The Girly Anti-Geek

Grandy just went on a business trip.  While there, she encountered some issues with some “automatic” things. 

It is the little things that will make Grandy even more crazy than she already is:

 - Automatic Soap Dispenser- Grandy held her hand, waived her hand, and did everything short of giving the dang thing a hand job, when no soap would come out.  Fast forward 3 minutes, while Grandy is putting on lipstick.  Then the soap starts spewing.  No hands under it of course.

 - Automatic Toilet Flusher - How sad is it when you lean over to tie your shoes while sitting on the can, and you get treated to the lovely biday treatment.

 - Automatic Transmission in Rental Car - Ugh!  This stupid thing would switch back and forth into manual and automatic.  Who decided they needed both?

Grandy has decided she would much rather dispense her own soap, get her own paper towel, and flush her own dang toilet.  However…if she gets an automatic car, she wants an  AUTOMATIC.   For crying out loud…why must we deal with such in-conveniences where there are so many easier things available?

Perhaps the development in technology where someone pushes a button and the computer tells you whether or not you’ve spelled anything wrong is the greatest invention ever.

Maybe it’s a common sense thing.

Maybe it’s just me.

But at least we have things like this to make us smile.

This one should be saved for Monday Funnies, but I couldn’t wait that long.

I can’t make this stuff up!  Thank you to those that email this stuff to me.

Thank you for the giggles. 

Ever hear of the phrase, Jack of All Trades…master of none?

Well, Grandy is starting to feel like that in the blogosphere folks.  The other day I got a message from the very nice today.com folks.  They indicated they were changing some things about my blog until I can get more traffic.  I responded with a very quick…Ummmm…I don’t get it…I’m trying… and they pointed me in the direction of their forums on how to generate traffic.

Maybe I’m the slowest blogger in the universe at catching on, but I thought I was making some progress.  Maybe I’m just kidding myself.  I work 60-80 hours a week, am the committee chair in my son’s boy scout troop, on the school site council, and oh yeah…wife, mother and hobby blogger.  Get that?  HOBBY!!

I obviously don’t make money off the blogging thing, and know that others do.  Mine are more creative outlets.  This blog in particular was designed to either help those that struggle like me, to make them feel less crazy (I’m as crazy as they come with this stuff) and maybe give the really smart ones something to laugh at.  I’m certainly laughing at myself because let’s face it…if you can’t, what’s the point?

My posts may be a little less frequent here for a little while.  I have some learning….some re-assessing…and some projects to do.  I hope to be able to bring this blog up to the quality of standards that Today.com requires.  But if I cannot, I may have to consider dropping this blog entirely.

The hobby becomes less fun…when there becomes stress involved.

When trying to figure something out, Grandy WILL usually try to find the answer herself.  When she can’t get something to work like it’s supposed to, chances are pretty good it is caused by operator error. 

I know I mentioned a while back that I use Adgitize on my other blog.  Well there is something about adgitize when you click on to other sites, that it will track and give you credits for going to those sights.  Something in my computer wasn’t working for that.  I would visit about 30 sites, and yet it would only give me “credit” for maybe 12.  It was kind of frustrating because I couldn’t figure out what I was doing wrong.

After searching the forums, and the blog, and other discussion threads, I decided to just send an email to the support team and see if they can spell it out to me…using small words…and speaking real slow…because remember who you’re talking about here.

Well Ken Brown, over at Adgitize, is very helpful and kind.  I swear I must be a tech support nightmare sometimes because here is what my question looks like:  Huh?  That thingy?  *UGH*

Well somehow in my asking of my questions (as frustrating as they might be) I helped him discover a bigger problem.  He even posted THIS BLOG POST about it.  By me asking my questions…he was able to discover a bigger issue that was affecting way more people than he had realized. 

He was very gracious and emailed me with the fix of the problem.  I’m afraid I did still have to respond with this:

Blah blah…not just me but IE7…blahdy blah…you’re working on it…blah blah…green and should be blue…yada yada…you’re working on it…yep yep…NOT JUST ME.

YAY!!!  Grandy helped a smart person and didn’t even MEAN TO!!  Now I’m not so afraid of asking these types of questions.  I make NO promises for the quality or clarity of the questions…but I would love it if I somehow help others by seeking help myself. 

Thanks Ken for always being so gracious and patient with Grandy!!!

For this week’s feature, I’m pleased to introduce you all to another self-proclaimed geek. Grandy truly doesn’t single these people out because she is calling anyone names. She really does enjoy learning about what these bloggers offer. The funnest part is featuring each of them here.

Readers, it is my pleasure to introduce you to Chris.  I met him through Entrecard, and like that he has tips for all levels of techies. 

C-tech (http://ctechblog.com) I’ve had several others but actually lost interest in them and eventually shut  them down.

**How long have you been blogging?

2 years on various blogs about 4 months on C-tech

**What kind of Geek are you?    

Well, I would consider myself a jack of all trades but my bill paying job is in the networking industry.  If I had to say I had one personal specific focus I would say it would definitely be PC building.  I’m currently in the finishing stages of opening Christmatnic Inc, A Gaming/Lan center and PC Repair Company.

**Are you a Geek offline?

Oh definitely, I’m starting my own gaming center so I have to be in the know to facilitate herding my other geek friends into the gaming center.  But I do a lot of non-geek things also.

**What’s your favorite thing to do when you’re NOT blogging? 

I would definitely say gaming and riding my motorcycle.  I actually own 2 motorcycles, a VTX1300S and a 750 Shadow Spirit.  I like to keep my life experiences diversified and being a motorcyclist that regularly attends rallies accomplishes that.

**Who is your target audience?

“Professional Bloggers” will tell you that this is bad but I try to provide value to a wide spectrum of people.  I write optimization tips with the computer illiterate in mind and write more in depth articles for the more tech-savvy.

**How do you generate traffic to your site?

Honestly I’ve never really done anything special I tried entrecard and got decent results out of it.  A lot of my traffic is actually through Google.  But my loyal traffic has been generated by participating in the blogosphere.

**Tell us one “secret” or “tip” you can share with us non-geeks who are learning.

Best tip I can ever tell someone that wants to become geeky is if there is something you hear or see that you want to learn about is to Google it.  Google it until you can’t Google it anymore and you’ll eventually become very “versed” on the topic your googling.  Googling is power.

**Tell us more about YOU!!

Well I’m 25 years old.  I’ve been around the it industry since I was 18 years old.  But had a passion for the geeky ever since I rebuilt my first 286 (Packard Bell) when I was 10 years old.

As for my hobbies I like to game a lot.  Some of my favorites are Dawn of War 2, World of Warcraft, and anything that’s Call of Duty.  I also like to ride motorcyles.  I guess that’s really are there is to say about me.  Overall I’m a pretty boring dude. 

Thank you, Chris, for your willingness to play along in my Tuesday Geek Feature!!  I don’t think you give yourself enough credit because you don’t sound boring at ALL!! 

Readers, please stop by his place and let him know Grandy sent ya!!

When this pic came into my email, it depicted how I look and feel sometimes when I’m staring at my screen.  Yep, even the cute little fluffy socks, and bloated belly, that is how I feel when I’m reading blogs, trying to learn, and getting entertained.

I really want to learn to grow my sense of community at both my blogs.  I’m proud that my Stalker list has grown to almost 50 over there.  I love the features I do here because I learn so much about the bloggers…as opposed to just the blogs.  There is so much to each blogger out there. 

I do feel bad sometimes that, although I truly love the features, and so do some of my followers, it seems the interviews don’t get much traffic.  I want the featured bloggers to have as many new visitors as I can send them, and yet I get hardly any comments.

I see that some blogs that have about 3000 hits per day.  3000?  Folks, how do you do that?  What is your secret?  I see one that averages 1200 visits per day (and I’m currently only talking in the today.com arena) and yet the last post was from FEBRUARY 26th. 

Who does that?  Who gets 1200 hits per day, on average, for a blog that hasn’t been updated in almost 2 months? 

I know that some of it has to do with SEO words (or something like that) but seriously.  Is someone out there just doing advertising somewhere?  I’m considering trying the Today.com Advertising offer they have.  But I haven’t seen where the ads run yet.

Has anyone else tried them?  What else are you trying?

Until then…I better get back to my fuzzy slippers and wipe the drool off my chin.  I have some serious work to do if I’m going to try and get to more than 100 unique visits per day.  *sigh*

Here’s how MY night went last night.

Grandy posts her Sunday Stalker Spotlight early yesterday at her other site, only because she realizes that it is already Sunday in Malaysia.  It would only be fair to have it up there for HER Sunday, right?

Anyway…it’s a good thing I did.  I went to get online just an hour later and couldn’t.  I didn’t worry about it too much because I had company over (my twin sister and her family whom I LOVE LOVE LOVE hanging out with).  She and her hubby are my personal IT department, but I wasn’t going to worry about it.

When they left, I decided I would sit down to make sure it posted alright, and try to get a post up here.   No luck STILL.

I try to run a diagnostic of the Network (only because those are the links I’m directed to do, not because I know what I’m doing mind you) and it tells me it’s a problem with the Network connection.  Well DUH!!  I knew that!!

I try doing what I’ve been told to do in the past:

Shutdown the computer…

Power off the modem…

Count to 10…

Pour a drink…

Power back up the modem…

Drink some more…

Power up the laptop…

Drink again…

STILL NO NETWORK!!!

Finish my drink….defeated…but feeling not so bad about it anymore.  Suddenly, I feel a bit warm and fuzzy!

::HICCUP::

Here in California it is illegal to talk on your cell phone while driving, without using a “hands free” device.  That put a run on the market for wireless headsets at all the cell phone stores. 

I personally don’t mind having the hands free headset, except for the fact that it keeps me from being able to hear as well.  Because my car is a convertible, with a soft top, it’s not as quiet as most cars…especially when it’s raining.  So it’s only really a problem when I can’t hear.  I don’t really understand, other than freeing up the ability to look over your shoulder, what the point of the hands free enforcement is.

Many of the new cars are coming equipped with Blue Tooth access.  Your call comes through the speakers of the car.  There is no problem hearing that conversation, let me tell you.  Whether you have the radio on or not, it comes in loud and clear.  When my carpooler comes to pick me up, I can sometimes hear the conversation as I’m approaching the car even with the windows up. 

The other day I was stopped in traffic and someone had their window down while talking in their car.  I don’t know about you, but Mr. Blue Honda Accord, if you are going to have an argument with your female counterpart…perhaps you want to roll.your.window.UP!   

I don’t know if this hi-tech feature really is good.  People already talk too loud on their phones in restaurants, and other public places.  I know you think you are by yourself in the car…but you are not.

As someone who is not afraid to sing in the car, I would not want to be caught scheduling a doctor’s visit to address an “itch” I can’t get rid of, in my car, where others can hear me.  I know that the world doesn’t want to hear it either.

I can’t be the only one that thinks that, right??  Am I alone?

Share your thoughts.

For today’s feature, Grandy is going to limit her lead in commentary because there is just so much to like about this guy.  With all the websites he works on, it’s a wonder he has any time at all…much less time for his wife and FOUR DAUGHTERS.  FOUR!!

Readers…allow me to introduce you to Tim, over Spy Journal 3.0, who is a very busy… very nice guy. 

**Your Blog (SSSSSSSSSSSSSS):

www.jethroconsultants.com one of our business website

www.jethromanagement.biz the other business website

www.krostech.bizour lan party site – mostly gaming reviews and mostly published by one of my staff

www.millerfamily.biz – theoretically our family blog site – however in drastic need of a major software upgrade and a site redesign and as such nothings been posted there for a year or so – its on my to do list and is half done!

www.millerfamily.biz/phlog/pharch.html i use this as a photo archive of my best photos. My wife posts here too.

www.millerfamily.biz/blog/emblogger.html - our extended family site – mostly unused as most of the family who are ever going to blog are already now

parklife.jethromanagement.biz/blog/parkblogger.html – this was my indoor soccer teams site – now mostly retired from that sport

social sites

facebook http://www.facebook.com/home.php

twitter http://twitter.com/Spyjournal

brightkite http://brightkite.com/people/spyjournal

delicious http://delicious.com/jethrocon

flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/65073328@N00/

linked in http://www.linkedin.com/in/jethromanagement

plurk http://pownce.com/spyjournal/ (just my ping mirror)

seismic http://www.seesmic.com/spyjournal (very infrequent)

stumbleupon http://spyjournal3.stumbleupon.com/

youtube http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=alborath

last.fm http://www.last.fm/user/spyjournal

myspace http://www.myspace.com/spyjournal - just a presence

digg http://digg.com/users/spyjournal

redbubble http://www.redbubble.com/people/spyjournal  - haven’t posted anything yet

aggregators

friendfeed http://friendfeed.com/spyjournal

shared google reader http://www.google.com/reader/shared/00501038846951373180

profilactic http://www.profilactic.com/mashup/spyjournal

technorati http://www.technorati.com/people/technorati/alborath/ 

**How long have you been blogging? -   It is very sad but our very original first website is up at http://www.millerfamily.biz/veryold/index.html this was set up in 1994. My first blog was set up at http://www.millerfamily.biz/blog/blogger.html in October 2004 So I have been using blogging software for 4 and half years.

 These were all combined into the new Drupal site at www.spyjournal.biz in September 2007.  

**What kind of Geek are you? 

A Microsoft Geek, a web geek and a gadget geek. I love hardware, gadgets and Hi Fi and Video gear. I have mixed sound for bands and love music in general. I love making technology work both for myself and my family and friends and clients. Microsoft products and particularly Office and  Excel is where my main passion and expertise lie. 

**Are you a Geek offline?

Most definitely. Also not. I play dungeons and dragons, board games and card games, but I also play several sports, coach basketball and fitness, and mountain biking. 

**What’s your favorite thing to do when you’re NOT blogging?

Well I don’t blog that often and my blogging tools make very productive when I do it so most of the time I am not blogging. My favourite thing would be good food and hanging with my family. I have a wife and four daughters so we get to do lots of crazy things together. We like going to the zoo, restaurants, swimming and playing board games. 

I am not entirely sure! Obviously I have a focus on Microsoft technologies so I get a lot of traffic for these keywords, in particular Excel and VBA. 

**How do you generate traffic to your site?

I use entrecard for casual traffic, good use of keywords and some reasonable SEO techniques in terms of the sites construction. However I don’t chase traffic at all. My approach has been to build a solid base of thousands of pages of good articles with decent content hat attract traffic and comments. I also participate actively in numerous social forums and uise these all to send traffic to my site on occasion. One great drawcard has ben the geek girl blogger series we have run for the last 10 months. These articles have been collectively viewed over 35,000 times now. http://www.spyjournal.biz/views/geek_girls 

**Tell us one “secret” or “tip” you can share with us non-geeks who are learning.

“Google is your friend”

It is your answer for everything – at least to start with. Not sure if the email you’ve got is real – Google it. Got a error on your screen – Google it. Want to buy a new car, purse, TV, mobile phone, pair of jeans, washing machine – Google it and look for reviews.

And don’t be afraid to ask a geek. In fact ask first. Geeks get most annoyed at their friends and family who come to them for help AFTER they have screwed it up, broken it, bought the wrong thing etc. They would much rather be consulted for their advice first then have to fix it afterwards. 

**Tell us more about YOU!!

Wow. I feel like I have already told you lots. But there are many sides to this geek. I play the violin, read theology and philosophy and love deeply involved philosophical discussions. I enjoy making and drinking coffee, riding mountain bikes (I just bought a Gary Fisher Fat Possum http://www.fisherbikes.com/archive/model/239) I coach basketball and fitness to a bunch of 15 or so teens each week, teach Physical Education once a month and play AFL (masters) and squash. I love boardgames and cards; my favourites at the moment are Agricola, PowerGrid, Settlers, Munchkins, and Carcasonne. I love music and currently my favourite music to listen to is Goa Trance by Infected Mushroom, Astrix and the like, old eclectic rock such as Pink Floyd, The Cure, Duran Duran, A Flock of Seagulls, The Police and U2, modern music like Franz Ferdinand, Muse, Coldplay, Radiohead, Cake and The Presets. I also like dance and electronica like Hed Kandi, Bent, Moorcheeba, Café Del Mar and Gotan Project. I have been listening to a lot of jazz and world music like Emiliana Torrini, Beth Orton, Vaya Con Dios, Oi Va Voi, Pink Martini and Michael Franks. I like certain heavy metal acts including Metallica a long time favourite, Blind Guardian and goth metal act Within Temptation. Finally I listen to a lot of Christan Contemproary, mostly music I enjoyed when I was younger including Petra, Cindy Morgan and Jaci Velasquez.

I love cooking and eating good food. My favourites would be Thai (red duck curry) Italian, Indian (butter chicken) and Mexican.

We watch a lot of sci fi shows and movies as well as weird Japanese and Asian movies with subtitles. Favourite shows would be Doctor Who and Stargate Atlantis.

Finally and most important I love my wife and 4 daughters and love spending time with them. My wife blogs at www.rasita.biz. 

Your girls on the team look GREAT!  I hope they appreciate all the time you give up for them, both with work, and the other random “Dad” stuff.

Readers!  MARCH ON!!  Get thee over to his site and check things out already!! 

Thank you so much!!!