Disqus - Friends of michaelJ

Re: Get a Life::Fighting Blog Obsession

Karoli — Tue, 25 Apr 2006 03:42:41 -0000

I leave all electronics behind for at least an hour a day with one exception: the DSLR camera. Every day, without exception, rain or shine, that hour is all mine, to take photos of what I please, to watch the herons nesting in the tree across our lake, to look for especially pretty flowers blooming and photograph them.

Of course, the next thing I do is upload the best of them to the blog. :)

Confession: I'm DrumsNWhistles and I'm addicted to my blog. Furthermore, I have no desire to cure myself of it.

DnW

Re: Get a Life::Fighting Blog Obsession

Karoli — Tue, 25 Apr 2006 03:42:41 -0000

Of course, the next thing I do is upload the best of them to the blog. :)

Confession: I'm DrumsNWhistles and I'm addicted to my blog. Furthermore, I have no desire to cure myself of it.

DnW

Re: Bad news, my mom is in hospital

Karoli — Tue, 09 May 2006 05:36:34 -0000

Robert,

My prayers go with you and your family. It is so difficult to receive news like this from a distance -- I'm glad you're going to be with her, and will pray that cancer is not an issue in this case.

Having just gone through this with my grandmother, the best advice I can offer is to prepare to be an advocate for her -- question everything, research it as much as you possibly can, and keep your mind open to all of her options.

Take care.

Re: Bawling over bowling

Karoli — Thu, 11 May 2006 05:33:53 -0000

In the last three months of 2005 I posted my share of posts like this to my blog. Maryam, who has never met me, left me such kind and touching comments. They meant the world to me.

In addition to the comfort that blogging is bringing you, your call to people to step up and articulate their last wishes is an incredibly valuable service. I have been in both situations (DNR order and no DNR order), and the pain of having to make the decision on behalf of a loved one is something no one should have to go through. I'm glad you have that small comfort, in the face of overwhelming grief.

Be gentle to yourself, remember to breathe, and give Maryam an extra big hug when she arrives on Friday.

DnW

Re: NSA and Calling Patterns - No One Asked Me

Karoli — Thu, 18 May 2006 16:26:29 -0000

I find it outrageous that the telcos were complicit with the feds. A close relative who spent a lot of time in the government told me about these NSA nets and I didn't believe him at the time. What a fool I was. The thing is, they cast a wide net and then hope to catch something meaningful in it...and it's just plain WRONG.

When the feds pay my outrageous telephone bills maybe then they can look at who I talk to, but until then they need to stay out of the way.

Counting the days till Bush and his buds are gone,

DnW

Re: If I was a cool blogger I’d be doing Lifehacker

Karoli — Mon, 22 May 2006 06:35:43 -0000

I am the most uncool blogger on the planet, then. Subscribed, then unsubscribed to Lifehacker. I am not made for that kind of life micromanagement. Some cool tips, yes, but accepting comments only from "insiders" really turned me off.

Re: More Changes to K2 SVN and TrueBlue

Karoli — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 14:14:06 -0000

Very nice! If I have some time I'll tweak mine too

Re: Hastert and Reynolds: Too late for damage control

Karoli — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 03:51:17 -0000

bonica_babe,

Foley's sexual orientation has been one of the worst-kept secrets in US government. Ordinarily I'd shrug and say "who cares?", but having suffered through far too much unwarranted righteousness with the Monica scandal and now having to tolerate the Bush revisionist party line on Iraq, I am no longer willing to overlook any hypocritical act on the part of the "family values" party.

There's lots and lots more to say about this one, I think.

DnW

Re: Shilling for Cash

Karoli — Tue, 03 Oct 2006 01:13:51 -0000

Why do you people keep getting this wrong? There is NO requirement for nondisclosure. Every one of my posts written with PPP links has a tag and/or disclosure.

If you're gonna criticize at least get it right.

Re: Surfing The Net - Todays Results

Karoli — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 05:54:32 -0000

Good grief. Good GRIEF.

That is so antithetical to the whole idea of putting on the "whole armor of God"...

If all it took was PJs we'd all be kings and queens by now.

Re: Footprints and Bass

Karoli — Wed, 11 Oct 2006 03:09:20 -0000

Ooooh, well done! Drifting in a boat you couldn't start doesn't sound fun though. :(

Re: You Pick the Topic

Karoli — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 16:33:20 -0000

Should Kerry throw himself into the Presidential Election fray?

Would Hillary have a chance of getting elected?

Are all of California's ballot initiatives nothing more than "pay per law"?

Are the A-listers the sole arbiter of ethics in the blogosphere?

Is James Spader the best actor on TV?

Inquiring minds want to know... :)

Re: Playing With Different Themes/Schemes and Other Things

Karoli — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 03:09:47 -0000

This one is interesting....kinda plain, but has some nice Ajaxy features. My connection has been whacko all day, so it's nice to get back on and be able to post a comment!

Re: So, You Want to Fix the World

Karoli — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 03:13:05 -0000

Economics and race seem so intertwined to me. Maybe because the balance on the lower end of the economic scale is so deeply minority-weighted.

While I loathe the behavior you described and would have an angry reaction to it if it happened to me, the intellectual part of me wonders what exactly it is that we need to change in this society to change the attitudes generating that behavior. Behavior which, by the way, is not limited to young black males -- I've seen some white kids from the suburbs with similar 'tudes.

Re: Color Selection Woe's

Karoli — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 05:09:12 -0000

Actually, I don't. This has been one of several struggles I've been having with the church website. There were at least two times last week where I contemplated an email to you to see if you wanted to help with the code and style hacks on it...it's been a challenge to me.

There's a handy little Firefox plugin that grabs page palettes and saves them as Photoshop palettes. You can get it over on the extension page -- it's called 'palette grabber', funnily enough. The cool thing about that is when you see a page with a nice scheme you can grab it and at least have a color palette to try building a style around.

DnW

Re: Two Schemes that I am working on

Karoli — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 21:10:17 -0000

I like Storm better. :)

Re: Playing With Different Themes/Schemes and Other Things

Karoli — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 21:12:38 -0000

I like the result on the Google search -- is this related posts plug-in or something else?

Re: A Photograph for the Pumpkin Season

Karoli — Sun, 22 Oct 2006 18:43:57 -0000

Wow, this is gorgeous! And I really like the new design -- a lot. :)

Re: What would Happen IF?

Karoli — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 06:20:50 -0000

I did that last night and basically it didn't wipe out my wordpress install. What it did do was make it next to impossible to install MU.

If you have wordpress installed in a subdirectory you won't wipe it out, because MU wants to only be installed in the root directory.

I'm still waiting for the subdomain to register in DNS, BTW....

Don't disappear...I need to pick your brain. :)

Re: What would Happen IF?

Karoli — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 04:08:49 -0000

I can set up the subdomains but it takes 24 hours for them to register in DNS. AND...I need to move one domain from the current host to the new one, which should have been much easier than it's proving to be. I'm working on it, though. SIGH.

Re: Google Me This, Google Me That, Bush Uses -The Google-

Karoli — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 04:14:00 -0000

I thought about creating a special Google Search just for him -- "the Google and the Idiot". :)

Re: I am a Grand Auntie Again!

Karoli — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 04:42:20 -0000

Congratulations! Pictures would be wonderful. :)

Re: Mike gets all medieval on PayPerPost

Karoli — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 16:37:30 -0000

Thank you for your measured approach to the topic. I know I was harsh, but Arrington's condemnation of an honest effort to start a conversation around the issue of disclosure and transparency seems to contradict what so many (including him) said just 2 weeks ago during the original round of PPP-hating. This particular post of his seems to send the message that the only good PPP is a dead PPP.

I'd like to think there's some measure of reasonable thought out there on the Internet, and your post tells me there is.

DnW

Re: If You Can’t Tell Whether Something Is An Ad, That’s Deception

Karoli — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 17:54:14 -0000

Can any of you who are so incredibly quick to criticize this please take my challenge? Go to my blog and click on the "reviews" category. All of my reviews are there -- paid and unpaid. Tell me if you see a difference between those which are paid and those which are not paid.

It is only deceptive if: a) I write something or about something I do not believe in; or b) I write something untrue for the sole purpose of being paid.

I am not a reporter. I am a person who maintains a personal blog for the purpose of writing about life, things that interest me, and issues that make me think. I have a small community of people who think what I write is worth reading. I am telling those people about a product or service or topic that interests me and that I think might interest them.

I have a policy which clearly defines my criteria for choosing posts to write about where I will be paid.

I am waiting for someone to explain how I am being deceptive.

You can argue that there are lots of people who aren't like me. That is the whole reason for opening a conversation around this issue, in my opinion. Rather than being like the mob in the "The Music Man", crying out that "Pool" is going to corrupt the town, why not engage in a reasonable dialogue about how bloggers can be word-of-mouth-marketers and NOT deceive their readers?

By the way, I just bought 2 sets of Moo Cards. I bought them after seeing some A-listers' cards -- ones that they got free as part of a Flickr promotion. By the time I got there, the free promo was over. I bought them anyway because I thought they were cool and worked well as a unique tool for my drummer-son to use to get gigs.

It was clear to me by the number of posts that went up about them that part of the promo was to blog about them when they received their freebies but it wasn't always clearly stated on the blog posts about them. Did I feel deceived? No, because I thought they were cool and so did the majority of the folks who blogged about them, even though it could be argued that 'payment' was the receipt of freebies in exchange for some powerful word-of-mouth promos.

Really, if we can wrap ourselves around some ways to identify ourselves as honest people who write the same whether paid or not similar to the Moo bloggers, I think we do everyone a favor, because being critical with no solution is no way to move the ball down the field.

DnW

Re: If You Can’t Tell Whether Something Is An Ad, That’s Deception

Karoli — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 19:15:11 -0000

Mario,

You're incorrect. I see you didn't actually LOOK, but offered a snap judgment instead. Every paid post is disclosed.

DnW