Stupid Site Stats

Not only can I not log in to Technorati (they have yet to respond to my request for my password), but now Sitemeter, which has remembered me as long as I've had the code on my site, has forgotten I exist. It's even forgotten my codename exists.

ARRRGGHHH! And I was 18 people away from 3,000 hits since I installed Sitemeter.

I am so far beyond annoyed right now. I wanna know what's up with Sitemeter. I want to know why I can't get my password from Technorati.

And I want to know why I am not permitted to register at TTLB. STILL.

Dammit.

Edited to add:

Okay, Sitemeter was apparently down (and still is to my knowledge), but is at least recognizing that I exist rather than trying to tell me I don't.

TTLB now lets me log on, but refuses to recognize my blog (even when I type in the URL correctly -- something about an error on line 85)

and Technorati still won't send me my damn password.

Blog Rating Notice

Ladies and Gentlemen, it has come to my attention that a terrible thing has happened to this blog.

This blog has slipped in its ratings.

Yes, dear readers, this blog has slipped to a PG-13 rating.

That simply will. not. do.

So, in light of this (and the obvious fact that I haven't discussed poop within recent memory, nor have I ever mentioned condoms), I give you the following three "post-ettes" in an attempt to raise this blog to its former glorious R rating:

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Cat Poop
Our cats are notoriously finicky creatures. If the litter boxes have not been scooped for, say, thirty minutes, they start clearing their throats and glaring at us prior to entering.

Now Daniel will continue to enter the litter boxes even up until they're scooped (twice daily -- it's frequent with three cats). Granted, he gives a long-suffering glare at whatever two-legged creature happens to be nearby, but he goes in the box, attempts to cover what he's done -- and at 12-15 pounds he isn't that successful despite the size of the box -- emerges, and proceeds to ignore his servants for at least fifteen minutes.

Patrick displays his disgust only when he's sick to his little gastro-intestinal tract, which leads him to doing such interesting things as going to the human bathroom to poo on the floor beside the human commode.

Now if only we could teach that boy to get on the commode, we might have something worth pursuing.

Emily, though? When her Precious Princess Poopy Palace is not scooped to her satisfaction?

Carpet.

Preferably in one of the kids' rooms.

Because she likes to hear them squeal.

Preschool Poop
Upon returning from dinner at my parents' house one night, I was apparently not moving quickly enough toward the front door.

My utter slackitude resulted in the following monologue from my younger son, who was waiting for me with his big brother at the door while I lugged in several tons of groceries:

"Oh GWEAT!

I dust poopded in my undoopayunts.!

I ated too much and it dust pushded it wight aout!"

(yes, he really does talk like this, and we have to fight the urge to mimic him... hee)

He had likely tried to pass gas (one of his hobbies) and got an unexpected result. I told him it was okay, it was an accident, etc. He got into the bathroom and got cleaned up. All was well.

Until I made this post, that is. Me blogging about this is yet another one of those things which will doubtless be revisited in my now-four-year-old's future therapy sessions.

Condoms
I know this comes as a shock to most of you, but my husband and I occasionally like to indulge in a bit of maritally sanctioned intimacy, also known as nuptial nookie.

Well, to accomplish this without changing our 1:1 kid-to-adult ratio, we use condoms (long story... short of sterilization or an IUD, both of which I'm considering -- the former for him, the latter for me -- it's all we've got).

Since I get to do most of the shopping, I'm usually responsible for procurement.

Unfortunately, I do most of my shopping with the kids, which leads to some hasty choices at times, especially if I wish to avoid the eight-year-old trumpeting, "What's a condom, Mama?"

So yeah, good times.

Anyway, the last time Himself and I decided we'd be killing off a few more rubber trees, he asked me, "Do we have any?"

"Sure honey, on the bookshelf by your side of the bed."

He looked, picked up the packets, and raised one eyebrow at me.

"Spiral ribbed or mint tingle????"

I shrugged.

"That's what happens when your wife buys the Party Pack."
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Must post and re-check the ratings... a moment, if you will...



Ah yes. Much better. We're BA-ACK!

Corporate Interest

Looks like the folks at Publix are interested in my thoughts about baggers:

(double-click on the image to enlarge)

On the off chance there are any other visitors from the Publix corporate offices, please also see my thoughts about deli workers who sneak black olives into pre-made wraps.

Thanks for coming by, y'all! Always happy to offer feedback.

Nerd Test

Well, I took the nerd test I found over in the sidebar at Scott's blog:



Heh. And why yes, yes I'm finding things to do to occupy myself rather than smoke. Why do you ask?

By the way, Scott, welcome to my blogroll*. May God have mercy upon your soul.

*(You'll show up as soon as Blogrolling stops dragging its feet...)

Edited to add: My husband took the test. Same score. Hee.

Meet Amanda, TechnoGeek Extraordinaire

Well, regarding the title, not really... but I faked it well.

Our normal in-house IT guy is on vacation this week. Of course, this week was also when the digital recorders and accompanying software arrived.

Guess who got to do the install? Yep. Ms. IT-Degree-Dropout-who-Calls-Computer-Related-Parts-"Doohickies"-and-"Whatchamajiggers".

First, the DSS reader program didn't want to install fully. Then when I installed the recorders at the USB ports, the USB ports didn't want to recognize that they were even there.

Of course, once the computers saw the recorders were, yes, indeed there, did they want to recognize there was a test recording (made by yours truly) on them?

No, they did not.

However, many restarts later (many, many, MANY... numbering well into the double-digits), the system worked.

Now I just have to get the program and recorder installed in our remote office. THAT should be fun.

I think I might possibly call in our contracted emergency back-up IT guys on that one.

More Potter, Still No Spoilers

No, I'm not going to do spoilers on this book.

On that topic, I can understand why so many people wanted to know what was going to happen in Book Seven. I can understand why copies of it started to appear on the web. What annoys me to no end is that people were then posting those spoilers to the Harry Potter for Grown Ups (HPfGU) Yahoo! Group and other places where those who, maybe, perhaps, didn't want freaking spoilers could be startled by them.

I admit, I'm a sucker for turning to the back of a book -- and no, I haven't done it yet -- but that's MY choice. When an individual opts to deliberately post the outcome of a book on a public group with a deceptively innocent topic, though, that's just plain mean. The HPfGU list had to close early due to that type of posting; I'm glad they had the foresight to do so and thank the List Elves for taking the burden upon themselves to moderate and make that determination.

And regardless of whether or not my readers give a rat's ass about Harry Potter, I'm not going to talk about the specifics of the book in the main topics at this time. I might do a post where the comments permit spoilers (since I can't do a "cut" to save my life) but seriously... spoilage reeks, in more ways than one.

That said...

Oh dude, this book rocks so far. I'm at page 389, and it's totally making up for the misery that was Book 6. And as long as JKR lets Ron, Hermione and Harry live (and the Weasleys because, well... just because), I'll be totally happy.

Of course, I might be happy regardless of how she ends it. It all depends on how it comes out in the wash, so to speak.

Back to reading again. Yes, I'm blogging about reading. I'm a nerd -- y'all already knew that. ;)

HP 7... GACK! (no spoilers)

I now have Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in my greedy grasp, and am on page 132.

Very interesting. I'm yelling at JKR due to certain things in the book thus far, but... very interesting.

AND... I haven't skipped to the end to see how it turns out, which is somewhat amazing for me. Here's hoping I can continue on and be surprised.

Jut a thought... don't read the chapter titles, and don't read the opening quotations. Just start at Chapter One.

And Chapter Two is really quite cool.

Angel and I had a great time at the release. We both had our elder children with us, and her brother-in-law also came along and laughed his ass off at the two of us together.

A video was filmed of both of us babbling. I have suspicions it will be aired. Be warned, I scratch my face at one point and near the end it's totally obvious I'm chewing gum.

Okay, that's all. Back to reading.

Potter-Mania

Angel and I will be meeting up tomorrow night at our local Books-A-Million's Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows release party.

Yes, we're 37 and we're totally into this. Angel mentioned something about finding her wizard hat. Me? Eh, my crazy hat is Christmas-oriented, but if pushed I'm sure I can find something suitably embarassing as my eight-year-old is accompanying me.

I'm over halfway through my re-read of Half Blood Prince now. I may or may not finish it before tomorrow night's release. Not sure if I'll go back and finish it first or just hang it all and dive into Book 7.

Probably the latter. Heh.

Anyway, a report will be issued following the event. There will be a camera present (mine) and I intend on photographing the madness.

And if Angel agrees, I might even get a pic of the two of us goofs at the shindig. Shoot, if suitably inspired I might even blog the insanity via laptop.

We'll see.

:Cackle:

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

WARNING! Do not read this post if you haven't read all the previous HP books and don't want to be spoiled!
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Okay, everyone on board then? Good. Anyway...

I bought my copy of HP Book 7 (well, a voucher, but the book is paid for) about three months ago. Since that time I've been trying and trying to make myself re-read Book 6, Half Blood Prince.

I've read the previous five Harry Potter books over and over, with a bit less emphasis on Book 5, Order of the Phoenix just because I was so utterly PISSED that JKR killed off Sirius. I mean, kid loses his parents, lives with the loser Dursleys (who do seriously bring the funny, though), then finally things start looking up. He gets to go to an incredible school, makes great friends, and then finds his god-father. Harry has a good life (at least during the school year).

Then JKR screws up Hogwarts during OOP with Delores Umbridge, which was bad enough, but she freaking killed off Harry's god-father? The HELL?

So yeah, Book 5 pissed me off a bit. But not so much that I wasn't standing in Books-a-Million at midnight for the release of Book 6.

Which ended up being a HUGE downer. Dumbledore's dead, Snape seems like he actually really is a bad guy... ugh. So yeah, I'm having a bit of trouble putting myself through that again. I tried to re-read it after the first read-through (I usually do this with all HP books -- I'm a nut, I know), and just couldn't manage it. It was depressing, the pace dragged, and knowing how it ended I couldn't make myself do it again.

Here's hoping I can manage it now because I do tend to need a bit of a refresher on the HP "canon" prior to the release of the next novel. Besides, this isn't going to happen again. And yes, it's dorktastic, but I'm excited about the release of Book 7 even after the disappointment of Book 6.

I'm feeling some trepidation as well.

But I'll be there next weekend at Books-a-Million. At midnight. And I'll rush home and dive into the book until I fall asleep from exhaustion. And if JKR kills off Ron and/or Hermione (don't get me started on her killing off Harry or even all three), I might build a fireplace just so I'll have somewhere to burn my newly-found ridiculously priced kindling.

Linked!

Okay, this is weird.

I was looking over my Sitemeter stats (more of you read this than comment... so comment, already! Hell, disagree with me, agree with me, but just freaking comment), and found someone had come here from Technorati.

Technorati? Wow. I even have, like, a page there and everything. Who knew?

Yes, I'm a blogging idiot. I thought you had to be a member of Technorati for your blog to be there. I was wrong, obviously. Huh.

Anyway, I found out also that this blog has been linked to by the New York Personal Injury Law Blog, regarding the shutdown of Flea's blog.

I feel mildly famous. Feeling at all impressed about this is rather pathetic, I'll admit, especially as my regular readers still seem to number in the single digits.

That said, I feel somewhat safe saying, Flea, what were you thinking? Oh man, I hate it that your blog is gone, and I hate it that you had to settle this case due to the blog. But dude, if you're posting about your medmal trial you have absolutely positively got to tell your attorney.

Number one Very Bad Thing to do to your lawyer is to allow that lawyer to be blindsided in court by something you did and failed to disclose to him or her. Nothing would piss off my former boss more than coming into court and getting wallopped by something her client had done that opposing counsel knew and her client had failed to tell her.

I'd even listen to her say, "Is there anything you need to tell me that the other attorney could bring up in court? I need to know now so we can handle the fallout if that happens." And the same clients she'd said that to were, invariably, the ones who did things like, oh, forget to take their meds for mental disorders resulting in weird behavior around the opposing party, or who'd left screaming phone messages for or sent profane e-mails to the opposing parties that, of course, the targets of these messages saved... arrrgh!

So, here's your public service announcement. Give your attorney full disclosure. Follow the attorney's instructions. Failure to do so can often result in disaster, or at the very least, an attorney who's desperately trying not to let opposing counsel see the smoke coming out of her ears in the middle of court.

Template Question

Does anyone know how I could widen the column to the left of my blog entries? Or somehow narrow down the BlogLog and Twitter widgets? They're all cut off, and I either need a wider sidebar or a couple of more narrow widgets.

I tried narrowing the Twitter widget down, but it seemed like it just kept moving to the right.

I'm not an HTML queen. I can do some tiny things, but as I can't really read the code well at all (and I was going into computers? Hee... delusional much?), so this is a bit mind-boggling.

Any assistance is welcome.

Update: Well, I messed with the width of the main body and sidebar, taking some away from the primary writing column and adding to the sidebar column. This solution, though, is imperfect as it makes the body of the writing really long and narrow.

I also had to decrease the margin between the sidebar and main body to an uncomfortable degree.

The ideal solution would be to take those little margins out to the side of the main body and the sidebar (the far left and right light brownish/ yellowish parts) and narrow them a bit, rather than widening the sidebar at the expense of the main body.

Problem is, I can't find where to fix that in the code. I can't identify what it's called. Urrrgh!

Help?

Quick Note -- Comments

For some reason my comments defaulted to turning off for the new posts. I don't know if Blogger hiccupped or if I accidentally messed up my settings, but it's all fixed now.

Sorry if there was any confusion.

Blogger

While basking in widgets, I somehow managed to put my blogrolling thingie up twice. Now I can't edit the extra one out, because Google says I'm a virus.

Marvelous. And all I was trying to do was put the blogrolling widget above the bloglog widget, but somehow it replicated itself instead.

Bleah.

I'm going to ignore this for awhile and try to fix it later. There's more weirdness with the "add page element" option sometimes not showing up when I'm trying to edit these thingies too.

I've said it before: this unholy alliance between Google and Blogger MUST END!

Update: I got it fixed. FINALLY. Whew. Now I can add folks to my blogroll. Widgets, I'm telling you... they rock!

Upgrade

Well, I upgraded to the new template. The layout's still looking weird to me (not quite "home", yanno?).

I daresay I'll adjust.

I'm also fiddling with some widget-y things, and am seriously contemplating putting up some links as Fat Doctor and a few other of the med bloggers I visit have got to be tired of my "stalkerish" stuff wherein I open their page to get to another page I know they have linked because I'm too fracking lazy to make my own links.

Now if I can just figure out how to insert URLs into posts...

Nerd/Geek/Dork Test

I wasn't surprised at scoring higest as nerd...

For The Record:

A Nerd is someone who is passionate about learning/being smart/academia.
A Geek is someone who is passionate about some particular area or subject, often an obscure or difficult one.
A Dork is someone who has difficulty with common social expectations/interactions.
You scored better than half in all three, earning you the title of: Outcast Genius.

Outcast geniuses usually are bright enough to understand what society wants of them, and they just don't care! They are highly intelligent and passionate about the things they know are *truly* important in the world. Typically, this does not include sports, cars or make-up, but it can on occassion (and if it does then they know more than all of their friends combined in that subject).

Outcast geniuses can be very lonely, due to their being outcast from most normal groups and too smart for the room among many other types of dorks and geeks, but they can also be the types to eventually rule the world, ala Bill Gates, the prototypical Outcast Genius.

Congratulations!


Also, you might want to check out some of my other tests if you're interested in any of the following:

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Professional Wrestling

Love & Sexuality