Do you prefer to use a pen or a computer?

Yet another NaBloPoMo writing prompt.

Answer: computer

A long time ago, my typing speed surpassed the speed at which I am able to write with a pen or pencil. If you know me in real life, you know that I talk fast. I think fast, too. So if I want to get something written down quickly before I forget it or get distracted, the fastest way for me to do it is to type.

Another fun fact about me: I hold my pen or pencil weird. I hold it completely vertically.

 It looks really weird and it hurts to write that way for a long period of time. I have tried and tried to change it but I can't write the "correct" way. And why should I? That's what the laptop is for!

iPhone in the toilet

In a mad rush out the door for a 24-hour trip to East Texas for Easter, the inevitable finally happened: I dropped my iPhone in the (fortunately empty) toilet.

I knew this was bound to happen one day since I keep it in my back pocket all day. I was just hoping it would happen nearer to the time I am eligible for an upgrade to the iPhone 4.

It can't have been in the water more than a few seconds. As soon as I saw it falling I was already reaching in after it. Would I have been so quick if the bowl hadn't been empty? Fortunately, we will never know.

Regardless of the mere nanoseconds it was immersed, as soon as I pulled it out, I watched its glowing face slowly fade into nothingness. It was like watching a pet die.

The good thing about the iPhone is that all the important stuff is transferred to the computer every time it is synced. Also, most of my to-do lists and email and other vital data are located online "in the cloud" so they're not actually on my phone either.

What was missing was my connectivity to the world. And by that I mean, mostly, Twitter and Facebook. But also texting. I thought I might die but it turns out that it was not very bad!

In case this happens to anyone else, do this: put your iPhone into a bag of rice.
I had seen one of my Twitter friends did this when her iPhone fell in the water and it worked for her. So on our way out the door, I grabbed a half-bag of rice and threw the phone into it.

After a two hour drive I checked the phone and the screen was very, very lightly appearing but the screen did not respond to touch.

After leaving the phone in the bag of rice overnight, the phone turned out and responded to touch but the "Power" button appeared to think it was always being smashed.

After another day in the rice, I am excited to say that the phone turns on, responds to touch, and works normally with the exception of the "power" button. The "power" button does not work at all. Also, the screen looks like it has spots on it which are apparently permanent.

Still, I think I can make it with this phone until August when we can buy a new phone.

Tell your friends: bag of rice!

IntenseDebate and CommentLuv issues in Internet Explorer 8

I wanted to do a quick technical post for anyone else who might have had the commenting issues I've recently had. I really love the way the CommentLuv plugin works on WordPress blogs, but for a number of reasons I'm not yet ready to move to WordPress. I was excited to find out that signing up for a service called IntenseDebate would "supposedly" allow me to use the CommentLuv plugin on a Blogger blog.

Unfortunately, I use the Firefox browser almost exclusively. Both on a Mac (at home) and a PC (at work). The fact that IntenseDebate and CommentLuv worked just great in Firefox tricked me into thinking that it was working fine everywhere.

In fact, it turns out that comments were not working at all in most Internet Explorer browsers. A big THANK YOU to my readers who emailed me to let me know! The biggest problem is that IntenseDebate does not work in IE8. Since CommentLuv needs IntenseDebate to function on the Blogger platform, I don't know if it is truly IntenseDebate or CommentLuv which does not work in IE8 on Blogger.

For the past 4 weeks, apparently the 30% of my audience who uses Internet Explorer has not been able to comment or see other people's comments!!

That's a big deal for someone (me!) who is attempting to really build blog traffic lately.

I contacted IntenseDebate to inquire about the issues with IE, and their response was disappointingly slow and unhelpful. Although they do have Twitter account, they did not respond to any @'s I sent to them in that manner (and still have not). I had to use their online Contact Us form. Ugh! who is still using those?? They are terrible! Hello, 1999, anyone? They also had a blog, but it hasn't been updated in more than a month and never addressed issues with IE. On some tech forums, I found people who were discussing their product, but if the company participated at all, it was to point people back to their outdated "Contact Us" form!

It took someone from IntenseDebate more than 24 hours to contact me back, and when they did, they blamed it on me not having Javascript enabled in IE. In a Web 2.0 environment, who would have Javascript TURNED OFF? Especially when I was attempting to install and use a Javascript widget. At this point I had tested Internet Explorer from 3 separate machines, as well as having 2 people from other states test in Internet Explorer, and no one could see comments in IE. And yes, everyone has Javascript turned on. Obviously, an issue with IntenseDebate. Ultimately, IntenseDebate claimed they "couldn't reproduce the problem" and that means there IS no problem. Nice.

The main problem with uninstalling IntenseDebate was that the Comment Export feature does not work with Blogger, so as soon as I uninstalled IntenseDebate, I would lose the last 4 weeks of comments from people who weren't using IE.

The solution I came up with to uninstalling IntenseDebate from Blogger and still keep my comment history was to install Disqus instead. Disqus accepts imports of comments from both IntenseDebate AND Blogger, so now all my comments are in one central place.

I have actually never been a fan of Disqus because it loads extremely slowly at lower bandwidths. However, when I twittered that my solution to the issue was to install Disqus even though I am not a fan of Disqus, @Disqus was kind enough to reply back to me immediately! Here's the convo:

So, for now I think the problem is solved. I am feeling much better about Disqus since I disabled some of the more complex features. I am also encouraged that they are so responsive on Twitter.

What do you think? How is the load time for comments on your end?

Twitter 404

Hey blog peeps! Just a quick note to let everyone know that I've deleted my Twitter account.
Remember, we do have a family account for pics of Little Sir and other things at http://www.afamilyis.us
It is a protected account, so you'll need to have a Twitter account yourself and request permission to follow it.

Fun with recipes: Yummy Soup

For a while now, I have been saying that I would put all my recipes into the computer somehow. I started out transferring a good deal of them into a Word document. Then I printed them out and put them in a binder.

But that Word document was getting a little cumbersome as I added to it, so Christian went looking for some good recipe software for our Mac.

The one we found that I really like is Yummy Soup. I have been trying it for a few days and I think I am going to shell out the $20 and buy it!

Here are things I like about Yummy Soup:

• It has a very cute icon. Seriously, I love this. It makes me fear the changes less.


• It lets me copy and paste the recipes to easily import, and it's recognition of the measurements is very precise so that I don't have to retype or correct much.


• It will also import recipes straight from Allrecipes.com or any other web site! Love it!!


• I can add pictures. But who takes pictures of their food?! Well, now I do!


• It does full-screen so that I can see the recipe in huge text from across the counter. This is awesome because I have had some issues with trying really hard not to spill food on my MacBook, having to keep it so close.


• Even better, it will read the recipe to you out loud if you want. NICE.

The only thing it doesn't have that I would like to see eventually is a corresponding iPhone app that would sync with the recipe library, making shopping easier. There was an app I found that did have that feature, but everything else about it completely sucked.

Yummy Soup wins!! Yay for Yummy Soup!

Birthday Geocache hunting

Yesterday was my husband's birthday, and since we now have church in the evening, we got up Sunday morning and went searching for geocaches! I had never done this, but his new iPhone has GPS so now we can.

Here is a blurb from the GeoCaching.com site explaining what geocaching is:

Geocaching is a high-tech treasure hunting game played throughout the world by adventure seekers equipped with GPS devices. The basic idea is to locate hidden containers, called geocaches, outdoors and then share your experiences online. Geocaching is enjoyed by people from all age groups, with a strong sense of community and support for the environment.

That is a pretty good description - we looked up 3 caches on White Rock Lake trail there near our house and we were able to find 2 out of the 3! We each found one, so that was neat. One had been there since early 2006. We are thinking of making a cache of our own one day.

Happy Birthday, honey!

Amazing Cat Video and I haven't killed the plants yet

Using my new camera, which has a video function, and iMovie, which came with the MacBook Christian and I created the following video and it only took like an hour and a half. Hopefully that's just the learning curve and it won't take so long next time.



And here are a few photos I took with the camera. Remember the bell pepper plant? Well, it's not dead yet. In fact, here is a baby pepper that has just started to grow, and another blossom that I hope will grow soon!

Silly pictures

Today we got to hang out with my brother and sister-in-law and they brought Natali to play with us! We took some pictures which we have not uploaded into the camera yet. I know how to do it but I don't know how to turn the .pef format into web-safe .jpg so we'll have to wait on that.

Christian and I were playing with the Apples iPhoto and I think we got a good picture of what our marriage probably looks like through his eyes with the distortion effects:
Just kidding...I think. We also got these. They're kinda weird!

We are some truly exciting people

I know I haven't posted in a while, but that is because I really can't think of anything that would be interesting to anyone but me.

We did get the MacBook! It is all set up. I can play Sims 2. I did our finances on Quicken. It is dual-booting using Apple BootCamp, which is free. I set it up myself with only minimal help from Christian! So we run Quicken and Sims 2 in Windows and everything else in Mac OS X. I have to say that the Mac OS is about 1,000 times better than Windows. Nothing can beat that F9 button that makes everything show at once.

The MacBook is so fast and cool that the old desktop computer is now dead to me. Dead. I am hoping we can format it and sell it on Craigslist sometime soon so I can get the desk space back.

We are going to see Millie and Danny in Kansas City in about a week, so that should be exciting. Geniant has offices there, but Christian won't be working or anything - it's just a vacation. We make jokes about us moving there one day. The cost of living is just so insanely low compared to here.

We got to see Natali last week and that was awesome! Although the MacBook is hooked up to the place Christian keeps our pictures, he hasn't downloaded those pictures from the camera yet so I don't have them to post. As soon as I get them I will!

The MacBook is on it's way!

We have ordered the MacBook 2.16 Ghz (white, of course - I don't understand why we'd pay more for it to be in a different color?!) on Amazon because right now they have a $100 rebate!!! We didn't pay for the special superfast shipping so it might be a while until we get it. This has given us time (OK, has given Christian time - I have no idea what is going on) to move files from the old PC to the external hard drive. Apparently the AirPort Extreme and our external hard drive did not get along happily as friends but have spent the last few days ignoring each other, which means no files can be moved. I have drawn a picture to illustrate what the battle between the 2 peripherals looked like. I call it "The AirPort and Hard Drive Case Grudge Match":

The AirPort Extreme won this match, because it turned out that the hard drive case was defective and we had to buy a new one.

Getting a Mac...sooner!

So, yesterday Apple released the new MacBook, which didn't have an updated graphics card like we had hoped, but it did lower the price of what was formerly the highest model and is now the lowest. We originally thought this update would come around mid-June.

There's been a lot of discussion as to whether MacBook has the graphics capability to handle my favorite game, The Sims 2. Currently we have the PC version of the game, but technically we could still run it in parallels, since the Mac now has Intel. Christian runs his MacBook Pro in parallels a lot for web development purposes.

My sweet husband has been working so hard over the last few weeks to prepare our external hard drive to accept all the data from our old PC so it is actually already ready for the transfer as soon as we purchase the AirPort Extreme.

The reason we decided on a laptop is because Christian already works most of the time at home on his MacBook Pro, which he can take anywhere. I have been stuck at the end of the hall on a relatively uncomfortable chair, playing Sims 2 alone on the giant 4-year-old PC. What I really want is to be able to go out in the living room and sit with my husband, if he is working also or if he is watching a movie.
So, I am really excited. I think we will be getting the new computer very soon!