Apr. 3: Stuff on Stuff Jen Says

A few weeks ago I published the re-design of my blog and have tweaked it here and there in several ways since. I’ll probably continue to tweak as I find new or fun or pornographic or interesting elements. Bear with me.

You should read this

There’s one thing I hope you’re watching: the “you should read this” section in the sidebar. These are what I consider must-read links to other blogs/sites. When good posts show up in my Google Reader I click “share,” which makes them show up in that list. My six most recently recommended links are always shown, and if you click “read more” you can see my recommendations from the past. Just because they’re old doesn’t mean they’re any less awesome.

RSS feeds tutorial (kinda)

A little further down are two buttons to subscribe to my RSS feed—one for my blog and one for the comments you guys make. I know some of you use feed readers but if you don’t, here are the basics of why you should.

• If you visit several different sites throughout the day to check for updates, a feed reader will save you tons of time. By subscribing to a feed, you’ll be alerted to all those sites’ updates in one place. This is especially handy and time-saving for subscribing to a blog’s comments feed (IMO). Once you’ve set up all your favorite sites in your reader, you only have to go there—one place!—to see those sites’ updates.
• I didn’t do a lot of research before settling on Google Reader as my feed reader of choice. Anyone out there who can recommend another, please do! I’m perfectly happy with Google Reader; it’s not fancy but does what it’s supposed to do. Most web browsers also offer some type of feed subscription; I didn’t think IE’s was that great but haven’t tried Firefox or any of the others.
• I use My Yahoo! as my browser home page, and it allows me to add RSS feeds to my page. While experimenting in the very beginning, I felt these feeds didn’t always update on My Yahoo! as often as I’d like. Other customizable pages like that may do a better job.
• So, how does a person subscribe to a feed? There are several different ways. The easiest is to click a site’s RSS feed icon; it usually looks like this and will take you to a page that has all the same content of the site, but without a lot of the fancy design elements. This is the feed page. The URL of that page is the feed address, and it can easily be copied and pasted into your feed reader subscription box.
• If a site you want to subscribe to doesn’t have an RSS feed icon, it’s possible that it has no RSS feed. My blog software created a feed for my blog since the beginning, but to get the icons on my blog I added them as a widget in Blogger layout. If you use Word Press or Live Journal or one of the others, I don’t know how it’s done but I assume it’s pretty much the same.
• The RSS feeds will contain links to the sites so you can easily click to view the content in its original context. 

Reading list

Near the bottom of my sidebar is my Library Thing list. I think Library Thing is a great site because it lets me read (and write) book reviews, rate books, get recommendations from other users with similar libraries and interests, and even request advance copies of new books. Of course, being able to put that little widget on my blog is the whole reason I started using it but I’ve gotten a bit hooked. I’m always looking for book recommendations (hint hint).

judge me, I dare you

I added a ratings box at the bottom of each post and it’s for exactly what you think it is: you can now give each of my posts a rating from 1-5 stars. One star is for “I hated this so much I want to punch someone (but not Jen)” and five stars are for “Jen’s my daughter so everything she writes is gold.” This is just for silly fun, but remember that if you give me a bunch of low ratings, your IP address will be listed in my suicide note under “People Who Have Wronged Me.” I will also cry and if you think you can live with that, well, you obviously haven’t been married to me. Or maybe you’re my grandma. (She hates my guts.)

Share with others

This button makes it easy for you to share individual posts with other people via email or on Facebook, Digg, or a number of other online communities. C’mon, you know you want to.

Bloggy friends

I’ll be adding my blog roll back in eventually. I’m looking for a better way to display it, and when I find that way, you’ll see them on here again. You have them all bookmarked anyway, don’t you?

I think that’s everything I’ve been meaning to tell y’all. Have a fun, safe, pastrami-filled weekend! Did I mention pastrami’s my new favorite flesh preparation besides bacon? It is.

Mar. 20: Plinky

Have you registered at Plinky yet?

Plinky’s a newish web site that reminds me a little of twitter and a little of Facebook and a little of a regular ol’ blog. Here’s how they describe their purpose:

Plinky makes it easy for you to create inspired content. Every day we provide a prompt (i.e. a question or challenge) and you answer. We make it simple to add rich media and share your answers on Facebook, Twitter and blogs.

As a blogger, I see Plinky as a valuable resource for blog material. However, if you’re not a blogger or simply never run out of blog material, Plinky has some integration with Facebook, Tumblr, and the most popular blogging software, enabling you to easily share your answers to Plinky prompts.

You can be like me: sign up the second you hear about it and then never use it.

Or you can be like most Plinky users: use it.

I get an e-mail every Friday that lists the prompts for the previous week, which is my once-weekly reminder that Plinky exists. I need to check in more often. This morning as I scanned the message I found it interesting that Wednesday’s prompt was “recommend a book to someone who needs a good laugh,” which is what one of my posts yesterday was about. Well, it sorta was. I wasn’t so much recommending the David Sedaris book as I was quoting from it.

Some other recent Plinky prompts, just to give you an idea:

• Hybrid Prius or Escalade with gold rims?
• What’s the worst way you’ve ever dumped or been dumped by someone?
• What city would you retire to if money were no object?
• Congratulations! You’re going to be featured in the next issue of Sports Illustrated. How does your bio read?
• Who would you rather be seated next to on a daylong bus trip: an irritating talker or a quiet starer?
• What’s the best prank you’ve ever seen?
• Name three songs to help you get over a breakup.
• Paul Simon was going to Graceland, Toto blessed the rains down in Africa – what place would you write a song about?
• If you were named based on your traits, habits, or likes, what would your name be?

If you haven’t started a blog because you just don’t think you’d have enough to write about, Plinky does a lot of that work for you (I’m looking at you, Mom). If you’re looking for a way to get more active on online communities, Plinky makes it easy.

I added Plinky’s RSS feed to my reader, and also put it in the sidebar here at Stuff Jen Says. I have no more excuses, and neither do you.

Mar. 14: Ch-ch-ch-changes

OK, I think I got the horizontal scroll bar to disappear. Dan, please let me know if you get a diagonal scroll bar—I tried for, like, a whole minute to re-create your problem until I decided you’re insane. Also, have you tried holding your head upright when you’re working on the computer? It’ll help you curse out A-Rod even better, your neck won’t get sore, and you won’t see any diagonal scroll bars.

Anyhoo.

You’ll notice a bit of a new look to the site. I am soooo ready for spring to be here, and I wanted some color and life in here to help that along. I stayed with pretty much the same color scheme, though, because with ten years’ of blogs here, I have no interest in going back and fixing up my archives. Deal with it.

The biggest reason I made the change, though, is to be able to fit more on the screen. There was a lot of wasted space with my other design, and even though I liked how clean it looked, there was a lot of scrolling required to get through all the goodies that can be found here. The pages will seem more crowded now, but hopefully in a good way. The center column, in which my blog posts actually appear, is quite a bit wider now, and will easily accommodate those fab YouTube videos and even hulu stuff when I get that figgered out. Yay.

There will probably be more tweaks here and there as I get the changes polished. Let me know if you see anything weird or awesome. I spent another long day staring at cascading style sheets so I’m going to bed.

Mar. 12: Screwed by a scroll

Today I started tweaking my blog layout a little and it turned into me spending an embarrassingly high number of hours making teeny tiny changes no one will probably ever even notice. And then, just as I was about to publish the new design, I did something that gave me a horizontal scroll bar.

I hate horizontal scroll bars. Hate them. To me, they mean the designer designed for one browser, one resolution, and/or one monitor size. Like, y’know, only bad designers do.

Have you noticed the Wikipedia home page has a horizontal scroll bar? If you scroll over you’ll see there’s nothing on the far right of the page. I have no idea why it’s there. I assume it’s intentional but it appears to be pointless.

My horizontal scroll bar is also pointless. There’s no special surprise waiting for you way over yonder. No winning lottery numbers. No witty joke. Not even a cute picture of a puppy. Nothing.

And do I have any idea how this horizontal scroll bar showed up or how to get rid of it? No. Because I’m a moron. I’d like to blame Blogger, but I think we all know where the problem lies… and until I figure out what I did wrong, you’re stuck with the same old design I’ve had for I don’t know how long.

I’d be sorry, but you didn’t even know I was working on a re-design until about 20 seconds ago, so why are you so mad? Geez.

Oct. 27: Stuff, I say!

There are some new things on the web site.

• Presley pictures. She gets cuter every day, no?
  
• Bissell family pictures. Lafe e-mailed them along with the news that there will be a new Bissell baby in February. It's supposed to be a boy, but I'm still encouraging them to name him "Jennifer."
  
• Lassen family pictures. They went to Disneyland earlier this month. Although these pictures are adorable, Lori's holding onto an even better one for their Christmas card. Can't wait!
  
• A few additions to the People We Like page
  
• A new section for the PAA Class of 1986. I let our class web site die because the brilliant Mike Devitt couldn't figure out how to work it. Hopefully he'll find this page a bit easier to navigate.

Something that hasn't changed: this *#%&@! headache I've had now for five friggin' days. I hate it. It makes me want to die. It makes me want other people to die also, like the scientists who think it's more worthwhile to develop drugs like Viagra instead of an effective cure for my headache. When I'm able to sleep, I have these very strange hallucinations−as opposed to very normal hallucinations−and it takes a couple hours for me to shake them off. Believe it or not, I haven't even been taking any hard-core drugs (I would, if only those scientists would let some blood back in their brains so they could make me some!). So I don't know where all the psychotic stuff is coming from. I'm pretty sure, though, that I'm slowly going insane. And I'm taking you all with me.

Truly, I appreciate your sympathy.

So far the worst part of this is having to cancel the Halloween party we'd planned with our neighbors for tomorrow night. Katie and Jack are disappointed, but there's just no way I can fake my way through it. Even if I suddenly began to feel better right now, I haven't cleaned the house for five days, nor have I shopped for the ingredients for the Crusty Booger Nuggets I was planning to serve. There just ain't enough time for me to get everything ready, even with Vic's help. Even if my mom and Donna came and rescued me like they did a few years ago... still not enough time. It's that bad.

This morning was Jack's last soccer game of the season, possibly of his life, and he actually made a goal. I missed the game (dammit) but Vic took lots of pictures. If I have the energy to get them off the camera so I can compress and publish them, you can find some here. This next week is his team's pizza party and they'll finally get their coveted bobblehead soccer trophies for a job well done. Jack can hardly wait. Let's hope his name gets spelled correctly on it--one year Katie's said "Katie Manulliana."

Jack's next activity to hate: karate. I'm not counting on him dominating the dojo.