What have we come to?  This really makes me sick.  I just got this (unapproved) comment on my JibberJobber blog:

There were some yellow flags that made me think this *might* be a spam comment:

1. The blog post is pretty old… most of the time if I get a comment on a post older than 2 weeks it is spam, and
2. The comment itself is without substance.

Nonetheless, I thought maybe it was legit… but then something really caught my eye… look at the commenter’s URL:

Ripoff Report? Seriously?  Someone wants a link to the ripoff report?  Now my curiosity is piqued.

So I click on the link, and indeed the name of the commenter will be hyperlinked to a report on Ripoff Report.  The event has to do with a doctor (vet) who apparently did something wrong…

It gets better.

The person who took their dog in to this vet is probably not the same person who left this comment.  Check this out – when I click the Whois link (this one, again, from the image above):

… I find out the person who left this comment is in Amsterdam.

From this, I’m guessing that the person who is mad at his/her vet hired a person or firm to spread libelous comments on the internet, with the intention of doing regular ol’ SEO. Not cool.

In fact, quite disgusting.

Note to the vet: Dr. what’syourname (I’m not going to say here, as he/she doesn’t deserve any bad link bait or negative SEO (yes, it’s in the top image, but search engines aren’t smart enough to figure that out)), there are tactics to get rid of this that are quite easy…. drop me a note and I’m happy to introduce you to my colleagues who specialize in this type of stuff (or go to ReachCC.com to find them yourself).

Note to person who is responsible for this filth: thanks a lot.  I was just getting my faith in humanity restored, and then I have to see this crap.

I have liked Chip Hartman from the minute I met him… I love his creativity and sense of humor.  And he’s a genuinely cool guy, to boot!  Here’s an image he made for my new boy (this is not a pic of my son) – click the image to go to Chip’s site:

Thanks Chip – very clever!

Yesterday my wife gave birth to our fifth child.  Mom and baby are healthy, and we feel very blessed.  

I didn’t intend to share much about what was going on, as we’ve chosen to keep our personal life fairly personal… so all I did was write a blog post about going to the hospital (just a few sentences).  

When we got to the hospital, however, I found out we had a really nice internet connection. So I jumped on my email.  And I got on twitter.  And I had the crazy idea of sharing more than I intended about the birth.  Of course, I wanted to tie it into me, and my business, which is our life, and how we’re going to pay for this kid :p  here’s what I tweeted:

I wondered if I crossed a personal/private line, but the reactions I got were terrific!  It was fun, and I started to get some phenominal responses… you can see the thread at either of these (see jasonalba or #babytime (which has less)).  Really fun stuff, as you follow my tweets and some of the responses I got from others.

I was amazed, also, at how many Facebook responses I got.  On Facebook, I am Friends with a lot of people who know my wife… and I’m sure they were happy to get the news and updates.

I just spent an hour going through the reactions, and for the sake of recording history, I grabbed a few screen snippets of a few of my favorite parts of the conversations…. enjoy!

Here’s all of my tweets from the hospital… notice I tried to not flood the twittersphere with too much info.

An otherwise brilliant person, Mr. Druid (a good friend) was the only person who didn’t quite get the contest and submitted a guess on weight instead of time… !

Accused of not being supportive? Nah, not me :p

We kind of had a funky-cool communication thing going on… still, I wondered how many people (mostly women) would have echoed Gayle’s sentiments? (Gayle is a JibberJobber partner)

LOL – I thought my wife might not be too keen on this, but it worked out for us (maybe if I tweeted more she’d have been livid… )

After much frustration with all of the chair-things for me, I broke down and CUSSED!  Robert’s reply was classic 🙂

This was hillarious – advice from the wife of a guy who I used to work with.  I read this and then headed out for food :p

My coauthor, aka Mr. Sensitive, offering to help kill some time at the hospital.  I kindly declined his offer :p  ROFL

Al summed it up, and helped me realize there were people who were actually reading all of the updates!

This was a cool affirmation from Mari, queen of Facebook.

I was hopeful that @cnn would have picked up on this – alas, apparently they hadn’t 🙁

Hillarious.  If you have a fifth because of this, you have to name him Jason.  Or her Jason.  

Here’s the winner – he beat out the next closest by 3 minutes!

What started out as “should I??” became a really fun way to get to know my contacts and friends better!

I just read this article I found on Yahoo about billionaires… I like to read “where did they come from” and trend type stuff… here are the characteristics from the article, and where I fall:

Parents have a high aptitude for math. I’m not sure about my parents aptitude for math, but I’m going to say it’s not “high.”  Ask my dad about his failed math career and he blames his math teacher, Charlie Brown, who apparently sucked as a teacher and ruined math for my dad.  Nothing like Sergey and Brin’s parents :p  -1

Parents who are engineers, accountants of small-business owners. My dad was government (-1) but my mom has owned her own business for over 15 years, and always had an entrepreneurial knack… indeed, her parents owned a business for decades (+1).

Born in the Fall (specifically September, definitely NOT December). I was born in November – is that Fall or Winter?  I dunno. -1

Never started college or never finished college. I started and finished, and then got an MBA.  I guess that’s -2.

Billionaires from finance (the industry) have graduate degrees. +1.  But 9 out of 10 are from Ivy Leagues. -1.

Worked at Goldman Sachs. -1.  Isn’t that a clothing store on Fifth Avenue? lol (I know, I know, it’s not)

“Suffered bitter professional setback early in their careers…” Oh yeah, totally.  I should get bonus points for this.  +1

Yale’s Skull and Bones ultra-secret society. Not.  -1

Even with inferior math skills, I’ve added this up to -5 (out of a possible -10 to +10).  Maybe I can be a millionaire instead.  Or perhaps just a thousandaire.

Tonight my five year old daughter confessed at the dinner table that she has a crush on Kung Fu Panda.  No kidding.  I almost fell of my chair laughing.

I kind of have a crush on the ol’ bear also 😉

—

This morning my 7 year old son came down to my office in dramatic tears.  The ones that almost make you want to cry without knowing why.

me: what’s wrong?

him: The tooth fairy didn’t come… blubber sniff blubber… (yesterday the dentist removed two of his teeth)

me: oh man, I’m really sorry (feeling pretty guilty… bad daddy!)

him: and I LOST my teeth!  They weren’t under the pillow.

… a few minutes later he found his teeth.

me: where were they???

him: Under (my sister’s) pillow!

Good thing I don’t drink coffee – I would have spewed it all over my keyboard!

His sister, in the middle of the night, stole his teeth from under his pillow and put them under hers… hopeful little girl :p

—

I overheard his in the airport a few days ago.  No kidding.  I couldn’t believe it.  It came from a guy who looked like he was about 25ish… maybe a little older.  Dressed in business casual, with a laptop bag… you know, a responsible guy with a job.

“… all I remember was that I was trying really hard to act sober.  But I know I was really drunk.”

OMG.  I better anyone who was around him KNEW that (a) he was really drunk, and (b) any acting sober wasn’t fooling anyone.

Can a really drunk guy effectively act sober enough to trick everyone around him that he’s not really drunk?

A good friend of mine, Chip Hartman, who is the Editor-in-Chief at the ETP Network, recently watched the 2 hour webinar I did called Blog Marketing 201-501.  Here’s what he had to say:

Just finished your Blog Marketing 201-501 Webinar and was totally blown away!  This is truly phenomenal, in-depth coverage of blogging with all the critical linkages to SEO peppered throughout the presentation.

I have 9 pages of notes and a completely full bladder because I just didn’t want to pause the program even for a minute – and when a man delays peeing in order to stay tuned in to a webinar, … well, that’s high praise, sir.

Thank you, thank you, thank you and since it’s a Jason Alba production, I’m not the least bit surprised that it’s another blockbuster.

And now if you’ll excuse me, I have something I need to do …

I thought his “something to do” was implement the stuff from the webinar… alas, it was something else (I had to reread a few times) :)And with that, I’m ending the year with a big smile!

Check this out – I finally accomplished my lifelong goal to get my inbox under control.  I grabbed this just a few minutes ago:

See that?  NO email in my inbox!  Yeehaw!  or w00t or yippee or whatever.

The thing is, I didn’t get to this monumentous point by abiding by the Tim Ferriss 4 hour work week ideas, or by applying Nerd Guru’s ideas (using GTD), or by listening to Kent Blumberg’s tips…

I got to this point by accidentally, permanently deleting every singe message that was in my inbox – almost 600 messages.

Yeah, it sucks big time.  But I can’t really do anything about it.  Dangit.  Sometimes the grass isn’t greener…