Velveteen Mind

If Microsoft won't hire me, the Geek Squad will... not, either.

If you are looking for something clever or interesting, move along.  My computer crashed late Monday and I'm having to scramble to catch up.   Today, the first day I have been back online for more than 15 minutes at a time,  is one of those "This is my blog and I'll do with it whatever I please" days, so that means I'm using it as a bulletin board.

• If you are waiting for something from me, I am working on it.  Reminder emails are welcome.
• Blog Nosh Magazine channel editors:  I am wading through the acceptance emails re. who edits what channel and will be restructuring as necessary.  Don't fret:  there is nothing you are supposed to be doing, yet.
• Waiting for a signed contract from me?  I'm hooking up our printer today.  Probably.
• Waiting on a post from me for your site and checking here to see if I've been posting anything anywhere?  I haven't and I'll be a writing fool today, so bear with me.
• Updating my blogroll again this weekend.  If you asked, I promise I heard you.
• Are you my laundry and/ or dishes?  You'll have to just shine it on for a little while longer, because it ain't happening.

Finally, because I have now spent a week working on improving the performance of my computer (read: begging it to not crash again before I can back up all of our photos), I thought I would share with you a little of what I have learned...

1. Computers are not like cars.  You can not just drive them into the ground and hope that your dad or husband or father-in-law or random neighbor guy takes pity on you and checks under the hood for if it needs an oil change or whatever those fandangled automobiles need.  Apparently you have to maintain them.  Whatever that means.
2. Apparently "maintain" means doing things like scanning for viruses, adware, spyware, cleaning the disc, and defragmenting.
3. Bill Gates is apparently not God and does not design infallible machines and omnipotent hardware and software.    For instance, Windows may be the son of the devil.
4. If you hunt hard enough, there are computer geeks out there that hate Bill Gates enough and would like to steal his money enough that they have figured out ways to fix your computer for free.  Okay, they may need to work on the taking his money bit.
5. Gizmo's Tech Support Alert has everything you could ever want to fix your computer.  For free.
6. I would have the baby of Advanced WindowsCare Personal if I could.
7. IObit's SmartDefrag is my best friend.  Watching it degragment over 8,000 files (I am not kidding) was like watching the most complicated game of Tetris ever and thoroughly satisfying.
8. I have an immense amount of patience.
9. I am easily entertained.

If you want to improve your computer's performance, here is what I did, in a nutshell that actually took about five days to figure out, but you can now get done in a couple of hours:

• uninstall all of your virus programs, because odds are you have one too many
• back up as much as you can on DVD, CD, whatever
• run disc clean-up on your hard drive
• set a Restore point
• install and run Advanced WindowsCare Personal, which does about a million things, all of which are incredibly helpful (virus/spyware/adware cleanup, registry cleanup, disc cleanup, Start Menu cleanup, etc.)
• install and run SmartDefrag (this bit is time-consuming, so do it overnight)
• reinstall virus program

I still need to update Windows, but I'll get to that once reading computer jargon doesn't make me nauseous anymore.

Now, back to work.  More regular posting schedule coming up, I promise.  Ish.

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I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together.

Rain is tapping at my window on this lovely Sunday morning.  The air smells clean.  My mind is clear.  And I am thinking of you.  Our day has yet to begin, so I enjoy this luxury.

More specifically, I am thinking of the subject of accessibility.

Most specifically, I am pondering my email inbox and this lovely blog's comments sections (tongue firmly planted in cheek, thank you) and I would like to ask you a question:

Do you, as bloggers, reply to comments via email or within the comments section itself or both?

Generally speaking.  I know there are exceptions to either preference.

I used to email everyone back, however I felt it made it look like I ignored my comments.  Then I tried responding with comments of my own on specific posts, but that was just messy.  Plus, I rarely go back to see if anyone has replied to comments I leave on other blogs.

Finally, I tried responding to comments with comments of my own and then emailed those commenters to check for the published reply.

Yeah.  Um, no.  That was crazy.  Though probably the most effective.

ProBlogger has a great article on accessibility as a blogger, by the way.  But it still left me with questions.  That's why I am coming to you.

For reasons that I will gladly share with you soon, I have been discussing the topic of iconic bloggers lately with a handful of fairly iconic blogger friends.  The fact that I have access to these people is both laughable and a result of my not thinking of them as "iconic." 

What never fails is that the "big name blogger" with whom I am speaking always thinks that one of the other "big name bloggers" with whom I am speaking is the real deal, while they are just a fraud to be outed as such at the next turn.

Celebrity is perception.  Online celebrity is virtual perception. 

All of it is fleeting.  All of it is surreal.  All of it is laughable.

We would do well by ourselves to laugh.  We would do well by ourselves to let it go.  We would do well by ourselves to just keep writing...  and reading...  and sharing.

Which brings me back to the notion of accessibility.  I am a mom, at home with my boys, reaching out and releasing some brain waves through the internet.  I tend to talk to you about non-poop-related stuff because I live poop-related stuff.    Rather, I talk to you about the stuff that I can not talk to my toddlers about.  Or, at least, I talk to you about stuff about which I get unsatisfactory responses from my toddlers.

But occasionally I wonder if you feel like I'm talking at you rather than with you.  Because of the comments question I asked above. 

You see...

I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together.

I am the walrus.

My son would then ask, "So, what color are you?  What do you eat?  Do you go to school?  Do you like Buzz Lightyear?  Can you tell me a story?"

Purple.  Apricots.  Yes.  Absolutely.  Always.

But I would also like to hear your response. 

Do you get caught up in the "celebrity" status of some bloggers and feel like you wouldn't be noticed if you did comment?  Do you inadvertently appear to be a blog-snob yourself because you have yet to master the art of replying to comments?

What defines "accessibility" when it comes to bloggers?

How accessible are you?  How do you respond to comments?

Am I taking these questions too seriously?  Do you even care?

If you are not a blogger, I am quite sure you do not care.  In which case, my apologies.  We are quite full of ourselves and our minutiae, no?

Goo goo g'joob.

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Let Me Back Into The Matrix

A little over a year ago, I took the blue pill.  The one that places you inside the Matrix.  The Matrix that is the blogosphere, that is.

A little over four months ago, I took the red pill.  The one that removes you, albeit painfully, from the Matrix.  The one that plants you in the real world.

Now I'm ready to take the blue pill again.  But will you let me back into the Matrix?

~~~

It is amazing how much I missed while I was out of the Matrix.

It is disconcerting how little I missed while I was out of the Matrix.

Wading through hundreds of blog posts, it is clear that the more things change, the more they stay the same.  Conversations turn into friendships.  Slights turn into tantrums.  Radicals are born and movements are started.  Resolves fizzle as the shine of new blog buttons begin to dull.  Awards are doled out and flashes appear in the pan.  All that glitters...

And yet nuggets of genuine gold are there.  Scratch them.  See for yourself.  There is value in this Matrix that we have created.  You just have to know where to look.

So I took the blue pill.

Now let me back into the damn Matrix.

~~~

My progress so far...

Apparently BOSSY really did email me about her Excellent Road Trip  while I was, uh, not reading my email.  Thanks for supporting my bludgeoning of her for "overlooking" me anyway.  I should probably read my email from her before I start yelling at her next time.  Nevertheless, I will be meeting up with BOSSY at her stop in New Orleans and I couldn't be more excited to have her in my neighborhood.

>>>

TopBlogMag is not dead after all.  It was just in a coma.  Unfortunately, it has woken up from its coma with amnesia, not being able to even remember its name.  Therefore, I have renamed it and given it an all-new identity that suits my purposes as its new publisher and editor:

Blog Nosh Magazine!

After consulting with all of TopBlogMag's excellent writers, the new reincarnation will be a magazine featuring republished posts from your blog's old archives. 

You know those really great posts you wrote before anyone was reading your blog?  The ones you try to pimp out in your sidebar's "Dear God, Please Read These Before You Judge Me for Writing About My New Haircut 4 Days in a Row!" section?  Yeah, those.

If it has fallen off of you r front page and you love it, then we will be noshing on it!

*With your permission, of course.*

I'll be calling for editors soon to start compiling content for lots of subcategories.  While TopBlogMag always had male writers, the majority of the bloggers seemed to come from mommyblogs.  Time to ditch our niche and help promote and discover  some solid content not originating from the uterus.

Not that I don't love mommybloggers.  ;)

*By the way, we will still have some "themed writing" challenges, but it won't be the entire content model now.

Want to get your name in early as a writer, contributor, and/or editor?  email me and I'll add you to the Blog Nosh Magazine mailing list for updates and cries for help about the progress of the magazine's restructuring and relaunch.

>>>

In this same vein, one of my favorite new discoveries post-hiatus is Alltop.com.  Granted, I sort of hover around the moms.alltop.com section, but when I do venture out, I am always richly rewarded.   Alltop.com is an excellent source to break out of your "Internet stagnation."  Taken from their "about" page:

We help you explore your passions by collecting stories from “all the top” sites on the web. We’ve grouped these collections ... into individual Alltop sites based on topics ... At each Alltop site, we display the latest five stories from thirty or more sites on a single page — we call this “single-page aggregation.”

You can think of an Alltop site as a “dashboard,” “table of contents,” or even a “digital magazine rack” of the Internet... The bottom line is that we are trying to enhance your online reading by both displaying stories from the sites that you’re already visiting and helping you discover sites that you didn’t know existed. In this way, our goal is the “cessation of Internet stagnation.”

Precisely.  As such, Alltop has become an excellent source for knowing which blogs' archives I might like to dig through to find old content that they might like republished and re-promoted for Blog Nosh Magazine.  Particularly blogs in niches that I don't generally read.  A gold mine, indeed.  Although they only display the most recent headlines and preview the first paragraphs* from these blogs' posts, it's usually enough to know if I want to click through or not.

*Good reminder to all of us:  open strong and headline with intrigue!
 

Love it.

>>>

Finally, the worst of my renewed immersion in the Matrix has been twitter.  When I took the red pill and stepped away from the computer, I was a so-so fan of twitter.  Mostly, I found that people used it to promote their blog posts and maybe talk about what they were eating.  No real conversations within the circle of twitters that I followed.

At the suggestion of MammaLoves, however, I decided to give twitter another go.  Apparently, Mamma is a drug pusher.   

May I suggest that if any of you decide to take a hiatus from blogging (highly recommended, mind you), twitter may be the fastest track back online.  Within days of logging back on, I have found at least a dozen new blogs that I adore and gained twice as many lovely "followers" as I had even last week. 

Talk about getting lost in the Matrix.  Get yourself an account or start using that dusty old one you already have and start following me.  You'll be amazed at who you'll meet, who you'll start reading, and who will start reading you.

>>>

>>>

>>>

Now it's your turn.  Tell me, what else did I miss while I was away?   Pop a blue pill and draw me further into your Matrix.

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Because I Am Made of Time, Energy, and Focus... Just Like You

My first post at the new eBay channel at eMoms at Home began with the admission that Goose had just eaten a piece of pink chalk while I was launching an eBay listing.  As the revamped eMoms at Home was on the cusp of launching, I sat here pondering how to announce my channel, eBay Selling for eParents.  While I delved into the recesses of my velveteen mind, my divided attention was drawn to Goose once again...  and his purple mouth. 

While he and Pants were drawing with markers (non-toxic washable markers, thank the Lord for some good sense around here), Goose decided that his looked good enough to eat.  So he bit off the entire tip and apparently sucked out some of the ink.  You've heard of "Pinch the Tail, Suck the Head"* for crawfish?  Mah son is a good ole' Southern boy through and through, because if it's good for crawfish, it's bound to be great for art supplies.

And with that illustration of my multi-tasking prowess, I proudly invite you to join me over at my new eMoms at Home blog:

eBay Selling for eParents

As a new featured author on Wendy Piersall's redesigned eMoms at Home site, my goal is for the eBay Channel to give stay-at-home parents interested in selling on eBay the one thing I believe has been missing:  a personally voiced, down-to-earth, relatable resource for ending your hesitation and finally launching the one business-in-your-pajamas venture you have always wanted to try.

Stop by and say hey!  Check out my new digs.  Velveteen Mind will always be my home, but now I have a place for all of my eBay stories about wacky customers and the gajillions of dollars I have pouring in that I thought would just clutter up the nice, neat, humble environment I've created here...  :P  I crack myself up.

Oh, and for any of you who dare ask me again, "Wherever do you find the time?," allow me to add this final note:  While finishing this post, good ole Goose ate the tip off of a green marker.  We're going for a diaper full of Mardi Gras colors today.  All we're missing is gold and I don't even want to think where we might find that one.

That's right, I won't slow down until Child Protective Services has my number on speed dial. 

God, I love these kids.  And the fact that they are awesome and alive, despite the fact that I have no less than two blogs and an eBay store should be testament to the authority with which I will be writing eBay Selling for eParents.  If I can do it, believe me, so can you.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

*The last time I mentioned "Pinch the Tail, Suck the Head," I linked to Dew on the Kudzu and their excellent description of the proper way to eat crawfish.  As it happened, the awesome Idgie over there later featured my post Camille was a Lady.  Katrina was a Bitch in his online magazine of all things deliciously Southern.  Thanks, Idgie!  Ya'll check it out...  after you check out eBay Selling for eParents, though.  ;)

Corey Haim and the Great Time Suck

The miracle of free time.  Give me a handful of hours to do with as I wish and I will immediately sacrifice them to the internet gods, let me tell you.  How time flies when you are totally wasting it.

Social networking sites have never really interested me before, but this weekend I tried out cre8buzz.com and actually had a pretty good time poking around.  Thanks be to Sara for the buzz on this one, by the way.

Taken from their "About" page, here's the lowdown on cre8buzz:

We built Cre8buzz with one question in mind: How do we get EVERYONE more…

• More exposure
• More visitors
• More views
• More friends
• More followers
• More comments
• More feedback

How do we help people cre8 a buzz of their own?

And that has, so far, been the real fun of it--  building your own little community, your custom profile, and building your own buzz...  with a little help from your friends, that is.  I don't know what it is about that site, but the majority of my blogging community has made its way over there, which is actually fairly interesting.  What's different about this networking site versus others?  Honestly, I couldn't tell you, but whatever it is, it's working so far.

Actually, maybe it's the competition to become the #1 buzz ranked member?  I'm at #18 overall right now...  meanwhile Suburban Oblivion has been totally hogging the top spot.  I'll let ya'll know when I overtake her.  ;)

Aaaahhhhh, but I'm more about community than that!  Which brings me to my next time suck of the weekend:  Twitter.  Yes, I finally succumbed to the temptation that is Twitter.  I wanted something else to add to my cre8buzz profile to make it more personal, so I thought I'd give it a shot. 

However, since I wanted to add the Google Share feature so that I could show off my friends' work but couldn't get it to show up correctly, I found a compromise in Twitter.  Rather than just featuring my own Twitters, I posted a sidebar widget featuring my Twitters, along with those of my blogging circles.  Pretty nifty, actually.  Let me know if you want to be included (or don't, for that matter) and I'll get right on it.

By the way, one of my most recent Twitters was earlier this evening when I realized that it was time to finally catch an episode of The Two Coreys on A&E.  How did I not hear about this show before this weekend?  Is my Corey Haim radar that old that it didn't pick up his presence on TV again after all these years?

Seriously, who here had a crush on Corey Haim when you were little?  (cont'd...)