LaserBlog.com

“These are a few of my favorite things…”

* M. Who doesn’t have a current website, because he’s… a dork.
* Sasha kitty, who just turned 18.
* M’s fur-pals (kitty and doggie)
* The Pug.
* family, obviously.
* technology, duh.
* My new pet project, a website for locals. (email me if you’d like the link. I set up drupal, a chat room, a message board, and am writing articles as well as just general blog posts.)
* Photography and compulsive camera-collecting (everything from pencams to digial SLRs).
* My teeny tiny laptop that I got for writing in cafes and places other than home.
* My moblog.
* Nala’s blog.
* TWIT
* Flickr, for the community.
* Fotki.com, for well-organized mass storage of photos.
* Spamex.com.
* Anonymizer.
* StuffBak.com.
* The EFF, eff.org.
* vimeo.com, like flickr, but for video. (Want an invite? Email me or comment.)
* Linux Lan Parties & BBQs at our house.
* Playing the iPod in the car, either the way I have it set up, or the way M has it set up.
* Chatting on IM.
* Staying up late.
* Sleeping in.
* ePrompter (checks multiple gmail and webmail accounts)
* Zone Alarm, Spybot S&D, AdAware, AVG Virus Protection (all FREE! and doesn’t bog down the sytem like McAfee and Norton do!)
UPDATE:
* AbeBooks.com, an online network of used books stores around the world. I’ve gotten used books for a dollar there.
* Trillian, lets me chat on Instant Message on AIM, YIM, MSN, and ICQ all at the same time w/ one piece of software.

This blog is basically a new incarnation of my last blog. (More on that here.) The old blog is closed, but is still online as it serves as a diary for myself as much as anything else. You can view that blog, and it’s archives, HERE. The search feature on this blog searches both this blog and the archives of the old blog.

Before the old blog, I had a classic Personal Website since about 1996. [See screenshot here.] I updated it often and put the New Stuff at the top. I included photos, what I’m doing, and “thoughts of the day”. Not quite a blog-layout, but it was a frequently updated website with the newest stuff at the top.

I had my first “personal web page” around 1996. I had a website at home.sprintmail.com for a long time.

Around 1998 I read about blogs and wanted to convert my personal page to a one, but for some reason couldn’t figure out how to do it. I read about some blogging software but didn’t want to pay for software and couldn’t figure out how to make the trail version work. I read about weblogs.com and looked at people’s blogs, but couldn’t figure out how to start one. If blogger.com was around then, I didn’t know about it.

In January ’03 I [turned off the old regular website and] started a blog by hand, and then a month later I started doing it in movable type. That lasted until roughly today.

Today, I am starting over with this blog. I intended for that blog to be private but public. Public so that people on the internet could read it, but private in that no family, friends, clients, etc. would read it.

But people from “real life” were finding it. I was getting careless. I used one too many words that google picked up as keywords, and now am at risk of the wrong person reading that blog.

I like my blog to be pure me, like my private locked diary, but online for all the world to see. I don’t care if you read it, you don’t know me. You are not my mom, you are not my client. Strangers can read my rants, my nasty, ugly rants where I curse and vent… but I don’t want my clients to read that. Strangers can read my raw feelings about, say, an Aunt who has committed suicide, but I don’t want her kids to read that. Strangers can laugh at my ravings about M’s parents, but I don’t want them to read it.

So here I am again. Starting over. And hopefully this time I will be more careful.

I hate to leave the old blog behind. I am not sure if those readers will follow me here or not. I liked the old blog ALOT. I liked the design, the voice, etc. Here is a new design, but hopefully the voice will remain the same. I am the same. If anything I can be more honest and open here.

At some point soon, I will link to the old blog from here, so that you can read my older archives. But first I have to figure out what my new domain name is going to be, etc.

Stay tuned.

I am a web designer and photographer. I’m a wanna-be writer. I own my own business and work at home. I live in the warm south, but secretly yearn to live in a place like Toronto or San Francisco.

I love winter. I hate being hot.

I’m married (although I hate the term “married”, I prefer “taken”), live in a nice new 2-story 4-bedroom home in suburbia, but we have no kids and don’t want them. I love my house but often feel like I don’t fit in here. Most people in this town are retirees, and most people in my particular neighborhood are soccer moms. As much as I love my house with it’s lake view and nice big yard, part of me would like to live in a flat above a coffee shop on Queen Street in Toronto. Hubby is from Toronto, and I really love it there.

I have 2 cats and 2 dogs: a 17.5 year old tabby, a 3? year old deaf Turkish Angora cat, an American Eskimo dog, and a Pug. The tabby and the pug are “mine”, while the Turk and the Eskie belong to M.

I am starting over with a new blog here at mentalbites.com/asecondblog. You can read more about that HERE. Mia is just one of my many nicknames.

Keywords that best describe me would be:
sushi
pugs, pug
sports cars
hiking
technology
gadgets
linux
blogs, blogging, weblog
photography
internet addiction

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