Timidity.org

Thank you for your comments on my last post.

I am going to keep my blog and most of the existing content on this website, so no worries.  I am going to slim a few things down and move a few things around.  Once I get that done I might do an update to the design…but one thing at a time (if I plan too much I will get overwhelmed and nothing will get done, heh).

Anyway, I started doing a few things by deleting some links from the main menu sidebar.  Most of those links led to nowhere anyway.  However, my Paris Travel Log link has been moved to the “Webmistress” section…can’t get rid of that.

More changes coming soon!  Yes, this is slow, but I need to do it this way.

I’ve had this domain for a long time.  Since 2001 actually.  For the past few years I haven’t really done much with it and as I was taking a look at it today I realized how embarrassingly outdated a lot of it is.  I’ve been meaning to clean things up around here and maybe try to revamp it, but I really don’t know what to do with it.  Several times I have been tempted to do away with this website all together, but in the end I can never bring myself to cast it into internet oblivion.

So…a summer goal:  Refresh my website.  Even if this means I reduce it to only a blog (because I don’t do much else with it) I want to make this better then it has been.

But, before I begin to purge my domain of all its…oldness…can I ask a favor?  What should I keep and what should I get rid of?  Some of this is obvious…like my collection of adopted pixels…those have to go.  But what about my own pixels?  Should I keep them even though I haven’t added new selections to my own offerings in…who knows how long?  Or should I just get rid of them, or just keep my favorites?  I guess I need the suggestions because I’m lost about what to even really “do” with this domain.  If you have any input please share, it might give me some inspiration on what I should do next.  Thanks.

I was at a stop light today waiting to turn left behind another car, also waiting to turn left.  The light for oncoming traffic turned red, ours turned green, and the car in front of me started to move.  She then had to slam on her brakes in order to not get hit by the moron running the red light.  Here’s the irony:  in the adjoining parking light was a police car, watching for speeders.  I thought for sure the red-light-runner was toast…but the police car did not move an inch or do anything.  Talk about disappointment, the police are finally at the right place at the right time and still the morons get away with being morons.  Is there no justice in this world?

I could write about more randomness…but I don’t think anyone wants to know about the girl I saw out in public yesterday with a skirt so short you could see her butt cheeks.  She kept pulling her skirt down…I wonder why?  Note:  if you wear a skirt and feel a constant need to pull it down, it’s a sign–your skirt is too short, duh!  I want to wash my eyeballs out with soap though, I really didn’t want to see her butt cheeks.

Those are my random thoughts for the day.  I should really get some sleep now, don’t you think?

I have an awesome Mom.  She is awesome, she has always been awesome and she will always be awesome (ask my sister, I know she’ll agree with me).  Here is why:

My mom always let me be me.

My mom taught me to be responsible and work hard.

My mom let me make my own mistakes, yet she was always still there when I needed a shoulder to cry on or someone to support me through my own stupidity.

My mom didn’t micro-manage my life, try to live vicariously through me, or over-schedule me as a child (therefore potentially causing resentment and/or rebelliousness, etc.)

My mom loves me unconditionally.

My mom is still always there for me as a friend, a support, and most importantly still my mom…even in my adulthood.

My mom taught me how to be a good mom.  What else can I say?

I love you, Mom…you really are the best!  Happy Mother’s Day.

I used to feel so forward with online tech things…now I feel like an old dinosaur or something.  I just cannot keep up with all the new-fangled online gizmos that everyone else seems so enthusiastic over.  Or maybe it’s that I don’t want to (in some cases that’s true).  Here’s the list of what I use, what I’m thinking of using, and what I wouldn’t touch with a ten foot (online) pole:

I do own a domain, and this is it.  I use Wordpress to run it.  However, this website needs a major overhaul, I just haven’t made the time to do that yet.  I guess I’m just not totally sure what I want to do with it at the  moment, all I know is that I don’t want to give it up.  I do have a pet-peeve though regarding Wordpress…I really hate it when I hear people say, “Oh, Wordpress is SO easy, anyone can do it!”  Please stop saying that!  It makes those of us who have trouble with it feel like a big dumb-dumb.  Installing it, yes easy.  Running it, no problem.  Customizing it?  Well, I’d rather get a root canal or something…that is so NOT easy.  I can’t be the only one who thinks so.  So, this website is due for some reorganization.  Maybe I’ll get to that sometime this year?  Heh…we’ll see… *wink*

I do have a Livejournal.  I use it to blog about my doll hobby and keep in touch with other people with the same hobby.  I got one so I wouldn’t bore my regular readers of this blog with my doll junk…I know most of you don’t care.

I have a Flickr account (a paid pro account actually).  Again, it’s mostly for hobby photos.  I like the Flickr format, it’s not expensive to keep a paid account, and it saves me from having to use my domain space for all my photos.

I belong to several forums.  Eh…that’s neither here nor there.  I’m not terribly active on any of those forums.  I used to run a forum but I got sick of it so I closed it down.  I’m not skilled enough with code (see my rants about Wordpress) to keep up with running a forum so it’s not worth it to me to have one myself.  I’d rather just join one or more and let other people handle the admin side of things.

I use Gmail instead of Outlook because I could care less about saving my emails.  Right or wrong, that’s just the way it is with me.  A pack-rat I am not.

Facebook:  I’m on the fence about this one.  I have a few family members who have asked me to get one.  I would only do it for them…but if I’m being honest, I doubt I would update the thing that often so is it really worth the trouble?  I don’t know yet, I’m still considering it.

My Space:  I will shoot myself before ever going there.  Why people still use it is beyond me.  There are so many other better options to use for social networks…I will never use or even visit My Space.  That’s how negatively I feel about that place.

Twitter:  The point of Twitter escapes me, unless the point is to annoy everyone.  I know it’s like the BIG THING right now (really, Oprah’s on Twitter so I guess now we all HAVE to have one, don’t we?) but I refuse to Twitter (Tweet? Chirp?  Whatever…).  If I want to waste time, I can think of better ways to do that, like sleeping.  It’s hard to get away from Twitter though because of lot of my Livejournal friends upload their Twitters to their journals.  When I see that I usually don’t even read it because most of the time it makes no sense whatsoever anyway.

There are other things I use like Ebay on occasion, Pay Pal, Etsy, and my library’s website to browse the catalog and reserve books.  But I feel like everyone pretty much does that so it’s not much worth mentioning in detail.

So that’s my list.  I don’t use that much stuff, but you know, I do have a life besides being online…shocker! :P  Dang, I don’t even text people…I really am an old fogey when it comes to tech stuff people do.  I like to keep it simple.  I try to stay informed about what’s going on, I’m just not that big on joining in unless I can think of an actual use for it.

Check out the new kitchen counter tops!

My husband did all the tile work himself.  Aren’t they nice?   So it’s not granite like we wanted but these are so much better then the old ones I really don’t care.  Not only that but the color is tons better.  Out cabinets and appliances are white and the floor and walls are in light, neutral colors.  The old counter tops were also light so the kitchen was just one big blob of white and light colors and there was nothing interesting about it (very functional, oh yes, but I wanted it to look a little nicer, too).  The contrast of the new darker counter tops with the rest of the light colored kitchen is really nice.  I love how it turned out, it’s almost like being in a totally new kichen.  We still have to finished the backsplash behind our kitchen sink but the rest of it is done…yay!

Bonus photo:

This is what’s left of our old counter tops. :P  My husband took them outside and dropped them on the back patio and they just…shattered.  I can’t say I’m sad to see them like this…heh.  But you can see what I mean about the color.

Get this:  So far we’ve spent a bit over $600 to do the entire project.  When we got an estimate a few years ago to get man made stone counter tops they quoted us $600 alone just to demo the old counter tops.  What?  It took us all of half an hour to do the demo ourselves…I’m glad we decided to make this a do-it-yourself job, that way we didn’t get ripped off.

We’ve put it off long enough…the counter tops in our kitchen have to go.  So we are now in the process of redoing those in our kitchen.  Our house is a construction zone complete with all that dust and noise.  My husband has the whole week off to get as far as he can in this project, I’m crossing my fingers he gets it done.

We wanted to do granite (or a man made stone counter top that looks like granite) and we were saving up for it, but our old tops just aren’t going to last long enough for us to save up the whole amount so we are doing tile instead.  We are settling, we acknowledge that, but we also acknowledge we can’t always have everything we want.  We tried really hard to pick something we would still like even if it’s not what we really wanted.  I hope it turns out well.

Our old counter tops were so bad…there are no words.  I don’t know who put them in, some previous owner of our house, but I hope they did not pay a “professional” to do it because if they did they got ripped off big time.  Whoever did it did not bother to install any supporting plywood underneath so the counter tops became warped and sagged by the time we bought the house.  Over the years it started cracking from the stress of use.  Finally, a few weeks ago, the top of our kitchen island spontaneously cracked clean through almost all the way across the entire surface.  Yeah, that is unacceptable.  Something had to be done so I guess now is the time.

We tore the old ones out yesterday.  A few of them just totally came apart completely, that’s just how bad they were.  I’m just astounded someone thought putting them in a kitchen was okay.  My husband has the whole plywood support structure in already (including the holes cut through for the sink and stove top.  He’s installing the backer board as I type and when that’s done we’ll be ready to start tiling.  I hope to turns out nice…but seriously, just about anything has to be better then what we had!

And…this is just for my mom…I swear, we are only doing the counter tops and the backsplash.  We aren’t going to end up redoing the whole kitchen. even as tempting as that might be, ha ha.  I’m teasing you, mom!  Love you.

I recently got the following comment on my blog (it’s still sitting in moderation, it’s not viewable to the public for reasons I’m sure will become quite clear when you read it).  I was going to just ignore it…but you know, I can’t.  Here’s the comment left by someone named “Hazel”:

“Uh, hey, since you said you’re sooo out of the harry potter craze in a recent entry, perhaps you could take down the sorting hat quiz that you blatantly stole from my friend’s website, word for word? Cause, it’s, like, her original work, and an author’s works are automatically protected by copyright, even if they don’t register them, and she has logs proving when her quiz was posted to her website. Or would you prefer to be a plagiarizing c*** for the rest of your life? Or at least, until she sues you? Inquiring minds want to know.”

Note:  I edited out the rude word she called me…because, you know, who needs that?  I’m sure if you use your imagination you can figure it out.

Since “inquiring minds want to know”, I would like to address Miss Hazel and her accusations:

While I admire you for standing up for “your friend”, I think it would be wise for you to check out all the facts in this case first before you make accusations, jump to conclusions, and pretty much decide that I’ve done something wrong.  So let me respond to each point you make one at a time.

1.  “…since you said you’re sooo out of the harry potter craze in a recent entry…” It’s true, I am “out of the Harry Potter craze” but what does that have to do with anything?  I am still a fan, just not so wild about it as I was before, but that doesn’t mean I automatically have to strike everything from my website that I made that happens to be Harry Potter related.

2.  “…perhaps you could take down the sorting hat quiz that you blatantly stole from my friend’s website, word for word?” You mean this quiz?  Funny…I distinctly remember making that quiz from scratch without copying anything from anyone.  I do admit (of course) to borrowing the ideas from Ms. J.K. Rowling and acknowledge that the underlying idea of the Hogwarts houses, classes, etc. belong to her.  But the quiz text, all of the images, and the coding of that page were written and created by me and me alone.  No, I won’t take it down.

3.  “…she has logs proving when her quiz was posted to her website…” I don’t know who “your friend” is, but I can take a guess.  On the same day (3/10/09) I received your comment on my blog I also just happened to receive an email sent through my website contact form accusing me of the same thing you are accusing me of and quite kindly pointed me in the direction of the website NextIncantation.com.  I can only assume you sent that email, I find it highly unlikely I would get two accusations on the same day about the same thing (when I’ve never been accused of it before) and it not being connected.

I did some digging around on NextIncantation.com and found this page.  Wow, you are right!  It’s exactly the same…word for word.  Imagine that.  I took note of the date that sorting hat quiz was posted:  March 08, 2008.  I can only assume these are the logs you are referring to since you did not do me the courtesy of pointing out where I might find any logs in your original accusation.  That’s fine, and because I’m nice and willing to give someone the benefit of the doubt, let’s just pretend for a minute that maybe the owner and administrator of NextIncantation.com had the quiz posted at an earlier date on her website in a different location.  Okay…but I wish to point out that after doing a little research on the “Who Is” database I discovered that the website NextIncantation.com was first created on June 10, 2006.  Let’s just say, to make this easy, that “your friend”, the owner and maintainer of NextIncantation.com (let’s call her “Lycanth” for fun) posted her quiz on that date.

Next, I would invite you to again visit my own quiz and take a few things into consideration.  If you right click on that page with your mouse (in any browser besides Internet Explorer…I use a right click prevention code that only works with IE, but try it with Firefox), then select “View Page Info”.  Please carefully read the information provided in that nice little window.  It quite clearly states that my quiz page was last modified on June 26, 2002.

That is nearly FOUR FULL YEARS before NextIncantation.com was even in existence.

4.  “…an author’s works are automatically protected by copyright…” Then I don’t have anything to worry about since I am the author.  Thank you for pointing out my rights.

5.  “…would you prefer to be a plagiarizing c*** for the rest of your life?” Do I really need to respond to that amazingly rude comment?

6.  “Or at least, until she sues you?” This especially amuses me.  Do you know how much seeking legal litigation costs?  Do you realize how much time that would take?  Excuse me for not taking this threat seriously, I highly doubt “your friend” would waste her time…especially since I’m sure she knows who the real plagiarizer is in this case…and it’s not me.

Speaking of “your friend”, why don’t you ask her how she came up with her Sorting Hat quiz yourself?  Better yet, why don’t you invite her to come and read this blog post of mine and tell you what she thinks about what I have to say?  I’d be very interested in her thoughts about all of this.  I would welcome a conversation with “Lycanth”, the supposed owner and maintainer of NextIncantation.com…and creator of a Sorting Hat quiz that looks suspiciously like one I made almost seven years ago.  You know, I’m a nice person.  If she had come to me and asked if she could use it I might have said yes.  People have asked me permission to use things I made in the past and I’m usually very open to sharing with those willing to give me credit where credit is due.  In a way, I’m flattered she felt the need to use my quiz word for word, it means it’s a good quiz (and it should be given the time, energy, and research I put into writing it).  However, I don’t like being taken advantage of and being left open for people’s friends to throw their unfounded accusations at.  You might want to advise “your friend” that it would be in her best interest to either ask me for permission to use my quiz, with the promise of giving me credit and a link to the original material, or take it down.

It’s also interesting to note, Hazel, that I would have never known of the existence of NextIncantation.com or the Sorting Hat quiz there if it hadn’t been for you pointing it out to me.  Up until your comment and subsequent email, I would have been none the wiser that anyone was using my quiz and claiming as their own.  Thank you for bringing this to my attention.  I’m sure “your friend” will thank you as well.

I decided to try out opening a store at Etsy.  Etsy is a place where people go to buy and sell handmade goods, it’s a really neat place to shop.  My store features my handmade doll clothes, made for the various types of collector dolls I have.  You can visit here:  Click

I know the name of my store is lame, but I can change it later if I think of something better.  I’ve already sold a few things so that’s good.  I’m also hoping to add some of my amigurumi (crocheted animals) eventually, too.

Please explain to me how a nearly 1 trillion dollar stimulus bill is going to stimulate the economy?  I fail to understand how something my grandkids are going to be paying for until the day they die is really going to help the current recession (please note I don’t even have grandkids yet).

Did you know the stimulus package that was recently signed by our President includes spending $300 million dollars on golf carts?  Ask yourself seriously, why does my hard earned tax money need to be spent on golf carts in a time of national financial crisis?  How many other ridiculous expenses are we being asked to pay for in that bloated stimulus spending bill?

My husband and I have worked hard to stay as out of debt as we can.  The only debts we currently hold are a mortgage (which *gasp* we made sure we could actually afford to pay for) and my son’s braces.  We are honest, we pay all of our bills on time, we have stellar credit, we paid all our school loans off within five years of graduating, we have no car loans because we buy used with cash, and we have all of one credit card that we pay off every month and don’t carry a balance on.  We live within our means (a really foreign concept it seems) and we try to save what we can, but it’s not easy.  But we try and we’ve worked hard to stay this out of debt and it does not come without certain sacrifices.

To be honest, I’m pretty pissed off at all these dumb Americans that live on borrowed money they can’t pay back and are really responsible for this recession we are in.  Thanks a lot.  Why do I even bother trying to do it “right” when my husband and I now have to suffer because of other people’s mistakes?  And quite frankly Washington can take their stupid stimulus package and shove it where the sun doesn’t shine for all I care.

You can’t spend your way out of debt.  The sooner we, as Americans, can learn this one simple thing, the better off we will be.