Life has drastically slowed down for us. That might be a good thing, but I’m not entirely sure of that. We’re getting back into a routine, and somehow that doesn’t seem to include unpacking!

There’s the normal level of chaos – chores to be done, errands to be run, school for the boy, work for the Hubby, and catching up on everything for me. There’s been a sprinkling of abnormal – new contacts to be picked up, delivery of our new router (working like a charm, BTW), xmas present delivered from our “new family” in Florida (Emory’s cousin), and catching up with people by phone (yes, that’s slightly abnormal).

≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈

We’ve been watching the new show on NBC, “The Sing-Off”, which is a competition for groups that use only their voices, a cappella style, with some “beat-boxing” and other vocal “instruments”. It’s totally awesome! If you aren’t already watching, check out the link to the show.  I don’t watch “American Idol” because they focus too much on the bad talent, and the judges making fun of people and absolutely crushing their spirit and dreams. They’re brutal on that show! But “The Sing-Off” is completely different! Besides the fact that it is only 4 episodes long, the judges are focusing on the good aspects of the groups, giving criticism in a nice and respectful way, and uplifting the spirits of the groups while genuinely hoping for their continued success. It’s a refreshing show full of people with actual talent that’s inherent and really can’t be taught.

If you’re watching (or just checked out the link), our favorite group for the win is Nota! Their talent is absolutely incredible! If they can’t win it (though I don’t see how), then the Beelzebubs deserve the title. We’ve been a bit disappointed in some of the groups that have been sent home, like Solo and Face, but definitely see a bright future for all of the eliminated groups.

I truly hope that these groups reach the kind of fame and popularity of one of my favorite groups, Naturally 7. Watch this, if you want to be blown away by absolute talent (remember, only voices, NO instruments!):

Or this cover of “In the Air Tonight”:

≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈

The most interesting development of the week was originally going to be the letter that I sent to my mother-in-law. That, however, has taken an unexpected turn. Bill got a call from his mother on Wednesday, informing him that they were changing the plans for the family get-together on the 23^rd. Yes, once again he’s the last to know. Only this time, I think she really pissed him off!

Now, they plan to go out to dinner (most likely 10 minutes west of where we live), then to [Brother]’s house to exchange gifts (15 minutes east of where we live). She tried to sell him on it by saying that it’s only an hour for dinner and an hour for the gift exchange. He started fuming. Bill pointed out that there was all the travel time to take into consideration, as well. At least an hour total travel time, since he would have to drive Matthew and I back home before going to work that night!

Then the icing on the cake. She told him that [Sister]’s husband and son wouldn’t be there, because they had a game that night! (b-i-l and nephew are sports junkies, and the nephew plays on several sports teams, year round, so they are usually tied up with one sporting event or another to the exclusion of all else. It’s really sickening, and very sad, and totally a post for another day.)  Needless to say, Bill lost his everloving mind! He’s going to talk to her over the weekend, most likely in person. He’s finally fed up! I will be staying home, where it’s nice and peaceful.

≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈

And lastly, our morally bankrupt former landlord has decided that we don’t deserve our entire security deposit back from our old apartment, because we didn’t give them enough notice (even though he knew on 11/2, but didn’t get written notice until 11/19). We’re only getting roughly 1/3 of it. And we’re pissed! The wife didn’t want to give us anything back at all! My biggest wish is for Karma to kick them in the ass in a major way. Public humiliation would be nice – something that we can read about in the paper! That’s not too much to ask, is it?

Why I’d rather be punched in the testicles than call customer service – The Oatmeal.

Yeah, this pretty much sums up my exact experience with 99.98% of the customer service people that I’ve had to deal with over the past 2 weeks. Fun stuff!

Yesterday, having had only 4 and a half hours of sleep, I was exhausted by the time Matthew got up for school. Being 12 (almost 13), he’s quite capable of getting himself ready in the morning. I woke him up, stumbled around for a few minutes, then collapsed into bed.

A few minutes later, just as I was about to shed the problems of the day and fall into a deep sleep, he bounds into my bedroom, touches my leg, and softly says, “Mom, I think I tore my contact”. After peeling myself off the ceiling (have you ever been woken up just as you’re falling asleep … then you know the feeling!), I forced one eye open and just looked at him, incredulous.

The look on his face was priceless. After the fiasco the day before, I think he was afraid that The Bitch was going to reach out, pin him against the wall 6 inches off the floor, and strangle him. What he didn’t realize, was that I was too tired to give a damn. I asked him to tell me what he thought happened, then I shooed him out of the room so I could try to re-enter sleep.

About 20 minutes later, he left for the bus, and I still wasn’t asleep. 10 minutes after that, Bill came home from work, and I stopped struggling and just got out of bed. I couldn’t stop thinking about the possible cost to replace the contact, and I had to see for myself just what he may have done to it.

I examined it, realized I had no idea what I was looking at, and decided to stay awake another hour to call the eye doctor’s office. I ate a donut that Bill brought home from work for me, watched a morning show, and discussed politics to keep myself awake. At 8:01a, I was on the phone, explaining what may have happened. I was told to bring the contact and the boy in to the office after school. I then fell into a very deep sleep, waking up only when the boy came bounding into the house after school.

It was confirmed, he tore it – right in the center – by pulling it too hard to open it, when it folded on itself. Luckily, his insurance will pay for 1 replacement pair. They figure that a new contact wearer will damage them at some point, while getting used to the routine. I was relieved. And the boy will be allowed to live.

≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈

This was sent to me in an email. I wish I knew to whom I should credit.

Well, there is good news and bad news about my Christmas decorations this year.

Good news is that I truly out did myself this year with my Christmas decorations. The bad news is that I had to take him down after 2 days. I had more people come screaming up to my house than ever. Great stories. But two things made me take it down. First, the cops advised me that it would cause traffic accidents as they almost wrecked when they drove by. Second, a 55 year old lady grabbed the 75 pound ladder almost killed herself putting it against my house and didn’t realize it was fake until she climbed to the top (she was not happy). By the way, she was one of many people who attempted to do that. My yard couldn’t take it either. I have more than a few tire tracks where people literally drove up my yard.

Kind of feel like I gave in to the  man by taking him down but my neighbor did confirm to near miss accidents on the busy street next to my house. I think I made him too real this time.

So it was fun while it lasted! Merry Christmas!

≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈

Another fun email. Truer words couldn’t be spoken.

If you are 30 or older you will think this is hilarious!!!!
(And those close to 30)

When I was a kid, adults used to bore me to tears with their tedious diatribes about how hard things were. When they were growing up; what with walking Twenty-five miles to school every morning…..

Uphill… Barefoot…

BOTH ways

Yadda, yadda, yadda

And I remember promising myself that when I grew up, there was no way in hell I was going to lay a bunch of crap like that on my kids about how hard I had it and how easy they’ve got it!

But now that… I’m over the ripe old age of thirty, I can’t help but look around and notice the youth of today.

You’ve got it so easy! I mean, compared to my childhood, you live in a damn Utopia!

And I hate to say it, but you kids today, you don’t know how good you’ve got it!

I mean, when I was a kid we didn’t have The Internet. If we wanted to know something, we had to go to the damn library and look it up ourselves, in the card catalogue!!

There was no email!! We had to actually write somebody a letter – with a pen!

Then you had to walk all the way across the street and put it in the mailbox and it would take, like, a week to get there!  Stamps were 10 cents!

Child Protective Services didn’t care if our parents beat us.  As a matter of fact, the parents of all my friends also had permission to kick our ass!  Nowhere was safe!

There were no MP3′ s or Napsters!  If you wanted to steal music, you had to hitchhike to the damn record store and shoplift it yourself!

Or you had to wait around all day to tape it off the radio and the DJ would usually talk over the beginning and @#*% it all up! There were no CD players!  We had tape decks in our car  We’d play our favorite tape and “eject” it when finished and the tape would come undone.  Cause – that’s how we rolled, dig?

We didn’t have fancy crap like Call Waiting!  If you were on the phone and somebody else called they got a busy signal, that’s it!

And we didn’t have fancy Caller ID either!
When the phone rang, you had no idea who it was! It could be your school, your mom, your boss, your bookie, your drug dealer, a collections agent, you just didn’t know!!! You had to pick it up and take your chances, mister!

You had to use a little book called a TV Guide to find out what was on! You were screwed when it came to channel surfing!  You had to get off your ass and walk over to the TV to change the channel!  NO REMOTES!!!

There was no Cartoon Network either! You could only get cartoons on Saturday Morning. Do you hear what I’m saying!?! We had to wait ALL WEEK for cartoons, you spoiled little brats!

And we didn’t have microwaves, if we wanted to heat something up we had to use the stove!  Imagine that!

That’s exactly what I’m talking about!  You kids today have got it too easy.  You’re spoiled.  You guys wouldn’t have lasted five minutes back in 1980 or before!

Regards,
The Over 30 Crowd

In my previous article about promoting blogs using comments I recommended using TrackBack as an alternative to comments. However, I’ve been checking the blogs of some of my commenter’s and realize that many of them seems to be new to blogging (since their blogs have few posts) and after talking with some friends who didn’t know about TrackBack I decided to write this little article about the subject.

TrackBack

TrackBack is a mechanism that lets you notify someone that you have written an article in your blog linking to (or commenting on) some post in their blog. Its like sending an email to the original author but, instead of a real email, you send a TrackBack “ping” using some TrackBack tool if your blogging tool does not support the protocol. The blog you’re pinging to generally will display an excerpt of your post and a link to it.

You need to know the “TrackBack URL” which usually is displayed along every entry and it’s unique for each post. So, if you want to ping some blog just:

1. Look for the TrackBack URL for the specific post you want to comment on, usually displayed at the end of the article.
2. If your blogging tool has support for TrackBack, enter the URL in it when publishing your post. If your blogging tool doesn’t support TrackBack use a third party tool after publishing your post.
3. That’s all! Pretty easy. Remember that you may ping several blogs at the same time.

Here are some free on line tools allowing you to send TrackBack pings:

• Simpletracks
• Trackback wizard
• Haloscan (requires registration). Let’s you receive TrackBack too.

Backlinks, the Blogger.com style
Blogger does not support TrackBack but it has backlinks, which is pretty much similar. Backlinks are just a list of blogs linking to your post produced by Google blog search. So, if you’re linking to a post hosted in blogspot you have nothing to do. When Google indexes your article the link will be automatically added to the original post.

However, the author of the blog you’re linking to must enable backlinks and, while TrackBack is a two-way communication system, backlinks doesn’t allow you to ping a post in someone else’s blog. That’s why many bloggers using Blogger.com service (like me) use a third party TrackBack service along with backlinks.

Useful links
Additional to the links in the text, you may find useful information on these articles:

• What’s a Trackback? Permalink? Post slug? Ping?
• Haloscan Trackback: What? Why? How?

I hope you find this information useful. This post may be the first on a blogging basics series. Or perhaps it may be the last. I’m open to your comments and suggestions.

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# posted by nongeek @ 12:37 PM | Trackback

Joining a Community of Bloggers

In early November, I became an active member of the Blog Engage Community and it has been an amazing journey and an extremely rewarding experience. This image represents a small sampling of the bloggers that I’ve networked with since joining Blog Engage.

I was somewhat timid in my initial approach because I’d heard talk that it is not a good idea to join a lot of blog directories. You know, everyone is afraid of the big, bad, wolf known as Google and what might happen to you if you don’t follow every rule they make to a “T”.  Yet, for every article that talks about not submitting your blog with too many directories, I find another that says directory submissions are the best thing since sliced bread.  So I have to go with my gut, forget all about Google’s rules, and just “do me“.

Building a Social Network at Blog Engage

I looked around the Blog Engage site and right away I noticed something unique. I quickly caught on to the the fact that BE doesn’t look or feel at all like a directory but more like a place to hang out and rub shoulders with some of the finest bloggers on the planet!

Soon, I began to feel increasingly comfortable in my new BE skin and I started to submit, vote, comment, interact, follow, share, laugh, and tweet up a storm with my new found blogging friends. Oh, and you probably know already that I created two how-to videos for newcomers to the BE site.

Here’s a summary of my Blog Engage activity for the month of November:

• Joined on 11/2/09
• Submitted 11 posts (not including this one) 7 are published
• Created 2  screencasts Introduction: The Blog Engage Community
• Read, voted on, and very often left comments for over 125 articles from other bloggers
• Did my first guest interview with Karen from Blazing Minds Latest Blogger Interview with Ileane from Ms. Ileane Speaks (aired on Dec. 3rd)
• Wrote a review of Blog Engage on Shvoong (please rate the review)
• My blog was featured in a post on Freeman Legacy LLC
• Received my first Alexa review from Ms. Freeman
• Wrote my first Alexa review for Freeman Legacy LLC
• My blog was featured in a post by Jimi Jones in The Online Business Blog
• Mentioned in Share the love, who’s talking about Blog Engage
• Listed in Coolest articles on the week form the Blog Engage community
• Listed in Weekly Round Up – BlogEngage, iTunes, Google Wave
• Received comments, tweets, retweets, stumbles, backlinks, trackbacks and pingbacks like never before
• Created a Blog Engage Twitter List http://twitter.com/Ileane/blogengage

There is one post that I submitted to Blog Engage that did not do as well as I expected in gaining votes. Do Twitter Backgrounds Attract New Followers? hasn’t received enough votes to be published yet, but I am still hopeful that it will.

Published Articles for Ms. Ileane Speaks

1. Introduction: The Blog Engage Community [Video]
2. Twitter Meets Buzzom [Video]
3. Searching for the Perfect Tweet
4. Posterous – Life Streaming or Not?
5. Top 5 Blog Topics
6. Tweet Smarter with Retweet Links
7. StumbleUpon Demystified

I want to thank each and everyone that helped make my first month as a Blog Engage member so enjoyable.  Feel free to share your Blog Engage experiences or let me know if you have questions.

Smooches!

こんにちは!
haitsuki です♪ ~

お元気ですか？
あなたが元気だといいですね。

とても寒いですね?
暖かくして寝てくださいね~!

お元気で!

- haitsukiちゃん -

P.S
わたしの日本語はあまり上手くありません。

AYANAVI

A few weeks ago, I was reading blog after blog about Thanksgiving. Some from my Canadian friends who celebrate in October, and some who are just overly excited about the holiday (or just like to prepare early, like Tiffany ).

I promised a blog about my holiday traditions, and promptly procrastinated. I thought about it … alot.  However, thinking about it sorta depressed me. Now, with only 1 day left until the actual holiday, I thought I’d better not put it off anymore.  So, here goes.

When I was growing up, my mother’s family would have these majorly huge feasts on Thanksgiving. They would take place over 2 days or so, depending on who was coming from out of town. If it was the usual, close-to-home people, we’d all just gather early on Thanksgiving morning. But every couple of years, we’d have relatives from 1000 miles away, and they all seemed to come on the same year. I’m sure it was planned that way, but it always seemed like such a huge coincidence as a child.

I had cousins galore to spend time with. My grandfather’s family was always large, and so he had plenty of bedrooms for everyone to sleep in. We’d either go a day early or stay a day late to spend time with those rarely seen relatives.

In the mornings, all the women would converge on the tiny kitchen; everyone bumping into each other. As a child, it seemed as though it was some sort of well choreographed kitchen dance. The kids were told to go outside and play … but don’t get dirty! Us older kids would usually go for a walk, most likely to get away from the younger kids.

When it was time to eat, we all crammed into the dining room and living room. Once you were in, you were stuck until everyone was done. There was no room to move around. In my high school years, my grandfather sold that house, and moved to a smaller house. But I’d swear there were more people that would show up then! Maybe it was just that all of us kids were the size of adults by that time.

There had to be at least 30 people and maybe upwards of 50 or 60 on some years. So many people, that 3 tables were not enough. Tables filled every available space. Some in the kitchen, some in the dining room, some in the living room. And us teenagers would take our plates into the bedrooms or out onto the front porch to eat. We usually had decent weather that day, even if the days preceding and following were rainy or snowy.

The amount and variety of food would boggle the mind. I’m sure I’m forgetting some, but there was turkey, mashed potatoes (white and sweet), stuffing, corn, lima beans, green beans, mixed vegetables, gravy, warm rolls and bread. Then for dessert we had just about every kind of pie imaginable, plus ice-cream. And since the day would go on and on, there was usually a tray of cheeses, deviled eggs, sweet gherkin pickles, olives (black and green),  pretzels, potato chips, raw vegetables, and an assortment of dips. I swear, I’ve never seen so much food in one place!

After dinner (which was actually closer to lunchtime), we’d sit around and chat, or play games or go outside and play. I’m sure there was a tv on with football, but if there was, I don’t think I ever saw it. The feast would last all day, ending only when the last of the people would finally go home, or go to bed. Dishes were an all day chore to be done by everyone at some point.

This tradition ended shortly after high school. I’m not sure I know why, but I think it was because my grandparents were just getting too old to host it anymore. It was too much work.

Which kinda worked out for me, too. I was with my first husband, and his mother liked to host her own Thanksgiving. So every other year, we went to her place or my father’s, alternately. The amount of people that I encountered dropped by at least half.

The amount and variety of food was drastically reduced. Old favorites were gone from my plate. A couple of new favorites replaced them, however it was disproportionate.  At my father’s, I had a creamy mushroom slop. I wish I knew what to call it; it tastes much better than it sounds! If I can get my step-grandmother to give up the recipe, I will try to post it. At my mother-in-law’s, I became addicted to stuffed mushroom caps. Stuffed with crab and/or lobster meat. And no, I never did get her recipe before I was divorced from her son! I know, I am just as disappointed.

Even though the variety of food was sparse at my mother-in-law’s, it was all great! And she did start a new tradition: she’d forget the rolls in the oven until the burning smell would remind us, as we were sitting at the table eating. Every year. Without fail. *snicker*

After our divorce, my tradition changed again. My father started going elsewhere, and my boyfriend fiance common-law husband … oh hell, let’s just call him Michael …  Michael’s huge Italian family had their own way of doing things. Some of the variety of food was added back, and some foods I’d never heard of, let alone tried, were added to the mix. Like “holiday soup”, which years later I found out was “Italian Wedding Soup”. Good stuff, if it’s made properly. It was always a surprise, depending on who made it.

The biggest thing is that all of the holiday luster just seeped out of my life. It took me years to feel like I was accepted by alot of his relatives, and during that time, I started to resent having to spend holidays with them. But I put on my fake smile and cheery attitude for about 6 years. After that, it became a fight to get me to go. Of course, Michael and I were fighting about everything by then. No surprise that we finally split up after our 9th year.

And now, yet another family and another tradition with my current Husband. The feeling of acceptance and family is there in abundance! But the food. Well, let’s just say that things took a major downward turn. My Husband’s family cooks much the same way the Amish do. Alot of that food is foreign to me. And if it’s not foreign, it’s something I just. don’t. like, period. Gone was all the food I’ve ever enjoyed for Thanksgiving.

So, I get turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy. There might be some vegetable, like corn, that I’ll actually eat. I’ll put a small spoonful of stuffing on my plate, just so I don’t seem rude (and then I’ll pick at it and cover it up with something else, just like a child). Oh, and the home-made bread that his grandfather bakes. YUM! There are no condiments on the table, except for butter. Everything is cooked as plain as humanly possible.

There’s stuffing (they call it filling) with oysters. Ew! Stuff called “chow-chow”, which looks as bad as it sounds. Red beet eggs (which always cracks me up, ’cause where I come from, they’re called pickled eggs … and besides, is there any other color of beet besides red?). There might be coleslaw, which I will eat. Usually.  But that’s it! Oh, and I think there’s sweet potatoes, but I don’t eat that anyway, so it’s no big loss.

Dessert is usually ok. Pumpkin and apple pie. Although, last year, the pumpkin pie was stringy, and I had to find a non-rude way of dumping it in the trash without being noticed.   Ice-cream. Yes, that I’ll eat without complaint. It’s all done and over with in 2 hours time, and everyone heads for the door.

So, aside from the usual things that I’m thankful for, like my Son and my Husband, and the people I love, I’m finding it difficult to be thankful for the actual dinner part anymore. I would love nothing more than to have the abundance of food and family that I used to have. But alas, we’ve all moved too far away from each other, and we’ve grown very disconnected from our families.

I am thankful, though, that I have a great bunch of in-laws that have accepted me into their lives and always make me feel welcome. That, and they raised a wonderful guy that I’m proud to call my Husband!

こんにちは! 
 
haitsukiです~
 
お元気ですか?,  わたしは元気です
 
お返事ありがとう ! (^^)
 
You are very busy? (>_<) … me too (T_T)
頑張って！ ! !
 
I’m glad ayana-san saw my website!
But … like I said before … the website is in stop (T ^ T)
 
No matter if you do not know much English ~
Just as you write to me … it’s ok!
My friend Alice knows English very well
So it would be easy to understand and then correct your translation
Well … only if you have time ^^
 
thanks for explaining me what the “ayana friends” (*_*)
 
Now …  what ayana-san said about HP  … when you spoke of “ayana fans”?
 
君の返事を待っています (^^)
 
oh! this is my e-mail cony-en-ciel@hotmail.com … write me anytime ^^
 
so… take care!
 
- haitsuki -

こんにちは!
haitsuki です♪ ~

お元気ですか？
あなたが元気だといいですね。

バカンスを目一杯楽しんでね！ (*_*)
わたしは勉強しています~
わたしは大学の学生です。。。わたしは１９才です (^^)
わたしは大学で情報処理を勉強しています~
そちらで勉強するのに適した日本の大学の奨学金を見つけたいです (*_*)
。。。わたしの夢は日本に行くことです, できればあなたと知り合いたいと思います (^^)
ayanaさん, とても親切で温かみのある人です~ とても尊敬しています。

話を戻して。。。(笑)

楽しい休みを過ごしてください ! !

- haitsukiちゃん -

P.S
わたしの日本語はあまり上手くありません。

AYANAVI

彩名さん, おやすみなさい ~ (^^)
いい夢が見れますように ! !

- haitsuki -

P.S

わたしは試験をパスしただろうと思います ~

でも。。。 勉強することがたくさんあります (T_T)

AYANAVI

Hello! Yuuki-san …

I am trying to make time to write
but I have not read my messages … I’ve been watching your
blog and my messages do not appear (T_T) … so I decided to try
with a trackback (^ ^)

I saw that … you tell ayana-san about “ayana fans” … but not
understand much what was your response (>_<) do you explain me?

Here …

” yuukiさん☆

ご紹介ありがとうございます☆
私も拝見させていただきました☆♪
…けれど色々な問題がありまして、HPに直接私が書き込むことが出来ないんです。。。

とっても嬉しいことなんですが。。
理解していただけると嬉しいっす(T^T) “

You could explain it all? (>_<)
And also … which means 「アヤナフレンド♪」?
Too! I wanted to bring something ~!

In “ayana fans” we had guys who translated from Japanese to Spanish
and then my friend Alice, translated into English … so we managed to have the blog
of ayana in 3 languages! Japanese, Spanish and English ~

But! … the guys can not be translated from Japanese to Spanish (T_T)
So “ayana fans” this detainee ~ (T ^ T)

You’d like … Blog ayana translate into English? … not necessary
you are an expert in English! (>_<) We fixed that … only that
would be easier for us to translate from English to Spanish …

you’d like? (>_<)

The good news is, a Miele repairman is coming at 1:00 today AND Kohler is sending an entire new faucet via FED-EX overnight, so my kitchen should be up and running in a couple days!!!

In the meantime, I CAN do dishes with the “water purifier” faucet – but that runs cold water and doesn’t cut grease very well or disinfect.

I’m lost without my Kohler faucet…

…..which brings to mind ANOTHER one of my favorite things – ANY product made by Kohler! It’s not Kohler’s fault that the faucet has broken twice now – that’s a result of “someone” (not me) pulling on it too hard.  What’s great about Kohler, is that they have lifetime warranties on their products and anytime I’ve ever had a problem, there’s always a helpful, courteous representative on the other line who arranges immediate replacement, at no cost – not even for the FED-EX overnight shipping! I LOVE them.  How many companies can you say that about these days?

Believe me, I have a laundry list of appliance companies, restaurants and PEOPLE I’d love to take to task, now that I have a “voice” in blogville, but I made the decision when I started this blog that “if I didn’t have anything nice to say, not to say it at all”  That may change, as time goes by, but for now, I just want to emphasize the things I DO like – like Kohler!

Someone commented already this morning that it’s too bad I don’t have the RV here so I’d have a second kitchen…

UPDATE: The film shoot was a success – the RV saved the day, because it dipped into the 20s in Palmdale this weekend and the crew used it to huddle in for dear life!

Hubby picked it up and dropped it off last night to have the fridge replaced (nothing to do with the film crew) It’s a huge expense and NOT included in a massive recall the refrigerator company just implemented (ridiculous and unfair) When the time comes I DO decide to start taking people or companies to task on my blog, you’ll surely get more than an earful about this confounded RV!!!

Cheers and have a great day everyone!

こんにちは!

haitsukiです~

彩名さん、元気ですか？
わたしは元気です (^^)

あなたの鼻。。。 何が問題なのですか？ (>_<。)
鼻は美しい! (^^)

もう行かないと~

体に気をつけてね!

- haitsuki -

AYANAVI

While it is said to breed contempt, familiarity more often breeds fondness.

So, it’s one thing to know older professionals met as acquaintances or relatives. And it’s another to see friends your age each add that exam-earned designation to their full names.

Only before you’ve seen them at their student best and worse. Your concerns just ranged from exams and deadlines to tambays and presentations. And you’ve witnessed each other mature in looks and in life.

Here, then, is my congratulations to college mates turned licensed practitioners with this year’s board exams:

• Engr. Santini Dustin Gesmundo Perez, mechanical engineer;
• Engr. Mary Vermi Aizza Almazan Morales, and
• Engr. Edgar Calolo Amatong, chemical engineers.

(Obviously) not from their college, I knew Dustin, Aizza, and Edgar as fellow members and leaders in Every Nation Campus Ministries UP and at Victory Quezon City.

Circa 2005: Aizza's at the center in red. Edgar the guy in white behind her. Dustin, not in shot.

When I met them in my first year, all three were serving at Victory’s Friday youth service, then at the Katipunan center. Then Kuya Dustin played guitars, Ate Aizza served with the ushers, and Kuya Edgar manned the PowerPoint booth.

Kodak moment with my mentor, plus two friends.

I grew closest to Edgar, who became my spiritual mentor and go-to person. He sure had headaches following me up at Kalayaan dorm week after week, even at times when I didn’t feel meeting with him.

I admired his persistence in leading our small group even if those Wednesday sessions sometimes ended up with just us two, or just him and God.

By the time I joined the worship team, Dustin proved the best music ally. We swapped, tried out, and lobbied new songs, experimented new takes on old ones, and assessed how we sounded each week.

This is the earliest available pic of Dustin in the Youth team (he's with the blue guitar). Earlier shots are welcome.

Aside from music, we also shared an interest in outer space–and heavy, intellectual conversation.

Edgar, Aizza and I later on found ourselves working together as committee heads at ENCM.

Our time in the ENCM ExeComm

There I saw Aizza’s commitment to the job, balancing it with her stringent academic load. She wisely delegated duties at the publicity committee but still did, among others, send those text brigades.

She graduated magna cum laude and placed 7th in the Chem Engg board–the second highest from UP.

Dustin had also risen to leadership in the Youth music team. And in those years the three still raised up other younger leaders and followers of Christ.

They modeled Leadership, Integrity, and Faith while showing Excellence in their studies.

True enough, Edgar and Aizza, with Hazel Turingan and Joni Esteban, each got ENCM-UP’s first LIFE Awards this year for those qualities.

Their batch also includes new electronics and communications engineers Luther Caranguian and Jason Enriquez, leaders at the Dormitories Christian Fellowship. They, too, were honored online by buddy Lance Catedral.*

Engr. Perez now works tri-weekly straight shifts at Shell’s natural gas plant in Palawan. Engr. Morales is taking a rest. And Engr. Amatong is back in UP taking masteral studies while sidelining as a tutor.

As much as I wonder at how much time has quickly flown, I also marvel that as these three have been faithful with what they’ve been given in college, so has God been faithful to them.

I can’t wait to see my O’Singko (‘05) batch mates from high school and college gradually join the line of professionals.

———————

*To Lance too, I owe credit for the inspiration behind this post.

こんにちは!

お元気ですか？
わたしは元気です~

そう言ってくれてありがとう(>_<。)
わたしはとても嬉しいです!
もっと努力します (^^)

仕事の調子はどうですか?
全てが君にとって上手く行くことを祈ります。

- haitsuki -

日本語では何と言うのか分かりません。。。英語で話してもよいですか?
My friend Aoi, sends you many greetings.

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Test Dorf Trackback
Noch’n Versuch: Ping + Trackback 12.11.09

Ping
Hat alles nichts gebracht.
Letzter Versuch )

http://www.selent-mosaik.de/wordpress/wp-trackback.php?p=323

Dies läuft sofort von Ut’n Dörp

http://paukstadt.wordpress.com/2009/11/08/test/trackback/

Na, schaun wir mal : Wanderer20
Das und ein verdammter Trackback an falke

お元気ですか？

忙しかったのです(>_<。)
とても難しい試験があります (T_T)
試験のことを考えると緊張します~
もっと努力します!! (^_^)

もう行かないと~

お元気で、それではまた。

-haitsuki-

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There is a lot of buzz around Twitter these days, but if you aren’t looking to find out what your friend had for coffee this morning or what’s happening in the latest celebrity gossip, does Twitter have relevance for business? The answer is yes. But it takes a little digging to understand when and how to use this exploding social phenomenon as a tool to build your business.

Marketing has traditionally relied on push methods. Content was sent via direct mail, television advertisements, e-mail, and more. Regardless of the channel, the strategy was to push information in front of consumers, whether they were looking for the information or not.

MousePaper Calendar Mouse Pad - email johnny.ray@wilsonawards.com

Today, thanks to the Internet, marketing has become far more reliant on pull methods. Whether it’s news, politics, business or entertainment, people can pull the content they want, when they want it, so they are receiving only information of relevance to them when they are looking for it. For marketers, the goal is to get people to pull information on their products and services or, if the person is searching by topic, to make sure that their company’s products and services get in front of the user’s eyes. (Hence the importance of search engine optimization—SEO.)

One of the places Internet users are pulling information from is social networking sites. While many in the business community are still getting their minds around whether or not it is relevant to their business, social networking itself is exploding—and its influence over branding and word-of-mouth is growing.

In part, this growth in influence is being driven by skepticism about traditional media. Instead of relying on television, radio and publications, people are turning to word-of-mouth sources such as Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Digg and Facebook. Consumers may not see these sources as more objective, but they may see them as more “pure” in that they are the “real deal” and less influenced by corporate speak. They also provide information that is more diverse.

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Twitter Basics

How are consumers getting information from these sources? They are looking at comments, blogs, trackbacks, feedback and other forms of user interaction. If you’ve read the reviews of a book on Amazon before buying, looked at the seller ratings on eBay, or clicked through a link on a blog post, you know just how powerful these peer influences can be. One of the most powerful these days is Twitter.

So what is Twitter? At its inception, Twitter started out as a content management system. Over time, it morphed into a mass messaging system of the most global and colossal kind. The premise of Twitter is simply to ask millions of people, “What are you doing?” then allow them to answer in 140 characters or less. The result is a free social messaging utility that allows millions of people to stay connected simultaneously. The power for marketing is nearly unlimited—if you can harness it.

Once you open a Twitter account, you can “follow” people that you choose. Once you log into your Twitter account, updates from everyone you are following are displayed to you in a list (like a giant RSS feed) in real time. You can then scan all of the “tweets,” as they are called, to stay updated with what people are posting and what they feel is important at that time. People can choose to follow you, as well. When they do, your tweets are displayed in their Twitter account, along with all of the tweets of everyone else that person is following.

Tweets can be about anything, but from a marketing perspective, you want to keep it about relevant business issues. You might tweet about the status update on a project, an announcement about a new blog post, or a link to a resource you think your followers might be interested in.

RECTANGLE MAGNETS keep your message in front of your clients. johnny.ray@wilsonawards.com to order

For example, interlinkONE offers multichannel marketing software. As president of interlinkONE, I tweet about marketing information that I think clients, prospects, and others in the industry might find valuable.

You can also do what is called “re-tweeting,” which is the Twitter equivalent of forwarding an e-mail message. “RT” stands for “re-tweet,” and the name after the @ reflects the original source of the information. This is hyperlinked so that people can click through to the original source if they find the information of value.

People can also send you personal messages. Unlike e-mail messages, these messages are posted publicly, like posting a comment on a blog. By posting a comment, this not only gives you an avenue for communicating with the person who has the account, but indirectly with others following them, too. Like posting a comment on a blog, which gives you visibility to everyone who reads that post, commenting on a tweet puts your comment in front of every person following them.

Using Twitter for Marketing

How can you use these capabilities to market yourself? Whether you are tweeting, re-tweeting or commenting on someone else’s tweet, you are creating visibility and marketing yourself and your company. From a marketing standpoint, the goal is to begin to attract followers so that you can post information and position yourself as a thought leader to your followers and, by extension, your followers’ larger social network circles. This leads to greater industry recognition, brand building and hopefully, sales.

Although some Twitter members use the platform to sell, sell, sell, I prefer to stay away from this approach. Positioning yourself in terms of thought leadership can be more powerful—and longer term. This means posting things that are of value to the people that follow you. Your posts may be related to trends in the marketplace, links to valuable e-books or white papers, providing marketing ideas, and so forth. It will also help you discover other sites and communities where you can share your knowledge.

Of course, you can post what’s going on in your company, as well. This might include news updates, events and new product announcements. You can also post fun things. Did someone have a baby? Is your company a-buzz with the NCAA tournament pool? It allows you to show the human side of your business. You don’t want to overdo it, but keep in mind that people do business with people, not with companies, so personalizing your business can have long-term benefits for customer loyalty.

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Let’s look at some specific steps to using Twitter for marketing.

• Lead Prospecting

Find people who are in your target audience and follow them. One way to do this is to search on specific names in the “Search People” box at the top of the page. Another way is to use the search box at the bottom of the page and search on terms that are relevant to your business. The search results will return the names of Twitter members that include these terms in their profiles.

Once you have leads, “follow” them. This allows you to read these members’ profiles, read their posts and do intelligence gathering before you make contact. Even if you do not contact this person directly, they will get a notification from Twitter that you are following them. This allows them to visit your profile to find out about you.

You can also do searches based on geography. For example, you might find all of the people that mentioned the word “print” in their profile and who live in a 15-mile radius of your ZIP code.

• Join Conversations

Just like networking at a business event, you are the most successful with social media when you are actively involved. On Twitter, this includes re-tweeting posts or making replies to other people’s posts.

Replying to another person’s post serves much the same function as posting a reply to a blog post, except that your reply becomes visible to all of the people following that member. Not only does this put your post directly in front of this extended network (giving them an opportunity to re-tweet your post), but your Twitter ID is hot-linked to your reply so they can click through and find out more information about you. To reply, just add the “@” symbol followed by their Twitter name. For example, @JohnFoleyJr, or @PrintingNews. You are the most successful with social media when you are actively involved.

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• Competitive Intelligence

We’ve already talked about using the search functions in Twitter to locate prospects, but you can use them to do competitive reconnaissance, too. Put your competitors’ names (or even your own company’s name) into the search box and seeing what comes up. It’s like having your ear to the wall to see what people are saying.

• Build your network

Twitter is nearly useless unless people are following you, so the first thing you need to do is build your network. Use the advance search tools to find Twitter members who are relevant to you, who you would want to have following you and who might have interest in your product or service.

Twitter also allows you to access the followers of others, such as your clients, your peers and your competitors. If I find the CMO of a company, for example, I check their followers and click on them. They are directors of marketing or other senior executives, I’ll follow them to find out more about them, and hope that they check out my profile and follow me.

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• Engage with the network you have built

In order to get traction on Twitter, you have to use Twitter. You have to get out there, get the conversations going, post information and make yourself visible. You want to be focused in your target audience and post relevant information. If that person isn’t you, it might be someone else at your company to whom you designate the job.

When possible, let others tell your story. Word-of-mouth marketing has exploded. If you have a great company, product or service, people will spread that message for you. That starts by tweeting relevant information. If you become a good conduit for content, people will return the favor (hopefully) by re-tweeting the information. That’s one reason I find content that is relevant to my followers, even if I didn’t write it.

• Be consistent

There are companies that put in hours a day building their brands on social networking sites like Twitter. Some even hire full-time people for this function. Not everyone can do this, but the more time you spend, the more benefit you get. We put in one-half hour a day on Twitter—it is a consistent brand building effort. If you really want to have a strong social networking presence, you have to work it. Be consistent.

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• Track and analyze

Yes, the activity generated by Twitter can be tracked. One way we do this is integrating the conversation into a CRM tool. We follow clients and prospects, and put their Twitter activity directly into our records. In other words, we track their Twitter activity the same way we track anything else, like phone contacts or files we’ve sent. In our system, we capture the current five tweets. Good salesmanship relies on knowing about your prospects. That’s a content management issue, and Twitter can be great content! We also track the hits to our Web site that come through Twitter. When we post an article or retweet, we pass that through a Tiny URL that is tracked in our system. We tie together landing pages that people don’t know they’ve been passed through. It’s a highly effective tracking mechanism. We use the same method for links from other social networks, such as LinkedIn.

Not only can we tell where people are coming from, but we can tell where they are going. We know what they are reading on the site. We can also track back from Twitter activity to see how we are doing from our search engine optimization efforts. For example, we might see that people come from Google search to Twitter to the interlinkONE Web site. This tells us that Twitter is having an impact on our Web traffic.

Benefits of Twitter

There has been a lot of negative buzz about social networking sites as being a waste of time. Far from it. From a marketing perspective, Twitter is highly effective, when used correctly, for doing the following things:

1. Finding prospects;
2. Talking to and educating your customers and prospects;
3. Providing a platform for establishing yourself as a thought leader;
4. Enabling you to establish your brand as a useful resource.

At the same time, do not lose sight on the fact that Twitter or any social media is simply one part of a successful marketing mix. As with any channel, it doesn’t act alone. Traditional marketing media must still be used to reach everyone in your audience.

John Foley is the president and CEO of interlinkONE Inc., a company which produces a software solution that manages marketing needs.

私のメッセージを読んでくれてありがとう!
わたしはとても幸せです(*___*)

お元気ですか？

私はベッドにいます。。。
このところ病気でした (T_T)
わたしはかぜです~ (>_<)

元気でいてください!

- haitsuki -

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お元気ですか？

わたしはかぜです (T_T)
気分が悪いんです~

あっちはとても寒いですか？(>_<)
こちらはここ何日か暑かったですよ。。。。(^^;)

お元気で、ではまた (^o^)/

P.S
あなたにプレゼントを送ります(*__*)

あなたの意見を聞かせてください ! !

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こんにちは。。。お元気ですか？
勉強で忙しかったのです~ (>_<。)

わたしはCMを見ました 。。。
あなたはお人形だ~ (*__*)

あなたにプレゼントを送ります(*__*)

あなたの意見を聞かせてください ! !

素敵な日になるといいですね ~

bye!

- haitsuki -

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