Pavlina: Life is Not For the Living

I know I have ranted about poor customer service before. It is terrible to be the victim of bad customer service. Standing as the random victim, caught in an act relatively routine. Perhaps it was the return of an unwanted/unintended item, or more information was needed, maybe there was an error on the bill, or were charged too much, maybe there was a foreign object in the product. Used to be, THE CUSTOMER WAS ALWAYS RIGHT. Period.

Now it’s more like, the customer is right on adjacent Tuesdays in the leap year cycle, for the time interval of 1:59 to 2:03 GMT. This is null and void if the premises is located in the greater European region, the time interval is then from 6:01 – 7:59 GMT -6. During this time, the customer will be right, at all other times the establishment will be right and may kick the customer in the teeth with no recourse. Complain as you will.

Now, I know I wrote that tongue-in-cheek, but doesn’t it really feels like it?

I firmly adhere to the belief that the recent (last ten years) decline in customer service is directly correlated to the rise of the internet and the anonymity enjoyed by billions. People get so used to trashing other people with no recourse it’s only a matter of time before that behavior begins bleeding over into “real life”. Maybe that is one reason I am always saying preaching (over and over, till I’m blue in the face) that we must all play nicely on the internet and NOT SPREAD VITRIOL!!!

The economy is in the crapper, you would think retail establishments would be wooing customers, not treating them like something they scraped off the bottom of their shoe. So let’s list the key players of customer service (CS) abuse:

1. My break started 2 minutes ago. In this CS mishap, the perpetrator will do anything to get you out of their hair as fast as possible. An example could be if you are trying to return something, all of a sudden the store has mysterious return policies where you also need to show your driving permit that expired 20 years ago to bring back the pair of shorts you bought and only realized after you got them home they are two sizes too small.
2. My SO just dumped me. Good luck. That’s all I have to say. You are at this person’s mercy. This is the equivalent of a suicide bomber. This person feels like they have nothing to live for and their last mission is to make everyone else around them as miserable as they are. I hope you don’t mind your eggs getting broken.
3. I’m too good for this job. Well, you probably are. I STILL need to get this printer, so just tell me if I should get this one or that one, ring it up and I’ll be on my way. Oh, I see. You were laid off from Big A Company. Sorry to hear that. Oh, what’s that? You made three times as much as you do now for this crappy electronics store? That really sucks…hee harr, can we just ring this up?
4. I follow the rules to the T. Usually, this one works out to your advantage. That is, until their computer systems goes wonky. Then you will be treated like the garbage from the shoe. I don’t care if the big clearing house got the hotels dates wrong. I don’t care what it says! I need to sleep! It’s midnight and I’m tired! Sleep! Now! you get, sorry ma’am, the computer says you’re checking in tomorrow. Good luck. This one will hide behind the rules until the cows come home. When the cows arrive, she’ll slap them on the hineys until they run back out.
5. I’m too smart for this job. This sounds a lot like number 3, eh? Nope, different beast altogether. Usually number 3 has a reason, no matter how thin and flimsy it is, for thinking they are indeed better than their current position would indicate. Mr. too-smart-for-this could well have never graduated from high school. Hell, he went to the University of Hard Knocks! He doesn’t need a knucklehead like you rolling up in here, trying to bring back this item that you stole anyway! Ugh, good luck.

So, there you have it. Not a completely exhaustive list.

Oh, by the way. in order to make this blog as customer or reader friendly as possible I have reopened comments on older posts. Enjoy.

Tags:   funny patheticNo Comments.

No, I don’t usually post this often. I try for a couple per week. I’ve been getting a few hits from the Baltimore Sun’s Dining@large site. This is due, in part, to my big mouth. When the truth flows from it, I may not stop it. Anyway. If you are here from there, then welcome. Welcome if you come in peace. If you’re coming to be a jerk then bugger off. I mean it, leave now. I have nothing here that a jerk would enjoy. I don’t spread vitriol, I am not “snarky”. I am, well, I don’t know what I am. I tell my stories about me and my kin, sometimes when I make contact with an excellent product I’ll talk about it, sometimes I post pictures, sometimes I write long posts on what is on my mind that day. I do spend a lot of time on each post, and most of them take me a few days to write. Except for this one

I realize that my About is very vague. It’s like that for a reason, but I do think it gives a feeling on the overall flow of the site. I think my long time readers will agree. No, I do not mean that life is for the dead. If you’re shaking your head over what I am writing, then this is goodbye for us two. We have nothing in common. I don’t mean that in a bad way, it’s just the way it is.

If you like what you see, and the site design is fabulous, no? Please stick around. I’ll look forward to seeing you in a few days.

Tags:   funny patheticNo Comments.

A surefire way to increase traffic to your blog is to leave comments on other sites. At least, that’s what they say. It is a good method, actually. This is especially true if one leaves thoughtful and insightful comments or even comments that go against the original posters/bloggers thought stream. I got a few hits after I posted a comment on the Super Eco site for their bashing of natural ingredients. I also got a few just recently after posting a comment on the dining@large blog for the Baltimore Sun’s Dining section. I frequent this blog because….I really don’t know why. Sometime they have good articles about restaurants I’ll never go to….hmmmm. Anyway, thoughts for another day.

This particular posting was about Calorie restriction. Now, I am not even going to go there. I don’t really want to write an entire post on calorie restriction as I am sure Wikipedia has a good write up on it, so feel free to go and check it out. I always think I do a kind of twisted calorie restriction. What I mean by that is that I don’t eat constantly , I stop eating when full (not over stuffing), I naturally seem to stay away form high fat//salt foods (no Spam, or pig brains for me, also not a fan of Mayo), and McDonald’s hasn’t seen me in years. So, I wouldn’t even call it Calorie restriction, per se, even a twisted version, as I eat when I am hungry. I think the point here is that I eat when I am hungry. Period. Actually I’m grateful for this, and it was struggle for me to get here. I had a twisted past history with food, let us just leave it at that.

I don’t have anything against the people who practice calorie restriction, anymore so that I have something against those whole eat a bucket of chicken everyday. Hey, my life is too short for that. What I do not like (no surprise here) is people getting their knickers all in a twist about what other people are doing. I know myself to be guilty of it on occasion, I know, I know. So all the comments were just laying down layer after layer of vitriol. Things like, “does it make you live longer or does it just seem like it” (okay, that one is a bit funny), “Notice that no one interviewed is over 70? Where are all the really healthy 100 year olds that use this diet?”, Mental. Illness.” , “Deep fried crazy” and my favorite, “This is too ghastly for comment except to say that the woman in the picture’s head is about 3 times to large for her shoulders.”

Ugh.

Be nice.

Really.

So I wrote this: “That’s right, why don’t we all pile negativity on those who can restrict their eating? I don’t practice CR, but I also eat a lot less than the average American. The fact that I am well within the average BMI numbers is no accident. We could all use a bit less food if you ask me. Just look at the average size of people today! I think it’s disgraceful.”

That was a bit disgraceful, but I was fired up after plowing through all that negativity!

Then this is what someone replies to me: “Eating less than the average American is one thing (I’m fairly sure I eat less than the average Americain). Deliberately making yourself feel hungry is quite another thing. I’m not really sure what “life is not for the living” means.”

I didn’t know one had to “deliberately” make yourself hungry. I always thought that what happened after a finite amount of time has passed since your previous meal and your body is telling you it need more. “I’m not really sure what “life is not for the living” means.” Ah, the killer blow! Guy never even came here! Such sadness! If anyone needs to know Life is not for the living, this guy does. Oh, he sent the arrow through my heart! He didn’t go to the About section! Could it be? Do I have *gasp* poor website design!!!

So then I reply that back. Cause I got ‘no life.

Actually this is what I wrote:

“Name of Guy: I didn’t know one had to “deliberately” make yourself hungry. I always thought that what happened after a finite amount of time has passed since your previous meal and your body is telling you it need more.

Thank you for summing up in your comment replying back to me. If these people want to restrict what they eat, how does this hurt you or anyone else? Calling them crazy, or OCD is uncalled for. Offer your opinion, but try not to let it cross over into personal attacks. It’s bad etiquette.”

So, I’ve written both about Life is Not For the Living, and comment etiquette so this guy just clicked the link to my site, but didn’t even bother reading anything. Then went back to the original post and left me that little snide comment.

Nice.

Tags:   funny pathetic1 Comment

I know many people don’t have much respect for SEO (Search Engine Optimization), but if you own a blog or any space on the internet it is something you need to become familiar with NOW! If you are counting on the Google, Yahoo, Bing, Alta Vista, ask.com, or any other spiders to find your site without any help from your part, dream on. I can’t even begin to tell you how many pages there are on the internet right now, but it is a lot. More than that. The fact is this, people (I mean strangers) will NEVER find your post without SEO. Period.

Earlier today I posted my Kenmore story. I just Googled “replacing the lid switch on a sears kenmore 80 series” and here is a snapshot of the page I get:

That’s the post I made not three hours ago, already the number six search result. The power of SEO.

Between you and me, it’s the best article out there.

Tags:   SEO · WordpressNo Comments.

I think the title says it all.

Now, I am not really Mrs. Fix-it, but when things break….

When I was in Seattle, what, almost a month ago now! The washing machine “would not drain”. Okay…so Jason went home and reported back to me it was the lid switch. It had gone bad, but if you put in a bit of paper or something and wiggled it just so, the problem was solved. Me, I didn’t care one way or the other, honestly. I don’t do laundry at the house, Jason does and Aubrey usually does the kid’s. Problem was, when Jason went away and I had to do some laundry. I broke the silly jury-rigged thing ASAP. Oh damn, now I had a washing machine tub full of disgusting wash water and towels. Grrrrrrr. I tried to fiddle with the lid switch and a rolled up bit of paper to no avail. The darned thing was BROKEN.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should also say the following. We have a newer washing machine/dryer in the garage. I thought it was way too much weight for me and Jason to move alone so I hemmed and hawed my way of out moving the new set in, so the lid switch was never “fixed”. I then tried to Freecycle it, hoping that the Freecycler would help me move the new set into the house and take the old ones away. The moderators at Freecycle wouldn’t let me post the bit about the help as that violated the “no string attached” rule, and apparently folks around here have it too good, as nobody wanted a perfectly good washing machine minus a working lid switch.

I Googled how to fix a lid switch, etc. It seemed an easy repair. I got the model number off the machine, put that into the Sears repair site and found the lid switch. Yup, that looked like the part I needed, It cost around 35 small ones. I looked up directions for replacing the lid switch. I went to two Sears on two consecutive days to secure the needed part. The first day, the Sears did not have the part in stock, but could order it for me. It would take a week. A week? I had a tub full of nasty towels! (Did I neglect to mention that I had removed the sodden towels and I don’t know how many gallons of water from the tub by hand?) So I got the location of another Sears that had the part. Since I had a “free night” I decided that I would disassemble the machine and that way when I got the part the next evening, I could just “pop” it in. Right.

I followed the directions I found on this post: Kenmore 80 series lid switch. The post has sentences in it like:

First of all, unplug your washer. You will need to remove the console in order to get to the lid switch. I believe your washer has release tabs under the console at each front corner. Simply slide a putty knife straight in from the front at each corner and push in while lifting up. You should feel the release tabs push in and the console will pop up. Or, you may have a console that has removable end caps. They can be removed by gently prying up on the top of them from the rear on each side. You may have to use a small screwdriver for this. The caps should pop right off. Once removed, you will need to loosen a screw under each cap. Once you have the console loosned, carefully lift it up and lay it back over the rear panel of the washer in its resting position. Be careful not to damage the small plastic hinges that hold it in place. Now you will need to perform the following steps:

1. Under the console you will find the lid switch connector. Unplug the switch from the connector.

2. There will be two brass colored clips. You will need to remove these to remove the machine casing. Place a flat blade screwdriver straight down into the opening on top of the washer and into the groove of the clip. Push the screwdriver away from you while holding into the groove and the clip will release.

Okay, very good. My washer ended up having the end caps, but they really didn’t look the way I expected them to.

Those are the screws under the caps you must unscrew to remove the console, or the part of the machine that has all the knobs and whatnot on it. Or, and I could never find a “resting” place for said console. I had to prop it up with a smallish fabric softener bottle once I had it loose. The next step of unplugging the lid switch is very easy, there is only one connection to unplug.

You can see it in this photo quite well. Oh, those are the brass clips the instructions are referring too. This was where I threw the towel in, as it was late, I was tired and could not figure out what brass clips they were talking about! But then inspiration struck! Searching YouTube I came across this video…

I saw those big clips were indeed the clips I was looking for, so I went back in, popped them off, then lifted the cabinet up and off! I had to move the smallish fabric softened bottle to do this. Then I called it a night.

Next day, I got the new part in my hot little hands. I had my two little helpers this time. So I pulled the entire cabinet up and off, then looked where the old lid switch was snuggled up into it.

I unscrewed the grounding screw, unclamped the two areas where it was clamped, you can just see one of them in the photo, and took the old, broken one out.

You can see the printed out directions and I am holding up the defective part.

If you compare the two photos you can see how droopy it is? FAIL! SO I put the grounding screw of the new working part it, clipped the parts that needed clipping. There are also two screws that hold the lid switch in place. All the while, my two little helpers were awesome! They held the cabinet up so I could do all this (our laundry room is tiny!), then I put the cabinet back in place, clipped the connection back in place, put the brass clips back in and the cabinet was back on! Here is a once photo of the lid switch in place.

Then I put the console back on, replaced the end caps, plugged it back in (important) and ran a short test cycle.

We did it!

I think the kids were just happy that mommy was so happy.

This was very very very easy to do. My goodness, was it ever easy. Hope this helps!

Edit: Did you find this helpful? I really hope you did. Drop me a note if you did, thanks!

Tags:   adventures · funny56 Comments

You know I believe in Kharma. I also believe in Garbage in, Garbage out. The two are really two ways of saying the same thing.

Speaking of kharma, if someone did a bad thing to me they should quake in their boots (but they never do). I know all kinds of ways to make their online and thus their real life a complete rendition of Hell on Earth, but I wouldn’t do it. Well, unless I was really, really torqued. It hasn’t happened yet, I wouldn’t want all that bad Kharma you see. Maybe if I really felt I had been dealt with unjustly I would say, to heck with Kharma and do all those mean and nasty things, but I haven’t been in that dark place yet. Thank goodness.

So I kind of trip through life like a convoluted Mary Poppins as I try to be generally nice and not make people angry. I can’t help sometimes having blacks thoughts and then I earn negative Kharma points and these always get cashed in. I do this weird derring-do dance where I try to be nice, but this passive aggressive side I have kicks in and does all kind of evil. Hmmmm. Anyway, as I was saying. Garbage in, garbage out.

I really do believe you are what you eat. I can tell when I have had a day eating crap, I feel tired and wore down. Even right now I don’t feel so hot as I have not had my usual amount of fruits and veggies. I think people who are tired and cranky all the time really should look at their diet. What are they eating? Chances are, it is affecting their mood. Maybe I have it wrong, but if I ate at McDonald’s several times a week, I would be a mental wreck.

Isn’t that the perfect figure? Exactly what I’ve been babbling. If you are a perfect (healthy) person and you est garbage, garbage comes out. If you are a person who’s been eating garbage the last 30 years, and you eat healthy, garbage still comes out. Lucky our bodies are incredible machines and if you keep up the healthy eating, you’ll get perfection.

Wow, I have really rambled on and on here. I had meant to talk about about garbage in the more general sense of the term, and instead I end up talking about food. Typical.

Do you know any bitter, cynical, generally unhappy people? I really think it has to do with their negative attitude. If you go out with a negative attitude, then you’ll get it back. I know, you’re thinking of my toxic post from a couple of days ago where I ripped into that author. Well, I really do think anyone with a fan base really owes it to that fan base (Barry Bonds nonwithstanding) to cater to them and suck up to them. Of course, I’m not famous so what do I know? Oh yeah, I’m a fan and I know how I like to be treated.

So, the moral of the story is, all that stuff your mom and grand-mom told you is true. treat others the way you want to be treated, you are what you eat, don’t make that face because it will get stuck.

Tags:   FamilyNo Comments.

Is it depression? You know, I’m not sure. We all get bombarded with so many ads on the television trying to cure us of depression and anxiety. I often wonder, are that many people truly depressed? Is it more of a problem these days that it was before? There must be a lot of money in the pharmaceutical market for “feel” good drugs.

Personally speaking, I don’t like taking medication. Sure, I’ll take an Advil when I get a headache, a Claritin when my allergies act up, and I take medicine for my asthma and allergies everyday in the form of a mouth and nasal inhaler, respectively. I am a bit leery to take something that can modify my entire personality, but if my personality needed modification….

I was in a bit of a funk the last few days. I think it was initially brought on my poor Martin getting too friendly with some poison ivy. He already has the most sensitive skin of anyone in the family so it really hit him hard. Of course he would scratch in his sleep and wake up crying from the pain. Poor guy. This meant for like three nights in a row I got very little uninterrupted sleep. It was beginning to feel like back in the days of babies where I actually would dread going to bed at night because I knew I wouldn’t get any sleep. The thing about me and sleep is this: I need lots of it. Like 8 hours minimum and I am always willing to get more. So after three nights of little sleep I was getting psychotic anyway. Then I still had poor little Martin to look after, the Nanny was being a complete idiot (sorry, must be said) and was wearing latex gloves and I overheard her telling Martin not to touch her. WTF? See, I get all mad and seeing red just thinking about it. I can add it to the list of things she does that I find completey pointless and ridiculous. Of course, we are all entitled to these small acts, but you know.

I got a bit sidetracked there. So I’m tired, Martin is sick, Nanny is an idiot, Jason is in Asia, washing machine breaks. Damn. I remember at one point Sunday morning, sitting on the floor of my bedroom and I was so tired. It was like depression (or whatever it was I was going through) was a large fluffy bed and I was on it fighting to get out and stay awake. The feeling/bed just was so nice and comfy that it was overwhelming me. Like that. “Damn,” I thought. I got up and went about my business, but I never even left the house on Sunday (yesterday). I didn’t even do any laundry (couldn’t, washing machine is broke). I did clean the floors…and that was it. Couldn’t even be bothered to make dinner. We had leftovers.

Whenever I get to feeling this way, I always wonder why? Why now? I got too much to do. I had promised the kids I would take them to the aquarium, but I never did. The kids ended up watching hours and hours of TV, and I couldn’t even be bothered to feel bad about it.

Maybe I was just tired…I don’t know. I’ll let you know what works.

Tags: 1 Comment

I see my WordPress article got posted over at Geek Girls Network. I couldn’t NOT write this up after my own issues with getting up to speed on WordPress. I like to think I am pretty handy with the press, no? Click over there and read it, or just read it below.

WordPress is hands-down the leader for web publishing. It is the Mac-daddy, the best, and the most awesome. I started out my wee home on the internet with blogspot account, then that turned into Blogger (owned by Google) and I just didn’t have the freedom there to do what I wanted very easily. I am no code master. To this day when I need to change my template I have a list of resources that I must go-to for the proper code. Whoa, let me back up. Templates, did I say? Yes. Template. Welcome to the world of WordPress.

What is WordPress? if you go to the WordPress home, it says:

WordPress is a state-of-the-art publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability. WordPress is both free and priceless at the same time.

More simply, WordPress is what you use when you want to work with your blogging software, not fight it.

I love that. Truer words were never typed. If you want a way to put what you want out there on the internet without having to worry about the backend, WordPress is what you want. At this point, I must assume that you are in agreement with me. You have downloaded and installed WordPress on your host server, you have found a template you like, and now you are staring at the dashboard wondering how what you do here will affect how your blog looks on the other side. If you haven’t done any of those other steps yet, please go do them now. I’ll wait for you.

When you download WordPress there will be many links telling you how to do it, how to upload to your host (FileZilla is your friend), and how to get started using your first theme. There are literally hundreds of sites out there with ready to go themes. Myself, I love Cutline and Cutline is what you see now, here, with your eyeballs on my website. Beautiful, No? Themes are a bit personal, and I won’t get into how to pick a theme right now, I’ll just have to assume you have found one to your liking and you have also uploaded that theme to your server.

The Dashboard.

I love the new dashboard. I can’t remember which revision gave us the striking view that we see now, but it is lovely and oh so very easy to use. A properly configured dashboard will make the care and feeding of your new home on the internet a pleasure to visit rather than a torture session. The first thing to do after gazing upon its beauty is to go to Appearance and select Themes. This will bring up where you select your new theme. The default WordPress theme will be here, along with the new one you just uploaded. Go ahead and select it. You can also edit your theme by selecting Editor. Now, I did mention I am no code master but I did make some changes to the code of my template. I use cutline and it is a highly customizable theme and it was very easy for me to do this. Even so, there was a lot of back and forth between editing the code of the template then checking my blog so this leads right into the big question, Which plugins should I use? I’ll tell you.

Eight Plugins no one should live without.

1. Theme Test drive gets the number one position because if you make any changes to your templates files, then theme test drive allows you to view the changes while the rest of the world sees your blog as it is. You can make changes invisibly if you will. This is so important, as anyone who has made a little change such as the width of a border that throws everything out of whack can attest to. If you are going to make any changes to your template, you need this plugin. Period.
2. Askimet gets number two because if you publish a blog, you will get comment spam. Even if you have a small readership you still don’t want the spammers take your blog over, or you don’t want to wade through dozens to hundreds of comments in moderation. Spam looks bad because new readers to your site will be turned off if they see a lot of comment spam there. It makes a blog look unkempt and dirty.
3. WordPress database backup. Remember how I said I wasn’t a code master? Well, for a time it seemed like every time I logged into the dashboard, it was time to upgrade to a new version of WordPress. When you upgrade, which is like a mini-reinstall of WordPress on your servers, it’s always a good idea to make a backup of your databases because this is the data that makes up your blog. I never liked the cumbersome process of logging into my host, then making the database backup, then exporting and saving it somewhere safe. This plugin will automatically make a backup for you either on demand or on a schedule, then you can also email a copy to yourself. I have mine sent to a gmail account, so unless both my host and gmail go down at the same time, I’m covered. If they do go down at the same time, the Zombie apocalypse has arrived, and I won’t care about my database.

Now for the rest, in no particular order

4. WordPress.com stats is a nice way to track your traffic on your dashboard. This will require you to get a WordPress.com account. I use this in addition to my Sitemeter account and Google Analytics. You can never have too many ways to track your traffic. This is important as it will tell you things like how people are finding your blog.
5. Rss Footer I just enabled this on my blog and have not yet realized the fruit of my labors yet. This plugin allows you to add an extra line of whatever you want into your RSS feed.
6. Google Sitemaps creates a sitemap for Google. I have a sitemap generated by my theme, but I also use this one. Maybe you have gotten the feeling that I appreciate redundancy.
7. All in one SEO pack is incredibly useful. Since I have enabled this on my blog, I get quite a lot of search hits and I don’t believe it is a coincidence this occurred after I enabled this. It is very easy to use, and adds right onto the post area of the dashboard, then you populate it as you write your post. Nice.
8. Flickr RSS is really only necessary if you have a Flickr account you want to link to your blog. So while not absolutely necessary, it is very nice. This creates a small, unobtrusive set of images in your sidebar.

Once you download these, you then put them in the plugins directory of your server. When you log into the dashboard, they should all be there waiting for you under Plugins. Any settings you need to make can be done here. The other very nice thing is when it comes time to upgrade your plugins, WordPress will let you know. When you log into the dashboard, there will be a circled number letting you know how many plugins need attention. You open your plugins, and you can automatically upgrade just like that. Plugins give you the most bang for your buck when it comes to tweaking your site. Most themes come ready for this type of tweaking, so even if your theme doesn’t support Gravatars for example, you can get a plug in to add Gravatar support to your theme. Let me know when you find it.

So now you have your tweaked theme, you have some plugins, now you should adjust your widgets. Widgets are also under Appearance, widgets are built right into the WordPress. This would allows for rudimentary tweaking to the site. The widgets will populate the sidebar in your theme, so choose wisely. If you select them all you will have a sidebar a mile long, a personal pet-peeve of mine. Just say no. You can also get rid of that freshman meta log-in. Bookmark (or memorize) the URL of your site. Some plugins will add as a widget, such as Askimet and FlickrRSS. I personally think many of these widgets can be handled more elagantly through a good template and plugin use. Widgets have their place and allow for some easy ways to add say, text at the top of your sidebar without having to go into the actual code of the theme. It’s your choice.

Okay, so now that I’ve talked about the Dashboard and why you should love it, the difference between plugins and widgets, the last thing I want to mention are Permalinks. A permalink is the line that shows up in the browser’s address bar, it’s usually something like “http://www.blog.com/why-I-love-cake/’. Permalinks are the permanent URL of your blog post, thus you really want something a search engine can grab hold of and send out to the masses, so to speak. In other words, you really want your permalinks to be ‘pretty’, like my example above, instead of “http://www.blog.com/3274672ccxdn78/” which is a hot mess. This is so very easy to do in WordPress. Simply go to your dashboard, select Permalinks under the Settings. This will bring your permalinks section, then what I do is link my permalinks to my blog title, but you can also use keywords, tags, categories or whatever you want. I use the Custom Structure radio button and in the filed I have “/%postname%/” which pulls my title and drops it into the permalink. As soon as I type my blog title into the post filed, this permalink is populated. Now, a word of warning. If for whatever reason you do not put a title in right away, but start typing your blog entry, the permalink will populate with a generic number that you will then have to go back and fix. Otherwise, I find this an incredibly useful way of both assigning your permalinks while increasing your blog traffic.

So hopefully that is enough to get you started on the way to getting a pimped out blog. If you find this interesting at all, please drop me a line and let me know. I’ll be more than happy to share my Power to the people, from the people, for the people philosophy of WordPress.

Resources:

• Css Cheat Sheat
• html kit for heavy duty CSS work
• HTML resource, the W3 schools is also a great resource for CSS, XML, PHP, Javascript, etc. Consider it your go-to home for all things web related.
• Cutline Theme, the greated them ever. nuff’ said.
• Sitemeter, for basic traffic analysis
• Google analyticsis the best place for traffic analysis, and if you are like most of use, you already have the Google account you’ll need to get started.
• WordPress Codex, for all your WordPress questions.
• last but not least, The WordPress forums, in case yor questions weren’t answered by any of the above.

Tags:   Wordpress1 Comment

As part of the Steampunk homage, I’ll link to this video I found on you-tube of one of my favorite bands. Enjoy.

Tags:   steampunkNo Comments.

Thinking out in the long term, I am thinking of my next big thing. My muse is this…

From the side

detail

and the lovely back

Isn’t that the cutest thing? It’s the only thing I spent any money on at Balticon this year, and so worth it. I wish I had the woman’s name who made these, she had several of them, all very cute. Wearable art, don’t you think? These colors really spoke to me and I knew this hat would be mine. So the idea is a neo-victorian-steamy-retro look.

A corset is a must…

I really like this one and it gets very high reviews. I think my sewing skills can handle a corset, and I happen to have a bit of white satin left over from a Halloween costume that I’ll make a first corset off. Nice.

Then, I didn’t want a plain stodgy (beautiful) Victorian gown. They are just too much. Too much fabric, too long, to cumbersome. I don’t really think a gal who is about to embark on all sorts of adventure can really go about in multiple layers of floor length gowns.

I think I do want to wear a chemise under the corset…

This pattern also has a corset, but the other one is much easier to make, if you track the comments about each. I really like the chemise in this pattern set though. Since my corset will have spiral steel boning, I won’t be able to wash it much and a chemise underneath is a must. Besides which, this is not a “modern” corset, which means that if I make it as drafted, it would be quite indecent to wear out in public, if you get my meaning. If I make it out of a nicer fabric, it will look less like underwear and more like a blouse.

Then, what to wear over the corset? I could wear nothing, but I saw this cute corset cover. It’s a bit over-frilly in this photo…

I could really make a nice fitted blouse from this, and if I work the neckline I could show a bit of the corset. Or maybe I could make a jacket…or a vest. Still not decided there yet. A vest is too casual, methinks.

Finally a skirt. I don’t want a long skirt. I like the draping on this one…

but I want the back much longer so I’ll need to extend it, and also the front a bit as well. This is a sort of apron meant to be worn over a much longer skirt. It is hard to tell form the design sketch, but it really is quite short.

But then I saw this overskirt and liked it much more, and I don’t think I will need to lengthen it at all.

You can really see the length quite well in this photo which I pulled from the Truly Victorian website.

You can see that this would be quite decent, and since I’m so short it would come to my knee probably.

The only issue with these skirts is that they both have quite a bit of pouf on the rear, and I will need to make some sort of bustle for it. I could go all out and make a proper “bustle petticoat”, but I may also be able to get away with some sort of “cushion”. I had considered making a crinoline, but that may not be sturdy enough to hold up that much fabric. Then I posted the question over on the Truly Victorian bulletin board and got a response that said I would make a shortened bustle/petticoat, and if I made it from a fashion fabric it could aslo serve as an underskirt…brilliant!

of course all this will need the perfect fabrics, so now I’ll have to turn my thoughts to finding some lovely burnt orange, brown and cream fabbrics and trim.

Tags:   costumes · Sewing · steampunkNo Comments.