Year in Review

December 31, 2006 | 2 Comments

In 2005 I did my yearly review in July. This year I’m doing it right. So, in 2006 here’s what happened. Just remember, events don’t make the man.

January - Ed and I were going to take our honeymoon to Costa Rica, but we postponed it. I was still too anxious about this whole marriage thing (psychological hang-ups with being legally tied to another human being given the history of marriage). So we stayed home. Here is my outlook post for 2006.

February - I spent four weeks in New Orleans. The first two were spent at a temporary animal shelter - an abandoned pizza place that Best Friends converted into an animal shelter. Both humans and animals slept in this building. The second two weeks were spent with Ed celebrating Mardi Gras and examining Katrina damage. The journal entries begin here.

March - I ended my twenties. Whenever someone asked, I said I was “29 plus 1.” What am I going to say this year? “A prime number near 30″ “Old enough to know better, young enough not to” “Twenty-Eleven” hmmm… I’ll have to think about it. Read more

Posted by Elaine Vigneault | Filed Under Travel & Adventure
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Don’t Fault on the Default

December 31, 2006 | Leave a Comment

I just bought the computer game “The Sims,” a people simulator. On my first game, I accidentally made all the people exactly the same because the default human is a white, adult male.

“We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal” didn’t mean all humans, and didn’t even mean all men. Black men were not equal to white men and women were not equal to men. Still today, it does not refer to all humans. Many Americans believe non-Americans are lesser beings.

The word “men” will never refer to all humans no matter what your English teacher tells you. I have been taught that in many contexts “he” really means “he or she.” But it doesn’t stick. Every time I read “mankind,” I think of a race full of men. Studies show that most other people do, too. Read more

Posted by Elaine Vigneault | Filed Under College Column, Feminism
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Please forgive the mess…

December 31, 2006 | Leave a Comment

I am experimenting with ads to see which placements work best. There tend to be two types of visitors to my site:

the ones who read one article and never come back and
the ones who read a couple articles per visit and who keep coming back.

My intuition as well as my research tells me that repeat visitors (who come for content) tend to develop ad blindness and ignore the ads. I know I ignore ads. I might think they’re ugly or annoying but I usually just ignore them and move onto what I want, the content. The only times they really bother me are when they are pop-ups or videos. Those will often drive me away to another site. But the other ads, particularly the banner ads, I can usually just ignore. So, I feel safe that my experimentation won’t drive you away.

But if you’re tempted to leave, let me know.

Posted by Elaine Vigneault | Filed Under Blogging
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Blogging is the ultimate therapist

December 30, 2006 | 2 Comments

“I want to make my blog profitable.”

“OK, Elaine, who is your audience? What is your niche?”

“I don’t know. My audience is people who want to read what I write. My niche is me.”

“But who wants to read that? Isn’t that awfully egotistical?” Read more

Posted by Elaine Vigneault | Filed Under Beginning Blogging, Blogging, Work, Business, & Finances
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Thank you, Akismet

December 30, 2006 | Leave a Comment

Going through my spam filter for my blog today and found the fifth comment like this:

“Anonymous | http://google.com | IP: 85.255.113.74

Google is the best search engine”

The IP is a known spammer and is on the blacklist, which is why my spam filter caught it. But why are they spamming for Google? Is Google spamming or is this spammer trying to screw with Google?

To be fair, that’s an extremely small percentage of my spam. I’ve caught 600 spam comments in the last two months and only five were these. But they’re often enough that they stand out as one of my most unusual spam. Weird.

Posted by Elaine Vigneault | Filed Under Blogging
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