In my most recent edition of What’s Up Wednesdays, I put up a link to an article by Alvaro Fernandez where he talked about how you can shrink your brain in 8 easy steps. The Homer Simpson-inspired piece was so great that I decided to name the entire What’s Up Wednesday post around it, calling it What’s Up Wednesdays: Shrink Your Brain.

Before coming across his brain-shrinking post, I had never heard of Alvaro Fernandez and, in all likelihood, he had never heard of me. I still know very little about him, but I have no problem linking to awesome posts when I come across them in the blogosphere. Just grab my attention in some way — commenting here, guest blogging on a site that I already read (like The Thinking Blog), or even putting up a funny video on YouTube — and there’s a good chance you’ll get some link love in a What’s Up Wednesday speedlinking post.

They say that what goes around comes around. In the world of blogging, most nice gestures (such as providing a free backlink) don’t cost you anything, but it can highly benefit the recipient. Do good unto others and they’ll probably do good unto you. And that’s exactly what happened between Alvaro and I.

I linked to his funny article with no expectation of getting anything in return. I just wanted to share the post with my readers, and in the off-chance that Alvaro decided to check out my blog, that was an added bonus. And then I got a magical email from Paypal…

alvaro fernandez buys michael kwan a beer

Thanks for the beer, Alvaro! Maybe with a little booze in my belly, my brain can become a little sharper too!

UPDATE: Right as I was getting ready to publish this post, I got another email from Paypal letting me know that Alex Yang of Usman’s World — the same guy that guest-blogged here about the top 10 grammar mistakes writers make — has decided to add to my beer fund too! Looks I’m gonna get liquored up this weekend. Thanks Alex!