Blogging and Websites

While I was sleeping . . . .

Wow!  Has it really been since May 2010 that I have given this poor, neglected bloggy some love?  Yup, and…guess what?  Google noticed, and Google BOLTED leaving not so much as a “Dear Crystal” letter where Adsense once lived. 

Call me naïve, folks, but one of my original motives for starting this blog/website combo was to earn a few pennies the easy way by getting people to click on my Google and Amazon ads.  Theoretically, I would blog my little heart out, providing useful and witty content for my adoring public, and the clickers would come in droves and click until their clicking fingers were swollen and bruised causing Google to reward me with a generous monthly Adsense stipend.  Ok, ok, so I never really expected to get rich–I’m not greedy–but I had thought I might earn the requisite $100 to get a check cut at least once a year. 

Unfortunately, I can be fickle and inconsistent at times with my hobbies, and one day I fell asleep at the blogging wheel—just could not churn out another post though I tried with half my might—leaving my poor bloggy to fend for itself for a time.  My bloggy, it would appear, survived my absence tolerably, but Google, on the other hand, took it hard.  Evidently, the mighty Google is not as thick-skinned as one might think and, at the first sign of rejection, took its toys and went home.  Or, maybe Adsense has read too many relationship books and is showing me tough love.  After all, I clearly have not done my part in keeping our relationship healthy.

Here I sit, brokenhearted and abandoned, getting a dose of my own medicine, and it hurts!  It really hurts!  Will ya take me back if I clean up my act, Google?  Will ya?

Why so blue?

Well folks, it’s because of snow.  I love snow, but snow that overstays its welcome is irritating and unsightly.  It must go!  And so . . . with the snow when it was pitched went my bloggy theme because it refused to let go no matter how hard I tried to pry its spiny fingers from those last few flakes.  WordPress themes can be fickle and even more so are the plug-ins we add to dress them up or add function.  Sometimes you can outsmart them at their own game, but other times ya just gotta give in, accept defeat, and try something new.  Fortunately for me, HeatMap just recently released Version 2.5.1.  It happens to be blue, and I’m OK with that.

How to make a Windows 7 Theme Pack

Many will call me trivial, but my initial disappointment with Windows 7 occurred when I discovered that it uses Themes rather than a single desktop wallpaper.  I had just discovered lots of fab new wallpaper via Vladstudio and InterfaceLIFT and was excited to give my favorites each a turn at presenting themselves on my desktop but could not do so because I didn’t understand the Theme Pack workings.  I allowed this annoyance to slip past me for approximately a month until a friend introduced me to The Windows Club, a site loaded with insider info on Windows 7, a site that I will now visit frequently to keep myself in the know.  I don’t like being clueless, and I still have much to learn about Windows 7.  In fact, I can’t even answer the Poll Daddy Poll on The Windows Club site because it does not give the option, “Yes, I have upgraded to Windows 7, but I am still kinda clueless.”

Anyways. . . . A quick search of The Windows Club yielded, voilá, a tutorial for creating one’s own Theme Pack.  Excited as I was with this information, I decided it was only fair to share my success here for the benefit of any out there who may be searching for a solution to the Theme Pack mystery.  Because I found the tutorial slightly confusing (duh, maybe it was just me) I’m going to provide the link to the tutorial here as well as my own interpretation of the instructions.  Using one or the other or a combination of the two, I am confident that you also will be able to create your own .themepack files to use and share.  For those of you out there who are scratching your head and wondering what a Theme Pack is I provide the following definition gleaned from The Windows Club.  A Theme Pack consists of four items: 1) Wallpaper with or without slideshows; 2) Window color; 3) Sounds; and 4) A screensaver (or not).  Don’t ask me how it works, ‘cause I’ve no clue!

How to create a Windows 7 Theme Pack: (my overly simplified version for those who need it)

1. Create a folder in the Pictures Library.  Give it the name that you would like to call your Theme Pack.
2. Add the wallpaper(s) that you would like to be a part of your Theme Pack to the new folder.
3. Right click on the Desktop and choose Personalize:  Desktop > Personalize
4. First, apply the default Windows 7 Theme.  Then select (click on) Desktop Background (located bottom left).
5. At top right of new screen, choose Browse to select the folder which includes your desired wallpapers (make sure all are selected or checked).
6. In the same screen choose from bottom the Picture Position, Timing to Change the pictures, and whether or not you want them to shuffle.  Now choose Save Changes.
7. Next select and edit one at a time the other choices at the bottom of the screen:  Window Color, Sounds, and Screen Saver. (If so desired.)
8. When you are done, click on Save Theme, give the theme a name (easiest if you name it the same as the folder), and voilá, you have your own Theme Pack.
9. If you want to share your Theme Pack with a friend, highlight the theme (left click on it) and then right click on it and choose Save Theme for Sharing. Your friend can easily install this Theme Pack by just double clicking on it.

And that’s it folks.  Pretty easy, huh!  If you wish to follow the directions from The Windows Club, click here.

Free Desktop and Mobile Phone Wallpaper

And so, as my Blog Catalog rating sinks lower and lower, I have to examine myself and my bloggy and ask what I ever did to Blog Catalog.  I’m not a creative genius and my writing style certainly does not rival Stephen King or C. S. Lewis, but for crying out loud, I try to present fun, witty, informative posts in a relatively intelligent manner.  My posts are not advertisements, but rather collections of information about free stuff that I believe my readers might find interesting or reviews of products that have either impressed or depressed me so that others might make more informed choices.  Maybe Blog Catalog thinks my bloggy is too commercial, assumes I am receiving payment for my mixture of encouraging and disparaging commentary.  Let me assure B.C. that if I were receiving payment for any of my ranting and rambling, I would not give a crapola about Blog Catalog’s opinion but would be rolling around in my windfall. 

Ah, but I digress.  My purpose here today is to lead my readers to a couple of really cool sites for the procurement of FREE Wallpaper and Backgrounds, not of the paper kind of course, but the kind we use to dress up our computer desktops, our mobile phones, our blogs and our web pages.  Check ‘em out:

1. Vladstudio – One of my favorite sites to visit and spend time, Vladstudio

   features the artistic creations of graphic artist, Vlad Gerasimov, and offers a wide selection of FREE wallpaper designs in a variety of specialized sizes, including for mobile phones and multiple monitors.  Currently (February 2010) Vlad is featuring his Valentine creations, awww, and being of a romantic mood lately, I have added several of them to my collection.  As if the free wallpapers aren’t enough, Vladstudio also offers Wallpaper Clocks (which work with Chameleon Clock from Softshape, a nifty but pricey little clock program that replaces the Windows tray clock), Online Jigsaw Puzzles as well as Puzzles for the iPhone (you can get 12 for free), adorable free E-Cards (any wallpaper can be sent as an e-card and some even have animation), Free Adobe Photoshop Tutorials, Themes for Blogs (for registered users), and much more.  If you’ve got a minute or an hour or two, visit Vladstudio.  It will be time well spent. 

2. InterfaceLIFT – InterfaceLIFT boasts 2,060 FREE high-resolution widescreen wallpapers by multiple artists–beautiful photographs and artistic interpretations—in a variety of resolutions, including ones for mobile phones, dual monitors, HDTV and for the iPad.  InterfaceLIFT also offers a collection, 1,445 to be exact, of cute FREE desktop icons for your downloading pleasure.  The ads can get a bit overwhelming on this site, but if you are willing to dodge them, it’s worth the effort.

From Vladstudio

Today I was un-friended

Call me ignorant, but I don’t even know how to un-friend somebody in Facebook.  I have never searched for this option because I have never felt the need.  I’m not sure what would cause me to feel the need, but so far nothing has.  Nonetheless, a more Facebook savvy relative of mine knows how to un-friend and she un-friended me today. (Yes, I know that “friended” isn’t a word.)  Apparently and probably (even likely), I got a little steamed up and overstepped my welcome on her page with a full paragraph retort on a political issue she posted and she felt that I was disrespectful to her personally.  Guess what?  I’ve decided she was right.  I meant what I said, no qualms there, but I certainly could have stated my opinion in a softer fashion without attacking her personally on her own page.  I hope you will forgive me, C.  On the other hand, I hope you will respect and understand that I love my country and that I take America bashing very seriously. 

Waving the white flag over here.  Any takers?

Free Windows Live Messenger Emoticons: The French do it best

This week, I’m on vacation, spending time resting and relaxing and whiling the time away with a few silly pursuits.  One of these silly, amusing pursuits is seeking out emoticons for Windows Live Messenger (WLM), my instant messaging client of choice.  Call me childish or overly emotive, but with the exception of the great functionality and features of WLM, the wide variety of available emoticons is my favorite part.  If you are gonna communicate you might as well be creative and have fun at it right?  

Ready or not, here they come.  My choices* of best websites that offer Windows Live Messenger emoticons, display pictures, and backgrounds, from first to last in the order of my preference:

 Drum roll please . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1. The French do WLM emoticons best.  Visit this French MSN site http://www.ilovemessenger.fr/toppacks.aspx  to see and download my favorite of favorites.  You’ll notice a bit of a language challenge if you don’t speak French, but if you’ve downloaded much from the Internet, you’ll be able to muddle your way through the process.  I especially like the Emoticones 3D and the Emoticones Love 3D, but there are at least 16 cute packs to choose from: aliens, animals, baby animals, super heroes, etc.   No signup or sign in required.
2. Another foreign language site (Dutch?) with fun Christmas Emoticons, background and display picture:  http://www.emoticons-livemessenger.com/pages/msnnlkerst/ No signup or sign in required.
3. Kiwee – Windows Live Messenger Emoticons.  You can get to Kiwee through my link or directly from WLM by choosing “more”.  Kiwee’s emoticons, winks, display pictures, and backgrounds download directly into WLM ready to use, and they have material to celebrate just about every holiday, event and emotion you can think of.  This site does require registration and sign in for downloads but I have yet to receive any spam as a result of my registration and you can choose your preferences.
4. MSN Ifadeleri:  No signup or sign in required.  Oodles of adorable emoticons.  The only drawback to the emoticons on this site is that, since they are able to be used for multiple applications, you must save each one individually to your computer and then use WLM’s “create emoticon” feature (Tools> Emoticons> Create) rather than download directly into WLM.
5. Blog Catalog MSN Emoticons:  A wide selection of regular, 3D, and animated emoticons in all shapes and sizes.  No signup or sign in required but these also must be saved and created as emoticons individually.  Blog Catalog site provides instructions when you click on the emoticon you wish to have.
6. Windows Live Freebies:  Emoticons, winks, backgrounds and music for WLM.  Some cute, some not so cute (in my opinion). 

There are, of course, many sites on the Internet that offer emoticons.  Just make sure you have firewall and anti-virus programs installed and that you check out the websites and the download content carefully.  I tend to stay away from sites that bring up lots of popup windows and try to get you to install various toolbars and/or change your home page.  Have fun!

*with credit given to my pod mate who helped me locate these sites

Yoo-hoo, Mr. Comcast man, where are you?

Several weeks ago, hmmm…actually it’s been just a few days short of a month, I wrote a blog post entitled Comcastic not so fantastic detailing my recent frustrating experience with Comcast Internet service.  The very next morning – Wow, that was fast! — I received a polite and apologetic comment from a Mark Casem at Comcast. 

Crystal,

I am sorry that we lost you as one of our one of our customers. I will definitely share your experience with our regional contacts so that we can look into problems you have experienced. I know it is all too late now, but I would really appreciate it if you can provide the phone number that was associated with your former account. This information will help us get a better understanding on your experience so that we can prevent the problems from recurring. We certainly don’t want other customers to experience the same.

If there is anything that I can do to come back as a customer, please let me know. Again, I sincerely apologize for the experience.

Regards,

Mark Casem
Comcast Customer Connect
National Customer Operations
We_Can_Help@cable.comcast.com

It’s no secret that Comcast and other large companies pay people good money just to sit and search the Internet and the news to find out the latest on the companies’ public images and to spy on what their employees are blogging about or what they might be doing on FaceBook and MySpace and such, but I never expected anyone, including Comcast, to notice little old me and my bloggy.  I even got a “Can I help?” response regarding my Comcastic ordeal from the Comcast advocate on Twitter, Mr. ComcastSteve.

Call me crazy, but, being a fair person who forgives and forgets easily, I was taken in by the compassion and good will which was extended in my direction.  I truly began to reconsider my own actions and attitudes and began to feel guilty for publishing the Comcast bashing post.  (Read my reply to Mark’s comment after the post.)  I promised to e-mail the phone# associated with my account along with the details so that the problem could be researched, and so I did, within just a few days of the post.  I confess that my e-mail had both generous and selfish intentions, *blush*:

1. Even though I had quit Comcast and become a member of the Qwest family, I wanted to help Comcast resolve the problem with Internet at my address so that future residents of this apartment (I will be moving within a few months) will be able to have Comcast Internet without disturbance.  I was even willing to allow them to enter my apartment again, if necessary.
2. I hoped to regain some of my hard-earned greenbacks.  My account never received all of the credits I was promised leaving me with an ending bill of $18 rather than the $50+ credit that was promised and due to me.

The following morning, I received this concise response from a Vinisha Chugani at Comcast:

Thanks for contacting us!  I am reviewing this now along with Mark.  We will give you a call.

Thanks,

Vinisha

Fast, brief and to the point!  I loved it, a taste of hope and the expectation of satisfaction, but it was short-lived.  A week went by and then another week and another week and now it’s been almost a month.  Vinisha, Mark, Steve, you handed me hope and then dumped rejection in my lap.  Yoo-hoo, Mr. Comcast man, where are you?

Did curiosity really kill the cat?

Every once in awhile, prior to hitting the “delete all” button on my spam, those evil comments filled with mostly Viagra ads that the nifty Akismet plugin vigilantly protects me from, I scroll through it searching for legitimate comments that might have somehow gotten pinched in the roundup.  Today was one of those days.  I have been ill in one way or another for the past several weeks, topping the mix with a nasty case of the flu that today finally seems to be subsiding, and have not had the energy or the desire to post.  Needless to say, visitors and comments have been less than few and stats we won’t discuss.

And so this afternoon, out of loneliness and desperation, I plucked a single comment out of the trash bin (one that appeared to be legitimate).  Not only that, but I e-mailed a response to the question of whether or not the commenter might tear a quote from my bloggy and return a link.  Will this cat’s curiosity and kindness net her a bunch more spam as a lesson to be learned or will she be glad she took a few moments out of her afternoon to challenge Akismet?  I’ll let you know.

Has anyone else ever gone dumpster diving for comments?

I think I’m in love with the SiteWizard

Okay, okay, it’s probably more of a lust for his knowledge than a love for his person, nonetheless, I have very strong feelings for the man (I think it’s just one man, the one listed in the copyright notice at the bottom of the pages.  I dunno, the contact button says contact “us”.  Hmmmm.) and his website(s)–TheSiteWizard.com, TheFreeCountry.com, and HowtoHaven.com. I found his sites several years ago while searching for help with creating my previous (now defunct) very rough attempt at a website, and have never been able to let go even during my darkest days when I had no website.  I knew I would someday need him again, and he would be there for me.

And so, Mr. SiteWizard, I would like to thank you for the hours, months and years you have invested into building your websites so that you could impart your wealth of knowledge to me (I’m sure it was written just for me.) and I could in turn build a website of my own.  I have followed your instructions carefully and unquestioningly  (Yes, yes, I read all the disclaimers on your site) and you have never let me down.  I’m only sorry to admit that I let you down–I was not savvy enough to use the various free PHP or Perl search engine scripts you recommended in order to build a search engine of my own on my site.  I tried, but I was not equal to the challenge. Still, although crystal-miller.net is not nearly complete and will probably be a work in progress for years, I think you would be proud of me.

I cannot begin to list here everything Mr. SiteWizard and his websites have taught me (I’ll go into that a bit more on my website when I get the time).  Let me just say that I would not even have a domain name or a web host were it not for his tutorials.  He has walked me step by step through the entire  process, gotten me where I am today, from A-Z, and I am most grateful.  And, best of all, he did it for FREE.

One thing to note:  Mr. SiteWizard provides all of his insight, information, tutorials, scripts, etc. for free, but he does accept donations and his stuff is definitely worth it.  I, for one, am going to start feeling guilty if I don’t donate soon as much as I have benefitted and continue to benefit from all three sites.

Get A Life

You know you don’t have a life when you find yourself spending your vacation sitting in front of the computer plugging away relentlessly at creating a website and listening for your mother to sign in and out of Windows Live Messenger so you know whether or not her network connection is working or failing.  Three days into my vacation and that is ALL I have done.  No, I take that back, I have visited my parents’ home for dinner twice and worked on their network connection only to come home and find Mom’s computer is still signing in and out and in and out.  I don’t know if I am more concerned about my mother’s Internet connection or about my irritation at having to listen to her sign in and out of WLM every five minutes.  Also, I have stopped for a few brief moments here and there to eat or get a cup of coffee and have slept some, more day than night.

One exciting, ugh, I mean disgusting thing happened to me today.  A close friend always teases me about roots growing from my tush to the computer chair because I sit on it too much for too long.  So, earlier today, laughing to myself as I felt the roots sprouting from my rear I decided to put out a tweet.  Yes, I guess another of my vacation activities has been tweeting on occasion.  I tweeted, “My tush truly has grown roots.  Hee hee,” never expecting that some twisted soul with a user name that includes the word “tush” would, out of the gazillions of people on Twitter, run across my tweet and send back an “invitation.”  Ewwwwwwwwwwe!  So, if you are twisted on Twitter, here is my announcement that Crysta79 is NOT interested.

And speaking of close friends, I prefer that mine always tell the truth even if it stings a bit, and the above mentioned friend recently put forth more than a hint that crystal.miller.net, my website, my baby, my pet project, my work in progress might be a bit, um, well….   I think he said something to the effect that it looks like a small child created it, .  No, I do him an injustice.  He did not put it that way.  His opinion was that it does not look polished and professional, that maybe I should try a ready-made template like I did with my blog, and he is right.  The problem with his rightness, however, is that it landed on the ears of a stubborn and determined woman with an I’ll-do-it-myself-or-die-trying mindset.  I hope that someday the site looks more polished than it does now–I’ll learn more tricks as I go along–but it will never look sleek and professional because it is being created by an amateur, a crazy lady who stayed up late one night and decided to buy a web domain.  And guess what?  She’s having fun!