There’s always something to howl about.

Month: May 2010 (page 2 of 3)

The Guy With the Website

Since October 2009 – roughly 8 months ago – my website – www.chetson.com – has brought in just over $200,000 in business. Quite a lot of this business I’ve referred out. But in referring it out, I’ve made clear to the receiving lawyers that I’d like to learn from them, would approach them with questions from time to time, have them review briefs etc. I try not to be presumptuous or demanding. Right now I’m in the business of learning the law and building a reputation as a smart, helpful, and good criminal lawyer.

This has worked out well, to the extent that by the time the year’s over I’ll probably have had at least two jury trials. I’ve gotten to interact with some of the top lawyers in town. One guy – a fantastic lawyer – has taken to calling me, half-jokingly, a “cash cow” and whenever I show up at his door, unless he’s with a client, he’s happy to help. I’ve gotten a ton more experience than I ever could had I simply been an associate in a law firm. By operating as my own law firm, and by bringing things to the table, I’ve been able to present myself more as a “peer” with lawyers whom I respect.

To be honest, I could make a decent living by just doing the web work for other lawyers, but my goal has always been to become a great lawyer, and so this doesn’t interest me much.

Here’s how I’ve done it: focusing relentlessly on clear and cogent content, taking advantage of all the tools that Google – Google Local/Place, Google AdWords (for a time), Google Analytics to measure, and Google Webmaster – has to offer to promote my business, by building links to the website, and by offering a good service that people are happy to write reviews about following the conclusion of their cases.

By trading on things I already know – how to build a promote a website that will bring in business – I’ve been able to make headway quickly in learning Read more

What does it take to be a successful real estate agent?

Being relatively new to the real estate industry (coming from a military background, followed by some time in the NYC finance sector), I came into it wide-eyed, green and full of expectations, realistic or not.  I believed that in real estate, like most facets of life, you could succeed through hard work, perseverance and a healthy dose of common sense.  Now I’m beginning to question if I had any of that right.

Intelligence.  An asset that will guarantee your success regardless of what you do.  But is that applicable in real estate?  I’m not saying I’m the smartest person in the room (even when I’m alone), but I have met some real estate ‘professionals’ who really push this issue to the brink.  And I’m talking about top-producing agents!  Just a few days ago, I overheard a conversation where an agent, who just got a listing for over $2.4M, asked another if he knew what ‘TMK’ meant. Really, I am not making it up.

Hard work.  Sure, most successful agents are hardworking.  But in it of itself, hard work does not guarantee even the slightest bit of measurable success in this industry.  Sure, having systems in place to ensure efficiency should make the work load a bit easier to handle, but I’m finding more and more than even when you do all the things that the experts say you should be doing, success is not necessarily within reach (at times it seems to be the opposite, actually).

Professional appearance.  Well, this one may be more touchy to me since I live in a tropical area where casual attire is the rule of the day. But really, how is it that people look like they just rolled out bed, slapped on whatever dirty clothes were on the floor, slipped some beach flip flops and land multi-million dollar deals?  Sure, I get it, ‘Aloha Friday’, but that could mean a number of things (i.e. nice shorts with a tommy bahama shirt) besides just being plain sloppy.

Knowledge of the market.  I can’t wrap my head around this one as I thought for sure this would be one area Read more

Rand Paul’s take on private property rights is correct — and daring to tell unfamiliar, uncomfortable truths to voters is laudable.

Well.

I’m thinking that “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day” has brought us a nearly universal display of cowardice from the RE.net. If I am mistaken in this, I will happily amend my error with a link and a courtly bow. But I expect there is even more room for quivering, quibbling, cowering, caviling cowardice on this fine and perfect day.

Like this: The position Kentucky senatorial candidate Rand Paul took on property rights yesterday is correct — not just as regards property rights, but as an expression of the errors we need to correct in the body politic if we are to reemerge, eventually, as something resembling a civilized society.

The left is attempting to smear Paul as a racist for insisting that private property owners themselves have the moral authority to be racists, even if Paul and virtually everyone else find that position to be morally-repugnant. This Two-Minutes-Hate campaign doesn’t seem like a winning strategy to me, in the age of the internet. The left will have no trouble finding reasons to hate Rand Paul, but his own tea party admirers may find in his principled arguments even more cause to admire him.

But mainstream Republicans are in full-reverse mode, backing away from Paul as quickly as they can. This seems to me to be a mistake. The tea party movement is an artifact of the age of the internet. At the least, tea partiers check up on the things they are told by the mainstream media. And it seems plausible to me that many of those folks are aware that the United States has been pursuing the wrong policies — as a matter of philosophy — since the end of the nineteenth century, at least. Anyone seeking greater human liberty has to regard this present moment as an incredible opportunity to get ordinary Americans thinking about ideas they might never have considered before. For Republicans to race away from the actual philosophy of liberty seems to me to be hugely stupid.

So let’s start here: Racism is by far the stupidest and most morally-repugnant form of collectivism. This is completely obvious to any thoughtful individualist, Read more

“Jihad, Las Vegas!”

A Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Willie story

“C’mon, Sahib,” the Cabdriver said. “Let’s get rollin’.”

Sahib said, “Again I must remind you that my name is not Sahib. And also I must ask you again to wait. Even now I am about to win the jackpot.”

Sahib was sitting at a penny slot machine in the casino of the Stratosphere, in fun-filled-Las-Vegas-Nevada. Max coins, no less, a real player.

“Jeesh!” said the Cabdriver. “Your jackpot’s a hundred freakin’ bucks!”

“No, you are very much mistaken. The colossal-grand-jackpot on this machine is ten thousand American coins.”

“It’s a freakin’ penny slot! Ten thousand pennies is a hundred bucks!”

“Even so, I have every confidence that I must certainly hit the jackpot. By now I have eliminated nearly every other possibility.”

“No memory.” I said that. I was at the bank of machines behind theirs, playing video poker.

Sahib said, “I regret that I must ask you to repeat yourself.”

“No memory. ‘The wheel has no memory.’ Blaise Pascal. Inventor of roulette. Also of probability theory. There’s a random number generator inside your machine. Sixty times a second it spits out a new random number. Doesn’t remember the last one. Doesn’t care about the next one. When you hit the max coins button, you get the current number, and nothing you did before, nothing you’ll do later will change that number.”

The Cabdriver leaned over to murmur in my ear. “Freakin’ fascinating,” he grumbled, “but I’ve got to get this clown out of here!”

“In addition,” Sahib continued, “a young woman has promised to bring me another one of these very appealing citrus beverages.”

“Margarita,” I said.

“Again I must beg your indulgence in repeating yourself.”

“It’s a Margarita. Lime juice and tequila, plus Triple Sec or Cointreau or Grand Marnier.”

Sahib was aghast. “Promise me, sir, that I am not consuming alcoholic spirits!”

“Not here. Not by half. Here they make ’em with lime-ade and monkey-puke.”

“Thanks be to Allah,” he sighed. “I am very much enjoying my monkey-puke.”

The Cabdriver was seething. “Sahib! Hadn’t we better go about assembling your freakin’ bomb?!”

To the Cabdriver I said, very quietly, “This is Las Vegas and it’s all about fun, but since nine-eleven I Read more

How the bank robbed Bonnie and Clyde

A Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Willie story

“Stick ’em up!” said Clyde. I swear that’s what he said.

My first bank robbery. I was right behind Clyde in line, so I saw it all. It wasn’t what I expected…

Behind the teller’s cage was Hello-my-name-is-Annabelle, the world’s most unflappable teller. She said: “Do you have an account with this bank?”

“Huh?! Lady, this is a stick up!” Clyde had one of those cheap little .25 caliber pistols, the kind that are guaranteed for three armed robberies or one family brawl. He was wearing nylon hose over his head so it was very difficult to tell that he had brown hair, brown eyes and a pitiful little attempted moustache. I don’t think his nose is really that flat.

“I understand that,” said Annabelle. “I asked you if you have an account with this bank.” The prim people worship Annabelle as a goddess: she is primness personified, right down to the last tittle and jot. Her mousy-brown hair was wound up in a tight little bun and her little half glasses rode half-way down her nose. She wore a forest green dress with the tiniest white polka dots. I couldn’t see her shoes, but I’d bet they have buckles.

“Oh, just put the money in the bag!” commanded Bonnie, Clyde’s moll. She’s an unbearably thin woman with bleached blonde hair and greasy jeans. She didn’t bother with a disguise, since the downtown of every city that has a downtown is crawling with unbearably thin women with bleached blonde hair and greasy jeans.

“I would like to do that,” said Annabelle. “But first I’ll need your account number.”

“I don’t have a damn account!” said Clyde. “Okay?! If I had money, why would I be robbing the damn bank?!”

“Well, if you don’t have an account, I’ll need eight dollars.”

“Eight dollars! What the hell for? If I had eight dollars, I could wait until tomorrow to rob the damn bank!”

“Non-depositor’s transaction fee,” said Annabelle. She tapped her pen on a little sign mounted on the counter: “If you don’t have an account with First American Interstate National Trust, we will be happy to process your Read more

What Does “Primacy” Mean?

From Bloomberg News:

U.S. stocks tumbled yesterday after Germany’s announced its ban on naked short-selling. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she will lobby governments to introduce a tax on financial markets, and for ratings companies to come under European supervision so governments regain “primacy” over markets. The euro is at risk and Europe may be facing its greatest challenge since the founding of the European Union, Merkel said

I boldfaced the word “primacy” because I believe it means “first in importance”.  Essentially, that means the State is upset because markets operate independently of government planning.  It sounds like Chancellor Merkel is trying to play with her superhero action figures again.  It won’t work; the markets are demanding competition among currencies to better reflect the risks and opportunites of sovereign nations.

It gets better:

“Policymakers are determined to protect the euro zone, and they have identified the financial markets as the key obstacle for stability, which implies risks of further regulation,” Erik Nielsen and Dirk Schumacher, economists at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., wrote in a report.

I boldfaced the phrase to show you how crazy this is.  Could you imagine the Yankees blaming the scoreboard as its key obstacle to victory?   None of this will work.  A competing global currency will re-emerge.  Then they’ll steal it.

Cooler than a corpse…

A Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Willie story

“I… uh… I thought we’d be meeting with the brands committee.” Manny Kant said that. He gnawed at his lower lip.

The Big Boss lowered his girth into the chair at the end of the conference table. He took his time, and Manny accommodated him by breaking out in a sweat at the temples.

“Naw,” said the Big Boss. “I don’t need no ass kissin’, no blame shiftin’, no idea snatchin’, no duty skirtin’. Not today. Today I need an answer, so I come down myself to see what you got to say. What you got to say, boy?”

Manny swallowed hard. “Well, I, uh… I… uh…”

“Go ahead, boy, spit it out. I ain’t gonna bite you!” He laughed from deep in his belly and the laugh turned into a crackle in his throat and the crackle turned into a cough and the cough turned into a fit. When he was finally able to stop coughing his face was florid. He chuckled and shook it off and fished into his breast pocket for a cigarette. He coughed again with the first puff of smoke but he was able to contain it.

The Big Boss was big. He was a commanding presence, and, now that I’ve seen him, he’s even a commanding absence. He was fat and fleshy and pink, but there was a power in him, a strength of purpose and a physical strength buried beneath the fat. He wore a blue seersucker suit and a starched white cotton shirt and a red bow-tie, a letter-perfect son of the South. He was bald with just a fringe of white hair at the base of his scalp and his eyes were small and dark and beady. They were overwhelmed by the flesh of his face, like a pig’s eyes.

Manny presented a nice contrast. He wore an Armani suit in a dusky plum color and a collarless linen shirt open to the third button. His slick black hair was pulled back into a pony tail and he had a tiny little triangle of an imperial mustache beneath his lower lip. Indoors, in a Read more

Facebook, Privacy, Monopolies, and Marketing Revenue…

More than several years ago, I used to snicker at those who were (in my mind) overly concerned about Google OWNING all of the data in their disparate enterprises. “What would happen if they would put all of that data into a large data warehouse and mine it?” folks would ask.

For the most part I thought of that as tinfoil hat stuff. (Did you notice where I said “More than several years ago?” I came to the quick realization that those with tinfoil hats may have a point. And it is not on the top of their heads.

Enter Facebook’s latest privacy debacle. Another site (granted social media vs search engine) that appears to be not NEAR as graceful as Google and dancing on that three way line of conundrums between privacy, monopoly (which Facebook book arguably is…FOR THE MOMENT), and marketing revenue.

I read with interest Louis Cammarosano’s take on the subject. And in very large measure I agree. His take was more bent towards the use of social media in business. But the underlying privacy issues conundrum remains the same. We (consumers) enjoy social media. Heck, it’s FREE. (please remember that NOTHING is FREE-grin). Nothing.

Facebook is making a huge miscalculation (in my opinion) by not dancing as gracefully as Google has. They are giving people an excuse to head for the exits when they had over 400 million people comfortably numb. (That is more than the population of the US and the President only gets around HALF of the vote…and you have to ask yourself…who REALLY is the most powerful man in the world?) It may be more of a footrace between Obama, Zuckerberg, and Page/Brinn than one would care to admit.

Could a President really get THAT many people to waste THAT MUCH time at work??? One wonders.

Although Google has danced more gracefully, that is not saying much.

I guess my wish for 2010 and beyond is this…here’s to competition (it makes all parties better), the lack of monopolies, privacy, and to do that, folks need to be prepared to pay for what they receive in terms Read more

In Remembrance of a Stealthy Icon – The King

I remember one day back in early 1974. I was sittin’ at my desk, a 22 year old pondering the future, as it was the first full time day after being part time since a teenager. We were in a recession, but I had less than a clue what that was. It was about six weeks ’till I was to be married, and I needed to figure out what to do no later than 4:30 PM yesterday afternoon.

As the son of the boss I had no dearth of available mentors. Hell, he spawned more successful new brokerages from 1964-75 than almost any two companies. Back in the period 1964-70 his East San Diego office was akin to the freakin’ ’27 Yankees for Heaven’s sake. Problem was, most of ’em were busy runnin’ their own firms now. Dad had hung up the semi-permanent Gone Golfin’ sign on his office door. He’d downsized from six offices plus an escrow to one office and no escrow.

What was left? Me, and the 8-10 loyal agents for whom he’d kept that lone remaining office open. So I started calling the OldSchool guys who’d mentored me as a snot-nosed teen who knew everything (not a damned thing). A couple hours later I was faced with a dilemma. Though the flavor of their advice had differed slightly, the crux had been the same — work harder than you ever have at anything, and see more people who can tell ya to ‘go to hell’ than the other guy. Lord only knows what magic elixir I was expecting them to serve up, but that certainly wasn’t it.

Of course, of all the agents who knew the generic answer before asking the question, I’d been given that answer countless times. Why even ask then? Cuz it’s human nature to want the easy way, when, paradoxically, the easy way is only easy to understand — not necessarily to execute. Lookin’ back, I guess a 22 year old searchin’ for the EasyButton isn’t exactly unique.

I got tired of hangin’ with the leftovers from a bygone era, and moved my Read more

The Desperation Waltz

A Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Willie story

“Hey, Tommy,” Jimmy said without looking up from the newspaper he had spread out on the bar, “what’s Reubenesque mean again?”

“Jeesh! It means ‘fat’. How many times do I have to tell you that?”

“Statuesque?”

“Fat.”

“Weight proportionate?”

“Fat.”

“Full figured?”

“That means really fat. Whaddaya doin’ that for? We got a whole club full of babes here. How do you expect to get next to a girl in the personals?” He thumbed his own chest. “Tommy Klein, he knows better. Tommy Klein is an operator. You just stand back and watch me work.”

This is the truth: I don’t even like bars. I can go for years at a stretch without taking a drink, and the last place I’d be tempted to drink would be a bar. But I had come to a club that is not but ought to be called Desperation to see a singer and songwriter, a chanteuse named Celia Redmond who is making a name for herself.

Desperation is her name for the dumpy little country bar stuck right in the heart of the big city. The real name is “Country City” or something equally forgettable. It’s a costume bar, really, as phony in its way as a gay bar or the tap-room at the American Legion Hall. Country transplants and the children of country transplants and would-be country transplants put on clothes they don’t wear all day, speak in an affected diction and dance and drink until the house band strikes up “The Desperation Waltz” at midnight. Desperation is a place to escape from the real life of the big city: Office work, factory work, construction work — and unemployment.

Jimmy and Tommy were not untypical of the crowd, just more immanently pitiful. Jimmy’s a gentle giant of a man, as broad as he is tall. His hair was cut down to the scalp and he had a fringy little mustache and his neck was very, very red. Tommy was dapper. If Jimmy had asked me what dapper means, I would have told him: “Short, and overcompensating for it.” He was trim and toned without actually bearing muscles and his Read more

@tcar’s manifesto: “Toothy chumps of the world unite. You have nothing to lose but your brains.”

Witness: “The next big project from 2nd Century will be Realtor University. A fully accredited educational institution[.]”

I do not for one second hate to say I told you so:

We know sheep will follow a Judas goat to their slaughter, as will cattle. Now the NAR is testing the idea on lemmings…

Todd Carpenter becomes one with the Borg and the charming little lemmings elbow each other out of the way to dive off the cliff head first.

One of two things will happen: Todd will discover he’s made a terrible mistake and will quit this job with dispatch — I hope very loudly. Or: Todd will deliver us to our slaughter.

Anyone who expects anything other than evil from the National Association of Realtors has either not been paying attention, or, much worse, embraces that evil.

In any case, this is not something to be celebrated, not even to affect to be “nice” in chorus with the rest of the lemmings.

The NAR may want to infest our world in order to destroy it. More likely, they want to take it over.

What they certainly do not want is to approach the public as we do — openly, authentically, concealing nothing. The entire edifice of residential real estate is founded on secrets and lies, and, as long as it is, the NAR will be nothing but a cesspit of tyrannical motives and vendorslut con games.

And — more is the pity — Todd Carpenter cannot take their money without being their shill and their Judas goat — or worse.

I’m saddened by this, because of all the gutless big-name real estate webloggers, Todd has more guts than most. But nothing good for us will come of this, and the only good that can come of it for Todd is for him to escape with his scruples intact as quickly as he can.

Too late for that now. If you’re in for a penny, you’re in for a pound.

Four years ago, almost, when I started this little project, I had huge hopes for a newer, cleaner style of real estate, one based on integrity and transparency. I’ve watched as Read more

Dawn in America: The American Evolution

I’ll say it out loud;   I like that Arizona Immigration Law.  I was initially unclear about it but I read the text , alongside the text of the 4th Amendment.  For me, it boiled down to what  an “unreasonable search” is and what is “reasonable suspicion“.  At the end of the day, I have to trust that the law enforcement officers will follow both the letter and the spirit of the law.

That’s not why I like this law so much.  I support open borders.   As far as I’m concerned, let anyone come into this country…only after we have abolished all the silly federal subsidies like health care, public education, and welfare for all.  Until we do that, we have to ration those silly programs and the litmus test of citizenship seems a reasonable enough hurdle for that rationing.

I like it because a state had a problem, couldn’t get the Federal Government to enforce its laws, and decided to take matters into its own hands.  This law was more powerful than nullification or secession because it asserted the state’s sovereignty, while being in full compliance with the Federal statute. It worked within the system and exposed the system for the folly that it is.

I like it because it is the Bunker Hill of the American Evolution.  Notice I didn’t use an R in that word.  I’m optimistic that reason will triumph over irrational thought in The American Evolution.  There will be no violence nor bloodshed in the American Evolution but there will be a test of wills.  I’m watching it unfold right now:

Arizona made a law.   A few California cities and a Texas city decided to boycott Arizona, for enacting that law.  No conventions, no trade, no money whatsover, from these “progressive” cities, for the “racists” in Arizona.  Sadly, my city followed San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Austin in the boycott.  Pretty stupid, huh?  Well,  California politicians live in a narcissistic bubble.  The past California influence on the world’s economy has afforded them the luxury of doing what they want, in SPITE of local businesses.

…until today.

San Diegans are yelling  “Psyche” to Read more

Turbocharge Your Income On A Steady Diet Of 3-0 Bases Loaded Fastballs

Here’s what hasn’t missed for me since Reagan was in office — a super narrowly defined database, from which you can call or write, and eventually email. Stop rollin’ your eyes, as this isn’t what you might be thinking. The concept of ‘narrowly defined’ has taken a beating, to the point it means almost nothing these days. I mean a concrete set of parameters, ALL of which must be present for a home to be in the database.

Who’s most likely a potential seller in your market? What facts will be in evidence on tax assessor records? It’ll be a little different for each region, each neighborhood. Sometimes you’ll need many factors, while other areas might need only a few.

For example, in my neck of the woods, San Diego, my Virtual Farm contains real estate investors who share ALL of these factors.

  • They bought in the spring of 2003 or earlier
  • They haven’t refinanced — OR — LTV is 70% or less
  • The property(s) is 1-4 units
  • They’re located in a small subset of zip codes
  • They live outa town
  • You can mail all these folks every month for less than $100. Budget super tight? Do it quarterly, or monthly, or to half of ’em each month. When I used to do this, before I stopped doing business in San Diego back in late 2003, it produced like clockwork. Rarely did a letter generate nothing. My best year produced six figures — from 104 names. When I had their phone numbers, my batting average zoomed, big time. But then, I don’t cry when folks reject me, so I’m willing to make those calls. 🙂

    Let’s use a baseball analogy.

    When constructed as narrowly as I’m advising, this database will be populated by nothin’ but the kinda reduced velocity, straight-as-a-string fastballs delivered on 3-0 counts with the bases loaded. What’d’ya think the batting average is for hitters on that particular pitch — especially since even Grandma knows exactly what’s comin’ — and where? I don’t know, but my experience watching MLB since the fifth grade, plus my years of umpiring at a relatively high level, leads me to Read more

    Unchained melodies: You either get Glee — or you will.

    A fun bit from Mother’s Day was agreeing with my mom, on the phone, about the intense and comical excellence that is Glee, the FOX-TV musical teen melodrama. The melodrama is hugely repetitive, but still very rude and pomo, but the music is often simply breath-taking.

    There is this: They harmonize the voices, so everyone sings with perfect pitch in a slightly mechanical tone. But the song choices — coupled with the dancing, the meta-melodrama, and the incredible quantity of incredible vocalists — serve to deliver the aural equivalent of a Broadway musical every week.

    But that’s not right: I hate Broadway musicals, and I love Glee. The whole thing just works. I make time for it somewhere in my week, every week.

    Here’s a fun contrast, playing off of last week’s episode. First up is Total Eclipse of the Heart, as recorded by Bonnie Tyler. This song was written by Jim Steinman, who wrote all of Meatloaf’s hits. The tune has melodrama of its own to spare, but it’s still a totally killer rock ballad, maybe the last chapter in the story of The Seventies.

    Glee took this song and wove it into its plot — not without consequences. Take this, for example, from the original lyrics:

    Once upon a time, there was light in my life.
    Now there’s only love in the dark.*

    That’s painfully simple, but it works as poetry because it’s so excruciatingly full of pain. But to make Total Eclipse work in the context of the Glee story arc, that lyric was cut.

    Not cool. But still… This is a searing cover of the song. When Rachel soars upward on her second time through the chorus, I’m ready to take flight with her.

    Sadly, my mother doesn’t love South Park, my other weekly TV obsession. But if you will give Glee a chance, it could be you’ll see why so many seemingly sane people are raving about it.

     
    *She sings it right in this video. A mystery…

    WP Cache plugin creating firesavez7 Virus Zombie?!

    If you have no idea what i’m talking about, you’re one of the lucky few!

    This weekend my sites were attacked by a virus trying to install maleware and redirecting visitors to URL that started with firesavez7.com/ and then a long line of characters that led straight down a path to virus hell.

    I have enough computer prophylactic mechanisms in place that I did not download anything but the job of cleanup is just beginning.

    I was out of town at a conference this weekend and was unable to be in front of my computer, but while frequently checking my analytics with my iPhone app I noticed my daily traffic, bounce rate and time on site were WAY down.  Like almost non-existent!

    My sites are hosted at Bluehost, and with a little research discovered that they were indeed a victim of this attack along with many other providers.

    The Solution was not that bad

    To initially resolve the problem, I had to restore my entire public_html directory to a previously backed up version from about a week ago, this was Sunday night.  That seemed to solve the problem.

    I went the entire day yesterday with no occurrence of the dreaded redirect notice and anti-virus alarm.  Site traffic, time on site and bounce rate (vitals) were normal….whew, that was close.

    But the dead rose to feed again

    Tuesday is my marketing day.  The day that I send an update to my entire consumer and agent database (9,100 recipients of this email update) to notify them of the articles I wrote this week about claiming California’s tax credit.

    Initially, there were no issues….and then it started.  One, then two, then three emails came rolling in warning me that I was sending out a virus!  HOLY S%&T!  This isn’t happening.  I saw my reputation being flushed before my eyes.

    I screamed through my site with absolutely no challenges, no virus, no warnings, no redirects….what the hell was going on?!

    I jumped on the phone with the smartest and nerdiest guy I know, Ryan Hartman.  He mentions that it’s common for viruses to attack your .htmaccess file in WordPress – so we look at it.

    Ryan saw some stuff in there Read more