Today after Spanish class I raced over to the salon and got my hair done nice an’ pretty for piture day.  Then I grabbed Bella (my Boston Terrier) and headed off to Walmart for a photo shoot.  Yes, to Walmart.  Yes, I am a hick, in Hicksville, Arizona.  And right next door to Walmart is a cow farm.

I found a tree to park under (there were only two, so I was lucky), and grabbed Bella’s crate.  I stepped inside Walmart and was bombarded by five “Greeters.”

“Only service dogs are allowed  in Walmart.  There’s food in here.”  I looked over my shoulder.  Farmer Ray was leading Bessie in on a rope, mubling to himself about drinking sour milk.

“But I’m going to have my picture taken and I would like my dog to be in the picture too,” I whined.

“It’s not allowed.”

So I took Bella back outside.  Then I went and had so many pictures taken.  I think that everyone I know will be able to have 5 wallet-sized pictures, and a framed picture for each room in their house.

I made the switch from Blogger to Wordpress. I did it. It was quick, relatively easy, and about as painful as a light shower in Seattle.

I had been looking around at hosting plans for a while; trying out themes; reading other bloggers’ cross-over stories. I would go to sign up, and then I’d pull back out.

Tonight I decided that I don’t have any hobby right now. I quit World of Warcrack, I don’t collect stamps anymore, I don’t really buy clothes (I’ve spent a total of $45 on them this year)… It just made sense to me that it might be okay if I spent some money on what I like doing. So I did.

Things about Blogger were just getting under my skin.
1.  This new “Blogger Beta (oh we’re just kidding, we’re not in beta any more but now we’re going to make web design a royal pain in the rear for anyone who likes to code in html)” didn’t work with me. Originally I made the switch, then I switched back to Old Blogger, then I switched to the new Blogger, and then I found out that some bugs were still there but I couldn’t go back to Old Blogger any more. It was frustrating and confusing.

2.  Blogger has served me decently well since 2004. In 2004 I tried lots of different platforms (livejournal, xanga, even geocites to name a few), and found that I like Blogger best. I wasn’t interested in paying for anything. I didn’t know what CSS was. All I knew was that Blogger looked the best and acted the best. But now I do know how to use CSS. And I do know more about MySQL, Apache, etc., and I think that I would like to further my education. The best way to do that is by hands on playing around. You can’t learn html out of a book. Basically, I was feeling Blogger’s limitations.

3. I was constantly aware of the fact that Blogger owned my site and not me. Stupid Blogger logos are plastered everywhere. There’s the infamous navbar uptop. The credits in the footer. The .png on the sidebar. It was like a bad disease.

4. I wanted to take the next step and use a website as more than just a blog. In the future I would like to put my website on a business card. Or perhaps develop a photo page. Or post a resume. Or anything, really. But Blogger just wasn’t giving me that (plus, .blogspot.com looks tacky on a business card).

We’ll see how this Wordpress thing goes, but I’m keeping my eye on the Habari Project.

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Today I made a Myspace layout that looks like the standard Twitter profile. I felt quite accomplished.

To compare:
Myspace.com/alisarae
Twitter.com/alisa

F.A.Q.’s (okay, so they’re just normal Q’s)

Q. How did you integrate the twitter updates into your myspace page?
A. I didn’t. Myspace is anti-javascript, and I don’t like the standard Twitter flash badges, so I decided that I can manually update the status as needed. Too bad it won’t be as up-to-date as my twitter page.

Q. Are those Flickr images I see? I thought you said that mysapce is anti-javascript?
A. You’re right! I did say that! But, lucky for me, someone has made some javascript-free flickr badges. Visit http://flickrbadge.theducky.com/ for more info.

Q. Did you get permission to steal those Twitter images?
A. No… I hope they don’t mind. I linked back to their site, and I’m a big promoter, so…..

Q. Can I have your code?
A. Right now, no. I haven’t decided if I’m going to release it or not. But I probably will. So keep checking back.