SUCK.

The Bad: BlogMad had a DB corruption, and lost 20 days worth of info. I, of course, had signed up 19 days prior, so my profile ceased to exist in the BlogMad plane.

The Good: I rejoined, re-added my blog and was even given some credits for the inconvenience. After I contacted them, they restored my user rank, so no harm, no foul.

The Ugly: Before, I had a VARB rank of 7.25. Right after I rejoined, someone voted Pixelslut a 1, so that’s where my rank is. They can’t manually change it, either, from what I was told. A POX ON THEE, ANONYMOUS VOTER. I’m not exactly writing Pulitzer material, here, but surely I’m not that lousy.

So, you know, if the spirit moves you it’d be cool if you would help rectify my crappy VARB rank. And join with my referral link above and in my sidebar, since I lost my referrals too.

Anyway. Back to more pressing matters, like setting up my new 10 gallon tank so I can buy myself a crowntail betta.

Edit: Er, the links in my sidebar have been fixed so that you really, actually can vote for THIS blog. Paint me embarrassed.

Things I am mildly embarassed to admit #1

I have a confession to make. I had a hard time remembering which way was vertical and which way was horizontal until 7th grade.

That’s when a classmate of mine shared her secret-she thought of it as “whore”izontal, and whores lay on their backs, so that’s which way horizontal ran.

Un-PC, yes, and I can’t even remember the name of the classmate that told me, but damned if I haven’t remembered that example for the last fourteen years of my life. Before I think of “horizon” being a similar word, actually.

I don’t think I even have a chance of saving my soul at this point, really.

We now return to your regularly scheduled inanity

I don’t even know if inanity is a word.

So it’s nice to have my blog back. The timing was impeccable-the night before I had started a blog for all my fish stories, and then WordPress.com went down for the count. Now the urge to finish setting everything up is fading. It’ll have to wait until this weekend.

I’m heading to bed now, because I need to drag my ass out of bed at 5am to finish lesson plans. My life revolves around fish and lesson plans. I’m starting to miss the human members of my family.

Of course, that isn’t going to stop me from scoring a crowntail betta from Petsmart as soon as I can get my hands on another tank.

It’s all been done

It would figure that I’d start getting a little steady traffic and then completely lose the urge to blog for a week. I haven’t had much to post about, though, because I’ve been in mommy and teacher mode pretty much nonstop lately-not a whole lot on the geeking-out front.

I don’t know if I’ve already written it on here anywhere, but I’m an assistant teacher for the 18-24 months room at a preschool. It’s fantastic-I love kids, and it’s an active job that keeps me moving. The last couple of months have been kind of rough, though, because we’re inbetween lead teachers. There’s a lot of extra slack I’m having to pick up without another consistant person in the room. It eats up a lot of my time, with the extra planning and prep and just plain being worn out.

Also, I seem to have picked up a betta addiction somewhere along the way. My little finned family has grown to four members. They’re pretty much all that’s in my flickr account right now. Crappy camera phone pics, but you get the idea. My family’s been very casual about the whole thing-I’m the one looking at the fishbowls lined up around the kitchen and going “How can you not think that I’ve TOTALLY LOST IT?!”

Actually, there’s a little (anime) geeking out for you-the last guy I bought is dark blue and black and his fins are pretty torn up. I named him Zangetsu.

IT’S OVER! </strongbad>

Having Standards

Four years later, I look back at my novice-CSS, big-ass-banner-image, nested tables galore n00b blog layouts and think: Goddamn, I wish I could use iframes again without feeling dirty. IE-only link effects, too. Le sigh.

I do wish I could upload my own layout for this blog. It needs a trendy celebrity header graphic with too much gaussian blur and some texture brushes. Just thinking about it makes me nostalgic.

Failing uploading my own theme, could we at least get more three-column layouts if WordPress.com is going to insist on piling on the widgets? My sidebar is getting kind of ridiculous. And this is after I took out my broken del.icio.us widget and decided not to use the calendar.

Musicality

The Pandora/Last.FM mashup rocks my freakin’ socks off. Now I can get some variety in my charts, rather than displaying to the world that I like to listen to the same fifteen songs over and over again.

That’s all I’ve got, really. Losing that hour because of daylight savings has totally kicked my ass. It’s 9pm and I’m ready to go to bed.

24 years old and ready for bed by 9. I must be getting old. Actually, I KNOW I’m getting old(er), because when I told my 17-year-old brother I named the fish and crab Mork and Mindy he asked me “Who’s Mork and Mindy? It sounds like a TV show.”

Me: **facepalm**

Heading to bed now, in the hopes that Dave will play a couple of games of Dr. Mario with me before we turn in for the night. He actually beat me last time. I need to remind him who the Dr. Mario master is in this household.

:-P

Why is my motivation to get things done always inversely proportionate to the amount of time I have to do them in?

DUDE.

When I checked my blog last night I had about four or five comments, and that was very cool so I figured I’d respond in the morning after I had gotten some sleep and then I woke up around nine and checked my blog and I had NINE comments and then I got like four more and I HAVE FORGOTTEN HOW TO RESPOND TO COMMENTERS WITHOUT HAVING THREADED COMMENTS, PEOPLE. LiveJournal has spoiled me!

I just recently got a coComment account. Hopefully I can remember to use it.

But anyway, thanks for the warm welcome! I’m hoping to get in some surfing tonight, and leave some comments. I’ve said it before, but I repeat: that’s the part where I fail at blogging.

Okay. I’ll shut up about my traffic now. I just had to take a moment to boggle at the influx. ^_^ Later: Bling-bling letters and DIY iPod shuffle skins(maybe)!

Um, Hi?

So, ah, I signed up for BlogMad like an hour ago and have already gotten twice as many hits as I ever have. (Admittedly, that wasn’t a very high number to begin with.) So if you’ve surfed in from there, hello! Drop me a line! Comments are awesome and I always visit sites of commenters.

For those not already involved with BlogMad, in the interest of full disclosure, the link above has my referrer code in it. If you use it to sign up, I get credits and would be very grateful.

I guess I should get out of my pajamas and do some laundry now.

I blame myself

It’s time for another game of “Amusing Search Terms People Found My Blog With”!

slut from egypt
free slut letters (Similar to “Letters To Penthouse”, perhaps?)
myspace hate icons (I should make some.)
best slut
my slut girl inbox

This may seem like some breach of internet ettiquette, but it’s really a thank you for all the giggles I get out of imagining the disappointment that must occur when it’s revealed that my blog doesn’t contain the kind of sluts the searchers had in mind. Wacky search term users, I salute you!

(Laptop keyboard is spontaneously working again. CAN’T. STOP. POSTING.)

Hurr Hurr

Today is my least favorite day of the year, since I am the person practical jokers dream of, who will fall for pretty much anything if told to me with a straight face.

That said, this is pretty damn funny, having looked for it knowing today was April Fool’s Day. LifeHacker.com’s series on zombism is pretty good, too.

My crabs died. I’m getting a couple more this weekend. Mork is still alive, though.

Girl in the world

A little non-geekspeak, since I haven’t updated in a few days:

I’ve lost weight again. This may seem like a good thing on the surface, until you realize that I was only 106 lbs. to begin with. (I come from small people.) None of my pants fit me anymore, and I’m currently too broke to buy new ones.

Mindy had to be evacuated from the fishbowl, as Mork finally launched a full frontal attack. Mork is now in my classroom and settling in, and Mindy is in a fishbowl at home with a new buddy of her own species. He has nine legs and likes to hang upside down in the arches of the little fake rock decoration I got for them. I call him Spidey.

I’m already totally attatched to all three. The animal lover in me that had gone dormant during my apartment days is back in full force, and now I crave the bowl decoration I saw that looked like mini Roman ruins. Also, some purple gravel.

Aaaaaaand I’m off to bed. WHY IS TOMORROW A LONG DAY.

What’s in a name?

Since the fish in my classroom went to the Big Aquarium in the Sky a couple of weeks ago, I schlepped out to the pet store to get a new one, as the kids are starting to ask where our fish is. Two year olds are a lot more observant than one might think.

After much deliberation, I came home with not only a shiny new red Betta named Mork, but a little red-clawed crab named Mindy to keep in the bowl as well. Mindy seems to be plenty happy with her surroundings. Mork seems to be a little disgruntled at sharing his living space with Mindy. He’s no longer trying to pick a fight, but keeps hovering over Mindy as though crustaceans can’t be trusted. I say, if he’s going to insist on waving his tail fin in a crab’s face, he gets what he deserves.

My own kids were so excited over the little guys that as soon as I have a couple more bucks to spend, I’m buying another fish and crab to keep here at home. I’m already trying to come up with cutesy matching names. Spiderman and Doc Ock? Vash and Wolfwood? Zabimaru and Zangetsu?

My kids are just lucky I didn’t get all carried away with naming them. As it is, my son’s name is a subtle X-Men reference, and if called on it I will disavow all knowledge.

Inbox Envy

I have 4,745 unread messages in my inbox.

Giving someone like me 250 megs of storage space is kinda like giving a shopaholic a credit card with a $100,000 limit and saying “Now, only use this for things you really need.”

The laptop keyboard has spontaneously started working again-I suspect there was some kind of moisture under the keys that was futzing with the circuits. That, of course, is just a fancy way of saying I think I got pop under there during one of my coughing fits last week. Whatever the cause, I’m glad I no longer have to painstakingly type out, backspace, and cut and paste my passwords to log in to my various online accounts.

I’m also just glad to be able to write upstairs again. There is something about the basement that inhibits my thinking. Maybe it’s my fears of the GIANT FLIPPING SPIDERS that tend to lurk down there.

Show “Now Playing” in iTunes on MySpace

ETA 01/05/2008: LastFM now offers flash widgets for MySpace and a variety of other blogging sites. Way more nifty, and you can even have it install the code for you without having to fiddle with your profile.

The ETA Returns 05/24/2008: With the addition of third party applications for MySpace, there is now a Last.FM app that will display what you’ve listened to recently. It’s called What I’m Listening To, and you can find it under the music category in the apps section. Keep in mind, though, that the application was not developed by either MySpace or Last.FM, so neither site will be able to provide support if it’s not working.

I’ve been getting some random hits for embedding stuff on MySpace, so I thought I’d indulge y’all. First things first:

⇒ This tutorial assumes you know how to follow simple directions elsewhere, and can copy and paste blocks of code.

⇒ If you’re looking for how to embed music or videos on your page, I don’t want to know you. (Seriously, though, there’s tuts for that on the MySpace site.)

Last.FM recently added charts that show what you’re currently listening to. These charts work on MySpace and LiveJournal because they’re dynamically created image files, and not a javascript code. Many multi-user journaling sites (including WordPress.com) will filter any javascript you try to add to your page.

To display an image that will show what you’re listening to:

1. If you don’t already have an account at Last.FM, go create one.

2. Follow their instructions for downloading and installing the AudioScrobbler plugin. There’s also versions availiable for WinAmp, Windows Media Player and a handful of other players.

3. When your plugin and account are all configured and ready to go, and you’ve played a few songs to confirm that the plugin is working, go to the For Your Site section.

4. Click on the Chart Builder link. It will walk you through the rest of the process.

5. Make sure you choose “Recently Played” as your chart type.

6. After choosing your chart style, you’ll get a preview of what your chart will look like and a text box containing the HTML code for it. Right click in the box and “select all” and copy, to avoid doing anything silly like leaving off the closing >. (Which I’ve done, and still do all the time, so STFU.)

7. Log in to your MySpace account, and choose to edit your profile. Paste the code into whatever box you want it in. I have it in my “Music” section.

END! Now whenever your iTunes is playing, that image will be updated with the songs you’ve listened to most recently. If it doesn’t appear to be updating, make sure your browser cache is cleared, your plugin is working as it should and the Last.FM site isn’t down or not receiving info.

This is a very, very basic tutorial, intended for anyone who doesn’t know much about HTML to begin with. Hopefully it was simple enough to understand without treating you like a complete dunderhead.