Ramblings of the Mildly Insane

Since Thanksgiving has come and gone, it’s been rather difficult for me to get back in the mood to work…but today, while I was brain storming and pretending to be productive, I was checking my webstats and came across an unknown referral link.

It seems that one of my westciv entries (although it didn’t win or anything) was being used after all. It just makes me happy to see that people do enjoy my work and it was also great of him to give me a mention as well - thanks X5 - you’ve made my day.

For those of you in the states (or anywhere for that matter) - it’s time to really think about all that you have to be thankful for. This is a time for you to realize just how wonderful life is and how wonderful you are. If you’re experiencing some negativity in your life at this time, then it’s ideal for you to have a moment of pause to realize - it’s really not as bad as it seems.

Enjoy your friends, family, pets, neighbors, nature, health, and everything else you have to be thankful for!

Wow, the web is a big place. There are just so many blogs - my live bookmarks folder is bustin’! I came across a website the other day which said “blog it forward“. This is a pretty nifty idea and so I’ve decided that I’ll post a review up here on some of my favorite blogs weekly (although it says monthly) whenever the mood hits me.

I tend to separate my blogs into certain categories, the ones I will check daily (or semi-daily), ones I check weekly, and others I check rather sporadically. Generally, I’ll add a feed to my sage reader (but I only check sage every so often), but if a blog really stands out for me, I’ll add it to my live bookmarks which gets checked daily or semi-daily.

As I was going through the archives of one of my favorite blogs I asked myself “why is this blog one of my favorites? What makes this particular blog ‘live bookmark’ worthy?”

<wild tangent> Celestial Seasonings Peach Passion tea does not taste as good as one would expect - especially not iced. I much prefer the Stash peach black tea (even iced) </wild tangent>

Since this is going to be my first blog forward, I’m going to keep it short, sweet, and somewhat superficial

First things first, Keith has an awesome writing style. It’s laid back, but truly professional. I can tell that this is a style he’s honed for quite some time (and judging by his archives, I’d be right). I’ve actually gone back a few years and watched how his writing has evolved throughout that time.

Aside from his informal, yet professional, writing style, there is also something else that stands out and speaks volumes. He considers all his blog readers his friends. This is truly apparent in that whenever he writes a response, he takes the time to address the person who posts by their first name instead of just hyperlinking to the post number or arbitrarily referring to the post in question.

When you’re reading his blog, he welcomes and encourages reader participation and although he has a few ground rules, it’s not very strict. The vast amount of knowledge one can gain from his blog is unbelievable and then every Friday he’ll give you a quick music review (something to destressify your mind).

Hopefully in time my writing style will evolve and I’ll find my own comfortable voice on my blog.

<rant>
You know, I’ve read about comment spam, I’ve even seen comment spam on other blogs and I’ve come the conclusion - it’s all fun and games until it happens to you and it can happen to you. A couple weeks ago, I got my first comment spams on a couple of my older posts and luckily, both were caught by my spam filters and set in the moderation queue. But one did get through and posted to my blog - why? Because “online gambling” wasn’t set in my spam filter key words so it was live for a few minutes while I deleted it.

And now today, I’ve just received another piece of comment spam on an older one of my posts, but I have “comment moderation” on, so any comment on a post older than 7 days will be automatically put in the moderation queue. What really sucks is that I actually have to deal with it at all, I have to see it and delete it. Man I wish there was a way to just automate it and delete all comments that seemed remotely like spam (but unfortunately, I wouldn’t want any legitimate comments to find it’s way to my recycle bin)

Can’t spammers just get lives or something? Don’t these comment spammers realize that the likelihood of their spam actually getting through on my blog is around 0.000001%? Don’t they realize that nobody likes it, nobody wants it, and it ultimately destroys any credibility they may have for their product?

Time for me to go search out some interesting spam fixes for Wordpress….
</rant>

Update: The day after this post, some moronic spammer, who apparently cannot read, decided to bombard me with even more comment spam. I just found the timing to be very odd…

Luckily, Kitty makes a kick-ass spam plugin and when combined with optional comment moderation, it has nipped my spam problem in the bud for the time being. Next in line, I’ll be renaming my wp-comment files so I can get rid of some auto-posters too.

I should prolly include a disclaimer on the posting page which says “if the post is more than 7 days old it will be placed in queue for comment moderation” - hmmm, I’ll get right on that…

Well, it’s bright and sun-shiney early in the morning and I’ve been awake for a couple hours now, but quite unproductive. I’ve already notified my clients that I will be “off-duty” until Monday, but I was hoping to get some stuff for myself done in the meanwhile.

My tummy is feeling a little queezy and lately (past two days now) I haven’t felt great. I have a houseguest coming (won’t name any names cuz he reads my blog - and I know it’s going to come back and bite me in the ass ) and it’s nerve racking. This isn’t just any houseguest either, otherwise it would be no big - it’s the ex.

We were together for about 2 years (according to him, it’s 3, but that’s a long story) and we had a bunch of issues. Anyhoo, long story short, we broke up, he moved away, we remained friends. I really am glad that we still talk and I’ve already said my I’m sorries and forgiven him for his. This is the first time I’m going to see him in a year and at first I was semi-excited, now it’s just weird.

Alot has happened since the “trip planning” and even though he deliberately booked a plane ticket without consulting me, we got it straightened out (sort of), and then he re-booked another plane ticket after I told him not to - but I decided to look on the bright side and go with it.

After a phone call at 3:45am (would have been 4:45am had it not been for daylight savings), I won’t go into the gorey details, I was really nervous about having him come visit, but decided to look past it and allow it to sort itself out. However, it’s like God is trying to tell me something and I’m not picking up the clue phone.

I tell my sister that he’s coming and she is utterly excited to see him, i.e. “my brother in-law is coming, my brother in-law is coming”, mind you, we’ve never been married or even dicussed it, and then she discussed all the facets of birth control I must use when he arrives. Normally, I’d blow it off as a joke - but I know my sister - and I know she was only being half-flippant.

Unfortunately, I can’t shake the ring of truth in her words and in his and that’s what makes me nervous. I know his charater, I know his mentality, and quite frankly - it’s not something I care to deal with, not right now. I wish he were coming to visit one of his other friends and I’d be a side trip, but alas - I’m the one he really cares about…

Here he is, due to arrive tomorrow, and every time I think about it I just have a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach and I am literally nauseous. This is simply a situation I fully don’t want to deal with. It went from being “okay, I get to see [insert random name] - woohoo!” to “I don’t want to deal with this - especially not this time of year, can’t it wait for spring?” in the matter of a week.

I just want to scream bloody murder, crawl under a rock, and hide from the world…

Nothing major, just added a few quick things to the blog:

1) I added a “recent comment” plugin so visitors can see who’s saying what. It will show the 6 most recent comments and a brief excerpt from each. Nothing too fancy, used the regular WP recent comments hack with a few tweaks.

2) I’ve also added a “subscribe to comments” plugin. The plugin will allow you to subscribe to a post’s comments and receive notification by email on any new comments left after yours. This way, you won’t lose track of the conversation on a particular post. It also allows you to moniter, unsubscribe, and update your comment subscriptions. Definitely a great plugin by Scriptygoddess.

When I have more time (or feel like it), I’ll fix it up and make the recent comments tie in with the theme of the site (maybe even give it a title so people can know what it is)

That’s all for tonight…

I have to admit I have one of the coolest eco systems going on in my front porch area and it never ceases to amaze me when I go out there.

I have at least 5 different types of spiders (they have some amazing webs), a bunch of baby frogs, some flying things (I haven’t looked them up in the book yet), shiney black beetles, butterflies (yellow ones, monarchs, and white peacocks), an assortment of lizards (one really large green one that I think used to be someone’s pet…but now he frequents my porch whenever the mood strikes him), and a green stinkbug I’ve named Frank.

Almost forgot - I have a racoon too, but he only comes out at night and he’s not on my good side. He ate the doves that were nesting in my hanging planter - the doves that I had watched and grown to love over the course of a month.

It started with one dove - who, at first, seemed very tentative about building a nest in my hanging planter. But one day, I looked out my dining room window and right there, plain as day, resting on a bed of twigs was the dove. Every day I’d peek out the window and have the most perfect view into her home. A few times I got scared because she never left, but the amazing morning I looked out and saw those two fuzzy chicks, I understood. I watched them grow and get bigger, and I thought about the day they’d be learning how to fly. I believe they even came to trust me because they stopped flinching each time I opened the curtain or passed by their nest.

Then that frightful morning came when I looked out the window and they were all gone. I knew it was too soon for them to “leave the nest” and figured they must have been spooked by something…then I went outside and saw the trail of feathers and I knew what happened. That was one of the first times I actually wanted to mame or injur an animal. I had actually grown to like the racoon (although keeping my distance), and it felt like it betrayed my trust. That was a sad day indeed. I try to remind myself that “it’s the circle of life” and all that nonsense, but it just doesn’t make it better.

Anyhoo, back to my eco-system. Some people (namely my family) don’t think it’s normal for me to “allow” these creatures to reside in or around my home area….

Personally, I like my little eco-system and so does Little Tiger. Plus, I’ve done my research and none of them are of the poisonous variety, and as long as they don’t disturb me, I won’t disturb them (with the exception of the racoon, next time I see that little fuzzy *******, I’m calling animal control on his ass)

I’m starting to think I don’t belong in a city of any sort and I should buy a house on acres of forested land or something…

The News Vault - Man Mistakenly Cuts Off His *****, Dog Eats It - Constantin Mocanu

Thanks ****…

And to think, I got mine for free…

They’re cloning kitties

Disclaimer: I was only watching MTV because I couldn’t sleep and there was nothing else that seemed mind-numbing enough to help me wind down…

It was a rerun of The Real World and this episode was aparently MJ’s birthday and the girl (don’t remember her name…um the one’s that has been trying to get him in the sack since the show started) made him breakfast in bed because of some traumatic birthday event he encountered when he was younger.

For some odd reason, it reminded me of my traumatic event when I was in middle school. I had just moved to Florida and my 12th birthday came and went without so much as a card from my family. Apparently, they had other things on their minds. So when it was a few weeks before my 13th birthday, I started getting a little antsy.

I don’t remember how this nervous breakdown came about, it had to be something major that set me off because I generally let stuff build up. But I remember losing it in school one day. I totally unleashed my pissiness and anger upon my friends explaining how I was ripped from my “true home” and brought to this God foresaken hell pit and had to leave all my friends and nobody cared about me anymore and that I was pretty much being swept under the rug in my family.

My 13th birthday rolled around and sure ’nuff, my daddy didn’t wish me a happy birthday in the morning on my way to school and no one called me. I arrived at school and just continued throughout the day as if nothing was special and then somewhere towards the end of my day, my friends said they had something for me. They gave me a brown teddy bear and wished me a happy birthday - said they were sorry my life sucked and hoped it got better (I’m paraphrasing) and I cried (don’t fault me for it, I might be a slight tomboy, but I am still a girl). I felt horribly bad for going off on my friends like that and they still went out of their way to chip in to get me a gift. That is one of the happiest childhood memories I have since I’ve been in FL.

I still have the teddy bear…