Category Archives: Technology

Exorcising the Dark Side

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I am easily annoyed. I’m also not particularly confrontational.

Put two-and-two together and it means any given day may find me teed-up and lacking an opportunity to vent. Especially if my husband’s at work and my mother isn’t available via phone.

I might write some relatively angry prose (which will probably never see the light of day) or even a tart tweet or two (out there for all to see), but I’m also finding a smidge of cathartic joy in dissing the foibles of my much-loved Pinterest.

I do adore Pinterest. But certain aspects of it, notably the idiosyncrasies of fellow Pinners, inspire my ridicule from time to time. Rather than suppressing, I find it healthy to offer up the infrequent DissPinterest image in order to lampoon a quirk or two.

Observe.

I’m sorry if that’s mean. I said I was easily annoyed. But I have to be real.

And really? “Lurve”?

You are killing the English language. Please stop.

Thank you.

Pinned.

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Pinning has taken on a whole new meaning since my college days. (Okay, after my college days, which are waaaaay back when…)

Now that I spend a lot of time sitting around doing nothing except providing my newborn daughter nutrition, comfort and maternal bonding, it’s nice to have something to do with my hands. I call it iNursing. (Thank you, Steve Jobs.)

But there are only so many times you can refresh Facebook within a given minute before you start to look bored. You might find yourself trying to telepathically urge your dearest friends to increase their social media presence: “Post something. Post now. Post something please. PLEASE.”

And you eventually realize your friends have jobs and families and other pursuits that preclude them serving as entertainment while you’re stuck on the couch for an hour twenty minutes forty-five minutes no thirty-minutes how ever long your baby chooses to keep you occupied.

Cue my new distraction.

PinterestSo now I’m on Pinterest. Don’t ask me to try to explain it.

Okay, I’ll try.

Pinterest is sort of a virtual bulletin board for all the different things you’re interested in. Home decor, fashion, books, crafts and DIY, architecture, art, recipes, snarky humor — my personal favorite. It’s all up there, along with just about everything else. You create your own boards and follow your friends’ and/or strangers’ pins.

It is probably the best time suck on the internet to date. And I mean that in a good way. It’s a black hole. If I didn’t have three young children, I would sign on to Pinterest and stagger back into public view hungry and bleary-eyed about three days later. Maybe.

If you care to follow my boards, use the handy-dandy link in the right sidebar. (Disclosure: My boards are a mess, but it seems backward to reorganize my virtual house when the real one is still a disaster. Priorities.)

Ciao.

Language Warning

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Mother trucker. Spit. Son of a pitcher.

Stupid comment function. Or unfunction, as the case may be.

Thanks to my ongoing and seemingly insoluble troubles with the comment function of this blog — which I have still failed to replicate, despite hundreds of attempts — I missed a comment today that I will never get back.

A comment from one Joni Webb.

That’s right.

Joni.

Webb.

Joni Webb of Cote de Texas.

Cote de Texas: Joni's gorgeous design for her daughter's bedroom

Cote de Texas was probably the first design blog I ever read and — probably the reason I’m still reading design blogs with a dedication tantamount to obsession. Joni “introduced” me to Layla Palmer and Brooke Gianetti. Her Top Ten Design Elements series is responsible for my conversion to curtains. Her posts on Belgian design are the reason my keyboard has drool-stains on it. Oh, and then there’s the Sally Wheat kitchen phenomenon. Don’t even get me started.

Yes, Joni Webb.

You see, yesterday I left a comment to her post about a reader’s renovation on a foreclosed home in Houston.

She tried to leave a comment on my blog. My blog.

Tried.

And the mother trucking blog failed to accept her comment.

I don’t have a lot of brushes with celebrities — I met Amy Grant buying donuts in a Florida grocery store at 7 AM one summer — so this kind of thing cuts me to the quick.

I could have had a bonafide Joni Webb comment on my blog. Alas, ’twas not to be.

Instead, she sent me an email — I’m thinking about framing it — responding to my comment and (gulp!) complimenting me on my destination blinds.

Of course, the magic was tempered by the knowledge that I have no clue how I’m going to resolve my Bermuda Triangle issue with comments on this blog. WordPress is a free blogging platform (God bless ‘em!) but I keep hoping to find someone to whom I can pay actual cash money to find and fix the problem. Hello? Anyone? Please, exploit me. I’m getting desperate.

In the meantime, I’ve removed “email required” from the comment form, just in case it’s the culprit, which will probably mean lots and lots of

but better that than zero comments. It’s awful lonely out here in Blogland. I need the feedback.

On that note, please take this as my personal invitation to comment early and often. Your comment doesn’t even have to be relevant. Favorite song lyrics? Sure. Next week’s grocery list? Why not?

If, in the course of posting your preparation method for Blowfish Sashimi, you should have trouble in leaving your comment, please take a mo’ to email me and let me know. There’s also a hefty bounty on any screenshots that help me identify the problem.

Until then, I will try to tantalize you with frequent and compelling posts that will leave you powerless to avoid commenting. (Or at least emailing me if your comments fail. Which they seem almost sure to do.)

Dang it.

App Happy

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We interrupt this broadcast to bring you an important message.

Abigail has now joined the 21st Century.

Thank you. We now return to our regularly scheduled programming.

Thank you, Steve.

But seriously. I did get an iPhone. A new one, even.

I’ve had a wireless phone for ten years or so.  In all that time, I never paid for a single phone. I took my pick of whatever freebies came with an contract renewal. My last one looked about like this:

I used it for three-plus years and was content.

Then, last weekend, a series of events (to be detailed at a later date) made it urgent that I get a phone with a data plan. I just couldn’t buck the trend any longer.

Hence…

I must say, not only did I manage to buy an iPhone, I somehow managed to set it up almost completely on my own without it melting down in my hand. True, the guy at the AT&T store transferred contacts from my old phone and Scott helped me a teensy bit it to hook up to our home wi-fi. But I synced the phone, added music, linked up to my email — all by my lonesome. I was pretty impressed with myself.

As a new inductee into the iPhone cult — can I call it that? — I stand as in awe of  technology as Pliny the Elder might be upon walking into the Mall of America. It’s way cool. Cooler than me, without a doubt.

I’ve been dining on iPhone apps. At least the free ones. Other than my Arkansas Razorback Fight Song Ringtone (a must), I have yet to fork over actual money.

But I think the clock is ticking.

I’ve been ogling Hisptamatic, for example. But what else? What other apps are changing the lives of iPhone users near and far? Help me. I’m woefully ignorant.

What’s your favorite must-have app? What must I have to live another day?

P.S.  Why won’t the WordPress for iPhone app work? What’s wrong with it? Why can’t I log in? It’s there, I can feel it, but it just won’t let me in. What’s wrong? Why can’t I log in? Answer me!

P.P.S. Does anyone else find it strange that my buddy Steve up there is holding the elusive white iPhone 4 instead of a black one? Where is it now? Because that’s the one I really wanted. Maybe they shut it up in the Disney vault after the WWDC conference was over…

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