Author Archives: LA Blogger Gal

Today Seems to Be the Day for Computer Issues

I woke up this morning, checked my email and found out that there’s an ad running on my website that’s not behaving nicely.  It seems to be slowing things down for folks due to their flash or whatever.  I forwarded it along to the ad agency and I’m sure they’ll handle it.

Not five minutes after waking up this morning my best friend calls.  Seems her website is down and in its place, a GoDaddy place holder.  Luckily the hubs was still home so I send him to investigate.  Turns out when it auto-renewed GoDaddy changed the server locations and had everything pointing to their servers, not our servers. Nice.  Of course it’s now fixed.

So now I sit here and I can’t seem to help but wonder what’s next?  Don’t these sorts of things usually happen in threes or something?  Nah, I won’t worry about that.  I’m all about being positive and I know I’ve got too much going on to worry ’bout something so silly and easily fixable.

If I was going to worry about anything it would be the bookkeeping.  I keep forgetting that even though the personal taxes aren’t due until April, we can’t do our taxes without the business taxes which are due in March.  So basically, that cuts a month off of our my prep time.  And well, I’m a little behind.  I think I have to input from October – December still.  Guess I know what else I’ll be working on this week 😉

And on to a totally unrelated sidenote: Does anyone know someone who knows something about tea?  I’d like to interview them for my site.  Also, does anyone know someone in the eco-friendly bag department (RuMe, Envirosax, etc.).  I’d like to do an interview and giveaway with them as well.

What’s Your Passion?

Man, this week has just blown by.

I know I did stuff: I had a doctor’s appointment that went crazy long, I cleaned the office (well, the floor anyway), I did some basic organization, I packed and today shipped off the first batch of contest prizing (which by the way, there are still quite a few contests still running!).  So yeah, I know I did stuff, but I can’t exactly recall where the week has gone.  Does this ever happen to you?

I will say, my favorite thing I did this week was meet with a friend to talk about getting her dream business started.  I love doing that.  I love hearing the ideas and the excitement and taking it all to the next level.  Getting drawn into that passion; it’s great.

Just through our conversation I could already think up a good niche for her that could get her known as an “expert” in her niche.  Then there were all to products she could create that she could sell passively.  If she decides to go through with everything, I really think it could turn out to be an amazing business for  her.  Talk about passion, the give and take of the brainstorming, it’s what I live for.

So what inspires you?  Where does your passion lie?  Have you done anything with it?  If not, what’s holding you back?

Ultimate Pepsi Super Bowl Party Pack Giveaway

pepsi_super_bowlEnter for Your Chance to Win an Ultimate Pepsi Super Bowl Party Pack

Super Bowl parties are one of the top at-home party events of the year and have become much more than a gathering of football lovers, but a time to dissect the ads, eat party snacks and hang with friends. In fact, many people attending these parties do not necessarily love the teams playing as much as they love the excuse to get together with friends after a very cold month.

So whether you are a diehard NFL fan or just want to party, Pepsi, the sponsor of the NFL Rookie of the Year, would like to offer you the chance to win an Ultimate Super Bowl Party Pack valued at $250 for YOUR own at-home viewing party!

One Grand Prize pack consisting of the following: one (1) football, one (1) beverage pail, one (1) snack helmet, two (2) key chains, two (2) hats, two (2) t-shirts, five (5) Pepsi 24-pack coupons and five (5) Frito Lay coupons. Approximate retail value of Grand Prize is $250.

Here’s the dealleave a comment below either telling me about your favorite NFL team, your favorite Pepsi product or your favorite Frito Lay product and you’ll be entered to win.  It’s that simple.  You do NOT need to be local to participate in this contests (nor do you have to love football when you come down to it).  Feel free to pass this along to your friends.

Good luck!

The fine print: Winners will be chosen randomly through random.org.  Contest ends at noon (PST) Sunday, 1/25/09.  Only one entry per person (if you want another chance to win, feel free to check out the contest over here).

1/25/09: And the winner is…

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What the Hell Happened to My Theme???

Well hell.  Last I looked, my blog had this pretty plain and boring, yet functional theme with some lightbulb or something in the header.  I post my Wordless Wednesday post and blamo!  My theme is gone.  It’s still shows the chosen them is the active theme in my dashboard, but it’s not.

Now I’ll need to figure something out again.  Man, this theme thing is getting OLD.

Saying Buh Bye to LiveJournal

VOX blog
Image by atomicShed via Flickr

Gawker says they’re on their way out with 20 out of 28 US jobs getting cut (they’re now based in Russia).  CNET says it’s was all an exaggeration and only 12 out of those 28 jobs were cut and that operations are still going strong back in Mother Russia.   Either way, I won’t miss it.  Then again, I’m still disappointed over how they handle harassment and stalking…they do absolutely NOTHING about it (even when contacted by lawyers).  So yeah, no hard feelings here.

While I’ll admit that I cut my blogging teeth over on LJ, I’ve been a WordPress gal nearly as long.  So many of my “real life” friends keep their ‘journals‘ over on LJ and it’s frustrating beyond belief for me to keep up with them since I have to go out of my way to read their posts.  I’ve found that for many people that keep a journal over at LJ, they’re pretty much afraid of someone finding them and reading either the inner-most personal details of their goings on, or what they’re saying about their husbands, their family, the in-laws, their bosses or co-workers , so they like to keep their accounts locked and only open to people they know. In this way, it really is more of a journal than a blog.

It should be interesting to see if they’ll stick it out, move on to something else (seems Vox keeps coming up), embrace blogging on other platforms or drop the whole thing all together.  All of this reminds me that I need to drop Brie a note about my original LJ account that I deleted.  She suggested I try going WayBack, but since I too kept a private, friends only journal over there, WayBack won’t be  much help.  Oh well.

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Another ‘meh’ Book

Cover of
Cover of Winkie

And I’m sure I’m never going to hear the end of it since I’m the one that suggested it.  I was poking around a book club website one day looking for books to suggest and stumbled upon “Winkie” by Clifford Chase.  Folks were loving it and likened it to a current, Bush Administration tale.  Thought my political friends would love it.  Me, not so much.

It really was kind of creepy and boring all at the same time.  I mean that was one UGLY bear.  And when he went to the bathroom and later gave birth, yeah, not what I wanted to read about.  I only finished it because I figured that if I suggested the lame book and didn’t finish it, I’d be shunned.  Shunned, I tell ya.

Well, at least it was a short and quick read.  I’m sure I’ll enjoy my next suggestion, Stori Telling, much better 😉

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Still Looking for a New Theme


Originally uploaded by me!

Head, meet Wall.

Funny how I can help clients to find a theme that works for them, but I can’t seem to find a theme that I like. Funny thing, it’s not like I’m asking for a lot (might actually be easier if I was). I just want a header that I can customize with a photo or three; a tw0-column format that doesn’t have a whole bunch of extra space on the sides, squishing all the content in the middle; and the ability to format with bullets and quotes and to post photos within the posts. Really, how difficult is that?

Work with me WordPress, work with me please.

PS – yeah, not a fan of this one, but it’ll do for a bit until I find something better. I loked a couple of the others better, but they didn’t bullet-format. Useless I tell ya!

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Damn! I Missed It!

Christmas double
Image by foreby via Flickr

Well, happy belated blogaversary to me!!  I started this blog two years ago on New Years.  Well, I actually started it a few days into ’07 but I post-dated some stuff to bring me to the 1st. I’ve actually been blogging over on LJ since about 2002 or so (started when I was prepping for a friend’s wedding).

Sadly, when I had all the crap happen last year, I deleted that entire blog/journal.  I had always meant to take all those posts and import them into another WP blog, but I just never got around to it.  Then one day I told myself that I no longer wanted to hold on to the past and just deleted it all full out.

Wish I’d remember to at least save my post from when I met Sir Paul McCartney.  That was such an amazing and surreal moment that I regret not having taken a moment to save it.  Oh well, I’d like to think that I’ll never forget when a Beatle (!!!!) sat down next to me and had a conversation with me about space camp (have no idea how we ever got onto that topic, but it had something to do with that tourist trap, crazy house where they have reverse gravity in the Redwoods somewhere in Northern CA).  Well, that and the fact that he slapped my leg while making a point and also spilled his drink on me while talking.  Ahhh…such fun (and again, quite surreal) memories.

Happy Belated Birthday to ME!!!

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It’s a New Year, It’s a New Day: ’bout Time I Post Something Already

New Day, New Year, New Beginings: Let's Have a...
Image by ktafoya via Flickr

Well happy two days after new year to all of you!  I hope your NYE was all that you’d hoped it would be.  We were pretty mellow and enjoyed a fine prime rib dinner with a friend and then drove around the Rose Bowl Parade route to laugh at those crazies that camp out (while avoiding getting hit by flying marshmellows and tortillas a’la shaving cream.  We were back home in time for some lovely snacks and some champagne before it officially became ’09.  Oh and we were lucky enough to catch some of the floats as they were arriving to settle in for the night (they’re in my Facebook photo album as they were blackberry images).

I’ll admit it, I haven’t been around all too much lately.  I’ve been taking care of some year end business and well, just been enjoying the holiday season without feeling the need to post much.  I’ve been all over Twitter and Facebook though if you don’t yet follow me there. Oh and speaking of Facebook, I did it, I finally found and contacted someone out of my past…someone from elementary school in fact.  It was kind of fun – especially checking out her photo albums.  I just might have to add a few other former classmates.  The odd thing, while I was poking around my old schools’ (yes, I went to two high schools) FB rosters, I realized that while I recognized so many names, I couldn’t necessarily remember a face, a personality or well, the person attached to the name.  Guess I don’t remember all too much about my childhood after all.

I’m wondering, does anyone else take a moment to look back over the past year before it officially ends?  I spent some time last week looking over my business accomplishments.  While I might not have made oodles of bank last year, I still think that I’ve accomplished quite a bit.  I also took a moment to send out a couple personal notes to people that I’ve met throughout the year that have helped me with my business (crap, I just now realized that I forgot one important person…BRB…okay, that’s done *whew*).  I think my favorite year-end task was writing a quick letter to my long distance friends (that for some reason or another I rarely talk to throughout the year) and doing a “what a year it’s been” update.  Lots of fun to linger over the memories and photos – especially since I was able to visit with so many of my long distance friends in ’08.  It’s been a good year with so much to be grateful for..gotta love that!

So now it’s time to look forward and focus on the amazing 2009!  Which of course starts with tasks…*sigh*.  Oh well, I’ll willingly clean up the apartment and especially my office knowing that doing so creates a shift in energy to bring forth new and amazing things.  Can’t say I’m so willing to embrace moving the Christmas boxes back out to the garage (though it will be quite nice to see them GONE!) or to do the piles of laundry that seem to have developed over the days (how does that happen??)  But I think my favorite task to do this week (what’s left of this week) is to sit down and set some intentions for how I want 2009 to play out and set some goals to go along with those intentions.  I’m honestly so excited for the many wonderful things that are going to come along this year.

So what about you, what are some of your year-end and new year rituals? Do you both to create resolutions or do you set up goals and intentions or something else?  Do you clean, organize, store away?  Tell me!!

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