New URL

You can now get here by entering the url: www.jonearls.com rather than www.jonearls.blogspot.com

The "cat" that was a possum meets its Maker

Some time ago I blogged about my wife's surprise encounter with a possum in the middle of the night. Tonight I finally got the possum. It had been living very well off of our cat food. Don't know how much it weighed but it was very large! (I am now my wife's hero) ;-)

Sorry for the gross pic :-)

March Madness madness

If you even slightly pay attention to sports you know that this years NCAA tournament was absolutely crazy! Duke won it all (unfortunately) and they were a #1 seed but that was the only "normal" thing that happened in the tournament.

For a long time things were looking good for me. I was first in our Tourney Pick'em group and seemingly sitting pretty - then the bottom fell out and I of course wound up on the bottom. Below are the final standings. I wound up 9th out of 11 - terrible as always. Congratulations to Marcus Evans for winning. Wesley Deaton was a close second and William Mahnken wound up third. Those three in the top three confirm to me just how "mad" this years March Madness was! =)

By the way, since Marcus is my best friend he gets a big fat nothing for winning! =) (I'll pat you on the back next time I see you Marcus)...

1	I hate Basketball!	24	16	12	8	16	32 (Duke)	108	108
2	Bigdaddy	18	18	12	8	16	32 (Duke)	104	104
3	Mahnken's Mayhem	21	14	16	8	16	0 (Syracuse)	75	75
4	Hilling's Picks	24	16	16	16	0	0 (West Virginia)	72	72
5	Top Picks by Carl Damon	22	20	16	8	0	0 (Kansas)	66	66
6	Underdog Glory	21	20	16	8	0	0 (Kentucky)	65	65
7	Darrell's Flawless bracket	22	14	20	8	0	0 (Kentucky)	64	64
8	Crushing Crusaders	22	16	16	8	0	0 (Kansas)	62	62
9	Jon's losing picks! *	24	18	16	0	0	0 (Ohio St.)	58	58
10	Go Buckeyes	22	16	8	8	0	0 (Kansas)	54	54
11	theolog	21	18	12	0	0	0 (Villanova)	51	51

March Madness Pick'em

For the last couple of years I've had a March Madness Pick'em group. I think every year I've wound up in last place but I've had great fun doing it! If you'd like to join this years group click here. A couple of years ago I gave away some books to the winner. Last year I was too cheap. This year we'll see. Perhaps I'll offer something to the winner but right now it's 1:30 in the morning I can't think of anything I don't want that I could give away. Maybe I'll think of something...

BTW, the password is "jonloses"

Facebook Advertisement for Classic Holiness Sermons

Recently I ran this ad on Facebook for Classic Holiness Sermons. This was really an experiment for me. I had a $50 ad credit to use and thought I would put it to good use and see how many people I could bring to the site by advertising it.

My budget was only $5 a day because I did not want to exceed my $50 credit. As you can see in the chart below there was a couple of days when the ad did not run. This had something to do with the way I had it set up and I had to tweak it and run it again. In total I have actually only used $45 of my $50 credit.

The ad was displayed 293,074 times. It was clicked on 122 times and their clicks lead them to the website where they could hear the message of Full Salvation. In the end it cost me about $.37 per person to get the 122 people to the site. Plus, think about the 293,074 people who had the chance they otherwise might not have had! to hear holiness preaching! Not a bad investment in my book! Now if only I had money to do this all of the time…

The actual number of visitors to the website appears to have increased by about 2,000 visitors over the previous 20 days in which the ad did not run. This increase may or may not have anything to with the ad though. I also created a Facebook Fan site etc.

Facebook ad statistics:

Date	Impressions	Clicks	Clicks Rate	Actions	Actions Rate	CPC	CPM	Spent (USD)	Unique Impressions	Unique Clicks	Unique Clicks Rate
12/28/2009	41827	11	0.03%		0.00%	0.45	0.12	5	31809	11	0.04%
12/29/2009	9017	0	0.00%		0.00%	0	0	0	5290	0	0.00%
12/30/2009	1042	0	0.00%		0.00%	0	0	0	656	0	0.00%
12/31/2009	475	0	0.00%		0.00%	0	0	0	256	0	0.00%
1/1/2010	3951	0	0.00%		0.00%	0	0	0	2483	0	0.00%
1/2/2010	1076	0	0.00%		0.00%	0	0	0	715	0	0.00%
1/3/2010	0	0				0	0	0	0	0
1/4/2010	1	0	0.00%		0.00%	0	0	0	1	0	0.00%
1/5/2010	29370	15	0.05%		0.00%	0.33	0.17	5	21114	15	0.07%
1/6/2010	28700	10	0.04%		0.00%	0.5	0.17	5	23619	10	0.04%
1/7/2010	30789	11	0.04%		0.00%	0.45	0.16	5	23492	11	0.05%
1/8/2010	29663	19	0.06%		0.00%	0.26	0.17	5	21328	19	0.09%
1/9/2010	29135	10	0.03%		0.00%	0.5	0.17	5	21162	10	0.05%
1/10/2010	30012	23	0.08%		0.00%	0.22	0.17	5	23392	23	0.10%
1/11/2010	29666	12	0.04%		0.00%	0.42	0.17	5	20504	12	0.06%
1/12/2010	28350	11	0.04%		0.00%	0.45	0.18	5	21009	11	0.05%

Below are the total stats for visitors to the Classic Holiness Sermons website over the period of time that the ad was run on Facebook:

 

Day	Date	Page Loads	Unique Visitors	First Time Visitors	Returning Visitors
Monday	December 28th 2009	139	65	58	7
Tuesday	December 29th 2009	348	123	105	18
Wednesday	December 30th 2009	241	65	51	14
Thursday	December 31st 2009	118	53	38	15
Friday	January 1st 2010	179	30	19	11
Saturday	January 2nd 2010	191	58	48	10
Sunday	January 3rd 2010	146	69	54	15
Monday	January 4th 2010	224	62	46	16
Tuesday	January 5th 2010	196	64	55	9
Wednesday	January 6th 2010	161	65	55	10
Thursday	January 7th 2010	447	240	222	18
Friday	January 8th 2010	215	124	108	16
Saturday	January 9th 2010	212	74	60	14
Sunday	January 10th 2010	164	69	59	10
Monday	January 11th 2010	212	83	69	14
Tuesday	January 12th 2010	260	73	58	15
Wednesday	January 13th 2010	204	66	55	11
Thursday	January 14th 2010	197	91	79	12
Friday	January 15th 2010	223	82	63	19
Saturday	January 16th 2010	186	38	33	5

Snow in South Georgia!!

You can't actually see the snow in this video...but hey, you get the idea! :-)

Black eye and burst ear drum…

Yes, my wife beat me up! Not really!! The burst ear drum came while flying out to South Dakota to visit my wife’s family and go hunting. The black eye came when I shot at a deer with a gun I had never fired before – unfortunately the eye relief on the scope was not right for me and the kick was a little more than I anticipated and the black and blue and bloody eye was the result. At first all I saw was black and I wondered if I would ever see again out of my right eye…the picture below is from a day or so later it wasn’t as bad looking as I figured it would be! The good news is that I did shoot two mule deer previous to this incident. I have no idea where this shot landed – other than the scope landed in my eye ball!

Getting older…

Yesterday was my birthday. I’m now 28 and I can’t say that it feels much different than 27 did. Anyways, yesterday I was driving my school bus and it was the last day of school before Christmas break. I asked the kids if they knew what today was and some of them said Christmas break, last day of school etc. One of the girls guessed it was my birthday. So then all the kids started wishing me a happy birthday and one of the boys asked if I was 40! I teasingly told him I was going to write him up for thinking I was that old!

So, after I dropped all of the children off at school I radioed in to my boss and asked her in a serious voice if I could write up a student for suggesting I was 40. She didn’t answer me back write away and then finally she told me to write him up and come see her. She thought I was serious! I immediately radioed back and told her I was kidding of course. When I got back to the shop she told me that a bunch of the other bus drivers and mechanics were all in the office when I radioed in and they all thought I was serious and she didn’t know how to respond. They couldn’t believe I wanted to write a student up for suggesting I was 40 but she was going to support her driver so she told me to write him up and come see her! It was really quite funny!

So, I’m getting older and I guess I must look at act like I’m 40…I’m getting to be an old man!

That's scary!

I read the following over at averyfineline:

Wanna get to know your local neighborhood blogger better? The site Typealyzer purports to analyze a blog and determine its author’s type on the Myers-Briggs scale. I’ve never taken a Myers-Briggs test before, so I don’t know how accurate the test is for me. But those who have suggest Typealyzer’s accuracy is “scary.”

So I gave the site a try and below are the results (kind-of scary!):

The analysis indicates that the author of http://jonearls.blogspot.com is of the type:

ISTP - The Mechanics

The independent and problem-solving type. They are especially attuned to the demands of the moment are masters of responding to challenges that arise spontaneously. They generally prefer to think things out for themselves and often avoid inter-personal conflicts.

The Mechanics enjoy working together with other independent and highly skilled people and often like seek fun and action both in their work and personal life. They enjoy adventure and risk such as in driving race cars or working as policemen and firefighters.

Cue the Hallelujah Chorus!

That's a $1.98!

Christmas is coming...

and I know that all of my loyal readers (both of you) are just dying to know what to buy me for Christmas. So, here's my list:

Who's responsible for the financial crisis?

Warning: one of the Democrats needs his mouth washed out with soap...

Question of the Day

This morning I was at Home Depot checking out at one of those self-checkout computers when I saw this message above the check out screen. The message caused a dilemma for me so I took a blurry picture of the message with my cell phone.

My question is: How do you show a self-checkout computer your appreciation for being such a good cashier? After all, apparently October is Cashier Appreciation Month and so I want to be a nice guy. I'm just wondering if I should buy the computer flowers or if I should buy flowers for myself since I checked myself out? Your help resolving this question would be appreciated!

I love my wife and here's one reason why:

Homemade - Jonathan apples - lattice crust - heaven on earth!

Their god is in their back pocket

The theme of Obama supporters right now is the fact that character doesn't really matter, it's all about the economy. Of course they don't want any attention on the fact that Obama is a shady character with a lot of shady friends.

I am growing weary of hearing how McCain needs to talk about the economy and not character. Yes, I am concerned about the economy (although I think a lot of the current market downturn is media driven in hopes of getting Obama elected). However, character does matter and in my opinion is much more important than what a candidate is going to do about the economy.

All of this has caused me to think about the fact that most people's god is in their back pocket (at least for men-women carry their god on their shoulder). Most people's god is their money and if they feel like something is going to affect their god they are willing to sell out on all principles whatsoever.

We saw this back when Clinton was in office. He was having an affair in the Oval Office but that didn't really matter because the economy was good. I've even heard how good a president Clinton supposedly was from holiness people!

It's not just Democrats whose god is in their back pocket - Republicans are guilty too. We saw it back in the primaries with Mike Huckabee. I was so disgusted with the Republicans then because all that matters to many of them was money. We were told that Mitt Romney was the one we should nominate because of money. I don't think there was any talk radio people who supported Huckabee other than Neal Bortz. The reason: money.

It's time to stop worshiping the god of money and start worshiping God. It's time for character to matter again and for morals to be more important than money. It's time for life to be more important than the lust for things. God help us!!

I am now climbing down off of my soapbox and returning to regularly scheduled programming...

Vote Early - Vote Often!

The voting for the name of the sermon website will end on Wednesday and right now only one vote is separating first and second place. So vote early and vote often! Click here to vote!

Help name the sermon website (final poll)!

This is the final poll for renaming my sermon website and for its url. Currently the site name is "Classic Holiness Sermons" and the url is "www.preachholiness.blogspot.com." Whatever the winner of this poll is will be the site name and url (i.e. "Preach Holiness" and "www.preachholiness.com" etc.)

There was a three way tie for third place and that is the reason why for the five options below rather than just three. I appreciate everyone's participation thus far - please vote this one last time! Thanks!!

What should I name the Sermon Website and URL?
www.classicholinesssermons.com
www.preachholiness.com
www.holinessaudio.com
www.holinessclassics.com
www.heritageofholiness.com


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Create a Poll

My new wheels

I am a school bus driver for the local public school system. Yesterday I finally was able to drive my long awaited new school bus. It is a 90+ passenger bus which I desperately needed since the 72 passenger bus I had previously was packed to the gills. It is a very nice bus with a lot of features my previous bus did not have. The best new feature is the air conditioning. Until you've driven a school bus - filled with 90+ screaming, fighting kids in 100+ degree heat without a/c - you've really not lived!

Next to last poll

I have created a new poll and once again I need your input on what to name my sermon website (currently Classic Holiness Sermons). I took the top 4 from the previous poll and added 4 other possible names I came up with. I will leave this poll up for one week and will then take the top 3 and will have you all vote one last time. The winner will be what I name the sermon website and url.

Thanks for voting!!

What should I name the sermon website and address?
www.preachholiness.com
www.classicholinesssermons.com
www.holinessaudio.com
www.soundpreaching.com
www.calleduntoholiness.com
www.holinessclassics.com
www.scripturalholiness.com
www.heritageofholiness.com


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Create a Poll

Poll - Please vote!

Please vote in the pole below to help me decide what to name my sermon website (currently "Classic Holiness Sermons").

What should I name the sermon website?
www.preachholiness.com
www.holinessaudio.com
www.wesleyanpreaching.com
www.classicholinesssermons.com
www.messageofholiness.com
www.classicholinessaudio.com
www.conservativeholiness.com
www.entiresanctification.com
www.secondblessingholiness.com
www.soundpreaching.com
Other (comment with your suggestion)


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Create a Poll