July 2007 Archives

The Muppet Show was the best.

Don't want to leave BlogHer on a sour note, but this just ain't right:

last night I went out with a group of women to find a restaurant. We went to this one place (very busy with a line up - all white, upper middle-class folks), and one of the women, Dannie a sista from the Bay area, enquired to see if we could get a table. She was told that the restaurant was sold out. We all thought that the terminology was a bit strange, so another woman (white) from our group went back and asked again. She was told that there was an hour wait if she wanted to come back. So when she came back and reported to Dannie, she stormed over and gave the host that she talked to a piece of her mind (she's a lawyer), got his card and assured him that she would be filing a complaint the next day.

I'm glad I blogged my bullet point thoughts from yesterday. What always happens at events like this is that I say I'm going to mull something over and come back to it, and then I don't. So at least there's something. My biggest takeaways are from talking with folks, anyway.

I feel smart.

I started out with the Taking Your Blog to the Next Level lab. That was frustrating. They wisely divided people up by platform (Movable Type, Wordpress, Blogger). People didn't self-select in terms of beginner/intermediate/advanced, though. I wouldn't consider myself advanced by any means, but I was trying to explain to a woman how put a border around her images with CSS, and she didn't even get the basics of what markup tags are, and how HTML and CSS even work. Anyway.

Had lunch with Laina Dawes and Waves Mowatt-Kane from AOL, who's a program manager for the AOL Developer Network (so most of what she does is way over my head). But we did have a great discussion about how people in different parts of the world use technology and how not just the use of technology, but the whole attitude towards communication and socialization is different between generations.

Just had this thought: Will my website evolve differently if I stop thinking of it as a blog? The response twitter from Gwen Bell is "yes. what about seeing it as an extension of yourself, like an arm? or a letter you write and send out...?" I think I like that idea. Definitely a (I hate to use this word, but...) paradigm shift.

The Politics of Inclusion and Exclusion in Online Communities

• Comment: Niche blogging and inclusion are at odds with each other.
• Kelly says she a "practice black person" for people who have race questions they're afraid to ask. Is it a good idea to take offline (safe) conversations to the larger (less safe) audience?
• If you're, say, a mommyblogger and most of them are white heterosexual women, how do you discuss that and have the conversation go beyond white heterosexual women? You cultivated/attracted that audience, so you should work to change that. But if people don't signify... ???
• Gena Haskett purposely did not self-identify online, eventually realized that whatever you read is going to have her filter on it anyway and people will infer from that. But she had to become comfortable with her self-identity first.
• Valencia Roner is fantastic at crystallizing the discussion points. (And she went to Michigan! w00t!)
• To have a healthy community, you have to protect your visitors. People shouldn't have to "armor up" to read the comments.
• "How do people see blogrolling as an extension of their own blog?" People still have blogrolls?
• Malaysian expat noted that all her Malaysian readers stopped reading when she moved to the U.S., finding her unqualified to speak on Malaysian issues. Stumped the audience and panel.
• What kind of responsibility do we have to build diversity into our online communities? The blogroll can be a tool. Making a personally risky post can do it. Purposely reach out to your community (more specifically, the lurkers) and invite them to share.
• Liveblog

Did you read where Elizabeth Edwards told Ann Coulter to shut the fuck up (in so many words)? I heard that they asked Hillary Clinton to come and she declined. I think I'm enjoying Elizabeth Edwards more than I would have enjoyed Hillary. Why can't she be running for president?

And I'm skipping the closing cocktail party at the Chicago Children's Museum. Meh.

Haven't taken a lot of photos. Whatever I would have photographed wouldn't really enhance my recounting of this experience for you. Or help me remember it better. Plus it always takes me forever to get around to uploading photos.

Overall, a very different experience from last year. Not better or worse. Just different.

That's all I got.

Privacy, Exposure, Risk: Can you maintain safer spaces online?

• Susie Bright: "Being out there and open is the best protection you have because people will defend you if they know who you are."
• Susie Bright: If you're getting threats based on something you say, then you said something important and influential. Congratulations!
• Liveblog

Does the Blogosphere Need an Intolerance Intervention?

• Laina started to introduce herself, and Liz had to cut her off because she was stealing all of her topic thunder.
• If you're going to delete/close/"actively manage" comments, it might be a good idea to state your policy or note where you've jumped in. Sadly, there are a lot of examples of people displaying despicable behavior online.
• When people are talking smack about you should you fight back? Or keep your mouth shut? Both ways can work. If the comments about you are not on your blog, you should probably let it go.
• You can't control what people will do or say, but you can control how you respond.
• Related to previous panel, if you have a good community of commenters, they'll stick up for you in your comments.
• Kathryn Thompson: If you're not intolerant, you're not authentic. We're all intolerant about something. We call people out on them when our intolerances don't match up with theirs.
• Liveblog

Blogging Workflow Tools and Tricks

• Gina Trapani: The technical act of blogging is not nearly as simple as people make it out to be. Especially if you're a high volume poster.
• All the good shit is in Firefox.
• The Wiki
• Be ruthless. Prune your feeds. Or at least mark all as read. Easy to say, hard to do. I always feel like I'm going to miss something. But I feel worse when I end up having to skip a bunch of stuff. Ignorance is bliss.
• Barb Dybwad: "don't get bogged down with a feeling of obligation to consume or look at everything. try to cultivate an attitude of opporunity rather than obligation." Amen!

And now, cocktails. Actually, find Missy first. Then cocktails.

Tag: BlogHer07

The grand ballroom at Navy Pier is a looooong walk from the entrance. I think I walked farther inside Navy Pier than I did getting to it in the first place. Initial impression: Navy Pier as a conference location is awesome. And the internet access is marvelous.

I hate icebreakers. We did that speed-dating icebreaker thing. Good idea, went on too long. Hard for introverts like me. On the plus side, I said the same thing over and over again.

Met Stephanie Roberts when she randomly sat down at my table this morning. We bonded over being INTJs after being stressed by the icebreaker. Super cool.

Met Nataly Hogan during the icebreaker. I saw Work It, Mom! on her name tag and "Oh my god, you know KathyHowe!" came tumbling out of my mouth. Nice lady.

Self-branding and Self-promotion

• This panel was packed. Folks sitting on the floor up front and standing in the back. I wasn't sure if I wanted to attend, because I'm not looking to market myself as a professional writer. But I do want to manage what shows up when you Google my name. And I really just wanted to see Penelope Trunk.
• PT asserted that you're more likely to be harrassed at work than online. Thinking... she might be right.
• She pointed out that we compartmentalize our lives and where we talk about what anyway, so we should recognize that even as you filter, you're still being yourself.
• Focus, focus, focus. Basic marketing principle.
• If you're blogging on a topic that's related to your day job and you want to leverage that, test it on your friends first. If you really want to use it for career advancement, you have to put it out there, or don't bother.
• If you can't find a niche, you need to have a huge personality (e.g., Anil Dash, Jason Kottke).
• If you're blogging, you're asking people to connect with you. So you should be happy to get all that email.
• Liveblog

Met Nina Smith at lunch. That is a really cool lady. Had an interesting conversation with her about the time and effort she puts into managing Queercents and about wrangling a volunteer corps of authors. I already loved me some Queercents. Now I love it some more.

So far, so good.

Tag: BlogHer07

Ever since the MT upgrade, the Junk filter's been a little aggressive. Tanya gave me a heads up and I fished a bunch of comments out of the Junk bin. Sorry 'bout that.

Missy and I drove to Chicago today. That's a long time in the car. But, despite an unexpected delay and power outage from Janesville to Beloit, we made it in a decent time. About 7 hours from Minneapolis to downtown Chicago is not bad at all.

I'm going to BlogHer tomorrow. Missy's occupying herself with something cultural and perhaps touristy.

We had dinner in Bucktown with my friends Natalie and Alex. We ate at Cafe Laguardia which, coincidentally, I ate at the last time I was here two years ago. It was good, too.

I think I'm packed for tomorrow. Got all my electronicals organized. I really don't have much to carry. The gamble is in whether or not it might be cold inside Navy Pier and do I want to lug around my space-consuming hoodie. I might do without tomorrow.

The wired internet seems to not be working in our room, so we're hanging out using the wifi at the mezzanine lounge at our hotel, which seems to be decorated like a Cosi, but without the giant furniture.

After spending all day in the car, sitting in this chair on the internet is not the most comfortable thing, cushy as the chair is. But you know how we need our internet.

I'm easily amused this evening.

(via Missy, via The Amateur Gourmet)

We went and saw Guster play the MN Zoo Amphitheater. I'd never been to the zoo before. To see animals (not my thing anyway) or a show. It was a great venue, the weather was perfect, and Guster played the best damn rendition of Airport Song I've ever heard. I was all ready for Brian's crazy drum solo, and they busted into this total funky groove instead. Marvelous. My last couple times seeing them were kind of disappointing, so it was awesome to be able to really enjoy the show.

She looked so good yesterday anyway, and then she put my hat on. *sigh*

I'm not really liking this Cutline template. Especially that woodsy banner picture. I could do without the graphic all together. My perception of it could have a lot to do with the fact that my iBook screen has been a fucked pink color for a few weeks, and I can't access my own sites at work, and the idea of working on the site on my work laptop from home is unappealing. So expect random templates to appear.

And there's the part where it doesn't seem to be as easy to actually access the CSS template to make changes. I'm sure there's a better way to do this, but I'm not web designer. Meh.

Sidebar modification shall continue. I want to see a flickr badge, my recent Metblog posts, and recent comments. And probably switch to a dropdown menu for the archives, because there's just too damn much of that. But keep it all as uncluttered as possible. If that's possible. Which goes back to being able to tinker with the template.

What I really want is one of those colophon deals where all the reference info is at the bottom of the page.

Oh, and some spam control. Several plugins have been recommended. Haven't done anything with that yet. This should perhaps be first on the list.

I think I've got my feed redirection action squared away. Who knows. I may not care at this point.

For some reason, ecto can't access anything on this domain anymore. Don't know what's up with that. I thought the upgrade would fix that, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Will the word "Lynx" continue to break the install? We'll see in a moment. Answer: No! *whew*

So forth and so on.

Feel free to pick up my Feedburner feed. If you're already subscribed this may or may not at some point fix itself. Still trying to figure out redirect vs rewrite in the .htaccess file, which may or may not even be located in the right spot.

So you can wait for me to do that. Or not. Just sayin'.

I'm running MT 3.35.

*blink*blink*

I'm in the process of taking everything out of Bloglines and putting it into Google Reader. This involves deleting feeds from Bloglines as I go. In case anybody actually noticed or was wondering.

Also, I've got Wordpress installed and while this is totally freaking me out, I'm going to try to migrate all my stuff from MT over there. I guess the migration to Wordpress freaked me out less than upgrading MT.

I'm really trying to streamline and cut some fluff. I'm excited to start fresh with a new template (that looks like a lot of other people's, I know). I'll be adding info back into the site gradually so as to cut down on some of the noise in the sidebar. I need my shit to be easy on the eyes so I can stand to look at my own page, ya know?

So if anything looks or acts weird, just hang in there and give it a day or two, mmmkay?

Regarding #11, wouldn't you know it fuckin' happened? In a way that I had been hoping might but wasn't sure how to bring to fruition.

Can't say any more but... YAY!

Every Wednesday should be a holiday. I like this day off in the middle of the week stuff. Two super short work weeks on either side. Excellent.

I actually took a half day yesterday. Or rather, I had a half day, because my boss was kind enough to let me off early knowing we'd be let go early on account of the holiday anyway.

I won lunch with my choir director in the silent auction that accompanied our spring concert. Actually Missy and I went in together on it. So we had lunch, and then I got my eyes checked and went for a run while Missy took a nice long bike ride. She got totally soaked right at the beginning of the ride and was soggy for the duration. I managed to miss the rain while at the eye doctor, but had the pleasure of running in the ridiculous humidity that followed.

Chilled for a bit, went to a basketball game, then went to an "I don't own a boat or a cabin, so I'm staying in the city" Pre-July 4th Bash where I had the first Jell-o shot I've consumed since college. Good times.

Slept in today, Missy made breakfast, went grocery shopping, did some laundry, and we've been otherwise farting around. We're sitting out on the deck right now surfing on our respective laptops (gawd, I love wifi), just enjoying the evening. Missy's about to start on dinner. We've got no plans for fireworks or anything this evening. Just relaxing.

Fabulous.

My girl's name is Missy.

There, I said it. File that away.

As seen at Dawn's. Also, I have no idea what happened to #14.

1. I've come to realize that my last kiss was... every bit as sweet and warm and loving as my girl is.

2. I am listening to... my girl putter in the kitchen.

3. I talk... too much and I never shut up. Not really, but that's the first thing that popped into my head.

4. I love... my girl.

5. My best friends... don't necessarily consider me to be one of their best friends.

6. My car... got pooped on (and in, damn sunroof) several hours after the last time I got it washed.

7. My love life... is pretty awesome.

8. I hate it when people ask... me, unreasonably, to go out of my way to do them a favor.

9. I want to... take some time off of work to get all of my other projects in order.

10. Marriage is... not something I think much about since I can't legally get married at the moment anyway.

11. Somewhere, someone is thinking... that they want to give me some money. Am I right?!

12. I'm always... self-deprecating.

13. I have a secret crush on... no one at the moment.

15. My cell phone... is serviceable. But I really wouldn't mind having something (anything) with a qwerty keyboard on it.

16. When I wake up in the morning... I check to see how adorable my girl is looking while she sleeps.

17. Before I go to bed I... brush my teeth. Usually.

18. Right now I am thinking about... what to do for dinner.

19. Babies are... the best form of birth control.

20. I get on MySpace... occasionally. Mostly to check bulletins.

21. Today I... rode almost 18 miles in my new bike shorts with the chamois in the crotch. Holy shit, did that make a huge difference. No sore butt at all!

22. Tonight I will... do some blogging.

23. Tomorrow I will... go to MNspeak happy hour. I so wanna meet Bixby.

24. I really want to... have this blog upgraded and have a new website launched by the end of the summer.

25. Someone who will most likely repost this... uh... I don't think anyone will, really. And I don't expect you to. But, you know, feel free.