Here's proof that whining works. I whined a little bit on my Blog Drive-Bys for 2007-05-03 and Erika Jean felt pity on me and made a cute little graphic image when giving me link love (I'm using it without permission, so I can only use it once).

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Colleen over at GeekySpeaky wrote about pagerank theft. People who saw blogs on the "D-List" (bloggers who had enabled a dofollow plugin) were making multiple comments but were not installing the dofollow plugin on their own blogs. That's just wrong and I saw it coming, so I stayed away from the D-List. It's no secret that I have the plugin installed, but I'm not going to advertise it all over the net.

Brian at Genius Types wrote about his reasons NOT to specialize with different blogs for different topics. I tend to agree with him and that's exactly how my blog is. I don't rotate topics the same way, but the general idea is the same.

The Happy Blogger at Genki Desu Yo!! wrote a short piece about Bonsai. I saw these trees in different places when I was stationed on Okinawa from 1987-1988. These are some great trees to have around, but you need a humid climate (not like Arizona) for them to thrive.

The juggling mom at gimme a break wrote about the danger of living beyond your means with credit cards. I gave up ALL of my credit cards when I moved to the Philippines. I should have kept one. They say hindsight is 20/20 and boy, are they right about that.

Do you want to see some funny stuff? Lachlan over at Rich Gentlemen Hide does his own comics and artwork. Hilarious stuff!

I don't know how, but I found another webcomic at Gummy - The Lovesick Alien Webcomic immediately after the previous one. Maybe it's because I need more humor in my life and unseen forces push me that way. Or maybe it's just the luck of the draw. Who knows?

Luke at HellsForecast pointed out a new novel that paints Jesus as a rapist and the virgin Mary as a rape victim. This is really going to go over well with the Christian communities, don't you think?

Brian at Home Based Business pointed to a service that will help you right a disclosure policy for your blog. I found it at an opportune time when I'm beginning the process of writing paid posts. I hope to have that resolved this week. Look at the bar between the header and the first post on the page and you'll see "Disclosure Policy" as one of my static pages. (Update 2007-07-27: I moved it to my right sidebar.)

Eve at Home Biz Blogger realized before it was too late that the readers of a blog come first. I almost fell into the trap of paying attention to stats and numbers myself. I probably spent too much time on it as it was.

Martin at HomeOfficeVoice wrote about Meebo, the IM that works from your browser. It's been around a while, but I just recently started using it myself. Some of my relatives and friends use so many different instant messengers, it's the only way I can stay in contact with all of them without having all the individual IMs open at the same time, hogging up all my resources.

Azmeen of HTNet wrote an interesting article on domain names that are attached to hosting subscriptions. I didn't think about it then when I switched mine, but luckily it's handled by two different entities at the same location. I think that's important when and if I decide to change hosting providers (again).

I'm not sure what his name is (L. B. or Albie or something), but he subjected himself to the torture of old Chinese Kung Fu movies for far longer than I ever could. Check out his story at i s a n y o n e O u t t h e r e ?.