Last night's DC Bloggers Meetup felt very successful to me, and I'm excited about having a strictly social Halloween party next month. We had a reporter and several new faces, in addition to members of our regular characters.
I spent most of Tuesday prepping notes for the Blogger's Meetup, the first one I was to organize, and somehow, the night before my colonoscopy. Ugly how that worked out in the scheduling. So I knew I was going to be a total wreck on Wednesday, what with not being able to eat and then having to rush out to start the whole GoLytely series. Thank goodness I had someone offer to help me organize after I'd already thought myself up the proverbial creek. We had a great turnout, although it's never up to my insane vision ideals I dance around in my head. Strangely, we had several people turn up who weren't members of meetup, which was eerie but cool.
My Twitterfeed -- http://twitter.com/jadxia -- I post to this every time I post something to ANY of my numerous blogs. It's a convenient way to follow along with what I'm doing.
Now if I could just get all these bloggers actually blogging on the new communal site. Of course, I haven't actually set it up yet (it's at DistrictBloggers.com), but I'm still taking new articles to be transfered over later. Where's my 80/20 people!? (There are 500 in this meetup, if 20% were active that would be 100 active members. Sad when your goal is 20% participation.) Of course, those who throw stones.... I myself am still two blogposts behind. More to come later.
Well, the new venue seems to have been a success, too bad the turnout wasn't nearly the amount expected. Our organizer is leaving, and it looks like I am stuck organizing for the indefinite duration (eek)!
Yesterday and today I'm helping load the electric piano at the nursing home for the pianist. Today is a double show and I have only an hour before I need to leave -- a long time to sit and do nothing, but not enough time to start any new projects. Today is a double show, meaning two hours of listening to the same songs twice.
The blogger meetup turned out great people-wise, but I was a little disappointed by our lackluster waitress. The venue has also gotten too loud to bear, so we've been shopping around for a new space and I hope to have something settled soon. Below is the official blogroll for this month's attendees.
My Twitterfeed -- http://twitter.com/jadxia -- I post to this every time I post something to ANY of my numerous blogs. It's a convenient way to follow along with what I'm doing.
The April blogger meetup was basically rained out due to a combination of terrible weather (for newbies) and work restrictions (for those of us who would consider driving to meetup through a hailstorm). AgtOrange and I showed up, and one new person whose blog is noteworthy enough to merit a 'blogroll' of one.
This weblog is devoted to helping small business owners use their existed software better (or possibly 'jury-rigging' their existing software) so they don't have to buy expensive specialty stuff. It is a newer blog and I hope she keeps up with it over the long haul.
On the meta side of my own blogs, I slacked a bit writing for all of them and of course the readership is bound to suffer (or not build, as I don't have a steady readership quite yet). A friendly reminder to those of you who are interested in my other blogs, if you follow http://twitter.com/jadxia I usually tweet (or twit, as I still sarcastically refer to it) whenever I post something substantial to any of my weblogs.
I've been reading about debt elimination and how to change ones attitude regarding money in an effort to curb my consumerist habits. I've learned some new takes on the old 80/20 rule and how to apply them to various aspects of my life.
And it really struck me just how little output I create, and how I've focused my life around input. And the things which do create output, such as singing and writing/blogging, I am not using to further myself. My writing style is also suffering because I primarily do stream-of-consciousness blogging. It's been awhile since I considered writing for money. I gave it up long ago as a hopeless endeavor.
Yet it didn't stop me blogging. Until now, I'd never considered it to be worth the hassle of setting up ads and having a target audience. I blog for myself. Yet I could be doing the exact same thing for profit, and even if I don't make a dime I wouldn't be losing much past the initial setup time and the cost of a couple of domain names. So it's stupid for me not to have some kind of income generating weblog.
The long and short of it is, I'm breaking this hodgepodge LJ of mine into at least three separate blogs. I'll still have my online journal here, with fun stuff and wacky links and all my personal thoughts and comments. I might even go meta and start blogging about how difficult it is to quadruple-blog.
Within the next week I will have three additional, very targeted weblogs and hope to have my first of many posts on each. I'm not done exploring wordpress or google adsense yet, but it has been much quicker and less painless than anticipated so far, so I'll introduce you to the first of my new blogs now:
Eco-ordinary.com -- a blog devoted to small, eco-friendly things people can do which don't require a lifestyle overhaul
Reasonable Activist.com -- a blog devoted to all my views on politics, my advocacy of sexual freedom and support of alternative lifestyles, etc.
I'm also looking for a title for the third weblog, which will deal with simple steps to a healthier, happier you. This blog may include healthier recipes, although I might also break that into yet another blog.
I'm very exciting about this reorganization of my current projects into something more profitable for me in the long-term. I will try it for a year, and if it doesn't look to be panning out in any way (which is not to say that I'll be generating ad-hits, but only that I have a consistent readership), I can scrap the extra blogs without too much harm done.
It was a great meetup, I had some fun giveaways for the holidays and we raffled off a tshirt. My t-shirt arrived in the nick of time and I was finally able to wear it last night. After a full day of rehearsal and blogger fun, today it's back to jewelry making and domestic chores. The week goes by so fast sometimes!
It suddenly occurred to me, long after I'd emailed the official blogroll to everyone else, that the only person NOT to post it was, um, myself. So much for attention to detail.
John R. -- Globalinvestmentwatch.com -- I didn't get to meet this guy, as I had class for most of Meetup.
Leon -- listentoleon.net -- Leon, with the always funny business cards. I guess you could call them business cards, anyway, they are rectagular and fit in your wallet. Maybe whimsical fun cards is more appropriate.
Tiffany B. -- www.welovedc.com -- We didn't speak this meetup, but I swear I met her at a different one in the past. Nicely setup blog design.
Joe L. -- www.joelogon.com/blog Joe, remind me never to go to a costume/Halloween party with you, was everyone there nuts? I just peeked at your flickr page.
And now it's back to cleaning the bathroom. I got hair dye on the toilet lid eons ago and it stained, so I'm trying to bleach it out. Ugh.
Since blogging has become an official 'trend', we've suffered the fate of all things fabulous. For the most part, I find dedicated bloggers to be witty and intelligent, darkly humorous, etc. But this is my moment to vent on just a few things I hate about the blogworld.
ON BLOGGERS: Brand new bloggers, who call themselves bloggers, and who have yet to write a single blog. Are the words 'Blogging for Dummies' written anywhere on my person? I'm on LJ, not noted for being the ideal perfect blog platform except for us 'online journalists'. Just because I am a blogger doesn't make me an expert on the subject. I can drive a car, but I still can't replace a head gasket and I have no idea which rims would be most stylin' on your ride. Blogging is not about making the perfect move, in fact the ideal move probably isn't to blog at all. Writing online is fractious, a shard of soul by which others will attempt to judge the sum totality of you. Any careful person should avoid online journaling altogether, it is a need born only for those desperate to turn their innards under the microscope, to be rid of attention-deficit emotions and scant morsels of primordial intellect. Unless you are blogging for business, it is really not important which blog host you choose, much as it isn't that important whether you write with a pencil or a pen unless you are doing your tax forms. You write, you blog, just do it already or stop calling yourself a blogger.
Business-people who blog, thinking somehow this is the way to catch the 'wave of the internet'. Very few industries benefit from having a business-oriented weblog. I guess news, photography, politics, and consulting services might find it useful, maybe a few others in the IT field. Your auto-dealership will net no new car sales. No one cares about the inter-office goings of of a paper-cup manufacturer. Chances are slim that 'a blog will make you rich', in fact, you have about as good a chance at getting rich through blogging as you do of getting rich through buying fixer-upper houses and reselling them. It can be done, but the work is monstrous, you live it and breathe it and burn out on it, and if are going to do all that for money you'd be better off in a field where the money-to-work ratio is more defined.
Please don't assume that because I write a blog, I am interested in reading your blog. In fact, don't assume ANYONE is interested in how many dirty diapers you changed today, or whether your husband is a shit. Most people are too wrapped up in their own little lives to care about the little life of someone else. Maybe the miracle (or curse) of fame will happen to you, but don't expect it, and don't expect me to help you get there. It's all I can do just to write my own blog, which I do for my own craving because I type faster than I can write and because once I blog my say, I can throw stress of my convictions out with the force of them.
Likewise, please don't judge personal worth by the number of hits to your/his/her/my website. Popular opinion is often blind and stupid, witness the Paris Hilton legacy (and yet even I cannot turn away from watching the garish train-wreck of it all). Sure, the readers themselves may be wise and intelligent souls, but we are often fascinated by the primal, the surreal, the baby thrown over the cliff, the constant hilarity of a good fart joke. We succumb to the id for our amusements, and blogs, if they are good blogs, tend to keep us entertained.
ON BLOG READERS: I am often irritated by people who think they know all about me based on what I write. You know nothing about me (with the curious exception of my few friends who both know me AND read my weblog). If I were to judge myself based solely on these scripts, I would think myself an artistic, manic-depressive psychopath. Yes, I am passionate and determined, but I keep the edges dull by writing a thing and then throwing it away. You take the feeling most tying you down and you force it with ink into paper, with light into ether, you crumple the edges and you throw it out there and it's gone.
ON OTHER THINGS: I hate spam. I hate the robots that check to see if I am monitoring comments, forcing me to take up valuable time double-checking back to their accounts and finding out that, yes indeed, their single blog post was written by a sentence generator and has a string of dirty key words at the end, "anal midgets" followed by "black cocks 3". I get enough weird comments from live people, let alone mock comments saying things like, "Great post, you sound like a wonderful mother" and "Wonderful website, very informative". My first run-in with a sentence generator was an email, and unbeknownst to any robot, they had practically sent me a poem online. I spent weeks looking at that email, wondering if some stranger was sending me poetry, if this were some kind of code I needed to break -- it was something about oranges with lusty skin. I imagined a peeping internet stalker, sitting alone and yearning toward my skin lush as ripe fruit, desperate for red-gold juicy contact.
Even after I knew it for a program, I kept the email and poked at it from time to time. I experimented with my own random word poetry to a moderate degree of sucess. I learned the art of sensual Mad-lib.
JULY DC BLOGGERS MEETUP BLOGROLL:
The fact that the blogroll for this month and the above post happen to fall together is known as irony. I meant to write the above two days before the meetup took place, but didn't have the time.
Yesterday I did another donut run. This is a jog/walk from my house to the Krispy Kreme at Dupont Circle three miles away. At the end of the distance, I eat a donut with a bottle of water and metro home. (Eventually, I will be able to walk or jog back.) I only timed the first mile yesterday, and was surprised to have dropped over a minute from my previous best time. My new time for one mile cross-city is 11 minutes, 21 seconds. It isn't great, but the improvement is so vast I couldn't help but feel incredible glee. It is hard to believe I dropped more than a minute in just a couple of weeks. Usually, I time the whole run, but yesterday I stopped to talk to some "Free Tibet" protesters outside of the Chinese Embassy at 2300 Connecticut. This was a 'honking protest' asking cars to honk to support Tibet, the outcome of which was a traffic-jam-like cacophony of horns in front of the Embassy for hours on end.
On the way back, I joined them in their last hour of protest.
I probably would have kept going if they hadn't seemed so normal, so sane, so not irate or inflamed or violent or prone to random acts of vandalism. In fact, at the end of the protest they gathered water bottles separately for later recycling and scraped candlewax from where it had spilled on the sidewalk. While I deeply support Tibet, I also feel a grave empathy for members of the Chinese embassy. I bear no ill will toward China or the Chinese, only a sort of stern disapproval toward some of their policies. It must feel particularly awful for workers born of a country that values saving face, to have to deal with belligerent American protesters. Any sort of protest doesn't leave much room for Asian diplomacy, and then again, we are not in Asia and this is often how issues are addressed in the United States.
It was a little eerie to see all the suits eying us warily from across the circle, hidden from view by lush foliage. At first I had thought the men by the park benches to be your average DC homeless. When I went in that direction to throw out some trash, I was taken aback to see every bench filled with security instead. A part of me wonders if I should take a lower profile, and not join in any sort of protest no matter how friendly, for the sake of future job prospects. But I can reconcile in my heart working either side of the coin, being both a protestor and a protector depending on which side of the street I am currently standing. I doubt any future employers would see things in such a complacent light, however.
They are planning another protest, as the date of the torch relay through Tibet has been changed to either Friday or Saturday night. For information, visit Students for a Free Tibet.org and feel free to join them in front of the embassy should you see them there.
Afterwards, AgtOrange and I went to the June's blogger meetup. Accordingly, here is the blogroll.
I'm still thinking about China, about Tibet, about where I stand and how loud I want to speak. Having missed much of childhood, I finally experienced it as an adult. Now, I feel as if I'm in my college stride. Will I regret any of this later?
Sometimes I'm so dense I amaze myself. I have a pretty strong running contest where I offered $20 to someone who could show me a porn I hadn't seen before.
Welcome to bikeporn. Now, you might think of me as pretty darn silly not to have thought this up or seen it before, me who has conceivably watched, read about, or possibly even done something X-rated in nature with just about every object created by man or nature. But I don't ride bicycles, so I never really thought about it much. The whole concept proved pretty basic once I considered it, but every now and again its something we might all take for granted that sneaks up and surprises us.
And thus, to my friends at Asylum bar, is brought to you my blogreaders, the awesomeness of bikeporn.
Of the fourteen bloggers who showed for the meetup (information for which is available on Meetup.com), only eleven of us actually have listed weblogs (myself included). As our organizer is currently struggling for meetup costs to keep this thing going, it was mostly old and friendly faces who rallied around in a sort of blogger meetup fundraiser.
globalchameleon.blogspot.com -- I'm still not sure of the exact focus, these are place based thoughts, but about such varied places it seems the themes vary wildly in context
You know, I never did manage to see that video, on account it had been pulled from everywhere before I got around to looking for it. Not that I needed to, and honestly, I've seen similar before and it's held no particular interest other than some mild 'ewe' and 'I'm glad I'm not the one who has to clean that'. This video, on the other hand, is totally safe for work.
For the bored and interested, there's a kewl new weblog called Guess My Crime. It's a series of mugshots, interesting for a few minutes of killtime.
For stereotypical quasi-racial comedy, check out Stuff White People Like, yet another interesting weblog.
Below is an old film of an argument set to the tune of Beethoven's 5th Symphony.
Maybe not the best karate punch ever, but certainly one of the funniest. If you can't hit a brick, don't get into a fight.
The latest on how NOT to firebomb a nightclub from CCTV.
Most of this stuff courtesy of bt3a
AgtOrange, TGVBoss, Intern and I all went out to the local Indian place for dinner last night, well... dinner and drinks. This weekend, I'm cleaning the Crypt, moving much of my stuff into the BatCave, buying a bookcase from Ikea in the process, going to class, and going to a party at one of AgtOrange's friend's house. Then I'm collapsing in exhaustion.
THE AFOREMENTIONED 'MAX' SHALL HERETOFORE BE RENAMED 'AgtOrange' BECAUSE I THINK IT MORE APT. I shall be striking previous references and replacing them as time goes on.
In other news...
Monday I skipped out on the audio-tech stuff on account DrShine woke up from his coma/sleep and called me. It seems he is due to recover after all, giving me a breath of fresh air. Not many people want to inherit a shoe shine business. After numerous tests, they've decided to implant a portable defibrillator, like Cheney has now. He should be out of the hospital tomorrow.
Despite the snow, the madness never ends. Between the shoe business (for which I often arrive late, having spent all day and half the night working or studying), visiting DrShine in the hospital, keeping house (cooking and laundry), jujitsu (I finally managed to accomplish one hip throw the correct way), the website (transferred one page between servers) and catching up with people, I barely have time to do... well... everything.
I did attend the bloggers meetup with Intern last night, after which (a little tipsy) I dragged her with me to go meet Pan. Maybe he'll help her get a new job, one that she's interested in working. The following list is a few of the souls who attended.
Aaron whom I've met before, only tonight he was personable rather than buzzed and obnoxious. -- technosailor.com
So someone claiming to be Bhutto's son put a phony profile up on Facebook and some silly shills BELIEVED it, even after numerous West Wing and Buffy references.
My time off from work is almost to a close, I will hence give a brief rundown of my last couple of days.
Monday I slept about 4 hours, woke around 1700 to get ready for a torturous time at various establishments. Had ballet class from 1830-1930, then worked at the DanceStudio from 1930 to 2200 (grabbing Chinese food around 2100 at the place next door). Then worked the GreasySpoon from 2230-0730, had breakfast there, and meandered off to TGV. Usually I deposit half my tips at the bank up the street, but I forgot that day due to a random occurance. I was walking up the street when a metrobus passed me by with all signs flashing "Emergency, call 911. Emergency, call police." So I did just that, despite it driving fairly normally. Only by the time I remembered the deposit envelope, I was already en route.
I passed out on the metro and missed by stop by three exits, on a line delayed by mechanical difficulties and track maintenance. Had to use the bathroom at the mall, where I made the 'mistake' of looking in the storefront window of a trendy clothing store. Decided to make a quick stop into their clearance racks, only didn't find anything. I was walking out of the store when I saw the perfect black vest, from which I ended up buying a matching outfit and later cursing myself for spending all my cash. Still, I didn't punish myself too hard. I've been needing new clothes (on account of my dropping some weight this year) and I'd been wanting to celebrate finally getting off training at the GreasySpoon (which happened on Saturday).
Still, I have bills to pay. Went to TGV finally, did what I needed to do, and got delayed by my boss for no really good reason. Sweetie and I had plans, which I was an hour late to, and so plans turned into dinner at her house. Her and Riff are having some financial arguments, among other things, which I hate to see two friends fighting but it really isn't my business. I gave her the leather rose embossed with cats I had bought at Rennfest, but forgot to give her back her tshirt.
Exhausted, I finally crashed Tuesday night around 2000 only to sleep a good 18 hours intermittently. Woke up bored and mostly broke. Morgue had invited me the Piratz Tavern as yesterday was International Talk Like a Pirate Day, and I nearly went (it would have been amusing for about 5 minutes, and tedious afterward). Thankfully, I received an email reminder that the blogger meetup was yesterday evening, so not only was I reprieved from pirate hell or dull boredom at home, but I also got a chance to wear the new outfit I'd bought.
By some strange quirk, combining the outfit with my red bandanna makes me look like I'm entirely in pirate costume. Hopefully I will receive some pics from my fellow bloggers.
Thus, we come to the blogroll!
Met a gentleman who writes for MWCNews.org and OpEdNews -- though not a blogger, his conversation made up for his anti-blogger sentiments. On my other side sat the writer of Rossnotes and DCTechEvents.com, a blog devoted to local IT events and such. Next a pharmablogger, who writes BlogPharm.com. I'd wanted to talk with him more, seeing as we are (or were, in my case) both CPhTs. Perhaps I'll see him at a later meetup. DevelopersAgent.com -- of interest, but not to myself, and why are all the Jesse's I know realtors? How odd... (He works for kentaylorrealestate.com, if you're interested). Some skinhead looking dude who does or works for B5Media.com. He was loud, drunk, and slightly grating (pretty much all synonyms) and mostly interested in picking up chicks. He did stop to tell everyone how he ranked 7th for Aaron's in the google search engines (looking it up on his phone/pda) and gave me a free hint on how to improve my search ratings. All this only served to remind myself (with some distaste) that I used to think guys like this were cool. Of course, I was 16 at the time. Live and learn, thank goodness. jfciii.com -- another person I hardly managed to speak to, mostly due to table distance. Whereas the above gentleman was a little to brash to my taste, judging solely from his business card this guy may be a little too self-effacing. Either that, or he has the typical web developers distain for capitalization. Still, it says something about a person when they never seem to capitalize their own name. At the end, two cute girls showed up (not to my taste, but I recognized their cuteness) who were more than happy to draw the attentions of MrBrashlyInebriated. One writes Evangelisting, and I would love to have her pose for my site but was too distracted to ask. Not that I think she would have, mind you, only that her stance regarding social causes reflected a NAN-girl quite thoroughly. The other writes the blog I never got around to writing, TheDCConcierge. *sigh* This is entirely good stuff, and I may peruse her blog more thoroughly and permanently link her to my website.
Then came along one of my blogfriends, JoeLogon.com. Yay! He twisted my arm (not hard) into accompanying him to the 9:30 club where we saw The Apples In Stereo play. (Basically, I had $10 bucks to my name and he subsidized the other $5 for the ticket and bought me a coke.) I'd been bopping around at the meetup, because even half a drink makes me want to go dancing (hey, I'm a dancer, whaddya you expect) and I had a really, really awesome time listening to a band I'd never heard before and Joe is the type to hit the dance floor and just have a good time, which is great.
I'd been telling 3D earlier yesterday that I needed new friends to replace the old ones, until the email reminded me of blogger night. I'm broke, and still sick, but the music is fine and things are going great.
As the Mri might say, there is peace in myself, there is peace in my house, there is peace in the outside, and soon I will have the tranquility that comes with the strength of my world and myself. All is well.
First off, the shenis for those girls who desire to pee like a man. Now I have seen everything. As a girl without penis envy, I'm kind of put off by the fact that they made it like a penis and overly large. Maybe I want a shenis like unicorn horn or something. That and I wouldn't be so thrilled about carrying around a tube you've just peed in, sounds gross.
A cute Fantasy Football commercial. I wonder if the girl knew they were going to photoshop her in that manner before she actually did the commercial?
We leave you with an cute game to play, called Battle Bots. You need to make two bots to win any rounds... and for some reason it the all-top-games.com comment section only allowed me to pick bad ratings.
And for the bloody minded, an awesome escape from jail walkthrough game called Arrival In Hell with a walkthrough hints page for us non-thinking folks.
Also, ALL MY READERS SHOULD CHECK OUT MY NEW WEBSITE! I put up my first widgets (technically, they are blidgets, or blog widgets). This gives all the new titles on my weblogs and updates automatically... in one convenient place.
DEFINITION OF WIDGET: 1) term used to refer to any object, usually of some mechanical nature and relatively small size, when it doesn't have a name, when you can't remember the name, or when you're talking about a class of certain unknown objects in general. (from whatis.techtarget.com)
2) A web widget is a portable chunk of code that can be installed and executed within any separate HTML-based web page by an end user without requiring additional compilation. They are akin to plugins or extensions in desktop applications. Other terms used to describe a web widget include gadget, badge, module, capsule, snippet, mini and flake. (from the almighty wikipedia.org)
SOME WIDGETS THEY SHOULD CODE: * The GPS widget, tracks the website owner so all the world can continuously monitor their movements. Good for encouraging your cyber-stalkers to stalk you in real life. This proves which fans are truly dedicated.
* The new and improved calendar widget, which lists all holidays on which fans should send presents to the webmaster.
* Cool air widget: This actually produces a blast of cold air from the users computer, inducing the proper air of shuddering awe when viewing the website.
* Smell-o-widget: Of course, because it is important to know which scent I'm wearing today, and capture all the nuances of bodyodor.
* "I stood you up because" excuse widget: for when I totally flake on other people and forget my appointments. Click the button and learn why I didn't make it.
* "I forgot your birthday" widget: Hey, if you didn't remind me, I didn't remember. But this excuse might make you feel better.
* BDSM widget: For those who like to feel the pain and are good at following instructions. Includes anatomy charts for helpful self-torture.
* The 5'o'clock somewhere widget: displays only one time, so you can go drinking.
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