booking it
sorry for the lame post. i wanna read my book.
internet hipster!
i wrote this for my column in the newsleader way back in 2002! some of my predictions did not hold true…
I have a confession to make: I am an internet geek. While some people may shy away from the internet and all it holds, I grasp it and embrace it, holding it and all it offers dear to me. You want to hear the geekiness? I used to find coupons that would get me $50 of merchandise free, I know what mp2s are and I remember when Hotmail was owned by Hotmail, not Microsoft.
Lately, however, the quality of the internet has rapidly declined. How so? Well, the afore mentioned $50 coupon? I’m lucky if I find a coupon for free shipping these days! So many web site upstarts were blossoming in 1998-99, free stuff on the internet was easy to find. One web site would offer up to $25 of free merchandise, and all I had to do was pay shipping. Another web site had an offer where if I created a “wedding web site” (I wasn’t getting married, nor am I married now, but what do they know?), I would get $50 free merchandise from a high-quality internet site, and all I had to pay was shipping. Once, I actually found a $20 coupon that INCLUDED shipping; I was ecstatic.
I can’t find anything these days. Amazon.com boasts free shipping on purchases over $100, but when am I going to spend that much? The mp3 craze is so high that finding any mp3s on the internet is nearly impossible, even those you pay for! (Copyright issues: another subject.) Yessiree, the internet is darn near impossible to fanagle any free stuff out of these days. Those were the good old days, when I could get $50 of items for $3.50.
Not only is finding free stuff a futile battle, but pop-up ads are insane. It used to be that only “risque” web sites had pop-up ads with advertisers taking you to their other web sites. Now, everyone and their neighbor is trying to find a good way of advertising on the internet. Advertisements don’t work online. No one pays attention to them, and this is the problem web-companies have; how are they going to sell advertising if research shows web site ads are useless? They have to find some way to fund their web sites, so they inundate us with pop-up ads and monkey target practice and musical dancing bears and $20 free if you click the arrow which is moving so slow a two-year-old could click it. The latest ads are pop-up ads which are almost transparent and have no X to get you out of them! No X means I have to search for five minutes before I can close the ad. Sure, no X means that I have to look at the ad while I’m trying to close it, but it also means that I’m so frustrated I wouldn’t buy from the advertiser anyway!
This is not a good thing, though, because it means to fund these web sites, soon the owners are going to start charging us to view their web sites. I see in the future no more free internet. OK, the internet isn’t totally free now because of the $20/month we pay our internet service providers, but pretty soon we’re going to have to automatically pay X amount of dollars to have internet-based e-mail (Hotmail, Yahoo, etc.) and pay a monthly fee to see certain web sites. The Wall Street Journal already charges to look at the entire paper online.
The new trend is going to be upon us soon. You know the old-age adage: “I remember when Twinkies were a nickel, movies were a dime, a bottle of pop was eight cents and gas was 15 cents a gallon.” When I feel I’m ready to spit out an adage of my own to my kid(s), it’ll be “When I was a kid, my e-mail was free, I didn’t have to pay to find out weather information from weather.com and they actually gave me stuff for free, even if I wasn’t married!”
the birds! the birds!
i got a bird feeder pole a few years ago for christmas because at the time i had no deck to nail bird feeders into. i hung up some feeders, and it seems like all i’d gotten in the past were wrens, robins, and blackbirds.
so i wasn’t expecting much when i stuck my pole out in my backyard and filled my feeders. boy was i in for a surprise.
the first birds i noticed were the goldfinches. there are literal flocks of goldfinches that come and hang out on my feeders and on the ground for breakfast. then the orioles came! this was such a nice contrast to the boring blackbirds and wrens i’d gotten in the past.
of course i got some purple finches (i’d had a few of those up in st. joe – not very common though). then i saw a few rose-breasted grosbeak and a few indigo buntings, as well as a woodpecker!
i decided to get a hummingbird feeder, which was a good move. i saw a hummingbird sunday morning zipping around the feeder.
i put my birdbook next to my sliding doors, and i need to get my long lens on my camera so i can start taking some pics of these birds.
next step is a pair of binoculars. somehow i’ve become a bird watcher in my old age.
happy 10-year blogiversary!
ten years ago. 2004. i had just moved out from a bad living situation and was renting a one-bedroom from a nice lady landlord. branden had a livejournal account, and even though i’d been bugging him to refer me so i could get an account, he declined. “yeah, i don’t want to give it to you if you’re not going to use it.”
10 years later, who’s still blogging? huh branden?
fortunately livejournal opened up for general consumption, and i grabbed an account and started typing 10 years ago today.
10 years ago:
- i was in grad school after moving from one bad job to another bad job
- had just started seeing a guy i’d eventually marry
- was going through a mild quarter-life crisis
- still had the same old cat (chasey!)
- had only been using the internet for 7 (7!) years
- had a two-DVDs/month plan with netflix
my blog has gone through a couple transformations in the past 10 years. i went from a livejournal-hosted blog to a personal website-hosted blog in 2008. i lost a year and a half’s worth of entries in the great blog migration of 2012. my livejournal (house of kate) is still alive, but i’ve deleted everything from it and put it here. and believe it or not, i actually opened up a blogspot blog a year or two before my livejournal, but who knows what the web address is or the date i started it (it was pretty short-lived), so even though i’ve “technically” been blogging for more than 10 years, this is the easily recorded anniversary.
i have two consistent readers i know of for sure: my sisters. thanks to them for at least showing me some traffic. i know there are more of you, but my sisters for sure have read my blog over the past 10 years.
and to celebrate my blogiversary, instead of getting myself a cake, i will give my readers a list of my top ten blogs.
- undeniable proof
- a bathroom review
- the best kind of books
- goodwill toward all
- it’s hard, jane
- christmastime
- it was the best of times…
- shhh
- whenever
- home
- bonus: TMI Tuesday: 90s edition (read at your own risk)
mr king
i FINALLY convinced one of my sisters to read a stephen king book. lord knows it took ME forever to pick one up, given that his name is pretty synonymous with horror writing, but, finally, after comparing “running man” to “hunger games” for jane, she picked it up, and LO AND BEHOLD who now is running to the library to borrow all of king’s books??
(i keep telling people that he doesn’t just write horror. that he’s an awesome storyteller. do they listen? noooOOOooo…welllll…eventually.)
anyway, jane wanted to know what she should read next, so i put together the list of all the king books i’ve read in order of how much i liked them. here you go!
1. 11/22/63
2. Green Mile
3. Under the Dome
4. Running Man
5. The Stand
6. The Girl who Loved Tom Gordon
7. Joyland
8. first three of the Dark Tower series (“The Gunslinger” is the first book i read of his, and i went wow he can tell a story. still need to read the whole series)
short stories i listened to on audiobook, both excellent:
Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption (obvs shawshank movie is based on this)
The Body (the movie “Stand by Me” was based on this)
I should add that none of these books are straight out horror. some have a weird sci-fi angle to them or are mystery, but i have read a lot scarier books than these. the next book of his that i’ll pick up is “the long walk.” i’ve heard good things about it.
let's play
one of my “guidelines” for 2014 was to be more musical. well, the other day i went to schmitt music and bought some clarinet reeds. after some poking around in some boxes, i found my clarinet music, and so begins more musicalness in my life.
for reasons UNBEKNOWNST TO ME* i have lost my etudes for clarinet, but i still have a lot of sheet music, so i think i’ll be good as far as music goes.
*that was total sarcasm and a lie. i’m sure i got rid of them because they were the bane of my existence during my first semester of college. bruce thornton, you were the worst clarinet teacher i’ve ever had.
life of an introvert
i am a big introvert. it’s not so bad that i can’t function in public, because i CAN function in public, and i function quite well if i know you well. if i know you well, it’s less of a chore for me to be around you (chore as in it takes a lot of energy). if i know you really well, i can easily be around you with no energy drain.
while cursed with this lovely introvertiveness, i am also cursed with the ability to be a somewhat presentable and effective presenter. it’s kind of like math – i am GOOD at it, and i can DO it, but i sure as heck don’t enjoy it. (ok, well, i don’t hate getting up in front of people as much as math, but you get the idea).
when the opportunity arose to say something at a MnSCU social media roundtable, i knew this was a good opportunity, and i wouldn’t mind sharing what i know. plus it would be a great thing to put on anyone’s resume! (NOT that i’m using it lately, but you never know what might happen!) so i volunteered to say something.
today was the big day, and while i wasn’t as nervous as i was in front of rctc’s administrators or the audience of 100+ on staff development day, it was still something that made my nerves wrack and my senses heighten to levels unacceptable to the little person inside of me who just wants to curl up on my couch with a book.
so now i’m wiped out, and after lying on the couch for an hour and a half, i am going to live-tweet the basketball game tonight (in lieu of “arrow” – waaahhhhhh), so i’ll be good to just pass out after that’s over.
you lucky people who get your energy from being around people don’t know how good you’ve got it.
a rant
my brand new house has a ton of phone jacks all over. i have no use for them. you know what i do have a use for? ethernet cat5 jacks all over. you would think that builders would get a clue and start wiring houses for internet as well as cable and phone.
that said, my netflix/amazon prime streaming quality has been so bad lately, that last night i got finally got fed up with it. because of the no ethernet jacks, i’d been running the ps3 wirelessly, which apparently decreases signal strength when it has to run through two walls. i ran a 50-foot cat5 out and hooked it up.
aahhhhh *clouds part, sun shines*
now i have an unsightly cord running from the office to the far side of the living room, right where i can trip over it. when nate and i finish off the basement, cat5 jacks are definitely going in.
sherlock!
sherlock! sherlock! sherlock! starts in an hour and 15! sooo excited! review to come after? we’ll see how i feel afterward!
sherlockian
i recently rewatched all the episodes of BBC’s sherlock so I can be prepared for when the show’s 3rd season/series airs on the 19th.
i love the show, i love that it’s modernized, and i love that it’s british, but for the love of all that is human, i swear i miss half of each episode because 1. i am not british and understanding the accent takes some time and 2. he talks so dang fast sometimes! so while mr. cumberbatch is doing his best to sherlockify his acting, i as a consumer only catch about half of what exactly was sherlock’s explanation of how something happened.
that said, i am super excited for the 19th. that and i’ve got one more episode of arrow to watch until i’m caught up on that, which airs new episodes on the 16th.
since i have basic channels now as well as a normal work schedule, do you know how awesome it is to actually look forward to a weekly tv show? i watched LOST the day after each episode aired on my computer, but it wasn’t quite the same as looking forward to a show’s first airing on tv while sitting on your couch. it’ll be like watching TNG or herk/xena again 😀