Squidoo Rocks! Record Payout and a Giant Squid

The global economy is in a rut and the US presidential campaign has devolved into an ugly unproductive mess but at least I'm having a good week on Squidoo.

Every quarter, Squidoo promotes a new batch of lensmasters to Giant Squid status. To qualify, you need a minimum of 50 good high quality lenses. I ended the quarter with 55 lenses and apparently they were deemed worthy because I got word late Monday that I'm now a Giant Squid!

So, what are the benefits of being a Giant Squid? First looks at cool new features, an extra lensrank boost for your lenses, an official badge (see above) on all your lenses and a bunch of other stuff that is probably interesting only to fellow lensmasters.

Monday was also when the August payouts were posted and I finally earned over $100 in a single month! On top of that, Squidoo HQ found an error in their payment calculations that caused lensmasters to be underpaid in prior months. They corrected that by issuing a one time adjustment to square everybody up. My share of that payment was nearly $80 which gave me a total of just over $200 for the month.

Granted, I should have been getting that $80 in bits over the last 2 years but I'm glad Squidoo owned up to the mistake and set things right. They're a good operation that works hard to do the right thing and I'm glad to be part of the community there.

I guess my next Squidoo goal will be 100 lenses. That's a ways off yet...it took me over 2 years to get 55.

One Hundred Push Ups - Week 3 Update

I'm now into week 3 of my one hundred push up workout and seeing progress. The week 1 and week 2 workouts weren't easy but I could finish them. After completing week 2 I did the next max push ups test and cranked out 32. That's a 28% improvement over my initial test when I started the program.

The first week 3 work out was tougher...set one was 25 push ups which tired my arms enough that they gave out before I finished a couple of the later sets. I visited the workout website again and found that they had updated the workouts since I printed them out. Looks like they distributed the number of push ups across the sets more evenly so you don't burn out on the first set.

I did better with the "easier" week 3 work out, but my arms still hit muscle failure before completing the 3rd and 5th sets. So I'll keep repeating that workout until I finish it. Minor set back but the third time should do it.

One Hundred Push Ups Or Bust

One hundred push ups. That's my new fitness goal. The other day my wife sent me a site with a training program to help you get to one hundred consecutive push ups in 6 weeks and I figured "why not?".

Like a lot of people, I've let myself get out of shape as I've gotten older. Even when playing sports in high school and college I don't remember ever doing one hundred push ups straight. 50 or 60 maybe, but not 100. So this will help me get working out again plus I'll be better at doing push ups than I was in my prime. Cool.

The program looks good, it's similar to a pyramid type work out and starts with an initial test of how many push ups you can do now. Then you follow one of 3 workout plans based on your initial number. The plan tells you how many push ups to do in each set and how much rest to take between sets. You do three work outs a week and each work out should only take 5-10 minutes total.

Last night was my initial test...25 push ups. Not too shabby. I'll do my first workout tomorrow. There's another push up test every two weeks to measure progress and adjust the plan as needed.

Will I be able to do one hundred push ups? We'll know in 6 weeks...hopefully less.