Last night I got back from Dusseldorf, Germany after attending Worlds 2009.

I left my house on Thurs, Oct. 8 at around 2:15pm to catch a bus 30 minutes away that would take me to the Leeds Airport.  I waited about 10 minutes at the stop before getting picked up.  The thing that confused me about the bus was that it didn’t announce any stops, and had no map, so if you weren’t familiar with the area, you were basically SOL.  The bus luckily drives straight to the airport, so it is hard to miss the stop.

I arrived about 3 hours before my flight, just to be safe not knowing how long the bus would take, how busy the airport would be, etc.  I ended up having to basically strip down at the airport because I kept setting the alarm off.  After getting through security. I just sat down and relaxed.  The thing I found wierd about the airport was that it didn’t announce which gate your plane would be until about 30 minutes before it departed.  Luckily this airport was small, so it wasn’t a problem.

The flight departed around 8:00pm.  It was really only my first night flight, so landing in Dusseldorf and seeing all the lights I thought was awesome.  I woman at sat next to on the plane was also going to be training out of the airport, so we basically walked through the airport together and got on the same train.  The signs at DUS (Dusseldorf International Airport) were horrible.  After getting through setting and the passport check, I had no idea where to go, so I basically just walked around until I saw a sign for a train.  Once I got to the train, I saw no way to buy tickets, or no maps showing where the trains go.  I asked someone which train to get on to go to the main train station, so I got on it and left.  After a 5 minute ride or so, I got off at the main station.  My next goal from the main station was to get on a train bound for the Luegplaz station.  I was able to find the correct train quite easily.  Once on that train, I kept looking for a map to tell me when to get off, but couldn’t find anything.  I woman sitting next to me asked me where I needed to get off, and then told me it was the next stop.  I luckily knew that since I saw a sign at the previous stop that I recognized.

After getting off at Luegplaz, I walked along the Rhine River looking for the hostel that I was staying at.  It took me about 20 minutes of walking to find it, but once I did I found a bunch of other cubers and was glad to have arrived.

The next several days was full of staying up late, sleeping little, waking up early, missing buses, and cubing.  It was tiring, but well worth it.  On Monday, Oct 12, my flight didn’t leave until 9:00pm.  I spent all of Monday walking about Dusseldorf with 3 Swedish people and Dave Campbell (Canadian).  After eating at a delicious German restaurant, me and the 3 Swedes traveled to the airport together.  After saying goodbye to them, I sat at my gate for around 3 hours and slept a bit.  My flight ended up being about 20 minutes late, but that wasn’t a problem.  Once on the plane, I met a guy from Leeds who lived in Headingley (where I live).  We ended up talking about everything from cubing to the Royal family.  I asked him if he was taking the bus, and he said he was taking a cab, and asked if I wanted to join since we were going close to the same area.  After getting off the plane, I waited for him to get his baggage, and then we went and booked a taxi at the airport office.  The taxi was already waiting for us, so we just hopped on and was on our way.  The taxi driver was really friendly, and it really made the ride home a fun, relaxing adventure.

I got home at around 11pm or so.  What an amazing experience.

Note the following:

1. – In each of the scenarios mentioned above, if the default text is displayed, it will be displayed exactly as typed in by the advertiser.

2. – The case of the user query does not affect how the word is displayed to the user in the ad.  For example, if you use the code {queryterm: default text}, the query term displayed back to the users  will always display in lower case regardless of how the user inputted the query term.

Frequently Asked Questions:

A. Who can use Dynamic Insertion (DKI or DQI)?

Dynamic insertion is available to all advertisers.

B. Why should an advertiser use Dynamic Insertion?

Dynamic Insertion can improve your CTR and overall ad performance by making the ad more relevant to the user’s search keywords in an efficient manner.

C. Why is the default text being displayed, and not the keyword or query term?

The default text displays only when the max character limit is reached.  You may want to revise your ad copy to ensure that the max character limit is not reached for your targeted keywords.

D. What displays on contextual ads

For contextual ads, the default text will always appear.  Contextual ads are based on the page content, not on matched keywords, so there are no specific keywords that match the ad.

E. The default text is required for destination URL, but will the default text ever be displayed in the destination URL?

The default text is only displayed when the maximum character limit is reached.  Since the URL has a very high character limit, it is doubtful the default text will ever appear in the destination URL served to the user.

The summer has been great.  I made way more money than I spent, I’ve traveled probably more than ever, and I even have an extra month of summer left.  Since I am studying in the UK next year, I gained about 40 days extra of summer.

A quick recap of my summer: Finals ended in early May.  Until May 25th or so, I stayed at my house in Golden and worked on affiliate marketing and played ice hockey.  In early June, I went to Albuquerque, NM for a wedding.  In late June I went to Dallas , TX for another wedding.  During this time my affiliate marketing went quite well (we’ll leave it at that).  In early July, I attempted to climb Crestone Peak from the town of Crestone (~6,000 ft ascent).  Later in July, I stayed in Alamosa, sand boarded at the Great Sand Dunes, and went fishing.  In late July, I went back to my house in Golden, went to the Aurora Summer Rubik’s Competition (which I won 4 events, including the 3×3), and then in the last days of July moved out of my house.  In addition to late July, I climbed Grays Peak and Torrey’s Peak (both 14,000+ feet) in the same day.  On July 30th, my family and I celebrated my brothers birthday by going to a Rod Stewart concert in Denver, CO.  In early August, I stayed in Alamosa, went to the Dunes again, and went fishing again.  In mid August, I flew to San Fransisco, CA for US Nationals Rubik’s Competition.  I got back on the 17th, and then last weekend went camping near Leadville, CO.  On Saturday, I climbed Mount Elbert – the tallest mountain in Colorado and the second tallest in the lower 48 states.  I did a cube solve at the top, you can see the video below:

So, another month left.  I still have a lot to do.  In mid September, I’ll be flying to Manchester, UK and will start school about 2 weeks later.  And then about 2 weeks into school, I will be flying to Germany for the 2009 Rubik’s Cube World Championship.  It should be a good time.

Here’s to a great summer, and much, much more ahead!

As much as people cut down on MSN Adcenter, I actually like it; for the most part.  Relative to Google, they are quite small.  But bids are much lower, conversions are decent, and you can still make a lot of money with Adcenter.  The thing I hate most is their ad disapproval system.  When an ad is denied, I get notified a couple days later by email with a huge list of ads and keywords.  I wish they had a notification that appears at the top of the campaign name so we, as the advertiser, knows exactly when an ad or keyword was denied, and which keyword or ad was denied.  It is frustrating to find out that 50% of your traffic for a keyword is gone because an ad was disapproved for some stupid reason.

Jon Volk made a post today with a poll as to whether or not rebill offers were ethical, and whether or not you could promote them.

You can vote on the poll here.

Here is the reply I gave:

I voted ‘No- and I wouldn’t promote them’

Since you are talking about rebill offers that we see all over the affiliate networks these days, I’d say it is completely unethical. The point of the offer is to *clearly* deceive the customer and make them pay a lot more than they think. Think of it this way, if *every* customer knew that they are going to pay $5 now, and $50-$100 in 7 days if they don’t cancel, how many would actually buy the product in the first place? I bet very, very, few.

For rebill offers like subscriptions to magazines, the terms are clearly stated on what they will pay each month or each year, with no ups and downs. These are rebil offers I see as completely fair.

The fact of the matter is that rebill offers such as Acai are clearly there to “rip” the customer, and I don’t see how anyone can deny that. Yes, people should read the TOS, etc. But the only point of the free trail is clearly to get a customers CC so they can be rebilled, whether they know it or not.

What do you think about rebill offers?

Today I went boarding at the Great Sand Dunes in southern Colorado.  I took a couple videos to show what it is like (see below).  Anyone else ever do any sandboarding?