I spend a lot of time online and have done for years and over that time many happy, sad, odd, nasty, fantastic things have happened to me online and off. This blog is about all of that and more.
Hey thanks for checking out my little blog. A bit about me: I'm a web designer for a Catholic Hospital
in Nebraska. I love my job and it's allowed me to learn so much about design and code etc etc. all at their expense, not mine, hehehe.
I have a daughter, she's nearly 12 and the pride of my life. You can check out her website at Sweetiepete.com.
She loves it when people sign her guestbook :) That's enough for this space. If you want to know more, read the blogs! :)
A lot of my life has involved TCZ both IRL and IVL. It's a whole world in there, with problems, and gossip, and good times... It's almost like a soap opera sometimes with the things that go on there. One of the things I like about it is it's global audience. We have people connecting from all over the world connecting, but mainly it's UK people and North Americans. It's very interesting to get all these people's perspectives on events and occurences in our world. I can say it's definitely been a learning experience for me. We have a BBS system there (bulletin board messaging type thing) with a wide variety of topics, and being able to read how a UK user views American politics or vice versa is eye-opening to say the least. Also learning how to 'coexist' so to speak with such a diverse userbase is quite the lesson in patience. With our Admin team, we have an eclectic mix of points of view. The UK doesn't have quite the same 'freedom of speech' laws that America does (which is a good reason we left ;) hehehe, j/k), And so if some user leaves what could be considered an offensive post to the British, may not be to the Yanks. So learning where to draw the line between us can be very difficult. Another problem Admin face here is giving up personal time for our own virtual lives. When we become admin here, because we are such a busy place, our priority becomes helping users out rather than chatting away. Sometimes I've felt that I'd like to just have a day when I'm not being asked a million questions, and I don't have to answer assist calls, things like that. Sort of an Admin sabbatical. There have been times when I want to connect, but I don't want the pressures of Admin on me at the time. It's such an addictive place, and I'm sure psychiatrists would have a field day with some of our users, but it's very hard not to connect... Just like it's hard not to check email that one last time before logging out. And so being able to pop on and relax once in awhile would be very nice. I may do that sometime.
I do wonder about the, what's the word I want.. The healthiness of it all though. It's so easy to think you'll just pop on to read your mail and get carried away, next thing you know 5 hours have gone by. And I think it tends to draw people inward. For example, I communicate so well via email and through TCZ. But I flounder a lot when I'm speaking irl to someone. I find it much easier when I have the time to think about what I say before I type it. You're sort of forced to. Plus you can always go back and edit it if it doesn't sound right. Too bad you can't do that irl ;) I think there's been a lot of benefits from this, at least for me. In one respect it's given me a bit more courage to say what I feel and voice my opinion instead of keeping it to myself, and I've found it carries over to my real life too. I'm a fairly shy person. (who isn't on the net right? Like you haven't heard that before), I'm one of those who opens up more after I've gotten to know you. Sometimes it's a good thing, you tend to make friends that you keep forever that way, other times it sucks, because it can work against you too. People can be put off by that, and for some ungodly reason it makes people believe you are 'stuck-up'(Cliche alert). But I think some of that shyness has crumbled away because now I find myself being more able to chat away to complete strangers. I used to be so quiet when I was introduced to new people. I'd have to assess them first, see if I could detect any hint of animosity from them. Or sometimes they just intimidated the hell out of me. But now I feel like, life's too short to spend it like that. I could die tomorrow and what would they say about me? "She was very quiet." I don't want that. And I want to be happy. It isn't too much to ask really. I have to fight a lot of ingrained training to 'bottle it up' and 'keep it to myself'. I just can't do it anymore, because the one time you finally do just explode and let it all out, it feels so GOOD!!!!! :) and I think being honest is a major part of being happy.
More on this train of thought later.. I realise there is a lot of stigma on someone who seems to spend a lot of time online. I want to disspell some of that, but right now, my daughter is having a slumber party and the noise level's too high :D More later.
The Internet's a great place to get yourself involved in just about any kind of heated discussion. Politics, religion, sexuality, music... anything you want. As long as you agree with whomever started the discussion of course. See, on the net, you're not allowed to have an opinion of your own. I've noticed that in every threaded discussion about any topic, any person who disagrees with the general majority immediately has to turn around and defend their opinion. Then the discussion dissolves into this:
"Well, it's my opinion and it's just as valid as yours."
"That's fine, but you're still wrong."
"So you say. I think you're wrong."
And so on and so on. I was reading a thread on the Placebo forum today that was started by a Palestinian and he/she was explaining how it is from his/her point of view. The thing is, it would be incredibly hard for her to accept any opposing view because it's so close to home. We also have Israelis on the forums who would, naturally disagree with said Palestinian. The thread was quickly beginning to deteriorate when someone posted a simple message that made me think:
"Its just as wrong to blow up a bus then it is to torture palestinans. I mean, me and ******** are Jewish and ********* is a Palestinian and look were we meet: on the placebo forum. So that means that we like that same music. What I am trying to say is that if have this one thing in common why shouldn´t we have more things in common? Why shouldn´t we be able to live in peace TOGETHER?"
Just beautiful that. I thought that was poignant. I hope they ponder that simple message a while.
I've got five thousand email addresses. I really should get rid of some of them. You know how it is, you see a cool free service offered on some website, you think to yourself, I'll get one of those and make it my main address. And then you promptly forget all about it until you get a message saying you're account's about to expire due to inactivity. Must stop doing that :)
Let's see, I've got my hotmail addy, yahoo, a placebo.nu, ukmelia.com of course, my service provider email, 2 work email addies, my daughter's email which I must check because of course the porn people have decided it would be cool to send her emails, my TCZ address... my goodness I never really listed them all out before. I suppose hotmail is the one I've used the longest. Yahoo is the one I give out on the net when I have to sign up for things and so it gets hundreds of junk mail messages a week. I use my placebo.nu address mainly just on the forums. Work is work, can't get rid of those. My ukmelia.com address is brand spanking new and I want it to be my main address, but I can't check my mail for that at work. The thing with hotmail is, you really CAN check it anywhere you go. So I suppose I'm stuck with it forever even though it's crap. Two bloody megs of storage just isn't enough.
Well that's me boring everyone again about email. Surely I can't be alone in having the 'too many emails' syndrome...
Oh interesting developments on TCZ rght now. Our rival, called Uglymug, after, oh I don't know 9 or 10 years has decided to log onto TCZ and harrass the Admin about our source code. Now, I'm not a technical geek, so I don't know why they're so pissy about it, but apparently they think JC Digita, who started TCZ 9 or 10 years ago stole the source code from Ugly and used it as a base to begin TCZ. Whether it's true or not is anyone's guess. Even if it is true, the way TCZ has developed and become better over the years suggests we've done something right and now our source code bares little if any resemblance to Ugly's. Now it's become this little mini war between their admin and ours. Since I'm a silly droo-wad (a term of endearment ment for admin of my rank - we have wizards, who excell at coding for TCZ and Druids who excell at user relations. Then there are 4 ranks within those: Apprentice, wiz/druid/ Elder, and Deity. I am an Elder Druid and am a funky colour of green. WooHoo. Anyway there's a friendly joke between us and we druids frequently get called 'silly droowads' a lot.) and I know absolutely nothing about our source code, I'm sitting back and watching the wizzies get in a tizzy over this whole thing. It's really quite amusing. I really should get back to work though. I've got an 83 slide PowerPoint presentation to tweak and make look pretty. Yeehaw! More later on.
Wow for some reason everything I just typed got lost. Damn it was good stuff too. I lied and I can't sleep so i was rambling on about why suicidal people gravitate to the Internet. We get a lot of them on the band's forum. I suppose because the band got stuck with a label as 'pop punk for postponed suicides' or something like that. So now and then we'll get some user leaving a long post saying they want to kill themselves. In the time I've been on the forum, it's always been some poor teenager with a bad homelife. What on earth, though, are completely unqualified users supposed to react to something like that? As a mod, I'm supposed to close those threads and leave a support hotline number or website for them to go to. What do they expect to get at a band website though? Are they looking for someone to say a magic word to make it all better? Do they simply need a virtual shoulder to cry on? I don't know. I don't have any answers either. I just find it odd.
Occasionally it happens on TCZ as well. Just tonight in fact (which is why this all came up). A user (who happens to live in my town) came on and began mumbling incoherently about killing himself and that he had a concussion and cut shoulder. But when I said I would be glad to phone 911 for him, he straightened up somewhat and told me not to do it. Should I have called anyway? What if i wake up tomorrow to find out he really did it, should I feel guilty for not calling? I don't know. For the record he's back now and typing a little more coherently. I'm thinking he's wanting some attention. *sigh* Real life does exist online. Real problems. The majority of people online I think are themselves on here, and they bring their IRL problems with them. Maybe the Net is a good way for them to reach out and find people with similar problems and in so doing, help themselves.
Oh and if people from TCZ or my band's forum should happen to read this and become offended at anything I say well, there's nothing I can do about that. I just like the idea of writing down the things I've observed to myself all these years and I want to do it honestly. If that means someone gets their feelings hurt, I'm sorry. I'll try to tread carefully and not name names.
I probably shouldn't have but I set the address to this in my title on TCZ and a person or two might get bored enough to check it out. There's not much here yet, but my plan is to write something in here at least once a day. I haven't figured out if this blog thing includes a way to respond to my posts, so if anyone has anything to say, leave a note in my guestbook back at www.ukmelia.com. Or email me.
Ok I've got the hang of this now :) Time to dig in and write. I suppose I should give a quick background of the sort of things I do online to explain why I'd be qualified to write observations about Life Online.
Basically (and I will try and keep this short), I started using the Internet in 1995 and through various channels, I stumbled onto a chat called appropriately enough, The Chatting Zone, of TCZ for short. It's a telnet MUD with a dynamic code base and it's more than your basic role-playing MUDs (which is short for Multi-user-dimension or something, I don't know, I just chat there basically, I don't do much coding). It's based in the UK and has a userbase of about 3-400 users (they aren't all on at the same time, but I'd say that's how many use TCZ on a regular basis). I became a member of the Admin team five years ago or so and that gae me a unique position of being able to meet more people, help them, observe the troublemakers and ponder the reasons they would rather cause trouble than get along with everyone. I've met and made some wonderful friends (and a boyfriend or two) on there and it's a place I still love to go to, though not as frequently as I used to.
I do a lot of web surfing, always looking for desgn ideas and various other information. But the other thing I do, and this is a sort of new one, is that I help moderate a web forum for a band whom I absolutely adore. This is quite interesting to me because the majority of people on there are younger than I am. Some are well-informed, courteous people, some are full of teenie-bopper nonsense who say 'ickle' a lot and some are just assholes through and through. What really interests me there is the views the users have towards the ones deemed 'in charge'. So far I've been called a Nazi and part of the Gestapo. It amuses me because in reality I'm just a single mum living in nebraska with a normal job and a normal life. I think If I were to offer these same people the chance to become a moderator (not that I could of course, hehe I'm not THAT powerful), they would jump at it. That's another thing, a lot of users seem to think that the mods have an 'in' with the band. The we know them and maybe even sleep with them. Boy are they in for disappointment should they ever become a mod.
Anyway, more on all of that next time :) It's late now and I have to work my normal job tomorrow. Good night.
Well after much tinkering I finally got the bloody thing to work. This is very interesting. My daughter's got her own website and I wanted to encourage her to keep a journal online (mainly just so she'd write really. Maybe I'll set her up with a blog account too :) I like this :) It's easy (once you get the hang of it), and where else can I blather on about nothing in particular? :D
What is this blogger thing? I read about this in Wired magazine and lo and behold, I got myself an account. I haven't quite decided what to write about yet. Years ago when I got my very first website at geocities (hey there's no spellcheck on this thing! Damn!) I started my own journal about what life was like as a 'Netizen'; the relationships formed, good ones and bad ones, the doors that opened for me as I learned more about it etc etc. You get the idea. Now though, I've been around long enough, I'm not as naive so maybe I'll just do what most people do and write my observations of life online from the persepctive of friendly curmudgeon :) Not that anyone would really care what I, an insignificant web designer stuck in the boonies of Nebraska, think about the Internet. But I doubt anyone will read this but myself and maybe my daughter anyway :)
Ok, that's enough for now, time to test how this works.
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