*~Fiesta Online~*

Welcome to The player’s view of Fiesta Online!

Fiesta Online? What is that?

    This is what you might be wondering; and I am going to tell you. It is a game that once you start playing for a while, it becomes addictive and soon, every spare time you have, it’s spent playing on this game. The graphics are very good, with the characters being very detailed. Oh, By the way, the characters are manga, and so they don’t look like real people, but cartoon-ish instead.

    The game also has a store that (using real money) you can buy spark cash, the game’s form of money; that can be used to buy cool items that your character can equip. Example:  A premium Beauty Shop Coupon. This can be used to change your character’s appearance. It can change gender, hair color, style, and the structure of their face. All for 3600,i think. That is a little over $5.00, which in spark cash is 3500. Although, most of the items only last for a week or a month. Then they disappear. Although, the new appearance of your character does not change after you have used the coupon. The creators of Fiesta are coming out with permanent items that cost about a lot more, but you can keep them forever. Great, huh?

    In Fiesta, you can gain titles, like the one I have on the game, which is ‘Announcer’. That title I got through talking on a certain chat for a while. There are other cool titles like ‘Talk Show Host’, ‘Enhancement God’ and ‘Warrior’.  Right now, my characters are a level 44 Wizmage named Teeta, in guild Cupcake_Cult, and my level 37 Highcleric named Royia, the ex-master of Eternal_Flower, and now a proud admin of Swift_Legion. I have other characters on my server, which is Epith, but those are the ones that I play on the most. The other servers are: Bijou, Apoline, and Teva.

    You can also go up levels by killing monsters, like for level 1’s, it can be slimes and mushrooms. Another way to go up levels is to do quests. Or you can have a high level help you with them, and go up levels faster. That is called ‘p-leveling’. That is where you are power leveled by a higher level where that person helps you with quests or takes you to a higher place where you get more experience. You need a certain amount of experience to go up a level.  Once you go up a level, you are faced with new quests, new titles, and new armor which you can buy with copper. 100 copper equals 1 silver and 100 silver equals 1 gold. And so on.

    There are also guilds. In one, you can be a member, a guard, an admin, a council, or even the master; if you created or were given that guild. It costs a lot though to make a guild. 300 silver. Tip: you can not buy gem, gold, silver, or copper like you can with spark cash. You have to make it yourselves. You can do that by selling the items that monsters drop when you defeat them.

    Right now, the highest level possible is 89; soon to be 105, i think. Oh! Once you become level 20, you have to take a challenge to receive a title. If you do not defeat this quest, which is where you must defeat a copy of yourself that has about 8000 health while you have only about 1000. Once you defeat him/her, you go up a rank. You go from a level 20 (cleric, fighter, mage, or archer. One of your choice.) to a level 20 (Highcleric, Cleverfighter, Hawkarcher, or Wizmage). Notice: once you start as a certain character, you can not change it’s class.

    There is a big map of Isya, which is the land where your character this game is placed in. There are 4 towns. Roumen: a beginner’s town. Mostly for levels under 20. Small and simple. Elderine: a level 20-60 town. It is luxuriously big and has a lot of people. Sand Hill: holds the same items and stores as Eldy, just has different monsters and look to it. Uruga: The high level town, only accessed by scrolls or traveling through level 60 places. I would show you a map of Isya, but currently I cannot find any. Everyone all over the world can play Fiesta Online.

Go to this website if you want to download it or if maybe your child does! 🙂 

http://www.fiestaonline.net/ 

If you are in the  US, Canada, or Mexico; scroll down to the right side of the screen and click on the link labeled: For US, Canada, or Mexico users.

Or, If you want to see my page and ask me about it, go to this website.

http://www.outspark.com/profile/?sparkid=seriena

P.S. ~ I hope this doesn’t sound like advertising! *laughs* 🙂

  <–People from Fiesta Online

This post was written by my 12 year old daughter who has spent the day with me on Visit Your Parents At Work Day today.

Take Your Kids to Work Day

Today two of my three children will be blogging. I’m just letting you know ahead of time. :0)

Today is “take your kids to work day” here in Maryland. One of my 12 year old triplets is going with my husband to the Naval Research Laboratory and the other two triplets are staying here in my office today. They think that they will have it easy. They expect to watch me for about five minutes and then go off and play their video games. They have no idea what I have in store for them.

Actually I have an incredibly busy day ahead. I am working on two design projects and have several regular webmaster updates to do as well as a phone conference planned and several other projects. I plan on keeping them very busy. In fact as a project they will each be doing a blog post on Monday so get ready!

Kids need to know first hand what their parents do for work. It can give them a wonderful sense of reality to see that no Mom does not sit in front of the computer and do games nor does she talk endlessly on the phone with friends, she is actually working earning money for the family and that the work is hard and takes time to do.

These are some of the things that I am having my kids do today:

  1. Answer all the phones.
  2. Punch holes in papers for client time sheets.
  3. Do a blog post on my blog about their experience.
  4. Log how many phone calls I make and receive.
  5. List the time spent on web design, Internet marketing services, and client management.
  6. Review the blog posts from our 7 blog writers to see if they are done and on time.
  7. Write a report for school on what their Mom actually does.
  8. Make me lunch, get me drinks, and be my go-fer for the day.

Actually I think they will be surprised at the wide variety of things that I do and the number of calls and projects I accomplish in one day. Although I have a full day planned, I know that my schedule has simply been flown out the window, so if you get a McCord child on the phone today, don’t get your email responded to, you will know why, I am performing a very important task in regards to preparing future web designers and Internet marketing managers.

How Do You Monitor Google AdWords?

It is shocking, but there are business out there that are spending thousands of dollars on Google each month without any checks and balances in place to monitor the performance of their programs.

Before we start working with an AdWords client we want several things in place. (This is really in the client’s best interest.) We want to have metrics to evaluate the success, or lack thereof,  of their Google AdWords program.

This is what we recommend:

  1. Have a website statistics package installed. AWStats is not enough. We like Urchin and second best Google Analytics.
  2. Have a contact form on the website that when the script is triggered drops the client to a new URL for the thank you page. Contact forms that simply place text on the same page thanking the client for a form submission will never be able to have Google AdWords conversion tracking installed.
  3. Make sure that AdWords conversion tracking is installed on the thank you or order confirmation page.
  4. Have a budget established for $800 to $1,500 per month for clicks to start with. Less than that, you really should not use our services as we will add too much to your program’s overhead.
  5. Consider custom landing pages targeted to your ad group’s themes. Some clients don’t always need this as they may have a page on their website that is a good match, but we never recommend dropping the AdWords clickee on the home page of the website. When we do custom landing pages we always enable a form at the bottom to allow for fast questions and an additional way to capture the lead for further contact.

If you are not using metrics to evaluate your AdWords program, you are just leaving your pocket book or wallet open on the table for Google to grab your cash without accountability. You should only spend on Google AdWords when it is smart for your business.

I’ve seen and made happen some absolutely wild success stories with Google AdWords, but I’ve also told some clients that AdWords is not working for them and they should stop advertising there. If you don’t measure the activity and leads generated by your program, you will simply be guessing at whether AdWords is working for you. You should not be guessing, you should know!

The College Of Now

Colleges are becoming more and more technology oriented. Everything is moving to the web. Almost everything I need to do is accessible on the web. Here are the things you can do.

• School Email account
• Preorder books through college website (This is great when you get to school you just go to the bookstore and pick them up, they are all in a nice box for you. This eliminates the long lines.)
• Check class work and schedule online
• Check grades online
• Sign up for classes online(this tells you if classes are available and even how many seats are available)
• Converse with teachers
• Pay bills
• Pay fines
• Check for holds on classes and accounts
• Pay Tuition online
• check if your laundry is done online, or if there are any available washers and dryers
• get text message alerts for anything troublesome on campus

This is all very different from when my parents were in college, from what they have told me they didn’t have computers available and calculators were the size of textbooks.

This is my last post as I am now going back to college. Thanks for being patient while I blogged for my Mom. I found out first hand it is much harder being a blogger than I thought it would be.

Times have really changed and college has too by embracing technology making convenience come to you with the click of a mouse. One thing that hasn’t changed is the amount of work and participation to be successful at college.