Category: Blather

Ugh. Facebook.

Well I got myself a stupid Facebook account. I don’t know why I have such an aversion to Facebook. But for some reason I’m just not very fond of it. Perhaps I’m too old to appreciate the ability to send imaginary “chocolates” across the intertubes to people I’ve never met.

I don’t know. I consider myself about as far from Luddite-ness as you can possibly be without knowing how to compile C++ code and yet maneuvering around Facebook befuddles me. I just figured maybe I should join up lest I be considered Unwired by the masters of the online newspaper industry like Steve Yelvington or Howard Owens.

As an aside, I totally love the word ‘Luddite.’

I’m actually a pretty wired chick. But I’m not a journalist, so I don’t think it counts. I belong to wiredjournalists.com, I’m MySpaced, Twittered, I have more blogs than I can keep up with, I’m now Facebooked,  I keep up with the industry, I heart liveblogging, and it’s nearly 10pm and I’m online, blogging. I do not, however, own a blackberry. I suck at txting. I had a palm pilot once, but I’m afraid it collects dust in a drawer now. Sometimes you just need to disconnect, you know?

Anyway, yeah. I’m in Facebook now and I do not wish to share my political or religious views, nor do I feel strangers need to know my educational background unless they plan on hiring me or dating me. So far I’ve added a Buffy application and become a fan of Whedon’s Dollhouse Facebook page. I looked at users who went to my high school and only recognized one guy, who I always thought was hot, but he was far too popular and good-looking to even remember my name. Though I was pretty popular in high school too. But it was a huge school and we moved in slightly different orbits and now almost 20 *gulp* years later, I really don’t give a toss what he’s up to.

Man, I sound like a shrew 🙂 Facebook’s ok, I guess, but I doubt I’ll be using it much. I’m also thinking I should maybe buy a domain of my real name. What I would do with it I don’t know because my online presence is pretty established at this URL. But I’m feeling this overwhelming urge to buy it “just in case.”

I’ll mull it over. Now if you’ll excuse, me, I’m going to check work email one last time and then climb in bed with my Dresden book.

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A nothing kind of post

You know, I have the best blogging intentions, I really do. But when it comes to this one in particular, I draw a big blank when I look at the editor screen. No one *really* cares that I’m in love with my new laptop because it’s so damn spiffy. But that’s all I can think of to talk about. It’s sleek and sexy. Powerful enough for my needs. i spent an hour playing with the speech recognition software. Shannon came home to find me saying things like, ‘Switch to Firefox’ and ‘Select all’ and giggling like a kid.

And don’t get me started on the fact that this sucker’s got Bejeweled on it.

Sunday I’ve got my first group recording session as Geraldine, the poet who’s prose is as bloody awful as Spike’s. Funny side note, some of the other actors sent me a bunch of Geraldine-esque poems and haiku for my birthday. I laughed 🙂 Here’s one that cracked me up:

Haikus are easy
But sometimes they don’t make sense
Refrigerator

Bwah!

I’ve got some scenes to edit as well. This Buffy thing keeps me busy. Which is a good thing. Not tonight though because I am up late posting election results on the site. I’m very sleepy atm but the state results are only 80% counted. Obama is beating Hillary by a few thousand votes, but McCain has more than both of them combined. Ah the joys of living in a red state.

I wish I had wittier observations atm, but frankly, I’m tired and headachey so I think I’m gonna go read until the final results are in. I promise better postage next time.

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Mom day, Melia Day

It’s the tail end of Mum Day now which, this year, segues neatly into my bday tomorrow. For those of you counting, I’ll be 37. Yep, 3-7. Three years away from the big 4-0 or as some like to think of it: death. Because 40 is just old.

Silly really. I don’t feel like I’m in my late 30s. I’m not sure how the late 30s are supposed to feel, but I know I definitely don’t feel old. I know I don’t look my age either which I guess is cool, but even if I did, I don’t think one’s age is something a person should be ashamed of. One of the fine actors in the Buffy Between the Lines phrases his birthday greetings like this: “Congratulations on your continued survival!”

I dig that. I’ve managed to live for 37 years. I’ve never broken a single bone or had a life-threatening health issue. Never been in a bad car accident. I’ve raised a child by myself (a pretty damn cool one too) and put myself through college and have been lucky enough to find a career in a field that I absolutely love. Plucked up the courage to transplant myself and Shannon in the UK for a while and I have zero regrets about that. I have a fabulous family that I love and who love me, had a great childhood free of trauma (unless you count the bell bottoms I had to wear in junior high when everyone else was wearing leg warmers and wishing they were Pat Benetar), and I have good friends.

37 years of that kind of life is pretty cool if you ask me.

Of course I’ve had bad times too. Pretty traumatic divorce followed closely with the death of my father (technically stepfather, but he was my dad. It’s hard to refer to him as stepdad but I always feel I need to qualify it to avoid confusion when I talk about my very much alive and well biodad that I’ve reconnected with and is part of the above-mentioned awesome family), a couple of other fairly hard breakups, and I’m not gonna lie, it’s damn hard to raise a child on your own. Then losing mom was.. Well suffice to say I’m still working on dealing with that. It’s been a little over 7 years now and I still can’t dwell on it. I can talk about her, and I can write about her but I don’t want to think too much about what happened. But couple that with losing my aunt to cancer shortly after mom and ugh. Hard.

So my life’s not been all roses. And no life is. It’s all of these things – good and bad – and influences and people and events that shape who you are. And that’s a good thing. But despite 37 years of good and bad, it doesn’t FEEL like 37 years. And so when I turn 40 I don’t think I’ll feel 40 either. It’s just a number, which is, I suppose what most people say when they reach these years. But to me, it does just feel like a number and isn’t really indicative of how I should think, feel or behave. I think if I want to go out right now, find a big rain puddle and jump in it, I will 🙂

So having said all of this, I’ve decided to quit letting it bug me when these young whippersnappers at work tease me about being old. It doesn’t bug me when my friends and family do it, so I’m not sure why it bothers me when someone I don’t know very well does it. Next time it happens, I think I’ll just yell at them to get the hell off my lawn.

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Fish oil and potential changes around here

So I know very well that eating fish is totally good for you. Problem is, I can’t eat fish. Well I can, but I hate it. Like, vehemently despise anything fishy. I’ve never been able to ‘develop a taste’ for it and I’ve tried everything from bacon-wrapped shrimp drenched in honey butter to smoked conger eel.

No matter what I try, there is a gagging, disgusting ‘fishy’ aftertaste that is the same no matter what the seafood is. And it makes me want to heave. So I’ve given up the though of ever liking seafood. But I want to take advantage of the health benefits of fish, the omega-3 oils and all that good stuff. Everything I’ve read says those are so great for you. So I bought some fish oil supplements.

Now, I’ve never braved buying them before because I fear that fishy aftertaste. But several people assured me you don’t get that with the supplements. Well, I’m here to say that, uh, yes you do. At least I do. And it’s making me ill. So no more fish oil thingies for me and I’ll try to get those health benefits elsewhere. Right now, I think I’m going to go gargle garlic or something to kill this aftertaste.

In other news, I’m seriously considering giving up Blogger for WordPress for this blog. And I feel guilty about it. I’ve been with Blogger since before Google bought them. And I love Blogger, I really do. It’s a wonderful platform – especially for beginner bloggers. They make it so easy to get right into blogging which is helpful when trying to convince someone who’s reluctant to blog because it seems too hard to set up.

But I’ve been using WP at work for a while now, and I really like it. I love the plugins and it just seems to have more features that I like compared to Blogger. It seems like Blogger is far behind in development. It should the ability to have categories by now and they’ve only just released the ability to set posts to publish in the future. Come on Google, give some more time and love to Blogger.

I haven’t decided if I want to tackle porting all these posts to WordPress, or if I just want to start from scratch and leave these archived. I’m still pondering. If you see a completely different layout one of these days you’ll know I made up my mind. One of the cool things I discovered with WP is a podcast plugin that I think is used over on the Buffy Between the Lines site (which is powered by WP). I tested it out on my TV blog last night and it’s fantastico. I’ve been thinking of doing a little podcast around here and this would make it so simple to do.

What else is up… I’m using a little stimulus check money to stimulate the economy to buy a new laptop. It’s so not a high end one, but I don’t need anything fancy. All I do at home is some photoshopping, some coding, some video/audio editing and writing so I don’t really need a $2000 laptop. But I do need one of my own. I use my daughter’s and she’s going to be needing it herself soon. I can’t be laptopless 🙂 Plus hers is feckin’ heavy as evidenced by the fantastically colourful bruises on two of my toes where it fell on them yesterday. I back and forthed on whether I should go to the ER last night because I thought they might be broken. But I don’t think they are now. The swelling is gone and I can wiggle them now.

I’m still writing. I’ve sort of halted the CherryPop story on Ficlets while I concentrate on fleshing it out. I gave up on the idea of writing in a coffeeshop or something. 1. I would be forced to buy a mocha and I’ve given them up for the most part and 2. Nosey clerks bother me.

Anyway, that’s me caught up for now. I’m picking up the new laptop tonight. I can’t wait! Off to look for garlic now.

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Making the rounds

Woah two posts in one day? What the..? 🙂

Something I’m kind of chuffed about at work. I know you should never blog about work, you would not want to get Dooced or whatever, but I love my job, so no need to mock coworkers or rant and rave about the work 🙂

Last week the paper had a big redesign that we launched on the readers and while it was supposed to be a fairly smooth switch, my experience with big server moves, file moves and complete layout changes means there will be glitches and problems. It’s inevitable. So I thought maybe it would be a good idea to hold a live chat with readers so they can ask their questions and tell us what they think of the new site.

I’d been looking for an opportunity to try out some liveblogging software I found on wiredjournalists.com called Cover it Live. It’s touted as a great way to enhance a readers experience at events like political debates, sports or conferences. So I was thinking we could use it for some sports chat we already do, and then I immediately thought it would b cool to use on 24addict.com when the show is back. I could liveblog it with the folks who hang out there with me. Thought it would be fun. But it had been a while since I found the software and thinking to use it for the redesign didn’t hit me until the day before the launch and I gt aproval, and got it mentioned in the paper just in time.

Well it was successful. And it had the added bonus of having the readers come in and actually tell us about errors they were finding or problems with navigation etc. The immediate feedback benefited both sides. I could fix a dead link and make a reader happy and the reader could tell me they felt it was too hard to find something, so the team could fix that and make the reader happy.

All in all, it turned out to be a pretty cool idea. And to my surprise, our use of CiL got a bit of buzz. I was interviewed by a reporter for journalism.co.uk, and that piece seems to have gotten picked up by another news media blog. Good publicity for us, and this whole thing is helping me find another niche area that I love working with: social media. I’m loving finding ways to use applications like Twitter and CiL for the paper, as well as working with the online team to recruit and run grandislandblogs.com. Things are changing for us so rapidly and I’m loving being able to help it out and being a part of it. Neat eh? 🙂

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Experiments and bad days

I had a bad day yesterday. It was one of those days where absolutely nothing goes right, computer “issues”, dropping things left and right, noisy neighbours at 3am, pounding headache, forgetting routine things and oh yeah, getting hit by a car.

Oh don’t worry. I’m being slightly dramatic on that last one. I was not hurt.

It began with the noisy neighbours. I suppose I should be thankful they weren’t having sex. But still, 3am’s a bit early (or late depending on your POV) to hold a normal, full-voice conversation on the other side of a wall you know to be thin from having to listen to 2 girls laughing loudly (but during normal hours) at the cat or funny Fark headlines.

So being woken up against my will is never a good thing for me. I get… grumpy. So after a groggy start to the day, I decide to stop by HyVee again after dropping the kidlet off to check if they have any of the Hint O’Mint tea I really love. I’ve stopped there in the hopes that they have it about 5 times in the past week and no joy. As I’m walking in from my car, a minivan parked illegally decides to back up just as I’m passing it. He hits me and knocks me off my balance a little. I smack his gas tank and give him a very loud, “OI!” He just looks at me like a slack-jawed idiot. No offer of apology or checking to see if I’m ok. Nope. Just a blank stare. Fucker.

And after that, HyVee STILL DID NOT HAVE MY TEA. Fuckers.

So I get to work, realize I’ve left my red Scheels sports bottle there the night before and so I have no lovely yummy Brita water to drink as is my habit. I grimace at the thought of going thirsty. I hate not having *something* to drink. I make plans to take the bottle home at lunch and fill it up. At lunch, I fill it and walk to the car, feeling better and carrying my water. Then I drop it. Now, it’s a tough sucker. The bottle bounces, and if I had better reflexes I probably could have caught it and had a good chuckle at how weird that was. But I do not have good reflexes apparently and all I could do was watch it land, the lid fly off and all my lovely Brita water spill everywhere.

I’m now late for work and besides, if I went back to refill it, the water would be tepid at best. I sigh, pick up the nearly empty bottle and head back to work where a slowbuilding headache begins powering up.

My computer decides to pick this day to do wonky things and I spend most of the afternoon wrestling with it, cursing at it, sighing frustratedly, and finding myself weighing the probability of getting fired over how satisfying it would be to pick it up, walk outside and heave it at the nearest passing semitruck. 5pm cannot come fast enough.

It finally does, and the minute I get home, I sit down, and stay there nearly catatonic until bedtime. Everything bothered me. I growled at the kid over stupid things and promptly apologised and then felt bad for being such a nitpicky bitch and finally I just crawled into bed.

Thankfully today was fine. Nice even. I didn’t drop a thing, no one ran me over, the computer behaved and I spilled no water. I even got to duck out of work 15 minutes early thanks to a surprise announcement from the kid that she had to work at 5pm and she had the car.

The cool thing I did this evening was venture out to Hastings (a bookstore along the lines of a Borders or Barnes & Noble) with the laptop with the purpose of getting started writing my book.

Other than being completely ignored by the staff there when I really would have liked to order a cup of tea (you apparently have to hunt down a clerk if you want to order stuff. I say screw that) and one screaming kid, I was quite productive in the hour and a half I was there. I was able to outline almost the entire story so that I have a base to work from. I needed that to help me focus. Otherwise I look at the blank Word doc and feel overwhelmed at not knowing where to begin.

I think I’ll try someplace else though next time because Hastings is full of crappy clerks (I did decide to name an annoying character in the story after the crappy store though 🙂 ) I’m just afraid if I go to Starbucks I will not be able to resist the siren call of the beautiful Mocha. God I miss my Mochas. Being good sucks sometimes.

Wow this is getting long. Sorry. Anyway, I made good progress on the book and I can’t wait to get in there and really flesh it out. I was looking at self-publishing options this morning (I’m not getting ahead of myself, I was just talking to a columnist at the paper who wrote a book a couple of years ago and he was telling me how he did it.) It looks like I’m going to use Lulu.com to publish it. They don’t require any dosh up front which is good because I don’t have any 🙂 I’d love to try and get the book published the old-fashioned way via a proper publisher but I don’t see that happening.

Except you know, sometimes bloggers get noticed by publishers. It worked for Dooce and that chick who blogged about being a cabbie in NYC. Those guys are part of the reason I began blogging as CherryPop. That and I want to post as her as much as possible so I can inhabit her headspace and do a good job writing this book. It’s going to be in first person so yeah, better get some practice. And if cherrypopmcgee.com happens to get some traffic along the way, then cool! Besides, it’s kind of fun 🙂 I also hooked her up with a MySpace page for the hell of it too. Why not!

Ok I’ve rambled far too much. I’ve got a Dresden book to finish up and then I think I’m off to bedfordshire. Gnighty!

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