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! :)
Since I've been using the Net, some seven years now I've noticed a couple of things. One, I have to physicially stop myself from ending sentences with smilies in everything I do, and two, my typing skills just suck. Years spent chatting have spoiled me. most of my online friends could care less whether I capitalise an 'i' here or there or transpose the odd letter or two. I get the feeling most netizens are fluent in typo. I'm almost at the point of not apologising for it anymore. I used to be really anal about misspells and incorrect grammar, I still am when I'm actually doing some writing, but if I'm on TCZ I'm more apt to just shrug my shoulders and move on. Even messages posted on my forums don't really bother me (although I truly hate it when people take shorthand to the extreme 'nd rite like this cos they r 2 lazy to spell' - to me it takes more effort to type like that than it does just to bloody write it out. And it makes me think the person writing like that is, well, not the sharpest tool in the shed). I can overlook typos and such, I don't get my knickers in a twist if someone thinks faster than they can type :) (Ooo, damn smiley again!). I'm guilty of it myself. Even more so since I started using the net. A benefit though is that I can make the keyboard smoke 'cos I type so fast :)
Anyway enough about that. Not much going on at the moment. A few minor blowouts on the Placebo boards from some user with a holier-than-thou attitude but no big deal. I will say one thing about this user in that she's given me something to do for a while. I was getting a little bored you see. That's another thing I've noticed. Blowups, no matter how bad they seem at the time, usually blow over and are forgotten in a short space of time. I can remember some huge fights in the BBS on TCZ, normally between the userbase and Admin, that seemed like the end of TCZ as we knew it at the time, yet the very next week it was forgotten until the next reason for arguing came along. Granted some of our users on there have very long memories and seem to be keeping some sort of mental scorecard and like to bring up past incidents at any given opportunity - but again, this also gets forgotten quickly enough. I used to get really bent out of shape over it all. It would stress me out completely and just wreck my mood irl (in real life - just in case, dear reader, you're not up on your net euphemisms). These days it just sort of rolls off of me. There are always exceptions, and I'll admit that sometimes I get so angry with some users I come across online that I'll notice I'm quite grumpy irl because of it. I need to work on that.
And I've been awake since 6am today and it's nearly midnight. Time for bed methinks.
Just wanted to say Happy Birthday to the Divine Miss M from Silver Rocket :) I dunno if she bothers reading this but I'm saying it anyway cos she's so cool.
Had an interesting night the other - well night. Hehehe. I was on TCZ not really paying much attention when another Admin decides to arse about with Voice messaging via MSN. Well, of course MSN voice sucks the big one so I told him to get Yahoo. next thing I know I'm sucked into a voice/web chat with about four other admin and a user I don't know very well. It was hysterical :) Next time though, I hope Ginge keeps his shirt on ;) he's a bit too white for webcams. So to Joey, Matt, Ginge, Vock and Lillith - had fun :) must do it again!
So I got rid of the other commenting system I had on here. It was down more than it was up and I have no patience for that. Hopefully this new one will work out better I quite like it. Give it a go - you can use smilies.... Hehehe...
Anyway, yes I've been lax again in writing. So damn busy. And I've just gotten a promo and raise at work so I'll be even busier. But I will make a better effort at this because this is very relaxing. Let's see what's been going on... Ah, the relaunch of the TCZ Digest happened (finally) last week. It went over pretty well I think. TCZ-ers are notoriously bad about giving feedback, but I saw a lot of people reading it so that's good. Next issue's out next week already. I'm hoping to add more staff.
All's quiet in Placeboland. The band are in the studio rehearsing I think, and so there's not much news about. My friend has just added some gorgeous improvements to the fan club forums and they just keep getting better and better. And everyone (a couple of exceptions of course, but they're hardly worth noting) is just in love with it all. The band are good to their loyal fans and have given my friend a lot of freedom to make the official site the best out of the lot. There are some brilliant fan sites out there too (Hello Bionic!) and it's wonderful to see how a fansite can be so supportive of the official site (and vice cersa) and coexist so peacefully - and yet be successful in its own right. Amazing innit? Hmmmm..
What else have I been up to.. Oh yes, been messing about with my own little forum, but I haven't quite found a purpose for it yet. It's just kind of floating around in space with no real reason for it's existence :) Well, I take that back, I am using it to show my bosses the benefits of it for use on our own websites. The possibilities are endless. But once that's over done and my work sites have their own forums, I think I'll just keep this first one and use it for friends and family. Might try and get TCZers to post on it if TCZ happens to go down or something - may be a good way to get the word out to our users. I dunno. Any suggestions? If you want a peek, it's Here.
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