Dot com-ination!

You have now logged onto etceverythingthatcounts.com, instead of etceverythingthatcounts.blogspot.com!

Last week I embarked naively on what I thought would be a quick journey to give this blog a custom domain name. etcverythingthatcounts is long enough without the blogspot, so I set out to shorten it with its own dot com domain. I thought I would just head over to GoDaddy.com, purchase etceverythingthatcounts.com, go to Blogger, type it into the "Add a custom domain" section and voila!

Boy, was I wrong. The domain purchasing part was easy, and cheap, thanks to a sale on GoDaddy (Who knew domain names went on sale?) and a coupon code I found on retailmenot.com. Finally that Emmy Award-winning investigative sweeps piece I did several years ago on internet coupon codes paid off! At the suggestion of my producer, I also bought hayleywielgus.com. He pointed out that in the EXTREMELY PROBABLE case that I become super famous, someone could buy that domain name and I would have to pay bukoos of money to get it back. He explained that this happened to Justin Beiber, and in light of recent events, I thought it wise to avoid falling into any similar circumstances as The Biebs.

Redirecting my blog to its new domain name was a two-hour test in patience and critical thinking skills, and I learned a new web language in the process. To veteran website builders, this is child's play, but to me, since I'm technologically-challenged, it was quite an achievement. I learned about DNS, CNAMEs, A-records, I typed in something that looks like this: gv-55szigymmrlvrv.dv.googlehosted.com... and this: 23zekrazojsv.

The entire experience was a reminder to branch out, to not give up on things that seem foreign at first, to try new ventures and do things to expand the mind. So often in our jobs and daily lives we do the same tasks over and over. According to Harvard Medical School getting mental stimulation is one of the top 12 ways to keep your brain young. "Doctors suspect that brainy activities stimulate new connections between nerve cells and may even help the brain generate new cells." Are you going to doubt Harvard? Didn't think so. And if you prefer dumbells to domain names, number two on the list is physical exercise. I just have to remind myself I'm sharpening my mind as I slog through my six-mile run tomorrow!