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All puffed up

Thursday, February 17, 2011 @ 7:58 pm by 1 Comment
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Porcupine-Pufferfish_tn

I have had a few questions lately about why I chose a porcupinefish as my avatar. I decided to take a moment to answer that in a post.

After my bad news Monday morning I realized I needed a time out, or a time in. I sometimes refer to my needing to step away and think as a time in. It is often necessary for me to stop and think inwardly about what is going on (good or bad) and process it before I act or say anything. It is better to respond than to react. Unless, of course, there’s a car wreck or a fire or a drowning person who needs your immediate help and your instincts kick in and your reaction becomes a life saving one. Then by all means REACT!

I found myself more than upset by the bad news of the non-delivery of my new washing machine and the lack of concern or care from the store employee to correct the situation. After the weeks of going to the laundromat and the multitude of items having been vomited on that needed washing I needed wanted that dryer right then. I don’t describe myself as a porcupinefish just because it’s comical.

The porcupinefish is adorable. I mean it, really. Who doesn’t think this face is cute?
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Filed Under: Bloggery, Gravel Notes, I am...

Announcement, part the first

Thursday, September 30, 2010 @ 11:27 pm by 8 Comments
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Screen shot 2010-09-30 at 11.14.43 PM

I know you will not kill me for splitting the announcement into parts because you want the rest of the announcement.

Right?

You do want the part the second and part the third, do you not?

It is simply a silly thing. But for me it is a fun thing. I have really been egging some of you on. I did not set out to do so, but I made one comment in my facebook status and it grew form there with the replies I got from my friends that I was forced to continue to taunt you all with a daily countdown to the launch date.

I emailed my wonderful artist friend …

(I do call him a friend and I do think he is a wonderful artist)

… and told him my desire to do something fun with my blog over the next few months, but depending on his time constraints and such at least for October, mainly Halloween. I said I do no really want to do a major redo of the blog. I love my fishy banner he made me. I LOVE MY FISH! I asked him if he was up to playing dress-up with my fish to go in my sidebar or something like that to be a bit festive for the month. His reply was bigger and better!
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Facebook and WordPress

Friday, September 10, 2010 @ 12:00 pm by Leave a Comment
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Screen-shot-2010-09-10-at-9.46.48-AM.png

This is a bit of a facebook and WordPress link 101 course. This is a long post, but I’ve had lots of questions via email and private message so I decided this was the best way to answer them. If you have anymore questions please ask and I’ll get to them next.

Some notes: A little blog and fb maintenance.

  1. Everything should be set now and there should be no more double posts or test posts. Sorry about all that.
  2. Networked Blogs is still installed, but not posting to my personal wall or the Fishbowl wall anymore. I’m not sure if this will still post in duplicate for those of you following via Networked Blogs. I have changed the settings so that they will not double post to my wall or the page wall. Any blog you follow via Networked Blogs can be set by you to publish to your wall as an automatic feed. So if you are still getting duplicate posts that are bothering you check on the settings you chose.
  3. Both the main blog (this one) and The Flooded Fish School (homeschool blog) are now importing to facebook with the apps I set up to allow commenting between wordpress and facebook. Your comments will now show on the blog and fb and there will now be better continuity of conversation between comments and replies.
  4. If you view and comment on my post via facebook I must admit that I’d love it if you took a second to use the share link at the end of the post and share the post. I want to encourage comments and conversation and when The Flooded Fishbowl fb page reaches 100 fans/followers (that’s clicking the [Like] button) I’m going to host a drawing on my blog for an Amazon Gift Card. I haven’t decided the amount just yet, but I know it will be for at least $25.00. This will go up based on my ad revenue between now and when the number reaches 100. I know that’s not much, but based on un-budgeted ad revenue I can guarantee at least that much.

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Gravel Notes: Wildcard edition

Thursday, June 24, 2010 @ 6:51 am by 2 Comments
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So Tuesday I typed a rather long post about various domain uses and how they all work, mostly. In my weak layman’s way I made an attempt to make it clear. There is another card that comes into play when subdomains are being used and it can make or break a site in that oh-so-cool neat-o professional looking way. It’s called a wildcard.

If you are using subdomains on your website then you type in the subdomain.yoursite.com and you get taken to that page. IF you do not have wildcards coded into your website zone then you can get some pretty ugly looking results if there is a typo. What happens if you type notasubdomain.yoursite.com? If it’s not a registered (on yoursite) subdomain then you get a really ugly 404 error or a “Problem loading page” notice or “Your Browser can’t find the server at notasubdomain.yoursite.com.” Ugly. Nobody wants to see that now do they?

A wildcard allows a nonsense or nonactive subdomain to be automatically redirected to the main domain of your site. Back to example, if I have subdomain.yoursite.com set up and you type that in the URL address bar then you will go to subdomain.yoursite.com. Exactly how it should behave. BUT what if you type nonsense.yoursite.com in the URL address bar? With wildcards enabled nonsense.yoursite.com will take you to yoursite.com if nonsense.yoursite.com is not an active subdomain. Cool, huh?
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Filed Under: Bloggery, Gravel Notes

Gravel notes: WP3.0 edition

Tuesday, June 22, 2010 @ 8:51 pm by 6 Comments
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I am going to write a post about the trip I took from WordPress 2.9.2 to WordPress 3.0. Technical posts are boring to most, unless this is what you came here to read. My blog is not usually about the technical aspects, but I learned a few things and had to decipher a few things along the way so I want to do what I can to put my experience into layman’s terms.

I know when I read things about how to do one thing or another on the Internet I often do a decent job of understanding it clearly. Occasionally, I find my dyslexia throws a huge curve into my confidence I have to have someone hold my hand or allow me annoy them with the simplest of questions to double check my understanding. I am pleased to say that for the most part I do understand it, but I lack that bit of confidence in myself to do certain things outside of my comfort zone.

I’m one of those people that loves the See One, Do One, Teach One philosophy. It’s a great way to learn and master just about anything. I do not claim to be a professional by any means when it comes to WordPress, but I have learned a great many things during my past five and half years of blogging. This weekend in particular I’d like to give a big hat tip to Miss Andrea (@andrea_r) for helping and holding my hand as I made the big jump from single blog (multi-installation) user to WP3.0 Network Super-Admin Super Rock Star level blogging. HA! (yeah, right on the super rock star level blogging.)
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