Pink Blog

Good Monday Morning

2011-03-14T06:51:00.000-07:00

Although I have been doing Virtual Administration for about fifteen years now, it isn’t something I have really promoted. I have been busy making websites which is what I like doing. But, many of my customers continue to ask me to do other tasks for them and of course I do.

So after many conversations with some of my colleagues I have decided to expand the Virtual Administration side of my business,because I still like to help my fellow entrepreneurs develop their businesses and websites and I would also like to create more work for some of my fellow administrators.

Additionally, in my continuous quest to learn more I will be starting online lessons this week in SEO Techniques. I already have a basic knowledge and I also have on my team some expert SEO members. For those of you that know me and have worked with me, you know I am a hands on kind of person and even though I might not do all of the tasks myself, I certainly need to know I can if necessary.

So while Pinksky Productions will continue to make beautiful websites we will also continue to make beautiful documents.

I am looking forward to the growth of Pinkoffice.ca and am sure it is going to be a welcome partner to Pinksky Productions and sharing what I will be learning with you in the upcoming weeks and months.

Joan Culbert

Pinksky Productions

Pink Office

2011-02-27T14:00:00.000-08:00

I have been on face book for a very long time now. It has become second nature, a natural part of my life. I stay in touch with friends and family which is all so good, but lately I have had the chance to experience the wonderfulness of face book.

A couple o f months ago I hooked up with a close friend of over 25 years who I had lost touch with, I am not sure who friended who but since then we have had a chance to catch up, get together & remember.

Now, just this week I had a friend request from another friend I knew & worked with (again) over 25 years ago. At first I had no idea who was sending the request until I read the message. She had married and her name had changed, but with a short reminder and a couple of emails later it all came back in a wonderful flood of memories. I knew her mom, she knew mine. Sadly and coincidentally we both lost our mothers three years ago.

We are catching up now.

I still have friends who refuse to join the fb movement. To them I say you are missing out on endless opportunity to contact and reconnect.

And for my other friends who have yet to embrace the internet. Let me know when you are ready and I will be there to help you get started.

Because some of these moments are too good to miss, too good to forget and wonderful to be reminded of.

Joan Culbert
Pinksky Productions

Cooking

2011-02-26T08:50:00.000-08:00

It is a well known fact that I love to work, but I do have hobbies and interests and passions outside of work. One of those passions is cooking. I love to cook and especially love cooking for other people.

Lately cooking in my kitchen has become an even more welcome break at the end of the day , there is a new ingredient, that would be Peter Guo my friend from China who has taught me a whole new way to cook, not only ingredient wise, but socially. I am learning to cook Chinese, not American Chinese but actual true Chinese cooking. It is a entire culture that involves so much more than the actual cooking part.

It is Friday night and a couple friends drop- in…we all make a dish…in the kitchen together we glide like a well oiled machine…olive oil and sesame oil….

We chop for each other, we get ingredients…dishes and vegetables are being passed around.wine is poured…languages are translated. Peter is from Henan, (source of river, is the meaning) because the yellow river crosses through his province, the mother river near middle China….and as he is explaining to me now about where his province is we have an English lesson…Henan has .01 billion population

It’s so wonderful to live in this new culture. Every word has a meaning and so I need to learn it all as we work to understand each other. Did I already say it is so wonderful to live in this new culture.

Every meal conversation ends in a geography lesson, the atlas comes out, laptops are always on hand (one in Chinese) I am watching cooking shows in china and learning to cook based on sight not words, and one in English because of course I do not yet read Chinese and still like to cheat occassionaly.

In China each person makes a dish, so tonight I am trying a new dish Crispy baked Basa, (Vietnamese Catfish) Peter is making something that he cannot tell us what it is (it is his invention), ground pork made with hoisin sauce, and wrapped in tofu noodle with fresh red pepper and cucumbers.

Susanne, rice pilaf, sauté dry brown golden pasta, tbsp butter, melt, chopped onion, sauté a couple minutes, add 1 cup long grain rice and pinch of sea salt stir and add one and a half cups chicken broth, Boil, the simmer for fifteen minutes, then sit for five (I write this down mostly so I will remember).

We are already planning tomorrow’s trip to the market to get our ingredients for fresh Sushi.

It’s good

Joan Culbert
Pinksky Productions

Beware Internet Dangers (Part 1)

2010-12-03T08:26:00.000-08:00

February this year my website was hacked. I found out through a colleague, it was very disappointing. Not knowing why or how I began to do research. After several days of telephone conversations with go daddy, who at that time hosted my account, what I was able to find out was the "hackers" do it for no other reason than they can & that my only option was to delete the site & upload a safe version from back up.

Sadly I lost a years worth of blogs, (blogging is really about as it happens) & the momentum I had built over the past year came to a stop.

I continued my research, reading everything I could find. A couple of helpful sites were http://smackdown.blogsblogsblogs.com/2008/06/24/how-to-completely-clean-your-hacked-wordpress-installation/
and
stopbadware.org

I was able to find the malware located in my website and remove it, as well I reported the villains to Google. I also learned updates are extremely important, especially when working with Word press and PHP, in avoiding Malware. Also it really pays to find a hosting provider that takes security seriously.

I have been wary about venturing back into the world of blogging, but am doing so now cautiously and with the hope that I will be more successful and that my new found diligence will prevent any further attacks.