SupahStar Saturday

Supahstar Saturday's blog of the week is Amy's 'Whatever I feel Like'.

Amy's blog showcases her family, her passions, and her zest for life. She's a wonderful lady and her blog is fun to read. Her compasion is endless, read about her helping efforts to get a friend to a funeral, and her trials and tribulations at getting a new washing machine.

She loves comments and reactions to her posts so surf on over to 'Whatever I Feel Like' and say hello today.

Get On The Fast Track With FlipTrack

Slideshows, videos, and music collections are one of the hottest items nowadays for showcasing your talents, interests, or products. If you're interested in a cool new way to add imagery to your websites and/or blogs, check out FlipTrack. Create slide shows that are accompanied by music, or just have the pictures themselves, and you can even add them to the more popular viewing sites, such as Blogger, Xanga, MySpace, and others automatically with a simple click of the mouse.

Check out their demo for an idea of how Flip Track works and then view some of the video collections to see what kinds of things you can do with FlipTrack or the music collections here--just click on a catagory and see all of the wonderful selections available that others have created, then get started on your own.

t a Colleen from over at Geeky Speaky has added a forum to her blog to get those of us interested in paid blogging a place to discuss all the alternatives and what each company does and doesn't do as well as how to make our blogs better. Check it out, it's not affiliated with any particular company so all the posts are completely unbiased toward anyone other than the opinions of the bloggers themselves.

It's the little things.

Having some issues with my fish tank here just lately because I was in a hurry to change the filter the other day really brought to mind how careful you have to be when performing even what seem to be mundane tasks. I didn't rinse out the carbon pack and activate the carbon in the filter now I'm having all kinds of cycling problems with my tank that had been fully cycled. How often to we rush though what seem to be run-of-the-mill, routine, things in our lives without realizing what the impact will be, or maybe not even realizing that a problem was because of that? Sometimes you just have to stop, and pay attention... in fact, all the time.

Save the last dance

You know, it's kind of sad, at least to me, that we can't seperate real racism from a magnificient symbol. The U of I's controversial mascot the Indian Chief is about to dance for the last time at Assembly Hall during the Illinois/Michgan game tonight.

I just don't get it. Perhaps it's very politically incorrect of me. Perhaps it's because I'm not a native American, but I just don't see why something that is meant to be a symbol of power, and strength, and to me anyway is awe inspiring is a bad thing. To me it keeps the personality, and heritage of the American Indian alive in cultural views where it would be faded into historical memories of rare thought other than for those of that actual heritage.

I don't see it as demeaning. I think sometimes people chose to see things as bad, or prejudice just to suit them. Perhaps they think by making a stink about something like this they are bringing their people to the forefront of everyone's minds... perhaps they are, but in what way? I'm not sure I'd want to be remembered like that.

War--What's It Any Good For? Probably Nothing... but

I have a little rant. The current feelings in Congress for not supporting our current troops in Iraq. Oh, they say they'll support the men and women that are there now, and that when the do come home they'll be treated like heros, not like outcasts from decades before in the similar situation in Vietnam... but they don't want to send more troops, etc.

Whether you feel the situation in Iraq was right, or not, this is not the time to waiver, withhold additional support, or financial support to the troops already there. They've been giving their all for a purpose. To stop now is as much as saying it was all for nothing, and your lives, and time were wasted.

War is never a good thing... sometimes it's necessary... sometimes it's not, but once you're in, you're in... you may as well do it right.

Supahstar Anyday

Hey, I know it's late, but I was sick this weekend and really didn't get to do this so I'm doing it now.



It's a holiday, so that's like a Saturday, right?

This week's SUPAHSTAH blog is Marcus Williford's My Thought's. I've never met Marcus in person, but I've spoken to him on PPP's forum, and know that he's a fantstic, and giving individual always ready to help out a fellow postie with a problem. He's a super fantastic guy who deserves to be a Supahstar on any day. Congrats, Marcus.

Internet scare

Had a big scare the other day. The phone company has divided our area code up because there is such huge growth in the area, so now even what used to be a 'local' call has to be dialed as if it were long distance with a 1-815- in front of the number. It scared the dickens out of me because I wasn't expecting it to impact those 815 numbers that I hadn't previously had to do that with. Some we already had to since it covers such a huge space. My Internet dial-up comes from a town 15 miles away. It's the closest real town and there is no service anywhere that has a number any closer that is 'local' suddenly now we have to dial 1-815 and I thought it would change my calling plan from the paypercall to pay per minute which would cost me a fortune in usage since I'm online all day long. I did find out after much scrounging around for the information that the phone company made a concession even though all number are long distance, any number within the 15 mile radius is in our 'extended coverage area'... just a new way to word it is all. Big sigh of relief on my end though.

Another Acceptance

My new article just got accepted at Associated Content today! That is the third one I've submitted to them and had accepted. Their payouts range from 3 to 20 dollars. All of mine have ended up mid-range. One for eight dollars, one for ten dollars, and now this one for $9.43... yeah, I thought that was a little weird. Why not just make it nine, or ten, but every penny counts and I'm happy to have been getting such decent offers from them for my articles. Look for it up there soon. They usually publish them within a day or so of accepting the offer.

Trouble In Paradise

I just saw a headline on Yahoo that read something like telecomuting has it's career drawbacks. I didn't actually read the article just yet as I'm a bit cramped for time at the moment, but I can really imagine how working for a company from home could have some problems. You can't network as easily. At least not face-to-face. Sure you can chat online, but that lacks some of the more personal elements. That plus you can't as easily 'do lunch' even if you telecommute farily locally it's not the same as passing a fellow worker's office and leaning in and asking him/her to join you. You can't walk into your college's office, sit down and go over a problem in person. I'm sure there are a more difficulties, but I'd see that as one of the biggest when it comes to career advancement, and drawbacks for careers of people working from home. That's why I like working for myself from home so much... I network with the head honcho, and lunch with her every day. Heck, I even sleep with her. haha

Saturday's Supahstar

I think just about anyone with kids, or who has had kids in the house, hubbies, jobs, or any and all of the above at one time or another can identify with Loretta in her Thoughts Out Of My Mind blog. Check her out today--she's the
in the new meme Supahstar Saturday. Her blog features all the thoughts of a ferveished mind as it spins through the days of hectic family life while maintaining her sanity by doing all kinds of creative things such as cross-stitching, quilting, and even making the cool new banners for this fantastic new meme.

To know just how far a crazed mind surrounded by the hubbub of an active family will go, see her self-imposed exhile into South Park land with her creative masterpiece depicting herself as one of the wild and raunchy characters of that far out funny. Or find out how she's coping with adjusting to her new daylight hours schedule in her active household. With all she has going on, it's no wonder she's 'out of her mind'. I think we all are at times too, so it's fun to join in with her in the fray.

Glitches In Every System

It's frustrating when a system doesn't work perfectly, but there really isn't any such thing as perfection, or an application that doesn't contain a glitch or two. Technorati says this blog hasn't been updated in over four hundred days. That's obviously not true. Let's see what it says now.

Family Ties

I should be spending more time over at Cass's Midlife Musings. We have so much in common--mid life, children, and just plain insanity, or trying to avoid it. Her post today about remembering her grandparent's house and the things in it really brought back memories for me of my own grandparent's house. The living room covered in plastic. The wonderful antique pictures of family, and one of the things that my grandmother was so good at--keeping the family together. When she passed a few years after my grandfather, things kind of fell apart. Different segments of the family went their individual ways, and were rarely heard from or met up with again. That kind of thing would never have happened were my grandmother still alive. She demanded that family kept in close touch and communication. It seems less important now, but every once in awhile I really miss having that connection. The family unit seems so much smaller, and not just by that one individual.

Firefox vs IE

I have always used Internet Explorer as my browser except for a short time a few years ago when I used the MSN browser. I've always been pretty happy with IE too but I've heard it has a lot of security bugs that just can't be gotten around. Just today I installed Firefox to try. They have a lot of really cool functions, but just like anything when you first start it you have to get it set up the way that makes you comfortable and that can be a real pain. They do have a set up installation thing that allowed me to automatically import all my bookmarked favorites, so that helped a whole lot. They're all out of order though, so now I have to position them where I want them rather than the default 'alphabetically'. It seems like it's a little slower as a browser too. I'll let you know more as I get the feel for it to see if it's the 'next big thing', or not.

A Stab In The Dark

I'm supposed to be cleaning house. Yes I am. I've had my list of things to do all made out since last night. It's still sitting on my desk, and I'm still staring at it like it will get done if I look hard enough.

Boy I wish that were true. But a fellow postie just gave me reason to stall a few seconds more. She asked if you could link an inserted picture in a blog. I thought you should be able to, but I'd never tried it, so here goes.


Well the above is a picture of one of our miniature horses right after a friend of mine's daughter showed her to a very proud second place her first time in youth showmanship. If you'd like to see more of our horses you can 'hopefully' click on the link and see our farm web-page. Just in case the picture link doesn't work, the site is Country Haven Ranch.

Smog Fog

An article on Yahoo this morning also claimed that sevearl nations tests support that the climate changes causing global warming are man-made thanks to things like factories, cars, etc. The only trouble I have with that theory is that great climate shifts have occurred before. LONG before man came on the scene, and definately before there were ever any factories. I simply don't recall seeing any cars speeding through the landscape in any pictures of the time just before the ice age.

Dance Fit

Yahoo had an article this morning on dancing your way to fitness. In my opinion the dancersize tapes and workouts are one of the best ways to get fit. It beats boring workouts, its fun so even while you're working up a sweat, you don't mind it much. It seems they're better as an aerobic excersize to me though rather than as a spot training type of thing for muscles in general. I think as a whole it's my favorite form of exercise second only to swimming.