Archive for the ‘Internet’ Category
I Can’t Wait Until I’m 70
December 9th, 2011 Posted 1:32 pm
Level 70 that is. I know no one will care but my newest MapleStory character is really leveling quickly. It almost makes me angry, how easy the game is compared to when I started playing. Still, it makes it fun and this is the only character that I could realistically get to level 70 to make a job advancement and it’s exciting for me.
Wish me luck.
Tags: maplestory, mmos
Posted in Internet, Life
Holiday Wishlist
December 5th, 2011 Posted 6:27 am
This is a meme that hits the blogging world around this time. Feel free to repost this on your own blog and leave me a link here so that I can see your desires and maybe help out as well. So here’s the cut and paste:
Step One
Make a post to your blog, tumblr, facebook, myspace, what have you. The important thing is to make sure these wishes are things you really want and that people can see the post. If you wish for real possible things, make sure you include some sort of contact info in your post, whether it’s your address or just an email address at which you can be contacted by potential wish-grantors.
Also, make sure you post some version of these guidelines in your post, so that the holiday joy will spread.
Step Two
Surf around your friends list/blogroll/RSS feeds (or friends friends, or just random places ) to see who has posted their list. If you have a list be sure to leave it in my comments section so I can view your wishes! If you see a wish you can grant, and it’s in your heart to do so, make someone’s wish come true. Sometimes someone’s trash is another’s treasure, and if you have a leather jacket you don’t want or a gift certificate you won’t use–or even know where you could get someone’s dream purebred Basset Hound for free–do it.
Wishlist
If you happen to want to send me any of this gifts, please comment here. Thanks in advance!
- A new iPod Touch.
- Mine was a hand-me-down squared to begin with and it’s nearing its end of days. The volume button broke a while back and it takes days to charge it. Skipping songs lags and I frequently wind up accidentally skipping multiple songs by accident. If nothing else, my friends are sick of hearing me complain about the charging issue. Sadly, Apple is bent on selling 8-gigabyte and 32-gigabyte capacities when I need a 16-gigabyte. Boo. I will, realistically, wind up purchasing one that is used or a Sony Walkman.
- ThinkGeek’s Circuit Sweetheart Necklace.
- I meant to but this for myself for my birthday but I didn’t and then money got tighter than I expected. It’s on sale, guys. Hint hint.
- Stuffies.
- I know this is kind of a cop out but it’s almost impossible for me to say that I want one stuffed animal and not another. In no particular order, here are the ones I want thee most:
- Anything Awesome.
- I’ve only seen The Book of Awesome in stores once. Since then, the Book of Even More Awesome and even a calendar have been printed. I think it would be such a sweet gift from anyone who knows me.
- Gift cards.
- When people ask what I want, I tell them gift cards. Walmart, Target, Best Buy, Think Geek, Bath and Body Works, etc. I usually say I will use it to get something awesome and then I wind up buying groceries or hand soap. The truth is, I really appreciate having a little extra money around the holidays and I would much rather have a gift card and be able to buy something functional than receive some crazy, useless gift..
- Gift Cards
- Amazon, JcPenney and Target are at the top of my list.
- PayPal donations
- cole[at]7and1.net is my address.
Other Bloggers Wishlists
*Yea, this is a rip off from the review blog.
Look at that cat in the Santa hat
December 2nd, 2011 Posted 12:30 am
The last page on our 2011 calendar features a kitty in a Santa hat. All the other pages feature other types of cats, too. This means that November is over and while I did not sign up for NaBloPoMo, I tried to make an effort to post more, across all my blogs. I was pretty successful and even though I didn’t post nearly close to every day on Her Realm, I posted a lot more. It felt good.
I’ve been mulling over this post in my head for a while because.. I don’t know if anyone will read it and I don’t know if it will leave an impression on those who do. But it’s important to me and I still rely on the validation of others just enough that the idea that it will go un-noticed and that’s kind of precisely what this post is about.
You see, I started this blog as a cry for help. I was angry and hurting and frustrated and confused and I was never taught how to express that and I had a hard time reaching out to those who cared about me the most, when they were even around. I desperately wanted someone to see that. I needed someone to understand that I was not okay and I wished that my blog would make someone force through my walls, break them down to get to me. And, as much as I wanted someone to reach out, I still strangely veiled my feelings. I was passive aggressive, vague and cryptic about my feelings. I put up another wall even as I tried to reach out.
I purposefully sent my friends and family to my blog and when people would ask how I was, I would send them here. When I look back at some of my archives, I am so sad that anyone could ever feel that way. Reading those words brings up the feelings and I hate that they ever exist. No one should ever feel that way but I did.
If I read long enough, though, I will see a change. I will see happiness emerge here and there. I see the struggles of a long term relationship but I see the happiness I felt at having found my one. I’ll see the frustration at growing up, moving away from the people I love. I’ll see the emergence of maturity and understanding. Skip ahead a couple years and I see the acceptance of my divorce and the sheer will power it took to finally change some of those awful habits and attitudes that made me unhappy for so long. There’s a period of time where I feel like I only tried to express positivity and there’s a lot of talk about the progress I made. There’s pride. And hope.
It has been difficult to keep up that positivity this year. There’s been new stresses, many of which related to finances, work and sharing a home with another person. There’s also been a lot of things I’ve crossed off the bucket list I didn’t even know I had and I think the more recent entries express the things I’ve gotten to do and the people I’ve been able to spend time with. I’ve unlearned bad habits and tried to connect more fully with those I care about, without a crutch. I’ve become more open about myself, some might argue too open about some things. I’m not constantly looking over my shoulder, afraid that people will discover something unseemly about me.
The more recent entries have been more balanced, I think. There’s been some serious, personal topics but there’s been humor and pictures of cats and I’ve felt comfortable enough to be more opinionated than I have been (although, not as opinionated as I once was).
So this blog did not do what I expected it to. In the end, I’ve had to be far more direct to connect with those around me and, sadly, I spent far too long in a dark place. But this blog has helped, slowly. It connected me with other people, new people. It helped me to feel not quite so alone and it gave me a place to vent, to joke, to think and to express myself where one otherwise did not exist. Finally, it has come to a place that I will not be ashamed or sad or frustrated to look back upon in the future.
It’s funny how life gives us what we need when we’re too busy working about what we think we want.
Tags: blogging, introspection
Posted in Blogosphere, Life
On Facebook and Friends
November 23rd, 2011 Posted 2:31 am
A while ago, I made a practice of deleting a person a day from my Facebook account. I have a lot of “Friends” there but how many of them are really my friends? Facebook is great because you can look up anyone, everyone that you’ve ever met but that’s sort of its downfall. With MySpace, my friends list was full of bands and people I didn’t know but, hey, at least I could pretend I was using the site because I wanted to get to know them. I make no such claims with Facebook. My Facebook friends list is full of people to whom I never speak, with whom I will never have a conversation again.
Perhaps it started because I simply wanted to have no pending friend requests. Maybe I felt guilty when I didn’t add people but now my friends list is full of people who were my friend eight years ago but one or both of us have changed so much — or stayed so exactly the same — that we could never have a friendship now, if we hadn’t already been friends. And that’s the better of the non-friend Facebook friends. I’ve got a ton of people who went to the same school as me but with whom I never had a single conversation who have tried to add me. I have people who have tried to add me who I’ve felt nothing but disgust for. I have people of whom I have absolutely no recollection.
Sure, people change and, yes, friendships can arise from surprising sources but Facebook isn’t one of those. I don’t talk to these people because of Facebook. It hasn’t facilitated much in the way of connections. It hasn’t rekindled a single friendship that I can think of. In fact, Facebook only connects me to people with whom I’d already be connecting outside of Facebook. It only keeps me up to date with people I’d remember even if there were no Facebook.
So when I say that a friendship a decade ago is not enough to keep you on my friends list. I’m not lying. It’s not. But it’s not unkind, either. We’re not meant to keep in contact with every person we ever met. Trying to do so will only weigh us down, perhaps more-so for those of us with anxiety. The value of our connections is that they are fleeting. They all cannot possibly last forever and, if we’re smart, that motivates us to make the best of that time and to be grateful for it.
NaBloPoMo
November 8th, 2011 Posted 7:45 pm
November is national blog posting month/national novel writing month. I didn’t sign up for either. Can you imagine me writing a novel? But, for whatever reason, I have been writing and blogging a whole lot more anyway. So even though I’m not participating, I’ve been trying to blog every day on all my blogs. Technically, I’ve been successful even though it’s a cheating sort of successful.
It’s interesting, though. Normally, I try to post every three days on each of my blogs. I throw in extra posts, like paid posts on Reviews by Cole, in between. I don’t really count them as entries, I guess. I do this because, as a blog reader, I become inundated pretty quickly. I find is so difficult to follow blogs that update every day, let along several times per day.
But the search engines? Those are an entirely different story. You see, websites that update several times per day really do rank higher. It’s especially noticeably with Alexa. When I’m posting like a madwoman, my rank increases (drops?) like whoa. But that’s crazy. I mean, who really has so much to say that they can put out two or three quality blog posts per day? Chances are, if you’re that person, I have to wade through a lot of crap in order to find something I find interesting. Sorry.
So here’s just one post for the day. Thank you very mucy.
Tags: nablopomo
Posted in Blogosphere, Internet
Ranty Thursday (Working on a new name)
November 3rd, 2011 Posted 9:37 am
Yesterday I posted a picture of a pony. It was facetious in several ways.
First, when I asked for suggestions of what sort of pictures I should put on this blog, Damita suggested ponies. I actually ignored her suggestion for some cat pictures. Sorry! Forgive me?
Second, I was irritated at a trend I’ve noticed lately regarding Wordless Wednesday posts. Here’s a hint: they aren’t wordless. This meme is simple. If you participate, you post one or more photos and nothing else, save for maybe a link to your Flickr or what-have-you. It’s about expressing yourself or simply showing something beautiful without words. I’m a wordy bitchy but I appreciate the sentiment, you know?
So how dense must a person be to post a “Wordless Wednesday” post and fill it with words. If the pictures don’t do all the explaining, then save them for another post and skip the meme. Someone I follow on Twitter keeps posting for this meme but doing it completely wrong and, in my opinion, cheapening it.
I usually don’t participate because I’m not a photographer. I don’t have a great camera or take amazing pictures, even if you all love Phantom. But that’s kind of the point. My photos are almost all of cats and I know people don’t want to see that all the time. I also don’t want to use others’ photos, even though I think that’s permissible. I’m not sure who started Wordless Wednesday so I can’t say.
But even if I only participated in it and used others’ photos, I’d still be participating in a way that is in line with the purpose. If your Wordless Wednesday has a word count, you’re doing it wrong.
Tags: memes
Posted in Blogosphere, Internet, Rants
Wordless Wednesday: This is a Pony
November 2nd, 2011 Posted 8:48 am
