Life and Times of Brad Owens
Site News
Yet Again, Another Site Update
Feb 28th
As you may have noticed, things have changed a bit here on OwensDomain. I REALLY liked the last update I made to the site but after having it for a while and seeing the lack of effort Jenny and I were putting into keeping it updated with fresh content, I decided to do away with it.
I also realized that the change to the last format wasn’t exactly the easiest to navigate for some. I sort of forgot who my target audience was for all of this. I made this site to keep friends and family updated on what was going on in my world and to share whatever I wanted on my own web space. I started looking into companies like Posterous, Delicious, YouTube…etc and thought to myself “why am I spreading my content all over the place when I have a perfectly good website for all of that?”
So OwensDomain is back to the basics. Hear about a recent video I made? It’s probably here. Hear about something fun I did? A picture of that is probably here. Want to know what I’m getting into? My Twitter feed is on the right side of this page.
Sorry to all those who didn’t like the last change. As great as it was, I don’t think it belonged on this site. Maybe it will surface somewhere in the future (hint hint).
-Brad
Another Milestone! 10,000 Unique Visitors
Oct 23rd
For those of you who followed along from the beginning, you may remember how excited I was about my 100th post, then you may remember when I hit 1,000 visitors. Now there’s something new to be excited about. I’ve just passed 10,000 unique visitors to OwensDomain! How incredible! I put together a video to thank you and to give you a little preview of what’s to come. More >
The Engagement
Jul 25th
Yes, it is true. In case you haven’t heard, Jenny and I got engaged last night.
I know, wow.
I’ll tell you how I did it and then you can watch the video and hear her reaction.
Jenny and I have had a running joke. She thinks engagement rings are way too expensive and instead she would like a simple twist tie to wear. A few weeks ago I discovered that they make shiny twist ties. Just this past weekend I ordered a few of them (2,000 to be exact) and decided that I’d use them in my proposal. I designed the ring the only time I could get away from Jenny in the beginning of July but it was ready to be picked up while I was in Ohio. My parents came to the rescue and picked it up for me and then Tim was nice enough to come “play with the puppy” (bring me the ring) Thursday.
I decided to take the ring along with me last night thinking that if the moment felt right and a few of our friends were around, I’d do it, but if not, I’d wait till sometime during the week. I went over to Jenny’s house and met her for dinner but before we left, I gave her one of the twist ties. She immediately started joking with me about it and playfully put it on her finger to which I replied “take that off, it’s creepy”. That didn’t sit well with her so I started the night out greeeeaaat.
We went out to a normal dinner at Boylan and then walked around the UVA Lawn a bit before heading downtown. Once we got there, I decided to give her another twist tie. She didn’t like this either. Her reply was “OK, I get it. We aren’t engaged. This is cute and all, but stop.” I was laughing on the inside while I tortured her with those twist ties. We got a drink at Siips with some friends where Jenny and I started talking about how well our relationship was going and how great we are together. She mentioned “the first place we really started to bond was on Alex’s roof” which was a rooftop apartment that one of my friends rented on the Downtown Mall. I saw this as my opening and started frantically texting people to meet at Alex’s roof!!
We got there and hung out with friends for about a half hour when I called Jenny over to me. I said “I have something for you” and handed her a third shiny twist tie. She started laughing and said “Wow, another one? Where do you keep getting all these? Seriously?” To which I replied “But, this time I’m not kidding.” She got silent. I made her put her purse down (which you can see me do in the video below) then took her in front of her friends and asked her to marry me. You can see her response below but *spoiler alert* it ends with her saying yes and everyone saying awwww.
Big News: I’m an Official Published Blogger
Jun 11th
When I started this website a few years back, I just did it as a fun way to keep family updated on what I was doing. Lately I’ve been starting to write articles with a little more substance and cater to my readers a bit more. I took that idea and ran with it. I submitted my article “5 Sites To Get Your Beach Body Ready By Summer” to MakeUseOf.com in hopes of being hired as a contributing writer for them.
They are a great site that describes what they do best themselves: “On makeuseof we don’t write about any new web applications that comes around but only about ones that are COOL, FREE and USEFUL. Or as it says in our tagline: cool websites, software and internet tips.”
I got word from them a few weeks ago that they would love to hire me as a contributing writer! I started thinking of ideas and came up with online places to find song lyrics. I had the story written in a few days, sent it in to them, and yesterday they decided to publish it on their front page!
Screen capture from my cell of the front page of makeuseof
You can read my first published article on their site and take a look at what the readers are saying in the comments.
The great thing that this means for this site is that traffic to OwensDomain will GREATLY increase. MakeUseOf has over 70,000 readers that subscribe to their blog. If only half of those read my story, and then half of those readers are inquisitive enough to click on my name, they will be taken to OwensDomain. That means that for each story I publish, could push a ball park number of 17,500 readers here!!!
I’m excited to see what this means for my site. I may start introducing ads to gain some extra revenue from this increased traffic. We’ll see how that goes. I’m excited though. Check out my story and let me know what you think in the comments! If you do enjoy it, you’ll see a button on the bottom that says “Digg It”. Clicking on that will help me out tremendously!
Watch March Madness For FREE on OwensDomain
Mar 15th
CBSSports.com is running a promotion where they are letting you stream the first round of the NCAA Tournament March Madness on March 19th and 20th. They are calling it NCAA March Madness on Demand. I guess their thinking is that they can rope you in with first round streaming and then make you pay to view the rest of the tournament.
On to the reason for this post…
In a first for OwensDomain.com, I’ve extracted the special code to be able to display the entire first round of NCAA Men’s Division 1 Basketball Championship right here, just for you. I know Tim will be watching Radford take on UNC this Thursday at 1PM and if he’s not around a TV, he can watch it right here! So bookmark this page and come back at 12:20PM on Thursday to watch with us! Stay tuned here for an announcement of a Skype based watch party for the Radford game. We may get everyone connected through Skype so we can have an open line of communication during the game to hear everyone yelling. Could be cool. Hope you enjoy!
Click here to view the stream.
