Ooops! Wrong Link!

If you popped over here from Smitty's Notes, please note that more recent posts are here, along with a whole new site design & everything. I moved the blog a while ago. Julie tells me I won Runner Up in the Best Local Blog category (thanks, yall!) even though I haven't been posting very much lately.

If you want to, you can read older posts by browsing through the archives here -- just click on a year or month from the list at right & scroll down. Anything posted after January 2008, however, is at the new site. Now I guess I need to go over there and post something. If only I can remember the password to get in there.

The stationary department has moved

I really did see that on a sign once, in a department store, when I went in to purchase a greeting card of some kind. It was maybe 25 years ago, but I still giggle about it sometimes, because that's the kind of gal I am. I still wish I'd photographed it.

This blogspot address will no longer be updated as of right after I publish this post, and (if I did everything correctly) this blog will no longer accept comments. I'll re-direct my URL in the near future, so if you have alphabitch.org in your bookmark or link list, the magic of the internets will automatically redirect you to the new location when it's ready.

Which, it is. Go there now for new posts, or you can find old posts listed by date and (if you click on the year/month, by title).

And if that's not working yet, the new URL is http://alphabitch.wordpress.com. You'll have to register if you want to comment, and you'll have to wait for me to approve your comments before they appear online. Sorry about that.

Happy New Year.

Search strings, and post # 142 in 2007

I just noticed that I did in fact exceed the total number of posts for 2005, my first year blogging. This was my goal, and I'm now happy. It's also, in case you are keeping track, post #384 or something like that. Traffic to alphabitch.org continues to be light, which is how I like it. I've only ever had to delete a couple of comments (mostly for irrelevant commercial shilling or really offensive and also highly irrelevant commentary). While I was adding things up, I took a look at some recent search strings that led folks here to this little corner of the virtual world:

• songs of the apocolypse: here's a playlist
• how much does a dash of worcestershire sauce mean in a recipe? I admit I have been guilty of not being more specific in my recipies, but 1 dash = 12 drops, according to the cooking page at the very fine website onlineconversion.com. Or two pinches. Or 0.00000258499 of a hogshead [US], whatever the hell that is.
• Christian biker chicks: Can't help you here. This is the post they went to, but I'm not sure it helped, as I am neither a Christian nor a biker chick.
• vintage lingerie pictures: I aim to please. Here you go. Of course, they are pictures of the lingerie only; I am not in them.
• regret it sooner or later: I'm not sure it was what this person in the UAE was looking for, but I did get kind of embarrassed when one of my friends mentioned a rather intimate blog post over dinner. "Regret" is putting it a little too strongly though.
• bodybuilderin alphabitch: um, this is weird. Someone from Germany. I don't think this post was what they were looking for, somehow. I used to do a lot more weightlifting, but not so much these days.
  
• concrete cut dog door: There is a dog door in my house, but it's cut into a wooden door in pretty much the usual way. Sorry, can't help you.
  
• Jennifer Warnes breasts: go away. There is nothing here about Ms. Warnes' breasts. She has re-released her fine recording "Famous Blue Raincoat," however, which I cannot recommend highly enough. It's all Leonard Cohen songs, except for 'Song of Bernadette,' which she co-wrote with Mr. Cohen. And did I mention it's excellent?
  

There were also the usual multiple searches for what I guess you could call my greatest hits:

• squid octopus difference: I don't know, precisely, but they are different. And I do know that some people think that finding a squid in your driveway makes more sense than finding an octopus in your driveway. In Wisconsin. While removing snow.
• duct tape leg shaving: I am probably going to be famous for this one, if I am ever famous for anything. Perhaps I will regret ever posting this. If you do try it at home, make sure that you use really high-quality, sticky duct tape, and also wait a good long time so that there is enough leg hair for the duct tape to get a grip. Doesn't work so well on stubble. And don't try it if you've never waxed your legs, because it will probably hurt a lot. Experienced leg-waxers, however, will find that it's quite effective -- if you don't use that cheap-ass 'duck tape' crap. And you don't pull the strip off, you roll it very firmly against the direction of hair growth.
  
• tatertot hotdish best recipe: A very good recipe, if I do say so myself. But don't use that crappy paddy-grown wild rice. You're much better off with ground beef or brown rice. But the really good wild rice? Totally excellent. And Tater Tots® are just plain good, I don't care what anyone says.
  
• can dogs eat blueberries? Yes! And they love them, fresh or frozen! Do NOT, however, feed your dogs grapes or raisins. It could kill them, for real. Raspberries, blackberries, and blueberries are fine, though. I've been feeding them to my dogs for years, and they seem to suffer no ill effects.
  

So maybe I'll keep blogging for another year.

Technical difficulties, and a couple other things

If you're trying to email your request for the 2007 Christmas CD and I haven't already replied to you, please try again. A couple of folks apparently ran afoul of my SPAM filters somewhere along the line. You can email contact.alphagal -at- gmail -dot- com if the other address isn't working.

I really will get them out this week; it's been a bit busier than usual here at alphabitch HQ.

Also, Ruby's foot is healing nicely, finally. She's still on restrictions, but can go for walks and run around a little bit. Makes things much easier for me.

Life imitates blog post. Or something.

Michelle, over at Well Hell Michelle actually tried my duct-tape leg-hair removal technique. It didn't go so well for her, alas, and I feel kind of bad about that. But she thinks that maybe she used some inferior quality duct tape, and I don't think I emphasized quite enough in my original post that it's important to use the extra-sticky high quality stuff: either gaffer's tape, or the kind they use on actual sheet metal-y duct work.

It was either inferior duct tape or that she has super-strong leg hair. She's considering trying it again, in the name of science. Or something.

Oops

If any of you read this on a feed reader that is set up to notify you if I make any changes to previous post, I just want to apologize for re-posting the last five posts. I forgot to put the NaBloPoMo tags on them. I didn't make any changes or anything.

I'm not sure it really matters, labeling them, but I do like to keep things organized. I'm pretty pleased with myself for posting every day so far this month. Yeah, I know it's only the 6th, but it would be pretty demoralizing, not to mention kind of lame, to have blown it already.

It's about time

When I set up this blog, lo these many years ago, I set the timestamp thingy for GMT, which is no longer officially called Greenwich Mean Time but in fact Coordinated Universal Time or some such. UTC. I did it on purpose, and I'm sure I had a reason for this. Very likely a sentimental one, but I can't recall what it was. Or maybe I thought that messing with the time zones would disguise my location or something. Make me appear mysterious. Or I thought if the real time were posted it would draw attention to my, um, insomnia issues.

Several people have pointed this out over the years, thinking that maybe I'd just left it on a default setting somewhere, but I've been reluctant to change it. I can't really tell you why; I have been reluctant, or lazy, or maybe I thought I would need it to calculate my longitude from the Greenwich Meridian. Dunno. My reasons for it are lost to the mists of time. So to speak.

But I changed it just now, partly because someone asked me how I'd managed to post something the other day while I was in a meeting. Did I have a Blackberry? Was I posting from a cellphone? I tried to explain, but it was lame. And I've already been outed as a "local blogger" in the free weekly paper, so it's kind of silly to pretend I'm overseas. And my insomnia issues are less acute these days.

Plus, it would look really bad to miss the very first day of NaBloPoMo. And it's already tomorrow, UTC-wise.

Suggestions, requests welcome

The lovely and talented Sara, of Moving Right Along, posted a while back about National Blog Post Month (a.k.a. NaBloPoMo), in which participants agree to post on their blogs every single day during November. I'm not really much of a joiner, but I've decided to give it a go.

In case you haven't noticed, I'm not always very good at posting regularly. I run out of ideas, or time, or sometimes I might have an idea but don't bother to write about it because I don't think anyone will be interested (not that that stops me the rest of the time, but you know how it gets). So your suggestions for posting topics and requests for recipes are entirely welcome. It will certainly be a challenge to post something every single day.

Is there something you've always wanted to ask me? Need to know what to do with all those leeks? Want advice from a total stranger with no particular authority or qualifications? Have questions about alternative fuels? Sex? Epidemiology? Leave a note in the comments or write to me at contact.alphagal -at- gmail -dot- com and I'll make something up and post it during November.

Bizarre search strings

OK, this is funny. A little over 24 hours ago, someone in Monongahela, PA, arrived here at alphabitch.org while searching for a sexy pharmacist plus size costume." And my little blog post was the second item in the search.

Which I gotta say I think is kind of strange. But hey, whatever. They didn't stay long, whoever they were. Less than a minute.

Another interesting search: "tape without shaving," which lists my post on hair removal with duct tape first. I'm nearly famous. That visitor was also here for less than a minute. From Columbus, OH. Incidentally, the second item in that search has instructions for men who wish to create the illusion of cleavage.

Go crazy, dudes. It'll look great under that sexy pharmacist costume.

Searching for meaning, or something like it

I just took a quick look at my site statistics (still averaging about 50 visits per day) and was amused to find that "the difference between a squid and an octopus" is no longer the most popular search string leading people here. That's been overtaken by searches involving duct tape and hair removal. "Can dogs eat blueberries?" is still pretty popular (yes, and they love them), as is "diy haircut" and searches for a tater tot hot dish recipe. (Or, more commonly: "tator tot hot dish.") "Green moth" is also pretty big.

I don't do tech support..

... but the guy in the office next to mine does, and when he's not at his desk, people come in and ask me for help with their technical difficulties. Sometimes the solutions are pretty simple, and I can help them:



[UPDATE: The video linked to above seems to have been taken away. Here is another copy, but without the subtitles. It's just as funny without the translation.]

Changes are good, right?

First off, I changed to a different template, because I'd messed up the other one so much trying to make it do what I wanted, and failing. This one doesn't do everything I want, but I'm liking it OK. Comments welcome.

I also added a thingy over there on the right, underneath the archives, that is a widget I agreed to beta-test. It's that AutoRoll box, and you can learn more about it at their website. Maybe it's totally bogus, but we'll see, I guess. It accumulates links based on the other sites that my visitors visit, and ranks them according to how frequent the visits are. Or something. I have it set to only display one link at a time, until it accumulates a little more data. It will only ever list other AutoRoll members, though, so I guess it's one of those "join us" type deals.

And another thing is I'm still on the fence about having a blogroll. I got kind of soured on the whole idea back during a recent skirmish in the ongoing feminist wars, where some bloggers didn't want to be on the same blogroll as other bloggers, and then I lost the password to my blogrolling account, so it was a major pain in the ass to keep up with that kind of thing, as well as with keeping links up-to-date and adding new stuff, etc. And then there's been some discussion about blog rankings, and how they're based on links and how it's all just a big old popularity contest out there, plus I know that ad revenue depends on rankings and links and so on. And ad revenue is important to a lot of folks. So I don't know what I'm gonna do about it.

I'm certainly not going to police the blogs I link to in order to make sure that I agree with everything they say and that they're all getting along with each other. And if people want to de-link to me on account of my potty mouth or my occasional patriarchy-blaming or they don't like my recipes, that's cool. I don't have any ads, and won't be adding them any time soon. It's not like this is a really high-traffic site anyway. In fact, I accidentally deleted my site counter a while back (like, sometime in December, apparently) and just noticed that it was gone a couple days ago when I checked to see if there'd been any amusing search strings lately. There hadn't.

And the last thing is that a couple people have asked me lately where's my tip jar and whether they could advertise something or another on my blog. There is no tip jar, and no, I won't advertise your products. I also don't want review copies of books or CDs. If you feel I should be showered with gifts, my wish list at amazon.com might help you choose something.

Yeah, I don't like it either

I know this looks funny but I'm not sure I want to go back to the old template just yet. Not quite ready to throw in the towel or whatever. I hope I'll have a chance to work on it this weekend. Requests and suggestions are welcome.

I'm working on it

Crap-ola. I am trying to make this new template thingy look right, and I tried to replace the header image but it's just not working and I don't have time to wade through all that html to figure it out just at the moment. And then I've gotta go back through all the old posts to put labels on 'em. And maybe I'll even do some kind of actual work today, who knows? And what's up with this picasa thing? It tried to scan all the images on my computer and post them to somewhere. This is my work computer! Rocket surgery is just not pretty! I don't want all my images posted online!!

Anyway, I might just go back to the old template. I did save a backup, somewhere. It's probably posted to picasa, whatever the hell that is.

Happy New Year, etc.

I was just sort of I guess you could say forced to switch to the beta new blogger. I'm not having really great feelings about this, but on the other hand it might work out OK.

Please let me know if you're having problems commenting or accessing stuff. I had to get a new gmail account for this, so you can email me now at contact -dot- alphagal -at- gmail -dot- com. Or you can still use the old comments -at- alphabitch -dot-org if you like. Whatever.

Today is my first day back to work since about the 19th or 20th of December. I have to say I didn't really miss it much, but I'm happy to have a job to come back to & alla that. I was sick, though, so it wasn't much of a vacation. And I'm exhausted & wanna go home.

Technical difficulties

Still haven't hooked up the new house to the internets, and haven't had much time for troubleshooting. I'm over at Julie's house now using her computer while she is outside in the beautiful fall weather trimming shrubs and such. I'm still trying to figure out where all the @alphabitch.org email is being transferred to, and redirect it to the proper place.

In other bad news, I got the film back from the Asheville trip, the one where I brought the Holga. Here's some advice to Holga owners everywhere: throw away the fucking lens cap.

That is all.

Apologies

To anyone who has tried to email me here @alphabitch.org in the past couple of days: I'm so sorry. It was all being forwarded to a email account that is no longer in service.

I'm such a flake. It should be fixed soon.

SPAM comments

I had to activate the extra level of blogular comment security on account of dumbass SPAMbots leaving their crazy links in the comments of some very old posts. I guess they finally noticed me. If you feel very strongly that using blogger comments and/or having to read and try to type accurately that oozy wavy string of letters to log in to comment here, please feel free to bypass the whole thing and email me directly. The address (comments -AT- alphabitch -DOT- org) is way at the bottom of every page in case you forget. But if you say anything really stupid and whacked out, I'll probably print it on the blog, so don't email me if you're just trying to avoid looking like a nutcase in public.

That's never actually happened, but I want to be clear up front.

I'm so syndicated

I added some kind of rss feed just now, if you're into that kind of thing.

I'm moving

Yes, it's really happening. I'm packing my bags and headed for www.alphabitch.org. You can go ahead & change your bookmarks and links now, if you have them, (though don't be surprised if it just takes you right back here for a while). It will surprise exactly no one that I'm taking my time with the new template design, etc., but I'm really excited about it, as I think it will look really swell, be easy to find things, and (best of all) I will have total control, or I'll have a little more control than I have now, anyway.

Even though I haven't been posting much lately, I have added a few links to the blogroll, which is getting quite large. Especially check out blac(k)ademic, and Blue NC, and Plasticeye, and Redneck Mother, and Scrutiny Hooligans, and smallsworld, and all the folks at ScienceBlogs.

Plus I'd like to extend a special alphabitch welcome to AngryBlackBitch and Bitch|Lab.