Pinky Stuff

[Pinky]

Insomnia provides awesome opportunities. I've spent many a long night stalking the dark streets in the swirling ether, and last night was a delightful gem of discovery. This first grab clicks to the convo thread on twitter.







The poor kittehs... This next grab clicks to the Wikipedia page.

Did you like that? Click this next grab for MOAR. Ur welcome.

[Pinky]

I'm thinking about pulling everything out of my kitchen cabinets and super dusting the insides. I used to do stuff like that several times a year, and climb all over the counters reaching up to the soffits with the vacuum cleaner. Looks like one of the bean roosters fell over. I can move around a little better now, so who knows.



I have this mug thing, but a person can pile up only so many mugs before it's ridiculous, so when I did a double take yesterday over these I very nearly triumphed, but wound up caving and going back. I'm usually really strong willed with money, but whoever made these snookered me.



July is my Christmas. Lotta sales, and Penney's sent a book full of coupons for $10 off and 25% off and stuff like that, and being the penny pinching retail gamer that I am, I got a new crock pot, 2 Farberware skillets AND those mugs cheaper than I would have on Christmas sales, was like walking out with free merch just for showing up. Still, we all know mugs like that wind up in yard sales when old people croak off. Most of this stuff is exactly that. I've been told that snuff bowl was my great grandfather's and he really used it for something.



My whole house is a hodgepodge of other people's stuff. Most of those people are passed now. I'm the odd relative that likes little bits and pieces of people I knew as a child. Nothing in my house matches, there is no theme. When you walk through my house on a quiet day you can feel sleepy old days that came before from other places. The little forgotten corners from other houses are all in my house. It's not junky because I loathe decor clutter, but barely any of it is originally mine.

I think a lot about time. I skewed through a wild diversion this last week into thinking about another story I'm working on about time. It's hard staying focused on finishing just one project when I've spent so many years dabbling in a plethora of them for my own amusement. I keep telling myself I want the money (if it's worth anything), but since I'm such an immaterial person I hardly take that kind of motivation seriously.

I'm wandering around my house today doing a lot of quiet thinking while I catch up on chores. I love the theme music when they visit the ancient dead planet Brunnis in Lexx's Supernova, like an ancient music box in a dusty attic but awesome like ancient-galaxy-full-of-stars awesome.

[Pinky]

Whoever linked my dotcom on a Brazil site, ur awesome. Let's celebrate. Push play when you get there. That's an 80's song from a radio jockey during my Phoenix days.

Did a big ol' mostly private assessment of how I'm doing since the big comeback two years ago. Exactly 6 weeks from today is the one year anniversary of the Xanga migration to new servers. Also in the last couple of years I've been on two different cancer watches (one more might be popping up, kinda holding my breath), and both my daughters went through difficult pregnancies at the same time and popped burritos out only 2 months apart, and the second one came early nearly right on top of me having surgery last summer. Also during this last year my father-in-law missed dying in his driveway next door by about 5 minutes but didn't, thanx to one phone call and expertly practiced emergency response, and now my mother-in-law is recovering from an extremely invasive surgery. A whole lot more than that has happened and I'm utterly exhausted, but those are the basic highlights.

Why am I saying all this? Because I hope you guys who follow me are picking up how cool it is to journal, whether it's public or private, because you can see your own writing progress, no matter how slow and agonizing it seems to be, with the added benefit of going oh yeah, I remember that because we forget being in that day. I'm a natural yapper on a keyboard because I rarely speak to anyone out loud on the phone or anywhere else, and I use my screen as a playback for my glitchy brain- this is how I organize my mixed up thoughts. It doesn't matter what you write or what you think of what you wrote, just make a habit out of writing something down every day. I have a very old Harry Potter journal from 2003/2004 that I didn't write much in but I am so glad to have because 1- I can point back to 2003 on the trigeminal pain because I mentioned persistent continual earaches even before I had Bell's Palsy 8 months later, and 2- I wrote something brief in that journal on the day someone very precious died, and even though I never wrote more after that, I am so glad I have what I wrote that day.

When you are writing on your blogs, don't think about other people reading it. Think about how you feel about what you're writing. Think about what you'd like to read about it. Think about creating what YOU want to see written down. It doesn't have to be perfect. You know what phonetics are, right? I had a linguistics course in college. All language is ultimately defined phonetically by linguists. If you can convey the ideas in your head to another person by means of symbolism, you are communicating, whether or not the spelling and grammar and punctuation are correct. Don't worry about people nitpicking, that's their OCD problem. The most important thing we do as humans is share what is in our heads. This has been going on since way before the printed page, or even cave painting. Sharing our thoughts and ideas in story form is what being human is really all about. We come together as a group, we share what is in our heads. If we are not able to do that, we are not successful as humans. Even if all we can do is smile at someone and hold out a hand, that is symbology at its core. That we can draw lines depicting that, or create words conveying that, is priceless in a sentient race of beings.

Words are hard, reading is hard, and writing is hard. For everyone. A lot of people have dyslexia or vision challenges, most of us use spell check like maniacs, none of us is born naturally writing our thoughts down. Even the most gifted have to practice this. I had a tough time in my creative writing classes back in college. I've spent years practicing on blogs, most of them gone now or private. I've had days where I could barely make a sentence. But that doesn't mean I can't.

The hardest part is believing something we say is worth reading. It's scary. I'm about to tell you something really true. If you write something on a blog, and only one person sees it, and that one person dumps their bad day all over you letting you know how stupid you are because you can't spell or your idea is dumb or you're wrong because this or that, you got their attention. And that was your goal, wasn't it? You were successful. That one person was better than no one at all. That one person took the time to respond, and it's not your fault it happened to be someone who loves bashing pumpkins on people's houses.

I once commented on someone's blog post about how much I admired them for being honest about something scary, and right after me someone commented that we were both losers looking for attention. 1- this was before I ever shared who I really am or a picture of myself, and I was as nobody as someone gets, so seriously, looking for attention? 2- I checked that person's page out and everything on it was political bashing, not one thing was personal, just a continual regurgitation of the news but loaded down with lots of negative opinions. CHECK OUT WHO IS COMMENTING BADLY. Chances are they have their own little psychosis going. You have the power to delete ugly comments. I certainly don't respond to crap like that.

I wish I had known how to screen grab a few years ago, I had some haters melting my screen every time I turned around, following me in forums and blogs and trying to sabotage everything I did. It was very stressful at first. By the time it was over it was actually pretty hilarious. I had gotten so 'famous' that everyone rushed to see what I would do next that would set the diatribes off again. If I had known more back then, I might not have disappeared. I would have used the 'free press' and capitalized on the gains.

It's scary sharing stuff on blogs, whether it's personal or not. I still feel shaky after some of mine. When that happens, I turn my laptop off and walk away. I go do chores or even leave the house. When you publish something that makes you feel shaky and afraid, that's when you go out and get a milkshake or whatever it is you do that makes you feel special.

[Pinky]

In true aspie response to extra pressure and stress, I trifurcated into 3 different sets of research notes and threw my manuscript into a vortex to splat all over later.



Aspies look like this when they stress out.



I mean, what if spiders could time travel? YOU HEARD IT HERE FIRST. By the way, don't do an engine search on 'spider time travel'. Just... don't.



One of my struggles lately has been softening up my content, trying to be 'nice'. I mean, I'm not going to get all languagy and stuff, but I can't be nice. I was remembering this morning back to being around my grandmother and one of her sisters, my great-aunt, always dressed to kill with their hair done and pearls on, never caught without their hosiery and gloves, the very picture of proper ladies. I remember realizing when I was about ten that you'd never suspect how sad or miserable they might be through the projection of looking perfect and fresh and ready, no matter what was going on. I remember realizing in my 30's that I can never be that kind of person because even on nice jobs and in nice places I can't help smudging my face and ripping my hose and looking disheveled- my priorities are so different. And that's what I'm struggling with in my writing. My priorities require that I dredge through the angst and sadness behind what is proper, while hanging onto all the things that got me in trouble for not being able to stifle my giggles.

I've been marathoning STNG off my DVR as it schedules through on BBCA, and one ep was about an alien drawing conclusions about whether everyone on the ship should live or die based on what it saw through a child's eyes. That means if I write the way I remember things only from my own perspective, the whole world will die and I really don't want that to happen. If I modulate several perspectives so that we can also look at stuff from the grown up perspective that Picard explained to the alien, then the world can go ahead and live. The problem I'm running into is that I truly do have a social deficit, plus I'm routing around two-way communication challenges that make it hard to convey what I want without catering or condescending to my readers, and I'm realizing that even though I've had years to think about things, verbalizing so much of it for the very first time is like trying to ice skate up the side of a cliff. It's like when you get bogged down on a quest so you go do something else for awhile and hope you pick up a jewel or level up your weapons for when you get back to it.

Basically, I popped out a couple thousand words yesterday and abruptly shut the laptop because even I wouldn't read that crap. But I would read about time traveling spiders.

There's a guy whose site I used to submit content for (the dotcom is still down until the Xanga migration is more complete, I suspect) who is meeting soon with local reps about autism planning. I'm not saying I'll be in any way instrumental, but people like me coming out on blogs and writing books over the last ten years has been a really big deal. Standing up against the genocide of a 'cure' has swept the world, brilliant minds headlocking with the financially savvy using the autism 'cause' as a big money pit, regardless of how badly it turns out for the 'victims' they claim to represent. I haven't been so shocked since I learned the truth behind Native American slavery and genocide. The answers shouldn't always be to 'fix the problem' without first finding out who stands to gain from there being a problem in the first place.

I have to write some mean things. I have to write sad things. I have to write things that most people would be afraid to write and have the world read, especially their families. It's important.

But I'd rather write about time traveling spiders. I'm making notes. After my hard work is done, I want so very badly to play.

[Pinky]

So this happened. These were the retweet and fav numbers at 12:11 pm central today. Add those up and you get the notifications on my phone so far just from this one tweet. They're still coming in, you can click that screen grab and check the current numbers in real time. I would love to have counted all the other notifications I got during the Sharknado 2 live tweet but there's just no way I have the time or brain right now for that. All I can say is Thanks, Syfy, this was a truly fun tweet, and super thanks Anne Wheaton.



Don't know about you guys but back to school has got me all excited for autumn and Halloween. Only 5 months until New Year's Eve! We rock what I call the 'holiday slide' in my family, and thanx to burrito's birthday, it starts even earlier now. From here on out till New Year's, we have a birthday, anniversary, or major holiday every other week, plus FOOTBALL, so we are one big long party in my house. It's exhausting but loads of fun, and the only way I can stay in the game is to start loading the freezer NOW. I have this many eggs piled up from my 4 hens since we got back from Houston in May, before that I emptied the fridge.



The goal is to repurpose these eggs into holiday goodies and get them into the big freezer asap. Over the next couple of weeks I'll be making cookie doughs, cupcakes, a variety of pound and fruit cakes, rolls, and anything else I can think of that uses eggs. Most of my baking for the next 6-9 months will be DONE. I've discovered this works really well for us since I have a pattern of crashing every year right around Thanksgiving, and after that you're lucky if you get Christmas cards or a little cash from me. I don't do big Thanksgiving and Christmas any more because that's when people are passing flu and whatever else around, and that's when colder damper weather flares up the aches and pains, and that's when I hit my wall and start flirting with flare ups from overdoing. Since we get burrito regularly now, it's especially crucial that I get all over this plan before my brain falls out for the winter. I was such a mess last holiday season I could barely do pinterest, my holiday boards look pretty dismal over there. The Darth Vader pin is my favorite.



Tell me you guys know this is happening all over Vevo right now.

[Pinky]

Reeled out of bed around 5:15 a.m. after one of those dreams where you think you're waking up but you discover you're still dreaming and think you wake up again, went in circles about 5 times before I really woke up. I think I'm awake now... I've mentioned having dreams about future tech or accounts or websites I've created and forgotten about. Last night I cycled through OH YEAH howcouldIforgetsomethingsocool and trying to get back into stuff, and every time I 'woke up' it turned into something different. Now that I'm *really* awake and know nothing that cool exists yet, I'm thinking future tech dream again. That or alt selves have really cool stuff in alt 'verses. I'm not the only one thinking about future tech, apparently. Click this.



I wrote 17 pages of notes this week, several while I was driving, and that was just one spiral. Kinda chewing on stuff the last guy talked to me about breaking down my outline further, categories into subcategories. Another person mentioned that I'm basically writing a textbook. I need to just accept the fact that this one is gonna be thick and I'm not apologizing for that. Since I'm so good at summarizing thought now, I feel like I'm creating word art in 4D space, and the people who read it will become time travelers. If you love pinterest AND books, this clicks to a book lover's board.



The Geek Squad did giant dust bunny surgery on my laptop yesterday. As he tried to talk me into an overhaul, I felt my laptop quiver. It's alive! And aware! O_O

[Pinky]

First- THANK YOU for 18,000 views here.

Now- business.

If you wrote a million words, maybe even 2 million words over 8 years, and suddenly everything you ever wrote was about to go *poof*, would you panic? Whine? Bitterly complain? Go into depression and seclusion?

Facebook went down again yesterday. People ~FREAKED~.

I paid $450 to keep my million words from disappearing a year and 3 days ago. I was glad I had the chance to save it from *poof*. I've seen so many people feel shattered and destroyed when host sites suddenly went dead and they could no longer access their stuff, much less save it from disappearing because they hadn't backed up their artwork and manuscripts and stuff.

Well, it's happening again, only this time no one is saying anything constructive, and there might not be a rollover to keep taking fees this year. I'm screaming like a banshee moving stuff as fast as I can, bracing myself to lose a lot of it, and this is still on top of writing the book. Egads. Seriously?

I'm in way better shape than last year, or I'd be in a puddle on the floor, just letting people step in me. I'm actually trying to do this. I'm moving mountains and planning strategy and counting nickels and dimes, holding onto a dream.

I want mRpl to be a real book some day. That's just one of many really fun things I want to do. It's about to disappear. I nearly lost it once, I might be losing it again, but dang I'm scraping my blogs out as fast as I can. I will be forever grateful to Victor Navone for the inspiration I got from his work.

[Pinky]

You know the big broohaha about twitter has facebook-like feed filters coming? I dreamed last night that there was a new drop down menu in twitter with new functions, and one of them was like an invitation button. You know how facebook lets you invite your friends to like your page and twitter has a promo thing that lets you pay to jump into other people's feed even if they aren't following you? Yeah, something like that. You could fill up a list of twitter names to invite to follow you. In my dream it did NOT show up in private messaging, but somehow showed up like a pinned tweet at the top of feeds. Can you imagine how annoying that would be? Political and fan accounts would go crazy with invitations. I really hope this never happens. The last time I dreamed about a twitter change, it actually happened.



I mock twitter every little bit by subscribing to these ridiculous report cards that big companies and growing businesses take very seriously, and then laugh when I read articles announcing that half the things listed here actually have no real meaning. I've been saying that about 'reach' ever since I first ran into this. Potential to be seen or get response but not actually being seen or getting response is a dumb way to measure worth. Anyone trying to sell product will tell you how it feels to sit around not being seen or responded to. You could have huge billboards and TV ads, but if you have restricted frontage entry for any reason (road construction, for example), that matters not, because you can't make money on people driving on by. I don't think twitter is any different, and that's why so many people jump up and down waving at big accounts to notice them. Anybody can get pretty numbers with a little bit of effort. It's like playing a game.

This was my report card for July 2014.



And this is the report card I got for August. ~gasp!~ I'm slipping! O_O The horror!



And I'm basically 'wasting time' right now during a huge time crunch to get 5 huge things done, so here you go, have fun getting this one unstuck out of your head.

[Pinky]

What gives? Don't you guys have lives??? lol, probably pings from spambots. Or something. Not sure how the filter works here. *rubbing eyes* Not sure how I feel about 1,000 in one month.

So, checking in, the complete blog renovation is going well, still thinking I can git'r'dun by Halloween. Burrito is on her way, so today will mostly be about figuring out giant crayolas and raisins showing up all over my house. I took facebook off my phone after a half dozen reinstalls over the last year because I'm tired of dead-end controls, so I'm a little scattered this week developing a new facebook work pattern. Have been a little scarce with the Lexx gang over there this last week. Other than that, all the sites and accounts are set, I think I'm on track for holidays so I can keep up this year, and if

-ok, now it's a working breakfast-



Where was I? Ok, if I can stick to the rest of this track I'm on through the end of the month, I might just start disappearing every little bit and get my original work going again. Dare I hope?

In the meantime, I'm reading Fluency by Jennifer Foehner Wells. I've heard there *may* be some interest in turning it into a film project, crossing fingers.



Sitting tight waiting for Nobility to premier, have been watching the press releases all summer. From their facebook- "“Nobility” is a new sci-fi dramedy dubbed “The Office” meets "Firefly". Set 700 years in the future, it’s about the C.A.S. Nobility, Humanity’s most powerful starship with a crew, that’s, well, anything but noble." My favorite Lexx cannibal Giggerota (Ellen Dubin) plays Col. Theia, check out the rest of the awesome Nobility cast.



Looks like Scott might need some help. We're into drawers and stuff right now, so next stop is finding another drawer to reload with burrito stuffs.



This is our jam today.

[Pinky]

I had the coolest dream about twitter last night. You know how they have subset auto searches, like they group all your photos and lists? I dreamed they added more stuff, like an 'all your tweets containing links' section (which could eventually be categorized by link type such as science or gaming depending on the tags in the articles or pages the links go to), all the hashtags you created (and then rank your hashtag usage which would be cool for people playing hashtag games or watching trends), and a search through your own convos by key word, which made looking up past tweets way easier and faster.

Those of you who don't blog, many blog hosts already provide a personal search engine on your own blog where readers can look for key words or phrases. I'm not talking about tags. If you don't know this, you need to snoop around some more. Other services outside of twitter allow deeper twitter searches, and I actually pay one of them so I can look up stuff most people can no longer find even on their own twitter accounts just because it's too load heavy to find older stuff, plus I use two others. I'm not talking about hoot suite or tweet deck kind of services, they are cumbersome and not helpful for what I'm talking about. Twitter has capability for way bigger service and has flirted with several beta models (while the rest of you grumble about change, I dig through stacks of performance assessments in press releases), but installing the necessary engines for individual user access will be a huge thing that needs to be go-ready.

Twitter is already on the cutting edge of becoming the ultimate in thought organization, and I can envision it becoming more reliable than wikipedia and even google search. What I saw in my dream last night was so thrilling that I jumped up out of bed as soon as my eyes opened and paced the floor while my laptop booted because I was afraid I'd forget all this before I could start typing.

And for the lesser inclined *cough*celebsandfans*cough* it's just a great time being there yapping our little brains out.

[Pinky]

Woke up to a new game this morning. Click this snip to see the whole thing, it's really cute. It opens up too big to snip it on my screen.



Someone got this. *click*



So I tried it and -->got this<--. It was fun scrolling down through all of them. Even though I've posted thousands of pix in the last couple of years, many of which I've completely forgotten about, a lot of them aren't mine and I think it's funny they wound up associated with my name in a search because of the word 'meme'. Who knows how the internet works, right? Here's a fave. It clicks to a fun story. I was on the fringe of this mob before I met most of you guys on twitter.



Jumping onto a completely unrelated track, is this true? So many photoshops jerk us around on twitter, I fail to gasp any more.



I also want to know if this is true. It clicks to a photo site, but that site doesn't link to original source or any kind of explanation. Attempting to look up 'chickens with blue combs' only gets lists of articles about a bad health condition chickens can get. I can only assume this was colorized.



After deeper digging I found this, clicks to an awesome photo effects contest, so since I can't find any other pix like this at all (actually, entry #113 was still another blue combed chicken), I sadly concede that our world lacks a really cool chicken breed. After I scrolled through all 135 entries there were more 'colorblind' contest links to click, and they look awesome, too, so if you're bored today, there you go.



Today's search for truth was brought to you by The Walking Dead Parody by The Hillywood Show?«. Ok, not really, they didn't pay for a feature spot here, but this was uploaded yesterday and already has 140,000+ views, check it out.

[Pinky]

People have asked me in the past why I don't 'name and shame' when I occasionally get a little uppity about business accounts that I sometimes go out of my way to do favors for and then get used and blown off like I'm just part of a free breakfast that came with a free service called twitter. Some of the people I've unlisted have 5 or 10 times the follower numbers I do and don't hobnob with people like me, a tiny little blogger who interacts with real people all over the world and never tries to sell you something or drum up my numbers on you.

Then there are other accounts that say thank you. They don't hesitate to tag my name into their timelines. I've been retweeted by celebrities with way more followers than those selfish business accounts that can't waste their time putting up with me not licking their shoes every day in my tweets, even though I go out of my way to make sure they get plenty of visibility through my accounts.

My follower numbers and traffic numbers have never been hurt by people who step on me and then dump me when they assume I'm stupid enough not to notice they used me. It's part of the game, and I play along. I'm a convenient stepping stone, yes. But only for that step. There are less than 70 accounts I allow not to follow me and I still follow them back. I don't list anyone I personally don't care about unless they have followed me first. They unfollow, I unlist. Easy. I've pretty much stopped doing that favor because it's getting so fashionable for business accounts to feel like they owe nothing to people who respond to their follows with a free listing that would never have otherwise happened. If they were smart they'd create a thank you list of people who did them that favor. Oddly, very few people seem to think of this strategy.

Once in awhile I point out a mistake I think someone is making.



You see, I got nearly 1000 hits just in the last week for a Walking Dead review that goes out of its way to promote other people. I often do favors for people that tag me to retweet or even just spend a little time talking to me, but this guy, despite being a sort of bigger fish in the zombie pool than some of the others in the list, has never taken the time to find this out. He's so busy pushing his own agenda that he literally does not care what his followers do unless they are obviously doing it for him. He wants hangers on, not a real network. So the day before I do today's review, he unfollowed. Which is cool. And I unlisted, which is my usual response. BUT. I couldn't help noticing how ironic his timing was.

And then at 2:44 pm he tweeted "Dropping bots and RT rings has consequences" and then proceeded to push for more followers. Another one of his still listed accounts retweeted it, so it wound up in my feed even after I unfollowed him. Seriously? He wants more followers, and he dropped a person who graciously listed multiple acounts AND is literally getting 40-50 hits within 2 minutes of every tweet link. And that's not counting the round the clock viewing that comes in. Or the 11,000 views I've got on a Walking Dead article I wrote. Want more followers? All he had to do was talk to me and I'd have linked him into my reviews, which would make sense if he wants zombie fans to listen to HIM, right?

So, I got grouped in with a bot because 3 times a day I do 5 retweets with a gang that has less than 15 people in it. Wow. So that guy doesn't care about me or my followers, who I have proof jump on links as quickly as they get their phone notifications, he doesn't tag me and say "Hey, I've got this link and a show, please retweet", he just boots me out after I put him into an exclusive list of fellows that he actually looks more popular than. I've got some fairly impressive media following me because of that list, but he doesn't have time to notice things like that. He's too busy decluttering and begging for more followers.

IRONY.

I'm going to tell you guys something. Celebrities DM me. I get invited to personal soirees and A-list clubs. There are things you guys never get told. I've gotten tens of thousands of views on sites that are so scattered that most people have no idea what all I am really into. I have been asked by professional websites to write for them, help them with their site building, and even run their forums. People in so many fandoms know who I am because I dabble everywhere I go. I have turned down some nice job offers, some of them from millionaires. My twitter account may be only 2 1/2 years old, but I've been on the internet since 1994. Some of my lurkers actually go back that far, bless their hearts. They know all my names, who I've been, what I've done, and still have links bookmarked to pages that are long extinct. People who only see me as a stepping stone, fine. As soon as you step off, you're not part of my life, either.

Yeah, I'm a little bitty person on twitter with a retweet gang. I LOVE FANS. I ENJOY PEOPLE. I am set up this way on purpose. I am one of the originators of the retweet game. I find cool fun witty stuff and neat pictures and wind up with more followers when I do that. I've got friends coming out my ears, people I like who like me back, and I'm not about to treat them like stepping stones and then push for more followers. I think that is a horrible way to do business, and it's not fair to my followers to subject them to that kind of stuff in my list feeds. I've blocked people without hesitation in list feeds for spamming. Me retweeting 5 tweets 3 times a day is NOT spamming. So yeah, I took that personally and pointed out the irony.

To be fair, I'm not going to tweet the link to this blurb. A thousand hits a month on this thread without me even tweeting links to it is enough for me to say something like this. Those of you who own business accounts on twitter, do a little thinking before you tweet like people are beneath you and then beg for followers. That's so fifth grade.

[Pinky]

Nearly 500 views since that last update 2 days ago (and I never linked that anywhere) and that guy is still begging twitter for 40 ratings by Sunday. I looked the guy up, he's got an impressive entertainment resume, but when I saw the donate button on their site I just laughed. They may be popular, but the people I run with support their own content out of pocket. I've been asked why I have never linked donation buttons on my blogs since I have full disability and scrape my dimes together to support my own little empire (and I have never accepted compensation for link sharing or writing), and the answer is simple- full autonomy. I answer to no one. Maybe one of these days things will be different, but for now, I'm all about free sharing on the internet as long as possible. In ten years there might be no such thing as free public access. Internet is going to turn into one of those parking meter things, where you put the quarter in to see the content, like pay per view. To donate to someone else having fun drinking and traveling and yapping to fans might change real quick once they start charging you to see and hear what they do. That's what comiccons are for.

Just noticed I'm finally coming up in a top ten on google search for Lexx. Awesome. And that little blurb in the bottom right corner is mine! I've been working on getting onto the front page with new content for 2 1/2 years, but there was so much really old junk that I kept getting buried.



Moving on! Wait... Looking back! This is from the last post I made on one of my private blogs.

November 24, 2009
Private: exponential escalation of stupidity

Extortion. Threats of bodily harm. Lies blowing up into such of rage of neighborly hate and side taking that I was actually told on the phone this evening that ÔÇ£this is the sort of thing where bodies could disappear, itÔÇÖs beyond the lawÔÇØ. Why in the world I got dragged into it is so far beyond me, I canÔÇÖt even comprehend why it would be important to any of them what I think.

Deer season. In the Ozarks.

Yes, I'm serious. I'm still debating whether I'll ever tell that whole story, might wait a few years, you know, because bodies disappear. People are so funny when they get upset. My fave true stories are the ones that still get me spittin mad when I tell them but everyone cracks up because they're so ridiculously funny.

There were tweets flying around this week about a teacher that butchered a rabbit in a classroom. They should have had me there. But seriously, I thought teachers had to get curriculum approved before presentation, plus there's OSHA and PETA and actual classes and jobs for correct food processing where you get professionally trained, right? I mean, if real life must be demonstrated in a children's classroom without having to be approved first, then a teacher could conceivably walk in with a bomb and then teach the kids how to defuse it. I'm calling it, our future schools will eventually be military run for competency because this social experiment we've been doing for decades is super fail. How many of us are going to need to know how to butcher a rabbit? (I ask facetiously... lol.) In case you still haven't hit those links -> survivalists- end of the world, 2012- mach II

I know, I'm in this weird mood, I've been up since 3:30 and, like every year, I'm praying Scott gets his deer as quickly as possibly so normal life can resume. Deer season just before Thanksgiving is one of the most stressful things we go through all year, mostly because we lose even more sleep than ever and our spare cash goes to licensing and processing and gear. For those of you gnashing your teeth wishing you could get into this forum and rant about anything and everything wrong with hunting or even about me personally, here. There is comment space there.

I walk a fine line between very spectrumy political and religious followers. By and large the biggest challenge is always people we know in real life. Five years ago was really hard and I did a good job holding my tongue (no one is special here, don't feel singled out), but that doesn't mean I can't tell the truth when I finally find a fun way to say it. See, this is why that book still isn't published yet, I'm wrestling with cost/benefit projections. The coolest stories are always the most controversial ones. Word construction is a lot like a food challenge, you develop a balance of emotion and story that doesn't overburden the reader with bad vibes and extra work processing what really isn't their stuff. I think that's why I tend to lean toward a more humorous view nowadays. My literary idols are Terry Pratchett and James Thurber.

Dawn has finally arrived and I'm hearing shots. Someone several acres over may have gotten lucky. I need to stop dumping my nerves in here and go do real stuff. I go kinda OCD on my house when my nerves are up, and yesterday I started tearing the kitchen apart and deep cleaning, moving stuff around, pitching stuff into the trash. You know. NERVES.

Here you go, in case there really is a zombie apocalypse and you need to catch a rabbit.

[Pinky]

I suddenly veered a couple of days ago into wondering why Nancy Drew took so many showers. Is there any connection to why shower questions pop up in so many of my surveys? I never thought to speculate on why it disturbed me as a preteen that she seemed to need to shower 20 times a week (or more?) and every single shower was quick. I grew up on a farm, rugged and dirty, and I was mystified why a young sleuth who barely got smudged would need so much hygiene maintenance. I found out on twitter about a year ago her original writer was a guy. Apparently that guy was into girls who didn't waste time luxuriating in bubble baths and scented oils, but the idea that he'd need to mention every time that this fictional hygiene-obsessed person showered kinda weirds me out.

So I was scoping around the webs querying "how many showers did Nancy Drew take", because aspie obsession gripped my soul, and wound up with this gem. http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Nancy_Drew It doesn't really mention the showers, but points out everything else that must have unconsciously been bothering me, as well, because I loved it.

I respect authors who can dredge up years of hack writing into collective fandoms and potentially loads of dough for everyone involved with production, but shower reports? Morticia says it best.

I think more people see this thread than all my blogs combined, so this-



To all my U.S. friends waking up to migraines, disabilities, social anxieties, and sadness this Thanksgiving Eve, I'm right here with you, and we're going to be ok. Just put on your caticorn armor.



Tell the world "Bring it!"



But with all due seriousness, if you are having a *really* bad day, please let someone know. Also please know that you're not alone!
The Other Side of Depression by Anne Wheaton
Depression Lies by The Bloggess
Oh no you didn't... by moi

You guys- there is no such thing as a difference between YOU and someone famous when it comes to depression. Well, except that when someone is famous, they can reach more people about it. Holidays are very hard when we've lost loved ones or our own futures look bleak, and especially if we're challenged and struggling all year. I know it's hard to reach out and hug the internet.



If you are bogging down and need distraction, start here.

[Pinky]

So I got this email alert that someone hacked into my facebook.



First of all, the dates are backward- the break in apparently happened after the alert was sent. BUT WAIT. Closer inspection reveals it happened UTC time (that looks so official, doesn't it), which is where all the world time zones start, and you go Oh, yeah, meridian time is about 6 hours ahead of me, so the times actually do match, OMG I'VE BEEN HACKED. (That's what they want you to do, freak out.)

The next thing I did was look up the IP location. I pasted the IP address into the little query bar and got the Prudential Insurance building in New Jersey. I'm pretty sure Prudential isn't hacking my facebook, so that's either a really good proxy someone is bouncing under for cover, or this email is a fake.

So, even though I know better, I clicked 'this form' and it went to what looks like a dead site, so this cyber criminal didn't even bother setting up a fake form. I'm going to bet at this point that the whole purpose of this email was simply to get me to take the bait and click out of panic, but I clicked out of curiosity. All kinds of info can be gathered when people click around. I play with several different stat trackers, and there are way more sophisticated collection trackers out there than simple stat tracking. Your computer sends information OUT every time you click to a site. Anyhoo, whatever you do, DON'T start filling out info on forms you have to click to out of alert emails before you investigate first. Your chain is being yanked.

I got into my facebook settings and of course, nothing had happened. My password was FINE.



Anyone else getting email alerts about your facebooks? This is a good time to review your security settings on facebook. Click on the little lock in your facebook menu.



From there click on Security, scroll all the way down to "Where you're logged in", and when you click that you'll see a list of all the devices that are logged into your facebook, like your phone, ipad, laptop, desktop, all the devices you use to access facebook. Even if they are all yours, sometimes it's handy to click "End Activity" and force your devices to refresh with a new login prompt. If anyone is piggybacking into your account, this boots them right off.

AFTER you have removed all the active extraneous devices, reset your password and review your alert security. I use a code generator that texts my phone when my account is accessed from a new device. Since I never got an alert text, I didn't panic when I saw the alert email that my account had been hacked and the password reset by someone else. They couldn't have done that without me knowing. I love the phone alert system. Besides, if someone had been able to get around all that security and changed my password, they were dumb to not end the activity on my devices if they didn't want me getting back in.

This is a lot of work, I know. It seems like everywhere we go now we have to do pilates all over the internet setting up security, but it sure beats trying to get your account back after someone has taken it, especially if they are using it to make your life miserable.

Several years ago I had a different facebook account, and I played with their security. I was able to find back doors into private accounts and read anything I wanted. Facebook is getting really good at security now. I'm sure the security code they have to build is a nightmare, or the coolest puzzle on the planet, depending on how your brain works. Facebook is getting really huge because they are getting really good at security.

So don't have a heart attack over an email alert. Check your settings, glance over your security, and chalk it up to having a public email address getting spammed by wannabe hackers.