No really! The other layout that I talked about in September… it actually EXISTS! While Cassidy was gone for a week I worked on it a lot. Coding it from the ground up turned out to be a little more time consuming than I had imagined (and there was that month or two that I didn’t work on it AT ALL) but now that it’s starting to finally all come together I’m really liking it. Ben even likes it. That’s saying a lot because he generally he thinks they are ‘okay’. This one he’s managed to come up with more than one adjective for. And none of them were ’suck’ or ‘really?’ or ‘nice’.

I’ve added quite a bit of new content. Some of this is because I’ve found cool new apps while playing with the 8525. My only complaint about the phone so far is that it’s POP mail sucks. A lot. Gmail has a nice little java app that you can run locally but it doesn’t allow you to attach files. I liked being able to email pictures to my flickr account with the Sidekick2 but the POP on the 8252 has MAJOR lag. Like a four hours of lag. I know the image files are quite a bit larger but yeesh. Four hours? I’m an instant gratification kinda girl. I want it to happen NOW!

So I came across a cool little program called ShoZu that uploads pictures via a pretty simple “one click feature”. Not only to flickr but to pretty much any moblog service out there. You can also upload video’s directly to YouTube which is kinda neat and I plan to start abusing that soon. One of the best features though is that you can upload photos in a blog post to wordpress like you see in the post below.

Another nifty little thing I discovered is Twitter. Twitter is kind of like a moblog minus the vanity shots. heh You send text messages to it via IM, SMS or on the web of what you are currently doing. Anybody who’s added you to their list also gets the IM or SMS and vice versa. So, how is this cool? Well, I’ve added a little script in the sidebar of the new layout titled “currently” that shows you what I’ve said and how long ago I said it. So basically, I can let all you readers know exactly what I’m doing at all times. So… you can totally stalk me. And… I can totally rub Maui in your face.

What?! Rub Maui in your face?! Yeah! Because I really want to have the site live by tomorrow night. It hurts my finger bones to type that but I honestly plan on having it live before I leave so I can take advantage of some of the cool new features like Twitter and ShoZu while we are away. And adding it to this theme seems just a little too lazy and EASY and NOT GOING TO CAUSE A PSYCHOTIC MELTDOWN for me. I’m all about the psycho.

I know what this is going to cause. It means that my Friday night will be spent running around the house like a psychotic obsessive retard cleaning and packing everything we own into way too many suitcases. Then Ben will spend two hours taking all the dinner plates and bottles of Windex OUT of those suitcases while trying to convince me they ALREADY HAVE those things in Maui.

But really this is a distraction I need. I can’t sleep at night and I’m getting more done at work then a superhuman because I’m in hyperdrive mode and cant’s stop moving. So if it wasn’t working on the site I’d be spending my time doing something REALLY useless to pass the time. Like counting the tiles in the kitchen. Or obsessively brushing the cats. Or cleaning baseboards with a toothbrush and bleaching the refrigerator. I guess that last one isn’t such a BAD thing but I have a reputation to uphold and “clean” is not one of them.

How did I not know about this site till now?! I love t-shirts. I LIVE in them. 80% of my closet is screen print tee’s in various shades of color and a many different degrees of humor. From my favorite Star Wars tee with the a big Empire logo to my ‘I’m Blogging This’ tee, I just love them all. I’m extatic that they are making such a big comeback because it means when I wear my ‘video games make me do bad things’ tee out I don’t get QUITE as many disapproving looks from parents. (But every time I do I’m SO TEMPTED to tell them that CASSIDY is the one that gave it to me for Christmas. hehe)

So on the way to work today I heard about Threadless Tee’s and I want them ALL! What makes these so great is that all of them are designed by members of the threadless community. Members can submit as many designs as they like and they are added to a voting que. The rest of the memebers on the site then get to vote on them and the big wigs look at the top 300 designs every couple of weeks and pick a top 10 to print. If your design gets choosen you get $2000 and people all over the country sporting your artwork!

I spent my entire lunch break voting on shirts. heh Ones like this that I’d TOTALLY WEAR so you should go vote on it.

They don’t have a wishlist feature but that’s only because they print a limited number of shirts so they sell out pretty quick. But at $10** a pop, there’s really no reason not to buy them as you come across the one’s you like. One’s I plan to buy very very soon:

Bleeding Heart:
(this one is aligned down the left side of the shirt, duh!)

Caged:

Dark Side of the Garden:

And there are SO MANY MORE. Must resist the cuteness. MUST! RESIST!!

**Edit - Looking now, the $10 price is a holiday sale. I think they go up to $20 once it’s over… So get them now while they are cheap!! :mrgreen:\
**Edit #2 - No this is not a paid post. I can’t stand blog advertisements like Paid Per Post and the such (won’t even link the site here). I ACTUALLY heard about this on the radio on the way to work and researched it and thought it was so cool that I’d blog about it. Sheesh!
**Edit #3 - Funny. Today Heather of dooce.com has on the MEAT IS MURDER. Tasty, tasty Murder. shirt in her daily picture. DOOCE! So that means the site’s coolness factor just went up by about 17,000 points. How come nobody was sharing this t-shirt love with ME?!?!

I have decided to participate in Pink For October, a breast cancer awareness campaign. From the site:

Now the challenge is to convince as many sites as possible to promote National Breast Cancer Awareness month (let’s make that International) and raise money for breast cancer research.

Feel free to contact me if you are interested in helping with this event. But even if you don’t have time to dedicate, consider redesigning your site for the month of October — Go Pink!

The more people the better, so if you are willing and/or able, pinkify your site too and let them know you are participating!

I really thought long and hard about what to do when it came to ranting about work and having a “private” place to blog. A lot of people suggested LJ but there are a few reasons I don’t want to use LJ. One being that I really don’t LIKE LJ and the only reason I have an account is to comment, read other blogs. The other is because I don’t want to call attention to other blogs. That’s vague. But the people will know what I mean if it applies to them.

I recently started seeing people handing out and asking for Vox accounts so I decided to check it out. But instead of asking for one, I just applied directly through the site and figured if I got an email, then it was meant to be.

So my accout is all set up as well as one for Cassidy and just starting out, I can see why it’s become so polular so fast. Unlike other networking sites like MySpace, you can’t go all out with customization. Some people see that as a drawback but I see it as an absolute plus. No blinkies, no horrid music accosting you when you check out a profile, you don’t have to get up and find something to do while the page loads, no lime green text on lemon yellow blinking backgrounds that cause your eyes to spontaneously combust into little balls of firey pain… Really, I could go on and on and on.

It has other cool features like the ability to import pictures directly from your flickr account using a little app.

anyway, check it out. Everybody’s doing it. Don’t be left out! In an attempt to help your coolness factor rise, I have five invites to hand out. So, if you want one, let me know!

I’m not dead. I’ve been swamped at work. Cassidy has had a lot of homework. Ben and I have been kinda wrapped up in a “project” that some of you already know about and others will soon. Friday possibly. Saturday for sure.

Since I feel kinda bad for slacking on the posting but I don’t really have anything fantastic or even worth reading to say I’m just going to link bomb you instead:

Go visit this site that Tracy found. The Best Buy and Cell Phone Symphony stunts are especially funny.

Then go visit Jason’s flickr. He has the camera that I dream of at night and has uploaded some of his shots. Every one of them is fantastic.

So, May 1st was a busy day. It was the three year mark from the end of “major combat” in Iraq. 140 American Troops died during “major combat”. 2266 have died since. (Source). I’m not going to get into my views on the war right now except to say that I’m proud of our troops, but not of this war. And I look forward to the day that that number stops increasing.

It was also The Day Without Immigrants. I think that it should have been called An Extra Day Off For Illegal Immigrants That Didn’t Seem To Do Much Good.

Basically, May 1st was a day for the rest of the World to point and laugh at America.

And in that spirit, I thought you might all want to laugh along with them. (I had to look all over for a site that still had that video up!)

P.S. - I *heart* Stephen Colbert.