December 10, 2007

website is up

http://www.themacmommy.com

Yay! Finally, my website is live and at least it's something to look at other than a 404 error. I think I like the logo I've designed. I think it's grown on me now. I'm not crazy about the whole red and green color scheme though. I like it in the logo but I'm not liking it on the blog. I need to play around with the color scheme some more and try to find some better eye-friendly colors. I figured out how to change the font to Comic Sans but I don't want everything in that font so I have to go back and see where to fix it where I messed up.

I'm still trying to figure out how I feel about what to put on my site in the contact area.

I've discovered it's really hard to write a simple bio with less than 1200 characters. I'm tring to decide where to put the more detailed bio. It's not like I'm that much of an interesting person, but I like to spell everything out for my own personal reflection later.

well, I did twitter that I was going to bed, but I wanted to at least put a website update out here in case anyone decides to check it out.

December 8, 2007

website domain and hosting blues

ugh, so frustrating! I just hung up with customer support from godaddy...again. Luckily they are nice to talk to and available 24/7 which really works out with my crazy schedule. Who else can you call at 1 am in the morning? (when the kid is asleep and my cell long distance minutes are free.)

Well, as you'll see – if my wesbite ever gets posted under the domain name I registered – I take a quilting approach to website design. And, believe me, I don't know how to quilt either. I'm making this stuff up as I go. What I mean is that I just use whatever I have availble and feel like tinkering around with. Right now, I'm trying to learn how to use iWeb for the design but I want to avoid using dot mac. Of course, I'm an Apple cheerleader, but dot mac is just too expensive for me.

TheMacMommy philosophy is that whatever I do with technology (or show YOU how to do) should be free, cheap and easy and all three whenever possible.

So, right now, if you go to www.themacmommy.com, you get a 404 error. The reason is because I have my domain name forwarded to my free ISP hosted space which I pay for even though they call it "free" space. Here is where the quilting comes in. They only give you 10MB of web space which really isn't all that much when it comes down to it. So what I'll be doing is "stitching" my pages and sites together using hyperlinks that redirect to my other ISP hosted mailboxes.

I have Cox and they give you 7 email boxes. Each of those boxes contain 10MB. So basically, I'll string all 7 of those 10MB chunks together. I did it this way before with our DavisPlace website which is still up but it's so old and broken and in need of repair so I won't even post the link to it. Plus, I'm not sure how I feel about broadcasting to the blogger world where I live yet. It's kind of inevitable since I'm trying to get a home grown business going and I suppose I'll have to put my mailing address out there. Anyhow, it's one of the parts of my old website that I should probably revise.

I registered this domain name through google and apparently, the tech from godaddy told me it has something to do with that and when they (apparantly the buck has been passed to google) did whatever magic it is that they do with DNS, they don't put the "www" in front of the site name. If you try it right now and just type in 'themacmommy.com' into your browser URL, bam, it takes you right to the site. If you go the long way and type in 'members.cox.net/themacmommy/themacmommy/Introduction.html' it also takes you to the site. The problem seems to be the 'www' part.

I explained to the tech on the phone that I need for my site to display with www because many of my clients are senior citizens. Believe it or not, there are still people out there who use pencils with erasers and they also still type in the 'http://' part. Not everyone and their uncle knows that you don't even need to use www most of the time.

So, he did some magic and told me to check it again in a few hours. Man! (whine) This has been about 3 days now of waiting. I'm not a very patient person by nature.

Well, anyhow, my site will eventually be more easily accessible once this whole forwarding and masking and server nesting thing is resolved.

I have a plan for my site to tie it into my blog here so I can maximize the free hosting and space. My plan is to start posting more technology based blogs instead of always ranting about the trials and tribulations of motherhood. Nothing at all against other bloggers who do that and I enjoy reading it, it's just that I would like to focus more on my experiences of being a mom in the technology age and how it relates to my parenting and how I can help others. I still like to post rants and raves about being a mother in general but I will most likely flavor it with some form of geekdom.

Well, I hear pots and pans banging and smell wonderful aromas so that means that Hubby is cooking and having to deal with the boy dismantling the kitchen while he does it. Now I just heard a grunt and I think that sound means that Hubby has probably redirected the boy for the umpteenth time so he can get something accomplished. And now I feel guilty for blogging when all I meant to do was come in here while they were snoozing and check my page and make a few updates.

Ah, ADHD strikes again!

and the screeching continues!

December 7, 2007

play-DOH in my wedding ring

Blue play-doh to be precise. blink blink blink goes my cursor on my screen. My mind is racing. There are so many things I want to blog about it makes me tired just thinking about thinking. Does that ever happen to you?

I can hear my son squealing (sp? hmm, this blogger widget on my dashboard doesn't have a built in spell checker and that's a bummer. I've now gotten into the habit of tap-tapping (I'm pushin a track pad so that's the same as a right click) on the word with the squiggly under it and clicking on the suggested corrected spelling in the contextual menu. Hmmm. Does that make me a bad person becaue I'm lazy? I know how to spell and I know how to touch-type but it seems I'm not always the best at doing both at the same time. Oh gawd. Yawn. This post is boring even me now. I don't even know if I have a point. Yes I do. I do somewhere in this brain and probably a million of them but they're all tied up in one huge clusterfu*!k right now. Like the fact that I'm not really all that comfortable with swearing on my blog. It's MY blog dammit! Who the hell cares?!

That's another topic within another topic for another time which I'm sure will come and go and then I'll forget all about it and never post about it. – or WILL I? perhaps if I just type like this stream of consciousness style maybe the brain constipation will yield the brain fart I so desperately (damn, miss spell check) need right now so I can unclog my mind.

Perhaps blogging is some form of mental Metamusil? Oh wait, is that the stuff that loosens you up or blocks you up? I can't remember. It's kind of like lefty loosey righty tighty. Wait. Bad example, that rhymes so that has to be right. doh I mean correct. Ok, it's like liquor before beer never sicker beer before wine always fine. I know that ryhmes but that doesn't mean I remembered the damn phrase correctly in the first place so it doesn't really help me so that's probably why I don't drink! (much)

Oh damn, running out of space on my widget so I guess I'll have to switch over to the web app. Perhaps I might look into the email version of doing this. crap.

Ok, so where was I? Oh yeah, so my son was squealing (oh, thank God, spell check is back) outside in the living room where his father is letting him run around wild. Yeah, he started doing the screeching thing about a month ago. I think. What's time to anyone. I'm lucky if I remembered to put the milk back in the fridge and the cereal back in the cupboard and not the other way around. Of course, the reason I try so hard to remember to do that correctly is because the first and last time I did that, I ended up taking a pregnancy test that was positive. Sometimes I'm tempted to do it just to freak out Hubby. Teee hee hee hee.

So why was I writing about my son squealing? I guess it has something to do with the fact that I'm hiding out in our little home office again trying to get my geek on and have some me time. I can't stand the new noise he has discovered how to make. It should be only a sound that dogs hear but I can hear it and it hurts my ears.

We've been spending a lot of time cleaning up the house and organizing stuff that got unorganized – or never organized in the first place – and getting ready for Christmas. Lately I have been so wanting to purge so many things. I can't believe some of the crap we save. WHY? Why are we such packrats? Luckily both Nate and I are pretty united on trying to not be like our packrat parents who are children of parents who survived the Depression. Let's try not to make this Depression like the last one, shall we?

Oh, and BTW, when I say 'we' I really mean mostly me. (wait, that's not really all that fair, Hubby has busted some butt moving stuff for me and helping out but it's the look he gives me or the heavy sigh I hear whenever I ask to pull out his teeth, oops, I mean whenever I ask him for help with a "project" that makes it feeeeeeeel like I'm the one doing all the work because thinking about making the house look nice is a lot of hard work!! dammit) –

What is there to get ready might you ask? Well, for starters, we haven't been keeping up with the house as much this past year and a half because we had a b-b-b-baby who is now a ta-ta-ta-toddler. So as you can imagine (I hope other people are slobs like us) our schtuff has just been schtuck here and there and everywhere. Yeah, sometimes I do think we live in a house that could come out of a Dr. Seuss book.

In lieu of recent events, i.e. my in-laws selling their home and trying to find a place here in Tucson because my FIL had to move off the mountain (health reasons due to high altitude) and in with us (not going to go there) (although I so baaadly want to but I just shouldn't) we have (the whole immediate family) decided to have Christmas here at our little place.

We live in a very small rancher with 3 bedrooms, 2 of which are small. Thank God we have 2 bathrooms though. There will be 8 people here (including us) for about a week that have to do the 4 Ses. (SSSS) (shit, shave, shower and sleep) I think we can pretty much forget about the 5th S. (sex)

Needless to say, it's going to be - how they say - cozy.

Now, my husband's family are the type of people who are so easy going and accommodating it makes me crazy because I'm just not used to it. Truth be told, I could just leave the house exactly the way it is and they wouldn't care and they would sleep on the roof if we asked them to. But, that's not how I was raised. I was brought up to go insane when people are coming to visit or stay in your home. The house has to be clean and accommodating like with nice guest towels out and clean sheets and pillows and the floor vacuumed and stuff put away. No lube laying out in plain view.

Hah! just wanted to see if you were paying attention. Oh, there is so much I could say about that but I just shouldn't.

It's like I'm writing this blog with my legs crossed. I'm just not sure how far I want to go with this, but that's another topic for another time that will probably come and go and by the time it does I'll be over it. And if I'm not, then maybe just maybe I'll blog about it. Or maybe someone else already has blogged about it and I'll just post to them and tell them, yeah, ditto, me too, thanks for putting that out there. (I'm so sure.)

There are people who say out loud or in text what other people think. I think I just think what other people think and then regurgitate it in my ADHD-flavored sort of way. It's all just packaged a little differently, ya know. You may say it with green and then I see how it looks in purple with yellow stripes.

So anyhow, I've been spending much of my time in between playing with the screecher, trying to get the house a little more re-organized. I got some stuff accomplished today but never as much as I want and I guess that's just the reality of it.

So, I sat down on the floor and played with my son and tried to show him how play-doh works. I made a really cool color by mixing the bright fluorescent red with the purplish red. It was cool. Lucian hasn't quite gotten that it's fun to moosh the stuff together. He's more interested in playing with the canisters. I was having fun. I was sooooo tempted to mix all the colors together but I refrained because I want to do that with him when he's a little more focused on the actual play-doh instead of the containers. I'm trying to teach him about colors.

In the process of all of this, I noticed that I had gotten some blue play-doh caked into my wedding ring. At first, I was like, oh crap, how am I going to get that out? Thank God it didn't get in between the diamonds. I think this is one of the reasons why I don't wear an engagement ring and didn't even want one.

Well, ok, let's be honest, I would love to have an engagement ring but only because it looks pretty and it's what everyone else wears. For me personally though, it's just not practical. I would probably injure someone with it or lose it or break it. I have a whole other deep philosophy about engagement rings but you know, another time that will come and go...another fleeting thought.

I think that's one of the biggest reasons why I blog - to help me remember stuff. I plan on using this as a diary of some sort to go back and reflect on later and hopefully be able to go back in and elaborate on all of these thoughts that I had bigger plans for.

So, back to the wedding ring with the play-doh in it. As I examined my wedding ring with blue play-doh stuck in it, it made me smile and a little weepy too. Whenever I look at my ring, I think about how much I love my husband and I'll never forget the first (or the second) time he placed it on my finger. Actually, he jammed it onto my finger because we were on a boat at the time and he was terrified he was going to slip and drop it overboard. It signified to me that life is pretty good if I am able to sit on the floor with my young son and play with play-doh and get messy. There was a time in my life not so long ago that I thought I would never have this opportunity. I thought that motherhood or being a wife was just going to pass me by much like the thoughts I have that never make it to my blog.

I'm happy that life is more like a box of chocolates than a blog. You can try to format it and edit it but in the end, you just don't know what you're going to get or which color play-doh will end up in your wedding ring.

404 bore


darn it! I'm trying to get my website up and going but the DNS servers are still not posting it. grrrrrrr
I'm just being impatient. I know. We live in such an instantly-gratifying world though. I'm spoiled. I don't even have my site designed yet, but I just wanted to play around with iWeb and Cyberduck and take it for a test drive. I actually managed to get into a zone and stay focused on ONE project – my website – and now I'm bummed. I keep clicking the refresh button. Nadda.

Well, I did find a cool new widget. It's a twitter widget. It's almost as cool as the blogger widget except that the blogger widget is small and I like to write a little more than the window will comfortably hold. I also wish it had a place to plunk in an image file. I have to use the web interface in order to do that. Oh well.

Well, I suppose I should attempt to try and fall asleep. I'll have a good reason to get up in a few hours to check and see if the page is loaded.

December 5, 2007

shhh, be vewry vewry quiet...

Do you ever hide from your kids? I'm hiding from mine right now. He's banging on the office door with one of his toys and all I can think right now is "Redrum, redrum, redrum....HEEEEERE's JOHNNY!!"
My son is such a sweet little child, he really is but sometimes I just need to get away and gather myself.

I'm waiting for a phone call from my client and I know as soon as I go out of the room, the phone will ring and Lucian will want to talk on it. This is why I never call anyone anymore! I have to go to great lengths to be able to use the telephone and most forms of technology these days but the phone by far is the worst. It's like baby heroin. He HAAAAAaaaaaAAAAs to have it or else there is a major melt down.

The laptop isn't so bad because he just comes up to me and closes the lid on me and says "buh bye" and then I just have to put it away and go play with him. I have mastered the art of nursing while either typing one-handed or I wait until he doses off and I can put the laptop on the pillow he's laying on and type. Pretty cool trick, huh?

It's kind of like that scene in Flashdance where she takes her bra off underneather her sweatshirt. We chics just know how to do cool things with our boobs, what can I say? Now, if only I could get mine to type, wow, then I would be even more impressed! I guess I'll have to wait until he weans....which is a whole other loooooong story I'll tell you about some day. year. millenia.

December 1, 2007

Hot Stuff on Ice

This is so good, I just had to share!