I’m Very Research-y

29 July 2009 by

This morning I’ve been working on / pondering / trying not to panic about my session with Lysa at SheSpeaks this weekend, and I have three questions for you, internets:

1) When you read a blog, are you looking for a super-professional presentation (design, photography, writing, etc.), or are you looking for something that might not look as professional but feels really relational? Or some combination of the two?

2) Do you tend to think of bloggers as friends? I mean, not your closest friends or anything – but do you feel like you have a little bit of a relationship with the bloggers you read?

3) Do you use Twitter or Facebook?

That is all.

Thank you ever so much for your wisdom.

Filed Under: The Interweb

Email Uh-Oh

18 March 2009 by

I won’t bore you with the details, but I just realized that I have what you might call an Email Sitch-Yee-Ation.

And my sitch-yee-ation is that every single email in my inbox that belonged to my old BellSouth email address or my current Gmail address HAS GONE BYE-BYE. The stuff that I’d answered and filed is okay – but the unanswered messages in my inbox are toast.

The irony, of course, is that I told a friend of mine this morning that my goal for the day was to tackle my inbox and get it down to zero. So I guess in a way I accomplished my goal – by, you know, accidentally deleting everything.

All that to say: if you have sent me any sort of email that requires an answer in the last month or so, then you might want to send it again. I’m just as sorry as I can be about that inconvenience, by the way. All I know to tell you is that I have absolutely no business trying to act as my own tech support person, and I am firing myself from serving in that capacity EVER AGAIN IN MY WHOLE LIFE EVER.

Now do have a lovely afternoon.

Filed Under: The Interweb

Server Switches! And More!

4 June 2008 by

The last month or so has been a little dicey for me web-wise, mainly because my interblogwebsite has been highly uncooperative. And if you don’t know anything else about my technical skills, you should know this one critical piece of information: I HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA HOW ALL THIS STUFF WORKS.

And since I have no idea what I’m doing, I am deeply, completely dependent on the people who keep this blawg-o-mine up and running behind the scenes. I daresay that Emily has developed a pronounced twitch in her left shoulder just from seeing my email address appear so frequently in her inbox, but she has been an absolute champ in terms of keeping me afloat in these murky techy waters. The same goes for Jules, Heather and Laura. They have jumped to my troubleshooting rescue more times than I can count.

Because I’m telling you: if not for every single one of those people I just listed, my header would be half-way down the page and my posts would be trapped on a server just south of nowhere. Not to mention that there would probably be some easy-listening music playing incessantly in the background, and you’d never be able to turn it off.

Ever.

So anyway.

Last week Emily – who has been great about monitoring my traffic and bandwidth usage and blah blah I’m typing the words but they have lost all meaning blah blah – made a couple of recommendations about webhosting and servers and whatnot, and I would be more specific if I had any idea at all what I was talking about, because I am the same person who only realized a couple of months ago (thanks to Anne) that there’s a thing called a cPanel that goes along with my blog, and I can access it and set up email addresses! And look at stats! And upload files! And more!

One of Emily’s recommendations was that I move the blawg to Fused Network, and so that is exactly what I did. Except that I think we all know that I myself didn’t move one thing. I just sat on my little barstool and commenced with the hand-wringing, because while I’m not good at many things, I am an excellent hand-wringer.

Award-winning, in fact.

But as it turns out, the hand-wringing was fairly minimal. There were some hiccups as a result of me posting when I was still floating between two servers, but David at Fused and Emily at Swank could not have been more helpful. In fact, once I signed up with Fused, David actually CALLED ME ON THE TELEPHONE to touch base about the whole process, and even though we must have exchanged about 40 emails over the last day and a half as I have tried to wrap my head around the whole server-switching process, he never once replied with, “Hey! Can’t you, like, TAKE A CLASS or something?”

Because I seriously need to take a class, y’all.

However, there is one lingering issue, and I think that’s why I started writing this post to begin with, but you can never really be sure with me, and besides, I take great pride in using 500 words when only 50 are necessary, and anyway, HASN’T THIS SERVER STUFF BEEN SO FUN TO READ ABOUT?

Ahem.

The lingering issue is that for some reason Bloglines seems to have decided to quit picking up my RSS feeds. I have no idea why. I’ve sent them a couple of emails, and OH, ARE THEY EVER GOING TO GROW TO LOVE MY RAMBLING BRAND OF CRAZY, but I haven’t gotten a response yet and don’t really know if I will. So if you subscribe here via Bloglines, you probably need to unsubscribe and then subscribe again, making sure that you select the Feedburner feed and none of the others.

There. Isn’t that so delightfully, needlessly complicated?

Last thing.

I’ve decided that, after the first of next week, I’m going to take a little hiatus from giveaways for the rest of the summer. I have a fun book giveaway scheduled for tomorrow, and a cool gardening-related giveaway scheduled for the first of next week. And once those are over, I’m going to take a giveaway vacation.

Unless I run across a CD that I think you can’t live without. Because I will always make an exception for music.

I will also make an exception if someone wants to give y’all some cash money.

But the main thing is just that as much as I love doing the giveaways, the correspondence involved with a giveaway takes up a pretty good chunk of email-related time. And a break from that end of things is gonna be a mighty good thing. Our summer is shaping up to be pretty busy, and there’s a five year-old who lives here who wants to go swimming and go to the movies and play with friends and run around in the blazing hot sun while his mama wonders if it’s possible to die from sweating.

Fun times. Precious memories.

Happy Wednesday, y’all.

Filed Under: The Interweb

Feed Ish-Ahs

29 May 2008 by

Most of you who subscribe to my blog through Bloglines are subscribed through a feed that seems to have stopped working.

Which is why you may be seeing a bright red exclamation point next to “BooMama” in your list-o-blogs.

So.

I have absolutely no idea how this stuff works, but just know that all my feeds are running through Feedburner now, and if you are tired of seeing the bright red exclamation point, then you can subscribe to the new feed either in Bloglines or Google Reader or whatever RSS reader you use.

And here’s the new feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/Boomama. It is sure to be very sassy.

If you’re not seeing the bright red exclamation point and everything has been updating as usual, then you’re golden. No need to change a thing.

And now I need to go take some Advil. Because the tech talk is right up there with math as far as I’m concerned.

Oh, I type the techy words and think they might have a shot of being at least somewhat accurate usage-wise, but in my head all I hear is “blah blah blahdety blah blah.”

Feed / reader / RSS / aggregation / blah blah blahdety blah blah.

The interweb is awesome.

Filed Under: The Interweb

A Sixteen-Piece Box Of Popeye’s Chicken Would Clearly Be Magical

17 May 2008 by

A few months ago David told me about an online trend called unboxing. Initially I thought maybe unboxing was some new “go green” movement that encouraged people to give a gift without first putting it in a box (which would be a super-fun conversation to have with Martha, by the way, because she would think that not putting a gift in box is crazy! that’s just crazy! why would someone do such a thing? and what about the wrapping paper? the wrapping paper wouldn’t look nearly as good! not to mention the bow!), but that’s not what he was talking about at all.

Because as it turns out, unboxing is when people, some of whom might be classifed as a smidge geeky (and I mean that in the MOST POSITIVE SENSE OF THE WORD, OH YES I DO) take pictures (or video) to document the process of removing a new piece of electronic equipment from its box.

And then they post those pictures to their blogs.

Don’t believe me? Consult Ye Olde Google.

I’ve thought a good bit about this whole unboxing phenomenon for the last couple of weeks, and after trying my best to understand it, I’ve decided that it has to be a mostly-guy thing. Because from my decidedly female perspective, the process of unboxing, say, a new camcorder or a new cell phone is as far up on the thrill-o-meter as watching a two-day marathon of Hardcastle & McCormick or being forced to listen to a monotone lecture on car maintenance and repair.

But guys are different about that kind of stuff. I know this because my husband still has the boxes for every video game console he has ever purchased, including each individual piece of styrofoam that surrounded the actual console as well as the cellophane that was wrapped around the instruction manuals AND the twisties that corralled all the cords.

And do you know what? I’m sure that hanging on to all those boxes is completely worth it in the long run, because if someone walked in our house right now and said, “Quick! In order to diffuse a bomb that’s right outside your door, you have to pack up your Xbox so that it looks exactly like it did the very first time you opened the box,” MY HUSBAND COULD TOTALLY DO THAT, Y’ALL.

It’s no wonder that I feel so incredibly safe here. As I’m sure you can imagine.

Well.

This morning I opened up the pantry and spotted an item that I picked up at the grocery store yesterday. And when I saw that item and realized that it was still unopened, I thought, This, THIS is worthy of unboxing documentation. Forget the electronic stuff. This is WAY better.

And so I grabbed the camera and got busy.

You may want to take some deep, cleansing breaths to prepare yourself for what you’re about to see.

It is very special.

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Breathtaking, isn’t it?

I suspected you would agree.

Filed Under: Family Fun, The Interweb

Dear Thursday. At First I Did Not Enjoy You. But Now I Have Changed My Mind.

1 February 2008 by

A few months ago I wrote about how I was waiting on some stuff related to some things. In fact, Melanie and I have been waiting together, and OH, the waiting we have done. Because there has been a lot of waiting. So much waiting, in fact, that we sort of forgot we were waiting because waiting felt so familiar. It was our new normal! And we were understandably thrilled.

Who wouldn’t be?

After all, holding patterns are fun.

Well.

Wednesday night I sent an email to someone who has been our Official Contact during the waiting. This person, an employee of A Large Corporation, has guided us through conference calls, planning sessions, more conference calls, more planning sessions, and finally, even more conference calls. In fact, I am a conference call expert now.

(Go ahead! Ask me anything! And I will tell you about the necessity of pressing pound after you enter your conference number and then waiting until after the tone to announce your arrival on the call. Because, you see, I have learned things.)

But Wednesday night? When I emailed our Official Contact?

I got a reply in about four seconds. A reply that informed me that our Official Contact – who is smart and professional and all-around wonderful – is no longer an employee of the Large Corporation. Clearly something was awry.

And then, Thursday morning, Mel and I received an email from the Big Boss. The email was very kind, very gracious, but the bottom line is that the deal is over. Done. Not gonna happen.

Internets, I will be very honest: I was none-too-happy about those developments.

Because any way you add up those developments from a financial standpoint, it looks like this: months of waiting + no deal – loss of potential income = WHOA, NELLIE, THIS IS GONNA SMART.

And any way you add up those developments from an emotional standpoint, the sum is pretty much the same: WHOA. NELLIE. SMARTING.

And that is why, around 11:30 yesterday morning, when I should have been running errands, I turned into a shopping center, parked my car next to Panera Bread, started to cry, called my husband, proceeded to cry some more, took my laptop into Panera so that I could tell the internets all about my troubles, realized that there weren’t any tables available, fought back tears, walked back out to the car, sat down in my seat, and cried some more.

So I guess you could say that I was a little emotional.

After all: WE WERE COUNTING ON THIS. Our families, in so many ways, have been counting on this.

But do you know what? Smack dab in the middle of what was no doubt one of the most draining 24-hour periods of my life, God gave me the gift of an absolutely incredible afternoon. My husband hugged me when I walked in the door and assured me that everything was for the best. My sister offered some mighty wise perspective via email, as did Emma Kate, whose email is now printed out, folded, and tucked away in my Bible forever and ever. I will treasure it for the rest of my life.

Emma Kate’s friend Jennie reminded me of the words to “He Leadeth Me” (which, by the way, will send you straight into the ugly cry, oh yes it will). Lysa called and was so encouraging that I actually contemplated running some laps or something.

Don’t worry. The lap-running urge passed. Aye, and quickly.

Then I picked up a little boy from preschool. He had clown paint all over his face, pizza all over his shirt, and a smile as big as the sun. He grabbed my hand as we walked to our car, and he told me it had been a GREAT! DAY!

Much to my surprise, I was starting to agree with him.

Mel and I talked later that afternoon, and we marveled at all the doors God has opened in the last year. We can hardly complain. My friend Daphne called to check on me, made me laugh until I wheezed, and agreed that while I’m in a different spot than I thought I’d be right now, it’s probably going to be a better spot than I could have ever imagined.

I asked her if there was going to be any cash money at this new spot. And then we laughed some more.

Then Janie emailed to check on me and to let me know she was praying. I went to Bible study, where we had an incredible time of fellowship as we studied passages on suffering (can somebody say, “I GOT ME A WORD”?). Alex had fallen asleep by the time I got home, so I crawled in his bed and kissed his little face. And I was reminded that there’s no “deal” this side of heaven that could compare to the joy of being that little guy’s mama. This I know for sure.

The rest of the night was blissfully ordinary: talked to the husband, watched some TV, chatted with a couple of sweet friends and giggled like crazy. By the time I went to bed, I felt like if I started counting my blessings, I would never, ever finish. There’s just no way to name and number them all.

So the stuff and the things? That we’ve been waiting on since April? Not gonna happen. Not now, at least.

But the body of Christ? Alive and kickin’, my friends.

And for now, that is all I need.

Filed Under: Faith, The Interweb
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