This may be more like Seven Reasons I’m Too Lazy To Blog, but we’ll work under the assumption I’ve just been busy. It might not look like it, but I’ve actually been busier than a one legged man playing Twister. There’s been a bunch of stuff happening in the background this week.

WP 3 I finally upgraded my poor blog to WordPress 3.0. Part of the reason is I like to let other people work out the bugs before I risk breaking my blog. I’m starting to be at the point where I get enough traffic and am lacking enough time such that if this thing goes down it’s a real pain in the butt. I’m happy to say that is was a painless experience.

Part of the reason I didn’t want to upgrade to WP 3.0 was I’d heard that there were some bugs between it and Thesis. I hasn’t upgraded from 1.6 to 1.7 yet, for the same lazy reasons as WP, and I really didn’t want to break my thesis installation. This was also pretty slick, although it still requires some FTP work. Anyways, I like it a lot, and even with the random GPL licensing legal conversation out there, Thesis is my preferred premium theme and is pretty fantastic for SEO.

1962 Stats I updated the ever popular Edmonton Real Estate Values Since 1962 spreadsheet with the must recent numbers. It goes up to June 2010 now, and I’ll give it till the fall and then recalculate the retrospective analysis. For now it’s all here if you want the data in a more accessible and useful format than the PDF’s you can get from the Edmonton Real Estate Board.

Housing Type Stats Since I was going through EREB stats anyways, I pulled the last few years worth of Edmonton’s average house prices by housing type into a spreadsheet and made a wee graph. Again, the data is here for you to enjoy and make use of.

Some have reminded me that I haven’t published the retirement savings post I mentioned in last week’s post about my generation being potentially screwed in retirement. I wanted to do more research into the actual numbers based on how old I am, when I want to retire, when my kids will go to University, etc. Stay tuned, it’ll come out this week.

It’s been a bit of a trend, but I’ve done more renos! Surprise! Actually, Leigh’s been the real rockstar of this project. Her role is much more that of a Project manager, since we’re using sub-trades for a lot of the work, but she’s still put a lot of sweat into this job.

And finally, I sent out two JV letters to friends who are interested in doing some real estate together. Unlike a lot of people in this industry, I don’t use this site to get people to invest with me. You can’t just throw me an email and then send me a cheque. I prefer to work with people I know reasonably well, have some shared interests and mutual friends. It keeps us both accountable and makes sure we’re both looking for the same things.

And actually, one more thing. I’m pretty stoked for the REIN fieldtrip and Multi Family weekend in August, although I’ll be at a wedding on the Saturday. Drop me a line if you’re going to be in town from somewhere far away, cause it’s always nice to meet new people. I get a kick when I bump into people who read my blog.

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In about 48 hours I’ll be getting on a plane and returning to the Great White North, which gives me cause to reflect on the past 3 1/2 months. I’ll be doing some more of that in the next few posts (as I’ll have a lot of time in airports to write them), but I’m going to talk about Continuous Improvement for a bit.

This weekend I finally wrote the test to become a Google Analytics Qualified Individual (GAIQ). For those who aren’t familiar with Google Analytics (GA) it’s a program which lets you see how much traffic is coming to your website and what it’s doing there. I’ve used it with huge sites making millions of dollars through e-commerce, and I’ve used it on little blogs like this one. The test was $50, which isn’t a trivial sum for a certificate which looks like they copied one used by a kindergarten teacher, but that’s not the point.

The point is that for the last three months, I haven’t just been fruitlessly searching for a job, roaming the European countryside on vacation and drinking the fruits of Ireland. I’ve been working to improve myself. Some of it’s been little stuff, like changing this blog over to the Thesis theme and starting to learn about WordPress hooks and CSS.

Then some of it’s taken more time, like the Google Analytics exam, or the reading I’ve done. You can see some of it in my Google Reader or my Delicious bookmarks. I’ve done a little writing for friends (see my story on an iPhone worm at WebAnalytics World). I’ve released another rental site ranking whitepaper and put on a free webinar on internet marketing.

In everything I do, I’m always looking for ways to improve what I do and how I do it, from sailing, to work, to music, to my marriage. I work to cultivate a spirit of continuous improvement, always trying to do better, in everything I do. Sitting on a beach for more than a week or so just isn’t in my nature.

I’ve been offered a position back at Enquiro. I know things have changed there in the short time I’ve been gone. I hope they find that I’ve changed too.

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It’s been almost two years since I started this blog, and it’s high time for a redesign!

If you’re a regular reader (or get my email updates or RSS) you may notice things changing quite a bit over the next week or two. If you see something you like or dislike, please leave a comment. If there’s stuff on other sites you like, leave a comment and I’ll check it out.

For now I’ve switched things to the Thesis WordPress Theme, a theme which has a lot of flexibility, and I’m using it for several other projects too. As usual, this blog is the test bed for my other SEO and webdesign projects.

I’m also considering reversing my previous stance against advertising. Anyone have strong thoughts one way or the other? Are you interested in advertising?

That’s all! It’s a sunny weekend in Ireland and there’s a big football (Irish Soccer) match on today!

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