is me” when they get their stuff stolen.

OK… so I should explain that I am not saying that anyone DESERVES to have their property stolen. I have had things stolen before, so I know that feeling, and there is no way I would want a person to feel that sort of loss. That being said, there is no reason that a person should invite that upon themselves and then be surprised.

People just do not seem to GET that people will look for opportunities just like that to open up. There are people that walk through parking lots and look for easy steals, and that would be just too easy of a steal. The only thing that would make it easier would be to leave the door unlocked and a note on the window letting them know that it is open.

Get a clue, people… especially this close to the holidays.

Posted in Rants and Raves | Leave a comment

Instant Tea, just add…

Posted on October 22, 2010 by SamuraiMarine

Recently I became infected with Valley Fever for the second time in my life. Valley Fever, for those of you that do not live in the San Joaquin valley, is also know by it’s less aesthetically pleasing name of coccidioidomycosis. Yes, if you are at a party, and you want to impress the people you are there with, say coccidioidomycosis a couple times might make you sound impressive, but that is about where it stops. Especially when you explain what it is.

Getting back to the point.

The last time I contracted this illness was way back in 1977, During the Great Central Valley Dust Storm. There is not too much I recall about the time, except that I came home, and after lunch I went to take a nap. The next thing I know it was several weeks later (six to be exact) and I was hooked to an IV.

I was told later that each time you get Valley Fever, it is progressively worse than the time before. So I lived most of my lift, to date, with a real fear of what could happen if I ever got it again.

At this point, I am thinking that three out of five of you are asking yourself… What the heck does this have to do with the title of this post. This is nothing like tea, instant or not. But you would be wrong, you see, there is a connection to Tea and to the point I am meandering my way to, and that is that because I have contracted Valley Fever again, I am trying to live healthier.

Well… not JUST the Valley Fever… You might say that the little beastie growing in my wife’s tummy is also a major factor as well. But together they make up the whole reason.

So… as I have been working on this, I have been drinking lots of water, to the tune of four or five small bottles of it a day, and one thing I have to say about water is that it is a boring drink. It does not do anything to excite the taste buds or thrill the pallet. People, at least many of the ones I know, do not see a glass of water and say… “Oooh, delicious! A Glass of water!”

Quenching? Yes. Life sustaing? certainly! The best thing to drink when you are thirsty? Of course? A tasty gourmet delicacy? Hardly. So I have starting trying this little things that my wife uses all the time. They are little instant packets that you empty into a bottle of water and PRESTO… you have <Name your drink here>. You have a large variety to chose from, Peach, Raspberry, Lemonade, Fruit punch, Ginseng, etc… this list goes on ad-nauseum.

There are certain flavors that I have tried that I was pretty sure from the start I would not like. Flavors like, oh… anything that does not taste like simple, plain, ordinary, bland, Black iced tea with no sweetener in it. The kind you get at almost any restaurant. Everything else has too much “Froo Froo” to it. But I am brave… so I tried the Peach. After the first couple sips, I decided that the rest would be great for watering the plant in the office. The plant later died… and it was plastic.

I ventured forth and tried a few more over the next few days, and just when I was getting to the point that I thought that plain water tasted pretter darned good, I found it. Fruit Punch. This was actually really good and reminded me of those simpler days of my childhood when you could buy the bottle of Hawaiian Punch mix that was in the jar, that think sweet liquid that you were supposed to only put one tablespoon into a glass of water, yet any kid that had access to would put two or five in and stir it up, then proceed on a three hour, sugar-induced rampage that usually involved torturing any adult within two miles with your insanity.

Yes… I had found my artificial nirvana. I say artificial because this little packets are sugar free, so there is no sugar induced high that follows the drinking. There is only that taste and the memories.

After all is said and done, I found three that I like and they would be Fruit Punch, Lemonade and Arizona Ginseng Tea. The Ginseng tea took a little longer to get to like, but I do enjoy it and it certainly beats straight water any day of the week. I am sure that as time goes on, I might find more that I like, so I will keep trying them as I see new ones come out. Who knows, maybe these will eventually break my addiction to sodas.

One can dream.

Posted in Food and Drink | Leave a comment

Guiding Friends

Posted on October 8, 2010 by SamuraiMarine

When you think of your friends or the kind of friend you are to others, how do you see yourself?

Are you one of those passive friends that occasionally gets together on special occasions but rarely sees your pals otherwise? Maybe you are lucky enough to be one of those people that has many friends and you go out with them all the time and see them often enough that they are almost family to you.

No matter how you are or how you see yourself, how we are with our friends says a lot about us.

I like to think of friendship, TRUE friendship, as a way to extend the boundaries of your family. As we draw these people into our lives, earn their trust, and in turn, they, ours. We get to a point where the relationship is almost indistinguishable from another family member.

This does not apply to all our friends. I mean, we all know people that we consider friends, but we would not leave our children alone with them for too long, or hand them the keys to the house and the new DB9 and go on a three week vacation. Then again there are people I know well that, if I had or could afford one, I would not give them the keys to a DB9… Sorry Grant and Jackie.

But through these relationships you build, you are not just getting something from them, but you are giving something as well. Good friendships are a two-way road, you both get something out of them and you both give quite a bit too. You are guiding each other through the relationship.

If the friendship is right, it can sometimes lead to more, as in the case of my wife and I. We started off and casual friends that really saw nothing in one another, that turned into a close friendship where we shared the details of our lives and then, eventually, into love and marriage. We both feel that our friendship is the basis that makes our marriage strong.

I cannot think of anything in life that is quite as important as friendship. I also think that it is also taken for granted more and more these days. In part because of things like Facebook, MySpace, and social networking as a whole. People just do not meet in person anymore, they meet online. Even when people live in the same town and only a few minutes from one another, they will meet online when they could go visit each other.

Unfortunately, I have started to fall into this process as well. I have two good friends and a sister that live within five minutes drive from me, yet we see and speak to each other in person rarely, and really, this is just a sign of where we are all heading and might just be the reason we have as many problems in society as we do.

Maybe if we spent more time sitting with one another over a beer or coffee, there would be less problems in the world and we could all be friends guiding friends.

Posted in Observations | Leave a comment

The voice of my father…

Posted on October 2, 2010 by SamuraiMarine

In the wake of learning that I am now a father, there has been a lot going through my mind these days. While many of these thoughts are the usual “New Father” things, there are many that are either introspective or retrospective. I have started thinking about MY childhood and how I was raised and the people that influenced my life the most.

It was during this process that I made a startling and sad discovery. I can no longer remember what my father’s voice sounds like.

It is not like we talked all the time. We, more or less, would have about one phone call a month and there were the occasional visits. We were not close, by any stretch of the imagination. There always seemed to be this wall of misunderstanding and inability to identify with one one another between us. So our conversations were relatively generic.

But there was always something calming about his voice. Even thought I never spoke to him about my problems or issues in life, there was something about the way he spoke to me that made things feel better.

When I think back to those conversations that we had, both the ones that really meant something and the ones that seemed pointless, I no longer hear his voice. In my mind’s process of playing back those conversations, I hear only my voice for both parts. I see his face, the face of when he was younger and healthy, not that of the man lying in the hospital, dying of cancer. I can remember the smell of his Aqua Velva aftershave and even the smell of cigarettes on his breath that were all just parts of who he was, but when I see him speak, it is in my voice. A process of the mind to fill in gaps with something you know.

It feels as though I have lost something. A crucial memory or artifact of my life, a key to my past and who I am. Unfortunately there are no ways to get this lost memory back. I have no recordings of my father speaking, there was no video tapes of him since that technology just was not available when he was still alive.

I spoke to someone else about this, and they told me that maybe it was my mind’s way of preparing me to be a father. Letting me know that it was time to say farewell to the overwhelming memories of loss of my father and begin the road of fatherhood myself.

If that is true, and if there is an afterlife, then I hope that somewhere my father is still watching me and is proud of what I have become and how I will help raise this child with my wife.

Posted in Philosophy | 2 Comments

SamuraiMarine News: The Guest Writer program has been eliminated

Posted on September 27, 2010 by SamuraiMarine

I mentioned that I was thinking about this about a year ago in the hopes that the three people I have listed as my Guest Writers would take the initiative and post something.

Alas… this never happened, so effective as of midnight… the program has gone away. If someone has something they would like submitted, then they are more than welcome to send it to me in an email and I will share it on this site, giving that person full credit for the item.

Posted in SamuraiMarine News | Leave a comment

Attitude towards Illegal Immigration.

Posted on September 16, 2010 by SamuraiMarine

Recently I did a little impromptu poll on my Facebook page, asking if they felt that the immigration system, as it is right now, is broken and what they would do to fix it, if the choice was theirs to make.

To say I was disappointed with the number of people that responded is an understatement. Of the two that did respond, one response was very good, the other was, more or less, dismissive.

While this poll was, by no means, a comprehensive scientific study, it was enough to tell me that either people do not want to show their hand on this topic for fear of alienating themselves or others, or just really do not care enough to chime in.

There also appeared to me through this another group of people. One of the responses was a person who replied with

“out of my league….i don’t bother myself with that stuff…que sera sera……”

This could not be further from the truth. If you are a tax paying US citizen, then none of this is out of your league and you should never adopt the “whatever” attitude regarding this. Every single US citizen should be angry as hell that this is going on. That our boarders, US/Mexico as well as the others, are so porous that people can go back and forth the way they do.

The other response I got was:

“The U.S. Immigration system is no longer the most efficient venue for entering the country as it once was. The burden of dealing with hundreds of illegal immigrants crossing our borders on any given day, has out numbered our border agents, …stretched our resources in capturing and deporting these individuals and has suck our social services system dry.

My solution may be harsh, but effective. Build a 20 foot wall at the border, with another fence approximately 50 feet from the wall wrapped with barbed wire. If somehow they manage to survive this, they become subjects of national security and will be shot.”

While there is part of me that does agree with this, I can also see the downside to it as well. I think that I would take this idea and instead of shooting them with bullets, I will tranquilize them and then put them into a massive holder center on the border, within this “No Man’s Land” that would be created. Process them, mark them and then send them back to Mexico. The mark would be simply to let us know they are repeat offenders.

I understand that there are many people that make the effort to come to America to have better lives, but there is a right way and wrong way to do so. In spite of those US citizens who seem to think it is perfectly acceptable for foreign citizens to wander into the US illegally, with no right to be here, there is nothing right, acceptable or healthy about it. All of this is discussed in my previous two articles on this topic.

Lastly, and what I think is the most silly, is the argument people keep throwing out about how those that are living in the United States now are, actually, illegal aliens. This is by far one of the worst arguments and only makes those using it look silly.

Granted… there was a lot wrong about the colonization of the land that is now the United States. We did a lot of bad things to the native population to gain this land. But the point is moot for one major reason. You name to me one country that exists today that has not in some way shape or form, been built upon the former lands of another indigenous people. So the US is not the only people you can use that argument against, if you really want to get technical. The global map you see today has mostly born from conflict and acquisition and not based on the original tribal lands of the native peoples. This does not mean that any of it was right, just that it is what it is. We have to move forward.

Now… if Mexico would like to challenge our right to this land, they can always declare war and invade. That would make things a lot easier for the USA. We might even get some more land in the process.

Posted in Illegal Immigration, ObamaNationism | 1 Comment

Risks of Illegal immigration…

Posted on August 11, 2010 by SamuraiMarine

Shortly after I finished the last piece on illegal immigration, it occurred to me that I forgot something important.

While it is an established fact that illegal immigration does cause a burden on the resources of the state in which they have invaded as well as a burden on the country in whole. There are also other risks and dangers as well, but not solely to us as Americans.

You see, there are good reasons that countries like ours try to monitor the flow of people across the border. In spite of what you might think of us as Americans, some of these reasons are not completely mercenary.

Let’s look at them one at a time:

Coyotes:

No… Not the dogs. But the people that transport the illegals across the border. If you visit the ICE web site and look at some of the ways these people try to come in, then you would have a better understanding of how dangerous it is to BE and illegal, and not just from Mexico.

Look at the stories of people dying while being shipped in containers from overseas. Or the stories of people dying in the desert while they are being transported to the US illegally. In some cases, you have dozens of people that are packed into a small cargo container with little or no water or facilities. There are even stories of people dying because they have no way to breathe. Then there is the occasional story of the cargo container, full of people, that is abandon because the person carrying it does not want to get caught.

Long story short… once the person pays the Coyote or transporter for their services, there are no refunds. If you back out, you do not get your money back. Furthermore, there is no guarantee that you will even make it here anyway. You might either be caught by the US or Foreign authorities or die in the process… Either way, you are not getting your money back.

Infection:

The process of quarantining both immigrants and emigrants for fear of passing diseases from one country to another is not new. This is something that has gone on since around the time of the Roman Empire. Even to this day the US, as well as many other countries, will monitor the inflow of visitors and immigrants to look for signs of illness. If they find someone that is sick with something that might be a hazard to the citizenry of the US, then they are quarantined or, in some cases, returned to the country of their origin.

There is nothing wrong, or racial, about this. It is merely a process of protecting the welfare of the United States and the people therein. Same holds true for any other country, the process is there to protect the citizens and not there to discriminate against anyone of them.

Now… when you subvert that process, work around it through the process of illegally entering the nation without going through the proper processes, you not only risk your own health, but you also risk the health of the people in the country that you are “invading”.

Now… imagine for a moment that someone enters the country that is ill with something like hemorrhagic fever, like Ebola. If this person make contact with others, especially through the process of crossing the desert with his or her fellow illegals. They are now all exposed to the same illness and all become carriers.

When they finally do reach a populated area, some of them might start showing signs of the illness outwardly. So when they check into a hospital, on the taxpayer dime I might add, they are now exposing potentially hundreds more people to the disease.

Yes… what I have just given you is a rare case. Luckily hemmorhagic fever is not very common and has never been a major threat to us. But the potential is there. It is a problem we have to consider and prepare for.

Risks in General:

Lastly… and most importantly, is the crossing of the desert itself to get here.

Most of the border is made up of some pretty inhospitable land. Not something that is easy for even the most well prepared hiker to deal with. But you have hundreds of people that are in worse shape than those hikers that try to make the crossing each year. Many of them fall ill or die in the process.

The answer is not is not like the placing water barrels in the desert and providing the illegals with maps as the organization Humane Borders seems to think. Or providing people with assistance to get across the borders. The answer is to stop the flow of illegals across the border, then to promote and praise those that DO come over legally. Make it something that they can be proud of doing.

I am not a hateful person. I understand that there are some opportunities here that people might not find in other countries. That is always what has set America aside as a great place to live. I encourage all the people that want to share the dream to come to America and live it, embrace it and love it. In spite of our downfalls and our present administration, we still have a lot to offer.

But as I said in the last part of the last post. Do not think you can steal that dream. It is an earned effort. No matter how long you live here, if you have not sworn an oath to uphold the constitution of this country, to renounce your interest in the country of your origin in favor of this one, then you are not an American. You never will be, and thus you are not going to share in the dream. You are merely an intruder on, I hope, borrowed time.

Posted in ...In the news!, Illegal Immigration | Leave a comment

Yet another commentary on the Arizona Immigration law…

Posted on August 8, 2010 by SamuraiMarine

I know… I know… about this time most people are tired of hearing about Arizona. But that is precisely why I decided to write this piece.

I am not trying to get in on the action and promote more traffic to my site by this, though I will have to admit that more traffic would be nice, but that is not why.

Personally, I agree with it. I think that the law itself should be put into effect and the peace officers should carry out their orders. I think that anyone that is stopped and questioned and refuses to produce ID (be they Hispanic, Iranian, Dutch, Congan, what ever…) should be detained until their ID and legal right to be in the US is established and then either let go or sent to the country of their origin.

This is not a Race issue. If you are Mexican and you are here legally, then you should be proud to show it. Whip out that ID and show us your Red, White and Blue. But if you are here illegally, or not a naturalized citizen, and are not sporting a valid and current Work or Travel visa… then you need to go home.

Why is that so hard for you people fighting this law to understand. Exactly how dense are you that you cannot see the reasoning behind this. It is not just about SB1070, it is about a sovereign nation protecting it’s borders. Nothing more that every other country, including Mexico, is trying to do itself.

So now a judge has placed an injunction on the key parts of SB1070 that make the most sense to uphold. They are the sections that:

• Require an officer make a reasonable attempt to determine the immigration status of a person stopped, detained or arrested if there’s reasonable suspicion they’re in the country illegally.

• Makes it a crime if they fail to apply for or carry alien registration.

• Makes it a criminal for illegal immigrants to ask for, apply for or do any form of work. (This does not include the section on day laborers.)

• Allows for a warrant-less arrest of any person(s) where there is “probable cause to believe they have committed a public offense that makes them removable from the United States.”

The funny thing about this, for me, is that people are turning this into strictly a Racial thing. Do you think that if Canadians were coming over the northern border in waves and getting government benefits and such, we would not be doing the same thing there? The answer would be yes, we would.

It is not a racial thing… it has become a racial thing because that is what people WANT it to be and that is the quickest way for people to make headlines. It is a racial thing because people respond when they think that you are picking on a minority. But you are still not looking at it from the grand scale.

This is not about Arizona at all. This is about the fact that we have a southern border that is about as porous as a fishing net. People come and go through it on a regular basis. US Border Patrol, G-d bless them all, are not able to do their jobs because of what might happen.

Granted, there are examples of things gone horribly wrong. Take for example the recent shooting at the border of Sergio Adrian Hernandez Huereca. This was tragic, but it is not the norm. Accidents happen, and when you place people in situations like this, where there is a potential for violence, then the chances of injuries increases. In this case, an American acted foolishly as the result of a Mexican acting equally foolish… maybe more.

Another thing that I find funny about these arguments is that while so many Americans are up in arms about SB1070, it seems that none of them have really commented on the Mexican government’s OWN laws toward immigrants… illegal or otherwise. Their rules and laws towards both legal and illegal immigration are much stricter than are ours. Yet Filepe Calderon, the president of Mexico and the person who, a few years ago, stated that “wherever there is a Mexican, there is Mexico.”, has the Gaul to come here and tell us what we are doing wrong?

For examples of what you have to go through in Mexico, as an immigrant, please check out some of the links below. These are not my work, but I list the parent site and give credit where possible.

From the Rosen Law web site – Click Here

From Michelle Malkin’s web site – Click here

From the Human Rights web site – Click Here

Why is it that if Calderon can come to the US and chastise us for our immigration policy, that we cannot send Obama to Mexico and have him complain about why you and I cannot run across the border and take up some of those jobs that He sent down there? Is it OK for Mexico to display such obvious racism towards Americans, by protecting their country from us, among other countries, but somehow it is a cardinal sin for us to protect our border?

People… Please… stop playing this as a racist thing. Sure, there are those out there that make it racist, but they are not the majority.

If you want the American dream, do not steal it. Earn it.

Posted in ...In the news! | Leave a comment

Our next adventure…

Posted on June 15, 2010 by SamuraiMarine

Well… My wife and I are about to embark on our next big adventure in our lives.

About two weeks ago we discovered the completely unexpected, but not unwelcome, news that we are going to have a baby. At the time of my writing this, she is about 6 1/2 weeks along, so we are expecting to have a little package arrive sometime around the first part of February 2011.

We actually had given up trying to have a child. We were told that we would not be able to have a child. This was not for lack of TRYING, I mean, like they say… that is the fun part. Trying to have a child. But it never happened, so we just figured we would not worry about it and have fun.

I have had a couple people tell me that it is not a good idea to have a child at our age. I am 41 and my wife is 40, she will be 41 when the child is born. There are stories of people that have problems with pregnancies after the age of 35. I understand this, but I also think that in this day and age, where people are having children well into their 50s, that my wife and I will have no problems at all, as long as we stick to the doctor’s advice and make sure we take care of ourselves.

I will not lie to you all… I am nervous. But that emotion is joined with several others… Fear, Excitement, anticipation and anxiety are a few of these other emotions that I am feeling. I am sure that these are the same feelings that all fathers have felt when they first got that news that they were expecting.

In all… this is going to be great. Between my wife and I and our friends and family that will be part of this child’s life, there is going to be no lack of love in the child’s life. That is the most important thing.

Posted in Personal Notes | 4 Comments