I think I have found a decent solution to my problems with eye strain, and it doesn’t involve contact lenses or glasses. I changed my monitor settings, and set the brightness way down. It has really helped a lot with the eye fatigue and focusing, and I got a bonus out of it: fewer headaches! All in all, it’s working well for me, although I do have to turn it back up occasionally when I am working on photos.

Technorati Tags: eye strain, monitor settings

I finished the work on this site’s categories yesterday. I’m glad it’s done, and I can now do what I enjoy: writing. Overall I am pleased with what I have accomplished.

SO, I didn’t choose between tasks yesterday, but tried to do them all. And was pretty successful at it. All the posts over here are categorized, with the exception of 3 that I labeled “move it”. Those belong over here. That’s fine, too, because there are a few posts here that belong there, too, and I’ll be moving those as well.

One thing of very special interest. I found my old schedule over there, the one I used before my life felt quite so crazy. I actually had an email that I used to open, and delete items as I had accomplished them. It was so incredibly helpful, because it helped me stay focused. I thought I had lost it when we lost our hard-drive in the great crash of 06, but apparently not. I don’t even remember blogging that, LOL, but I will be looking it over and tweaking it to accommodate my additional tasks.

So what are my plans over here? I had someone evaluate my blogs for me, and I found her observations incredibly helpful. One of the things she said was that this blog was very similar to CassKnits! I talked a lot about my kids etc, on here. Well, if you look over in the sidebar where I keep my blog manifesto, you will see that this blog is supposed to be about ME. My thoughts, my feelings, my life beyond being a mother. While that is a lot of who I am, there is more to me than that. Accordingly, I’ll be moving those posts that focus on the children instead of on me, my thoughts, me, my emotions, me and my feelings.

I am attenuating. That’s today’s new word. I looked it up, and it doesn’t mean to attend, as I thought. Attenuate means to make slim. (The drug tenuate is based on this word.) I am doing that over at CassKnits: trimming the pile of posts I need to re-categorize. As I make a new post on any blog, I run over there and re-cat 10 old ones. Slow and steady will have to win that race, because I will go insane if I try to do it all at once. Considering that I started this project with over 1600 posts, I’m satisfied with the progress I’ve made. And in five minutes or less, there will be just 434.

Technorati Tags: attenuating, new word

PayPerPost is going to release some big news in the near future. I have a pretty good idea what it is, since I stumbled across the website by accident. I’m not going to spill the beans though. I will answer the question they asked: how do you think the world will react? Frankly, I think most of the world will ignore it, and the same bloggers who’ve been dissing PPP since it’s inception will have a field day with this. Maybe I’m wrong. I hope so.

Here are a few announcements I wish they’d make.
1) Yes, you know your own blogs better than we do, since you have been the ones writing them. We apologize for our high-handedness in trying to tell our best bloggers what they actually talk about on their blogs.

2)We’re sorry we rolled out the whole segmentation thing without explaining it adequately to either the Posties or the advertisers. We made an error, and we have compiled a fact sheet explaining categories and tack scores and bans, and this fact sheet will be sent to every advertiser and blogger via email.

3)We’re sorry that some of our Posties have been unfairly penalized because we didn’t bother to explain what a ban meant to a blogger when we encouraged advertisers to use it. We will go back to the advertisers and verify that they meant to ban *every blog* a Postie has, and not just the one the opp appears on. Additionally, we will remove bans that advertisers have placed just to keep a blogger from taking their opps, when the content and writing are fine. We’ll encourage them to use phrases such as “please do not take this opp if you have blogged for us in the past”.

4)Regarding the bans, we apologize for telling you to improve your blogs, and then not giving you feedback by refusing to reveal the reasons advertisers may be displeased with your work. In the future, you will receive email notification of any ban, and while bans will stand, we will remove the negative impact from your tack scores of those bans that are not due to poor work quality.

Perhaps if PPP makes a couple of those announcements, I will be in love with them again. I’m just not right now. I’ve tried to keep my recent feelings of discontent off my blogs, because I still believe that PPP can turn this ship around and get it headed back in the right direction. Acknowledging that you have left your best writers confused and angry would be a great place to start. If you don’t begin to address these issues, then soon you will have left only those bloggers you were attempting to get rid of with segmentation.

Technorati Tags: PayPerPost, blogs

I’ve been thinking for a few days about upgrading to a faster computer. This one made me happy when I got it, but I’m using the internet more now, and since it’s an income stream for me, I thought an upgrade might be in order. Yesterday, for instance, I made 15 blog posts. That’s a lot of time spent here at the desk, as most of them were fairly lengthy. I was thinking a lap-top might be a wise choice, as it would give me freedom to be where I wanted to be and still get my work done, especially if we could swing wireless internet.

Well, there are a couple of snags in my plan. Dh tells me that wireless is really slow compared to our current connection, so that would be a really bad thing. The idea of a laptop still appeals to me, though, so we’ll see how that goes. I don’t know if I could even blog without an on connection, because I like to/need to link to what I am talking about, and frequently need to do research as I am typing even the most personal of posts.

Here’s the other one: I don’t want VISTA. Everything I’ve heard about it begins with “It stinks” and ends with “It blows”. In the middle, it’s “security issues”. So, I’ve been leaning toward a mac. We had one several years ago, and I really liked it. However, when I asked DH about getting that instead of a windows based system, he told me they were higher in cost.

I don’t want to take out secured loans for a new computer or any other thing. I just want a faster system for me, and to let the girls use this one for schoolwork. I’m just not convinced I can get what I need at a price I am willing to afford.

Technorati Tags: computer, wireless internet, VISTA, mac