How Was My Weekend?

Wow. Thanks for asking. That’s so nice of you.  =D

Well, to start things off, I had surgery on Thursday. Nothing major. Just had my tubes tied. Five kids is enough I figure.  Right? Tell me I’m right and not going to regret this and will eventually stop crying everytime I see my fat belly and realize it’ll never be fat again because there’s a baby growing in it.  *sigh*

So I spent the weekend trying to recouperate. The Ol’ Man did a great job taking care of the kids and the house on Thursday but come Friday… he was back to work on the roof. Mama was left to pick up the 300 pound 6 month old when she cried. Then mama cried.

THEN!! hubby cried… He pulled his back during a coughing fit while he was on the roof.

Wait… backup… rewind…  Did I tell you guys that hubby ripped the roof off of my house? And then it rained? And then he put some black paper on it? And then it rained? And then he put some shingles on? And then it rained?   Bahahaaa  I have the worst luck ever.  No really!  Check out this screen shot from weather.com  Care to guess where I live based on the fact that I had no roof during this particular time….

So anyways…  Hubby was on the roof and had a severe coughing fit and pulled the muscle across the middle of his back. He can barely move. It’s so bad that last night, he refused to go to the bathroom for fear of getting stuck in there. LOL  That’s bad!!!

So anyways… The ol’ man and I spent the weekend walking around the house at the pace of two 90 year olds. Both moaning and groaning the entire time.  It was pitiful.

The good news is, I can still sit on my butt here at my desk and not be in pain. Yay for that at least.

Also, this weekend, I released my very first free theme for download. Actually, I released 2 of them. Yippee for me!  =D

I submitted them to a contest that’s being held at Free BuddyPress Themes. BuddyPress is a plugin that’s specifically for WordPress Multi-User. It’s actually the plugin that I’m using while creating the social network for parents that I’ve told you all about.  (Yes, I’m still working on it whenever I get a spare moment)

But anyways… I released my themes and submitted them to a contest and it would be super awesome if ya’ll could go vote for one of my themes. If I win, I’ll get a free WPMU Premium membership, valued at $250. Yippee again. That’ll totally rock because they have plugins that I’d love to implement into the new social site.

My themes are the TEB themes.  TEB is The Easy Button, another of my sites.  Personally, I’m kinda partial to the purple theme. Something about it is just kickin. LOL

Ok… so anyways… I’ve jabbered long enough for today.  I’ll be posting again either tomorrow or Wednesday, when we get the results of Luigi’s blood test he’ll have done tomorrow. And don’t worry. I plan on going later in the day so we don’t have to deal with the same bull we dealt with last week.  What a crock that was!!!

Ad Images

See… That’s what happens when I blog at 2 in the morning. I leave out all of the important stuff!

So, regarding the ad image request, here’s what I need.

The pictures need to be 125 x 125 and have your blog’s name on it… or something. LOL I’m really not picky. I’ve found that what works best are images that don’t flash and say “Hey look at me!! Look over here!!”

I made a lot of the ads you see over there. Basically, all I did was… I went to the persons site and grabbed part of their header. Or grabbed some of the colors they used on their site. And then, I just put the name of their blog on the button. Nothing fancy really, but it gets the job done.

I think what I’ll do is just go ahead and see if I can make buttons for those of you who said you don’t know what to do. I’ll email them and get your feedback. And, if in the future, you make another one, just send it to me and I’ll swap it out. =D

*UPDATE — Comments are now closed because the spam bots found this post.

Almost

Well, Luigi did have to take the AR test yesterday.  And… he failed.  That’s the first time he’s ever failed anything in school.  I doubt highly that it will have much of an impact on his grade, but we’ll see.  He gets to take the test a 2nd time tomorrow.  I’m not sure if that wipes out the first grade or if they average it out or what the deal is, but at least he gets a 2nd chance.

The Ol’ Man’s still gone.  He called last night and said he’ll be gone until at least Saturday.  He’s in California right now and on his way to New York.  Then back to Indy… and home to Illinois.

Still working on the community.  The coding is still kicking my butt.  More than that, the design is wiping me out.  The good news is, I did come up with a domain.  I hope ya’ll like it.

I have a doctor’s appointment this afternoon.  Totally NOT thrilled about that.  As far as I know, it’s a surgery consultation about getting my tubes tied but… I’m honestly not sure. LOL  How terrible is that?  I guess I should call them and find out what I’m actually scheduled for.

ETA: I just finished putting a new layout on Luigi’s site. Maybe that will prompt him to start blogging at least once a week.  I really wish he WOULD write something every couple days.  Lord knows the boy’s got a more exciting life than I do.

It’s Almost Ready

I feel so bad because I avoided my reader yesterday and didn’t visit anyone’s blogs. And now I’m scared to even LOOK at how far behind I am on reading.  But there’s good reason. I was working on the mommy community all day.  And it’s SOOO close to being done.

This is something I’ve actually piddled with the for past 2 or 3 years.  But, what happened yesterday totally pushed me into overdrive.  Right now, I’m just working on the layout of the site.  Hopefully it won’t take too much longer.  The layout and some test runs are the last things that need to be done.  Yay!!

My fear with this whole thing is that people will actually sign up (lol can you feel the confidence) and then they’ll blog… and then… something will go wrong and the site will crap and all of their memories will be gone.  I think I’d go into permanent hiding if that ever happened.  “Where’s Chris?”  “I dunno.  I think she fell off the face of the Earth.”

But… I think that if I backup the info at least once a week, a total explosion of the site won’t cause people to track me down and want to kill me.

I have a couple questions for ya.  The site I’m working on has features that allow internal mailing (like.. you log in and see messages, but it never hits your REAL email)  and you can add friends and crap like that.  It’s a whole SOCIAL thing. That’s GOOD, right?  It’s GOOD to be able to have interaction.  Right?? Yes, there will be wordpress blogs (if you choose to have one) that will link directly from your profile.  But, interaction is good IMO.

And domains.  Oh man… I need help with that area.  I have one domain that I could use.  Some of you have seen this domain if I’ve e-mailed you.  You saw it because I was too lazy to log into gmail and use that account.  LOL  But… the domain sort of removes the possibility of having the daddies join in.  Is that okay?  Do we really NEED the daddies?  I mean… I love them to death but, I’m having one helluva time trying to find a domain that’ll fit moms AND dads.  Anyone have suggestions?  Anyone?? Beuhler…. Beuhler…..

Okay - Off to work on this some more.  Well, first, I think I’ll clean the house a little and start a fire.  My fingers are so cold that I can barely type.  I’m so sick of this weather!!  If only I could wake up tomorrow and have it be summer…

Anyways… let me know.  Give me suggestions.  Opinions.  Ask questions.  Hollah!!!!

Blogger Blows

I just found out how bad blogger really does suck.  This is totally burning my butt!!

I love user communication.  It excites me when I comment somewhere and they reply in an email. It makes me all WooT WooT and stuff.

Well, since my little move over here to Text Imps (wordpress based instead of blogger) all of a sudden, no one is sending replies to my comments.  I started to get very sad.  =(  Did I anger a head honcho??  Did they hate finding out that I’d converted?

Guess what — Freakin blogger isn’t giving them my email address.  That irks the crap out of me!!  Now, of course, if I sign comments using the google/blogger option, it will give them my email address.  But it will also put the blogger.com/user2089409238409382049832048023480238402384038048230 address as my webpage.  I don’t want people to visit that stupid blogger profile.  I want them to come here.  Where I am !!!  In one click!!

Name/Url gives a crappy noreply@booger address.  OpenID gives the same crappy address.  The only way to give my email addy is to use the blogger/google thing.  What kinda crap is that?  I find that to be 100% selfish.

I wish I had a million dollars!  I would pay everyone $50 just to convert to wordpress.  Wordpress isn’t selfish!  I can’t believe that google would be selfish like that!  I mean seriously!  They’re suppose to be one of the top companies that you can rely on for getting your name/business/products out there in the world.  Grrr…. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and just pretend it was an oversight on their part.

If anyone wants to move to wordpress and needs help, use my contact page and get ahold of me!! I will help!!!  I can tell you that you can host on your own server for about $5 a month.  And you can register a domain for $7 for a full year.  Get ahold of me!! I will help!!  LOL

Also, is anyone interested in a Mommy community?  One that’s hosted on wordpress?  One that will allow you to import all of your stuff from blogger and be done with it??  Cuz I’m about 2 seconds from setting one up!!

AND… if I’m wrong about this whole email/blogger business, someone PLEASE tell me!!!  Please!!!  I’d hate to be wrong but at the same time, I’d love to be wrong. I’d love to find out there’s a way to give my address to the people whose blogs I’m commenting at.

I’m off to clean the house and stew in the anger. Bahahahaaa

Comment Approval & Captcha

I hate captcha (word verification) as much as the next person.  Mainly because I hate trying to decipher what the heck I’m looking at.  Sometimes you really have to have a good imagination to figure out that the squiggly lines you’re looking at are actually letters.

BUT… yeah, you knew there’d be a but, right?  But… I’m putting a word verification on the comments.  Actually, it’s a math verification, so there’s no need to worry about squiggly letters.  As long as you can do kindergarten math problems, you should be okay.  And if you can’t add 5 and 5, I’m really not sure you and I should be friends anyways.  LOL

My reason for adding the captcha is that I get about 60 comments a day here.  60 comments from spam bots.  Ugh… I hate those things.  I hate them and really don’t even understand the point of them.  Are there actually places that allow those comments to be published and seen by their visitors?  I just don’t don’t get it at all.

Another little security measure that I’m taking is, ya’ll have to stand by the door and be patted down the first time you comment.  (Put your clothes back on - I said patted down, not strip searched)  After that, your comments will automatically be approved.

And please don’t worry about having to enter your e-mail address. (That’s optional by the way.) I have more important things to do than spam you or sell your address to someone else so they can spam you.  Okay… That’s not really the reason.  The reason is… I’m too lazy.  But ya’ll already knew that, didn’t you?

Also, don’t forget to put your blog addy in the comment form.  Inbound links (links going to your blog) are the best way to get more traffic to your site.  And it’s also the best way to gain ranking on search engines.

If anyone has problems submitting a comment, PLEASE let me know!! Something might be going wrong in my coding and it may need fixed.  And I’ll just think you all hate me and I’ll sit over here going “boohooo I shouldn’t have changed from blogger BooHooo… “  And, you wouldn’t want me to cry, would you?  LOL

Just drop me an email at textimps at gmail dot com.  Or you can check out the contact page for my instant messenger IDs.

Thank you to everyone who’s come over here from Coke On My Keyboard.  It made me so happy to see you all here.  BTW, to those who signed up on that google thingy over there in the right sidebar, does that do the “Follow This Blog” and put it in a subscription, like blogger?

Packing My Stuff And Moving

Well… I did it.  I finally decided I’d had enough of Blogger.  There were just too many things about blogging there that I couldn’t stand.  I have given up & bailed.  This, will be my new home.

There are so many more things that I can do using Wordpress.  There are thousands of different plugins I can download and implement.  I know how to work a template.  I don’t have to deal with the way the pictures turn out when they’re uploaded at Blogger.  I can make my own templates & I can write my own plugins if I need to.  I love Wordpress and I knew from the very beginning that I was royally screwing up by using Blogger.  I hate the limitations over there.

I can’t stand not being in total control of my sites.  That drives me nuts.  That’s one reason I’ve also bailed on myspace & the reason I never got into facebook.  I gotta have control & that’s all there is to it.

I spent the last 10 hours importing everything from Coke On My Keyboard over here.  What a mess that was!  It turned all of my tags into categories.  Messed up a couple CSS attributes.  And the biggest pain in the butt was downloading all of my pictures, uploading them & changing the links on each of them. It wasn’t really hard to fix the problems.  It was just time consuming.  It would’ve been a breeze if there weren’t already so many posts here & if I weren’t integrating them.

The worst part is the fact that the comment import didn’t link anyone’s name with their site.  That really upsets me.  But… I’m sure all of you will be commenting soon enough and guess what… I even have CommentLuv installed for you beautiful people.  =)  Easy as pie when it’s Wordpress instead of Blogger.  LOL

I’m going to try and get back into featuring a site & post each week.  That was my main goal for Text Imps when I first bought the domain.  But my main focus is going to stay with my personal blog.

So…. Here I am.

If you subscribe to Coke On My Keyboard, please update your subscriptions.  There’s a feed button up there in the top right corner.  I also put one of those google friend thing-a-ma-bobs over in the sidebar.  I THINK you can use that to follow, just like on Blogger… but I’m really not sure.

If ya’ll have anything suggestions about the layout here, anything that’ll make navigating easier, let me know.  =D  Thanks for jumping over here.  Grab a drink from my fridge.  I think there’s water, soda and a couple kinds of juice.  Put your feet up.  And….  I dunno.  LOL…  My brain has shut off.  Too many codes flying through my head right now.

New Comment Thing - Again

ETA — Let’s try this again — Something went wrong with the js-kit install…..

ETA — ehh…….. screw it ……….. LOL

– Post Deleted cuz I got irritated but I’m saving the comments cuz you guys are hilarious –

=D

Not Sure What To Do

So, I’ve basically decided that blogger irritates the crap out of me. It makes me nuts when I try to post a picture and the alignment of it won’t work. It also bugs me that the quality of pictures is so BLAH when I use their upload function. I also hate the lack of addons and plugins and widgets and all that jazz.

Another thing I’ve decided is, I totally screwed up my other site, Text Imps. My plan & goal was to scour the internet for great posts and blogs to feature each week. Instead of finding something good and moving on, I started subscribing. Then… my subscription list grew and grew. Then… I got hooked on about 70 writers (10 that I’m not sure I could live without). And now… I’m screwed. LOL Instead of jumping from one blog to the next, I feel like I have to stop and read and get to know the writers and… ugh… it’s an endless cycle that leaves no time for scouring.

Another big part of my plan was to have people submit their favorites. So far, in 3 months, I’ve only had 3 submissions. Huge downer.

So now, I’m not exactly sure what I should do.

I’m thinking I may move my personal blog (the one you’re reading now) over to Text Imps. I’m not sure if I should combine the 2 sites and just do a once a month feature or what.

I’m also thinking that I may completely scratch the idea of running Text Imps. I mean, I liked the idea. I had fun doing it. But all of a sudden, it turned into work. The whole point was to do something that was fun. Read great stuff & share it with others. Where could I go wrong… ya know??

Tonight will be the 2nd week in a row that I’m not updating with new featured articles. I hate feeling like a failure, but right now, that’s the only word that’s coming to mind. FAIL!

Anyone have any suggestions? I’m 100% open to any ideas, comments, suggestions, complaints, questions……. whatever…….

Spinning My Wheels And Looking For A Tow Truck

**Warning — Just turn back now…. seriously… By the time you finish reading this, you’ll hate yourself (and me) for wasting your valuable time. **

I have a million and one things going through my head right now. I have tons of projects that I could work on and 2 tons of projects that I’d like to start. Problem is, I just don’t know WHERE to start.

I feel like my other blog needs a complete overhaul. Also, I have a game site that I’d love to redesign. On top of that is this blog. I love that header up there, but it’s not mine. Do you know how nuts it makes me to use someone else’s layout? I shudder every single time I open this thing. It drives me absolutely bonkers.

I’ve also been thinking a lot lately about starting some sort of blog design business. I’ve talked to a few other designers and they’ve given me lots of great tips but I just don’t know where to start. Maybe the first step would be to set myself up with a design. *laughs*

Another problem I have is the fact that, with my luck, anyone who would want to use my service would like “pretty”. I am SO not into pretty! Black is my thing. I love black. I’ve designed things in the past that were pink and purple and frilly and I wanted to gag every step of the way. The customers were happy, but I hated it!!!

(Sidenote — Who are these weirdos that keep finding me on Twitter? And… when I message all ya’ll, do you think the same thing about me? LOL “Who’s this weirdo??” ?? )

What about these pictures that the other designers are using? The mommy cartoon characters. Do they draw them on their own or is there some secret society of underground cartoon sharing sites (that made no sense) where they just swap cartoons back and forth?

I’m just thinking outloud right now. Ya’ll feel free to find something else to read before this jibber-jabber causes brain damage.

Still here? Alright, well… answer me this. Do any of you do design work? Do you have any tips? Would you like a lackey? Do you have any tips? Did I say that already?

I seriously need to find SOMETHING to do!!!

Anyone want a new layout? Anyone need some functionality added to their wordpress blog but just can’t figure out how to do it?? You can find a link to all of my contact info over —->> there, up at the top.

Dooot-dee-doooo La-la-la

Bored Bored Bored….

Anyone online and just want to chat? LMAO!!

Bueller….. Bueller…….

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