Melinda Musil dot Com

Posts Tagged ‘digi misc’

I am a pretty confident person.  It hasn’t come easily.  During my teenage years, my self-esteem was in the gutter, to the point of depression.  But a lot has changed since then, and a lot has happened to me since then, and I’m quite proud of myself and where I am in life- not in an arrogant way, but in a “very confident” way.  And, in fact, that is one of the things I love about myself: that I can be confident, and that I am confident.  That I’m not who I was- I’m nothing like the teenage version of me.  That I’ve done so much in my life to be proud of (like getting a college degree, or setting up and maintaining a website).  Most of all, I love that I no longer feel the need to prove myself to anyone.

One day not long ago, I was eating lunch at a local fast food restaurant when I saw, on the other side of the restaurant, two girls who I recognized from high school.  I haven’t spoken to them since high school.  I also remember, though, that these girls were not “mean” or “enemies” in high school.  We weren’t best friends, but we worked together on a few group projects and on the school newspaper, and they were always kind to me.

But I didn’t jump up to say hello.  In my mind, I started thinking of what I would say if they noticed me.  Since we hadn’t seen each other for so many years, I knew I’d be asked what I’ve been doing since then.  So in my mind, I began thinking about what to say. “Well, I’ve got a degree in education.  Then I also got a few extra certificates.  I lived in Africa for awhile.  Then I decided to leave education and focus on some opportunities in the computer field.  I maintain a few websites, and I also do a lot of search engine optimization.  What?  Well it’s kind of a hybrid between site design and content writing.  It’s very cutting edge stuff.”

Then I caught myself.  These girls hadn’t even said anything, and already I was figuring out how to prove myself to them.  Just the thought of high school made me feel like I needed to prove my value.  I have nothing to prove and I’m proud of that!

I never did say anything to those girls.  They didn’t notice me and I was fine with that.  But it still makes me angry, that anyone can make me feel like I need to prove myself.

This is a website cataloging all kinds of Web 2.0 services.

A quick congrats to Stump, the winner of the Westminster Dog Show.  Stump, a Sussex Spaniel, is ten years old and is the oldest dog ever to win the Westminster Dog Show.  He’s beat serious illness as well as nearly 2,500 dogs in 170 breeds to become the nation’s top dog.  Plus he’s just awfully cute!

Two fantastic portraits celebrating the 200th birthday of our nation’s sixteenth president: One man is creating a portrait out of sixteen thousand post it notes.  Another man is creating a portrait out of over a thousand Lincoln pennies.

Now that I actually have a bit of supplementary income, I am considering investing in a new computer.  I need to do LOTS of research to figure out exactly what I want.  However, my current computer is getting so old that it’s going to need to be replaced soon.  (It’s only three years and two months old! how sad is that?)

Anyway, I’ll do tons of research, as I always do when I am purchasing a piece of electronic equipment.  I might even get in on next year’s Black Friday sales… because it just might take me that long!

Unfortunately I also need to take a bit of that income and pay for a visit to the doctor.  I’ve been dealing with chronic nosebleeds for a LONG time (on and off throughout my life), and it’s been getting worse lately, so I need to go have my nose cauterized.  It probably wouldn’t hurt for me to get my teeth cleaned, either- it’s been a few years (plural!) since they were last cleaned.  However, that will probably go on the back burner.  First I need to deal with my crazy nose and the other essentials in my life.

So I’ve been toying with this idea…

See, I want to start promoting my freelancing a bit more. I do both freelance writing and freelance search engine optimization consultation. I want to promoting and publicizing that.

Here’s the thing. I have another domain. I can develop my freelancing business on that domain. But this domain- my name- seems so much better suited to the task.

Except, I have this blog on this domain so nicely optimized.

So I’m debating… This crazy idea… Moving this whole blog- archives and everything- over to another domain. Then I can develop my freelancing on this site.

It’s a totally nutty idea. It makes no sense but at the same time makes perfect sense. Argh.

The result of an afternoon of vicious deletion:

When I was in eighth grade, I took a typing class.  It was incredibly boring, but I will always be thankful for that class.

During that class, my teacher taught us that in a properly typed paper, you will have two spaces between sentences.  So I got into the habit of typing two spaces between sentences – “sentence period space space, sentence period space space” and so on.

Later, when my older sister studied graphic design in college, she said that many designers now believe it is acceptable to leave just one space between sentences.  However, either method was still acceptable.  I had no reason to change my habits.  I continued typing two spaces between sentences.

With a blackberry, I’ve discovered that it really is easier to leave just one space between sentences.  This wouldn’t be a problem, except sometimes I type blog posts on my blackberry and publish them later on my PC.  So that leaves a strange mix of one and two spaces.  Habits can be such a nuisance sometimes!

As an aside, I’m quite annoyed that my phone is out.  It’s not a huge deal- I’ll take it back to the store tomorrow and get it fixed.  But I just realized that I am left with nothing to use for an alarm clock tomorrow.  I need to wake up to feed all these animals, plus I want to do a load of laundry and maybe clean up anything else that needs cleaned.  But I’m quite nervous that I will just not wake up – I’m just really good at oversleeping.  I will attempt to set the alarm on my watch, but I’m not very confident in that.  So I’m praying that I wake up without an alarm tomorrow!

Tonight, I got an email telling me that someone had written on my facebook wall.  This particular someone is a girl who went to high school with me.  We knew each other but were never particularly close (of course, we graduated in a class of 450 students, so no one was particularly close to many others).  But, I have certainly learned that people change, and who knows why she’s writing on my wall.  So I log onto FB to check the wall.

Her message said something like, “Did you see that they are using your profile pic on ****-com-check it out”.  That was certainly an odd message.  I clicked over to her wall, and discovered that she had left similar messages on several other people’s walls.

I did a couple of google searches, and discovered that this particular site was a pornographic site, and probably one of those where they charge your account bazillions of dollars.

Why do people feel the need to try to take advantage of other people they know?  Even people they don’t know very well – it doesn’t make sense to me.  And it’s definitely annoying.

This afternoon, I am watching You Don’t Mess With the Zohan with my family.  I’d heard good reviews, but frankly I’m a little disappointed.  It’s got a lot of sexual innuendos.  I don’t mind sexual innuendos, although I don’t think they are particularly funny, but I don’t like watching that kind of thing with my family.  It really bothers my parents.  Oh well.

Is it possible to get bored with the internet?  Seems like I can’t find anything to do nowadays.  I guess I should work on catching up with my bloglines- I don’t know why I have been so not into reading my blogs lately.

I have this sort of “habit” with my sub jobs.  Every time I am hired to work in a particular classroom, as soon as I can, I try to email the teacher I will be subbing for as well as the principal of the school where I will be working.  The district where I work has a pretty standard system for staff email addresses – they are always (first-initial)(last-name) @ (district-name) dot mo dot us, or (first-name)_(last-name) @ (district-name) dot mo dot us.  Some people might consider it to be overachieving or even brown nosing to contact the teachers ahead of time, and I suppose it is in a way, but I also think it’s just good business to contact them ahead of time.  With as much communication as possible, the days tend to go much more smoothly.

Plus, sometimes I even get the lesson plans in advance.  That’s mostly a great thing.  A couple weeks ago, though, I received lesson plans that were written in the Office 2007 format- so, as I recall, it was “.docx” instead of “.doc”.  Since I have “just” Office 2003, I couldn’t open the file.  I wound up spending a LONG time figuring out how to change file extensions from something I can’t use (like .docx) to something that may be “older” but that I can use (like ABA files).  Kind of negated everything I gained by getting the lesson plans early.

And, for what it’s worth, I’m seriously annoyed by this new change in the Office file extensions.  Seems like a giant nuisance and not worth it at all.

3D Mailbox is an email program that adds a touch of adventure to your email.  In one version, new emails are represented by avatars.  Good emails are sexy models, while spam emails are goofy sumo wrestlers.  In another version, all emails are represented by airplanes.  Good emails go to the terminal (or to various hangars), while spam emails go to the airport boneyard.  Unsure emails circle above the airport until you “land” the email and choose where it will go.  I doubt I would ever use it, but it certainly looks entertaining!