so don't ask if you don't want to know
Archive for November, 2009
Tips and a Thank You
Nov 29th
I wasn’t raised as a Thank You Note person. The first I remember ever discussing TY notes was in response to graduation gifts. We just didn’t do thank you notes. Sure we said thank you all the time, but to write a note or letter? No. I always felt sending out generic bunches of thank you notes smacked of insincerity. I’d rather the giftee seek me out and tell me to my face if they appreciated my gift – or not say anything at all. Possibly call and let someone know I received their gift if it’s delivery might be in question. That’s it.
Over the years I’ve had voracious thank you note writers come and go. As a teacher’s aide I had one parent that gave every teacher/aide/PTO board member a hand-made TY note at Christmas and at the end of the year. Some people have too much time on their hands. It made me feel as though maybe I should send her a TY note for her TY note.
It’s a struggle. I’m happy when someone appreciates what I’ve done but when it’s my job or something I’ve volunteered to do I’m uncomfortable with too much back-patting. I’d rather a sincerely expressed thank you than anything.
Which aligns with how I feel about tipping. For the most part I feel if you’re doing your job it’s your employer’s responsibility to pay you accordingly. Traditionally wait staff been underpaid and we’re expected to make that up in tips. I get that. But a good server deserves a bigger tip than a bad server. This automatic percentage tacked on is bullcrap. If servers expect a certain percentage added on to their pay, then their employer should pay it.
Tipping should show a patron’s appreciation for great service, not be expected.
“You did an excellent job on my haircut, here’s a little extra!” Right?
And what’s with this tipping everyone else? I hear people talk of tipping the mailman. I don’t even know WHO my mailman is! Even in smaller apartment complexes the mailman often changes. Or their garbage men? WTF! Since when did someone doing their job well mean their customers should come up with something extra? Isn’t it the employer’s responsibility?
I tip good food servers. I tip whoever cuts my hair if I like it. That’s it. I refuse to be guilted into assuming the responsibility of whoever they work for.
And an honest thank you to everyone who appreciates anything I do. You can believe I appreciate all you’ve done for me… even if I don’t write a fancy note.
Tiger?
Nov 28th
So yesterday twitter went nuts with the Tiger Woods serious accident!!!!!OMGELEventY!!! I didn’t bother to click on anything, cuz there are more important things in my life than the OMG about some golf dude. After the bullshit over the balloon boy, I stopped jumping on anything trendy.
Someone posted a link last night to an article praising twitter for having the headline/story out HOURS before CNN! OMG CNN dropped the ball! We’re all smart and superior for knowing half a story before actual reporters you know, report!
I love that regular twitter users get the first heads up about important events like plane crashes and earthquakes, but I think the gossip factor about other “news stories” is out of control. It’s almost as bad as junior high girls trashing each other.
Don’t believe it just because everyone is talking about it on twitter.
This morning the story is a little more fleshed out. Apparently Tiger was fucking around on his wife which may/may not have anything to do with his accident. He somehow crashed into a fire hydrant in front of his house and his wife busted the SUV’s back window open with a golf club and dragged his sorry ass out. I’d have let him sit there for a while. That is, if I gave a shit at all about his private life. Why do you?
My point is SHUT UP TWITTER. Calm the fuck down. Don’t haphazardly retweet headlines of unproven gossip. Let’s try to be better than TMZ or FOX News.
My 5 Favorite Blogs
Nov 23rd
I won’t start this with the usual “in no particular order” cuz it’s not true. These are the blogs in my Google Reader that I check numerous times a day for updates.
CakeWrecks. I love this site. Six days a week there are posts about screwed up cakes, generally by so-called professionals from grocery store bakeries to specialty shops. But on Sunday the cakes are beautiful. And she hates cupcake cakes, as do I.
Contemporist. This site is just plain interesting. I don’t know what I find more interesting, the houses that are stark and clean or the furniture that mostly looks too uncomfortable to actually use. There are posts many times a day, but only a few treasures. Lots of practical works of art in there.
Yeah, it says of the day which implies it’s every day but it’s not. What it is is a free game download – no strings attached – no viruses – no problems. Sure they’re all older low-tech games which I happen to love. But they’re free.
Skepchicks. This blog is more of a forum. They post questions or lists of idiot filled links or reports of interest to the skeptical community. Much discussion goes on. Smart people and me.
People of WalMart. Most of the time I feel a little guilty when I go to this site. It’s pictures of people at WalMart. Sometimes they’re just poor or too fat for what they’re wearing, which is sad and I feel sorry for them. Sometimes they’re WAAAAAAY too fat for what they’re wearing and then it’s hilarious. Or the men dressed as women. Not cross-dressers, but guys wearing one obviously female thing like a skirt or a frilly blouse and the rest of their outfit is male. Or the pimps, or black women with their bizarre choices of outfits. A site full of “what were you thinking when you walked out of the house?”
Road Trip!
Nov 23rd
So it’s official. The whole fam damily is going with me to Florida. Semi-spontaneous road trip across the lower half of the USA. We’ll be driving the I-10 over to the I-75 so if you’re anywhere around either of those and you want to meet up for a break let me know this week. It’ll be me and Ginnie and Casey and Kira for sure, Max is still deciding.
They’re giving me shit about my car. Of course, it’s the nicest car of the bunch but it’s still not good enough. Goddam Grand Marquis! It’s a great cruising car!
- *whine whine* there’s not gonna be enough leg rooooooooom! (yes, both of my boys are big/tall)
- *whine whine* we’ll have to stop all the time to get stuff out of the cooler in the trunk! (and stop to let the 3-year0ld move about too)
- *whine whine* It’s a V8 and sucks gas! (sure in the city, but once we’re on the highway it’s no big deal. It hardly took any more than the rental when we took two cars to California.)
- *whine whine* there’s no CD player, just a cassette deck! (fuck you and quitchergoddamwhining)
But I checked out rental cars last night and anything bigger is outrageous. SUV’s are a bit cheaper than Minivans, but they’re all over $900 for two weeks. Getthefuckouttahere!
We’ll leave next Wednesday the 2nd and plan on being back two weeks after that. Maybe sooner, maybe later. Maybe I’ll just dump their whiny asses in Florida and cruise up north alone.
All this why?
Mainly to see if there’s any way to peel my niece away from her no-good-asshole boyfriend so she can maybe get her kid back. There might be ass-kicking. My boys are both big and tall and pissed off about her situation. And while we’re there visit my parents and let everyone meet Kira before she graduated High School. Find out if my sister is ready to speak to me. The kids want to go to the beach. For a change of pace. To get the fuck outta Dodge for a while.
So if there’s anything along that route that we should stop and see we’ll have plenty of time. That’s the fun part of road tripping. Any suggestions? Anybody want to hang out along the way? Let me use their bathroom?
I'm gonna be a great-grammi
Nov 21st
Except not really.
After losing the battle of the britches wherein SmallChild insists the jeans with the flowers fit her and I try to explain “fit” means she can actually you know, sit and climb up on the furniture, I was driving her to Chad’s for the day. She was rattling nonsense in the back seat and the monologue turned extra weird.
SmallChild: … cuz cuz I ate too much cereal and now I need to get the baby out of my tummy cuz dere’s a baby in dere and I gotta squeeze really hard and get it out so I can hold it and love it and eat more cereal later…
Me: What? (as I swerve to avoid the car I almost sideswiped)
SmallChild: … yeah Grammi I ate too much cereal just now and now I need to get the baby out of my tummy so I can show Casey (Chad’s daughter) but I can’t move cuz my pants is too small…
I guess I won the britches battle after all.
New Moon
Nov 20th
I don’t want to see this movie because of it’s literary brilliance. I’ve no interest in that sparkly imitation of a vampire. I can’t stand the limp noodle of a lead actress. The entire movie is a waste of time except for one thing. I want to see it because of this:
From what I understand he’s shirtless quite a bit. His character Jacob is a werewolf. You know, animal attraction and all that. Heat. This kid is HOT.
Yes, kid. He’s only 17. I feel a little dirtier than usual.
Seriously, I’m betting that with this second movie the sweet young girl focus will shift from Edward the Emo Vampire to Wicked Hot Werewolf Jacob and Robert Pattinson will become the next has-been. Books are books but people are visual and Jacob is MUCH nicer to look at.
We’ll see.
30 years ago today
Nov 19th
I left out of nearby Detroit to go to basic training in Texas. Now, I’d never been out there and had no idea what to expect weather-wise or anything. I’d traveled from Michigan to Florida and back enough times to understand that different parts of the country had different weather. But every stupid cowboy movie I could remember showed hot dirty desert and technically Texas is in the south so I never thought it would be so cold! 
The whole trip was a mess of confusion and constant motion. Our family had had an early Thanksgiving and I’d said my goodbyes to everyone. My recruiter drove a few of us into Detroit where we swore the oath, gathered more people together, rode a bus to the airport, flew to Texas, shoved on another bus to Shepard AFB and assigned to a Flight. But I was freezing all day long. Can’t really remember much else of that day… and I might have some of that wrong.
I mean it was 30 years ago.
Edward R. Murrow oughta slap a dude.
Nov 17th
This comment slid past my twitter stream and caught my attention:
Journalism schools should not be teaching students how to get a job. They should be teaching them to tell stories.
Wha-what?
Now I don’t want to get into a pissing match with this particular dude. He gets particularly touchy about his newspaper background. So I respond politely with:
I think stories means made-up. Maybe they should teach them to state the facts in an interesting way.
To which he replies:
That’s your bias. Stories can also be truthful and accurate. A good journalist is a storyteller.
So I look it up.
sto⋅ry
–noun
1. a narrative, either true or fictitious, in prose or verse, designed to interest, amuse, or instruct the hearer or reader; tale.
2. a fictitious tale, shorter and less elaborate than a novel.
Fine, technically a story can be truth or fiction. I still think the word story implies fiction and I’m pretty sure I’m not alone.
But after the steady declining of journalistic integrity and the news being taken over by businessmen, where are the real journalists? Should so-called journalists be telling stories?
I want real news back. I want straight facts, very little educated guessing and no fireworks and glitter. Can you imagine Walter Cronkite making shit up? Huntley or Brinkley taking sides on an issue? Or any of them spending hours gossiping about the private lives of reality show attention whores? I DON’T THINK SO!
And I don’t want to know if they ever did. I want to remember trusting the guy in the box. We need more guys in the box to trust. We need more men and women with integrity to go out and find the important news and give it to us straight with no frills, no filling and no corporate agenda.
Not tell stories.
I can get stories everywhere else.
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And I say guys in the box, because I think newspapers are dead. Yesterday’s paper can’t compete with 24 hour news channels and the Internet. I realize newspapers can go more in-depth with a subject than the local news can, but they don’t stand a chance. We’re so disenchanted with ALL journalists that we’re leery of more than the quick facts. The more I read, the more I wonder how much is fudged. I have friends in the news business and I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, but you’re owned by the stockholders. I don’t trust you anymore.
NotReallyCamping
Nov 16th
Friday was Phoenix WordCamp. It’s where everybody roasts Blogger buttons around a campfire and chants WordPress, WordPress, WordPress. Nah, not really. I don’t even know why these things are called camps! There are no tents, fires, or s’mores. Wait, WordCamp was held in a tent! One of those humongous commercial semi-permanent tents with A/C. And we had sack (picnic?) lunches.
Anyway, it was a day filled with WordPress information. It started off with some woman I’ve never heard of calling her self the Diva of WordPress and yet preaching “we don’t care if you have bad spelling or grammar, we just want to hear what you have to say!” Cue immediate disrespectful twittering from many people. Then another all-about-me presenter and more cranky twittering. Then some kid who looked 12 but seemed to know a lot. The morning was filled with more motivational type speakers – all about content. The afternoon leaned more to the technical side, the guy who created WordPress in the first place, and local WordPress magicians Chuck Reynolds and Josh Strebel had a Q&A panel. Another guy got all geeky with step-by-step widget coding that was way over my head. Merlin Mann was highly entertaining, and Brent Spore was great. All-in-all a nice motivational day, but not what I expected. Props to my friend Chuck for organizing the 500 seat sold-out WordCamp.
Saturday and Sunday were this year’s PodCampAZ, the one I’m involved in planning. I spent most of Saturday working registration with Rachel so I got to meet lots of new people. I helped Evo with his panel (I clicked the slide advance button) and helped set-up and take down. Yesterday I set up registration, but spent more time in actual panels. Brent’s panel on social media almost immediately got intense when the packed room divided between the let’s-keep-it-to-ourselves side and the we-need-to-bring-in-new-people-side. He wanted to get people talking and it certainly did. Another friend Katie had a panel on social media but it was more what you should and should not put out there. The best panel I went to was a WordPress panel, where Josh skimmed over the best settings and must-have widgets and plugins – which was the information I’d been looking for from WordCamp.
So expect some changes to this site as soon as I’m rested up. I’m still tired as hell and I have a lot of notes to expand on while the information is fresh. We all learned that GeekWeek is toooooo much at one time. Information overload + planning anxiety + RL stress = exhaustion. There were other conferences earlier in the week that some people attended too. Thursday was the Entrepreneurship Conference, there was a design camp somewhere and I think one other thing and some people hit them all. Each event was successful but running them all within a week is too much which is likely why the PodCampAZ ending wasn’t attended by as many people as we expected. Our numbers were much lower than registered though there were a lot of walk-ins.
I was surprised at how many of our speakers failed to show up! When I checked with our speaker coordinator Lawrence, only about half of the n0-shows bothered to contact him with an explanation beforehand. It’s fucking rude as HELL to have a roomful of people waiting for you and not show up.
When worlds collide
Nov 12th
It freaks me out.
Twitter just started this listing thing. You can assign the people you follow to various lists. I got about halfway through and gave up.
Certain people are older Internet friends from the McCaffrey boards and BPOI. Some of those I’ve met in real life and a few are actual real friends now.
Certain people I’ve met through podcasting. Some of those I’ve met and are real friends, some are just fans (which is freaky in and of itself) and some I’ll never meet and really have no connection to, but follow because. A handful are writers I’ve met through podcasting who have become both semi-celebrities and semi-friends.
And then there’s the real life family, friends, kid’s friends, etc.
It’s weird enough when, because of some interesting banter or retweet, person A from list B starts following person R from list D.
Right?
This completely freaked me out today:
Katie Berry is one of my daughter’s friends we’ve known since Kindergarten. Seth Harwood is a published author and podcaster and cute as hell. They cannot know each other! Coincidence has made my mind explode.
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Kira’s vocabulary has exploded too. In the last few days she’s started say things like, “Just listen to me, LISTEN to me! Be very careful out there so the monsters don’t get you.” She’s so insistent. And today in the car when I asked her if she was going to behave in the store she answered with the most nonchalant “of course” I couldn’t help but burst out laughing. Casey’s friend Charlie tells me Kira got up at the crack of dawn the other morning and proceeded to (attempt to) wash her dishes.
At this very moment she’s dancing to Funky Town in Shrek 2. I wish my camera had batteries. Crap.
