Twitter Friends

If you are on Twitter, then chances are that you already know about Friend or Follow. If you do, bear with me while I talk a little about that, but a little bit more about my new love: Twitter. Even though I just hit 5,000 tweets last week, I'm still claiming the Twitter newbie title while I can. There is just still so much that is new. Aside from the general coolness of Friend or Follow, here's the new thing I learned this week: I could totally be the crazy facebook tattoo girl of Twitter. Well, not really, in that I'm totally not a tattoo girl, pain girl, needles girl, or anything too permanent girl. But other than I could totally be the crazy facebook tattoo girl of Twitter.

In case you don't know about the crazy facebook tattoo lady, all you need to know is that some lady was reported to have tattooed the faces of her 152 facebook friends onto her arm. Turns out, it was just a hoax. But the point is, that when I saw the story for the first time, I thought: Really? (Re-read that with the voice of Seth Meyers if you will.) Really? Your whole arm? I'll bet you hide most of those "friends" from your fb news feed, too.

But then this week my husband was reading my tweets, as he is wont to do. (He's not on Twitter, he just reads my tweets. So it's kinda like having a stalker, but he's my husband, so it's kinda sweet.) Someone had suggested in a tweet I go to friendorfollow.com for some reason or another. I was probably either apologizing for my poor follow-back skills or whining about how Twitter just randomly unfollows people "for" you and how would I even know if Twitter had unfollowed someone I really liked following? So as my husband was reading my recent tweets, he says to me, "You haven't been to Friend or Follow? It's kinda cool." So when your non-tweeting husband is in the know about a twitter-tool website and you're not, you of course, have to stop what you're doing and go directly to that site. And OMG! I love this site. It's super simple, but so cool!

So what does all that have to do with me becoming the crazy tattoo girl of Twitter. Well, I'm getting there. Geez. Patience, people.

For those of you who don't know what Friend or Follow does, it basically just breaks your Twitter peeps into three groups, which I will show you.

Following: These are the people whom you follow, but who don't follow you. These are mine.

There's really nothing too shocking here. Except, of course, that @AlecBaldwin hasn't followed me back yet. That's a little weird.

Then there are your fans: people who follow you, but you don't follow them. Again, these are mine:

I could't believe this when I saw it. I know I am rather horrible about checking out (and hence following back) new followers. I usually just wait until they talk to me first. Then I follow back. But this was a large number. 116 to be exact. I decided I'll visit here regularly and choose some interesting looking avatars to investigate for potential follow back.(But if you actually want me to follow you, it's really best if you just talk to me.)

And finally, there are your friends: people whom you follow and who follow you back. These are my Twitter friends:

Now if you don't follow me on Twitter, this is just a group of 235 random avatars. If you do follow me, you probably recognize some of these faces.  But when I saw this group of pictures, I just smiled. Really smiled. These really are my Twitter friends. I sent out my very first tweet on February 26, 2011. Since then, not only have I acquired this many Twitter friends, but I look at those faces (and cartoon faces and even some pictures of just random stuff **ahem shoes**), and I see the faces of the people who keep me company, make me laugh, share their lives, ask me about my day, send me eHugs after a crummy day, and just all around make me love Twitter. It's not Twitter that I love though, it's you.

So at the risk of sounding like a drunk college kid, I love you, man!

But no, I am not tattooing your faces on my arm.

Comments, Tweets, FB, or Phone Calls

I got a call earlier this week from my husband's cousin. She lives about 4 1/2 hours from us, so we don't see her very often. Mostly on holidays and other special occasions. But she's great. Want an example? Well, that call that I got earlier in the week, it was to tell me that she reads my blogs. She doesn't always comment (do any of us?), but wanted to let me know that she does read them and really likes them. Is that not the coolest thing ever? It totally made my day.

I know that lots of bloggers really prefer the response to their blog posts to come in the form of comments. I, too love comments. (Even though I can't get my new comments to work quite the way that I want them to just yet. *sigh*) So if you're feeling so inclined, please leave a comment. But I also know that sometimes leaving comments is probably the least user-friendly way of responding to a blog post. You have to enter your name and your email address and your web address. Sometimes you need to need to login through some other account. Some people have (gasp) captcha. I do a lot of blog reading from my iPhone, so jumping through all those hoops on my tiny little screen is an even bigger pain. OR if I read blogs through my Google Reader iPhone app, it's an even bigger pain, since you have to leave the Reader format to go to the actual site, but when I get there, Google still makes me login even though it knows it's me since I'm logged into Reader, just to leave a comments. In the end, a response tweet or a comment through FB is just SO much easier.

And then there are all those blog posts that you read that make you smile or think or that you just kinda like, but don't have any really deep response to. And it makes me think that what I always thought of as the stupid Facebook Like button maybe wasn't such a bad idea after all. Because sometimes all of those hoops you have to jump through just to say, "nice post" just aren't worth it.

So I'm going on record. I love comments. Feel free to leave me one. But if you'd rather respond via Tweet or FB or even by giving me a call, I'm totally cool with that, too. (I realize that most of you don't have access to that last option. Sorry about that. And no, I'm not giving you my phone number.)

And to cousin-in-law Becky: Thanks. You made my day.

Life Outside the Social Media

I am a fan of social media. I really am. I came later to it than many people, but what's not to like? facebook, Twitter, Blogging, it's all good. Well, mostly good. There's thing thing that's been bugging me ever since I joined facebook and has gotten exponentially worse since I started blogging: How to not talk about social media, when you're spending face-to-face time with your actual friends?

See, when something interesting happens in my life, I usually update my facebook status. When I have a random thought I've got to get out of my head, I tweet about it. When my children do something adorable or something annoys the crap out of me that cannot be contained in 140 or even 420 characters, I blog about it. Some of this is for the other people in my life. My Little Ants blog (my other blog about my kids), for example, exists primarily so that grandparents and other distant relatives can read stories about my boys and I can feel less guilty about the fact that I am horrible at sending pictures regularly. It's separate from this blog so that said grandparents and great-grandparents don't need to sift through my regular tirades to get to adorable stories about their grandkids. And I still love facebook for staying up to date with the lives of my friends whom I don't see as often as I used to. But this blog is pretty much just for me. If I hear something on the radio annoys the crap out of me, I can blog about it instead of yelling at my radio. Well, maybe in addition to yelling at my radio. (It's how I know it'll be a good post. Is it yell at nobody in my car worthy?) Don't get me wrong. I am very happy to have readers. (Hello, readers. *waves*) In fact, I love a good debate and LOVE thought provoking comments.But I truly hope that no one is reading this blog just because they think I'll be disappointed if they don't. Really, people, we've got too much going on in our lives to read blogs we're not interested in. So if everyone I know never reads this blog again, I'll really be ok with it. Same with facebook. If you're not digging what I'm putting out there, unfriend me; or at least hide me from your feed. We can still be real friends even if we're not facebook "friends".

But how do you talk to people who are friends with you on facebook without starting every sentence with, "Did you see what I posted on facebook?" It's even worse now that I have a blog. I say way too often: "Did you read my blog post about x?" 

What I'm saying is this:

You just said something that reminded me of something cute my kid did. But I've already blogged about it. So if you read that post already, I'm not gonna' tell you the story again. So I just want to know if you've already heard this story before I tell it to you again.

But here's what I think it sounds like:

Dude. I am so awesome that I have a blog that's totally about every random and awesome thought that pops into my head. My blog is so awesome. And you should totally be reading it. Every post. It's all about me, you know? So are you reading it? Because you totally should be.

So if I am ever out with you for dinner or we're talking over a nice bottle of Cabernet and I ask you, "Did you see my blog post about x?" Please know that my feelings of self-worth are not tied to your answer. I just want to know if I should tell you the personal anecdote that just popped into my head and happens to be something I've already blogged about.

Cool?

Cool.

Meta-Blogging (Again)

I may have dived into this blogging thing a little too quickly. I wrote my first post 28 days ago. I didn't really give it much thought. I figured I'm going to max out at about 20 readers anyway, so it's not like I needed a full-fledged plan or anything. Not.

27 days ago I decided that maybe I had been a little careless in naming my blog. (Everyone agreed.) So 26 days ago I renamed my blog. The new name is a fine name. It suits me. But today, while driving home from work, I thought of the perfect name for my blog. Dammit! Why didn't I think of this 27 days ago? Wanna know what it was? "Witch & Moan" It's perfect, right? Because basically all I do here is bitch & moan, but then it goes with the cute little witch-themed avatar over there. Oh I am so clever. But dammit, how retarded am I? Really? I'm going to change the name again? It's not even a month old. Plus, when I told my husband my incredibly clever alternative blog name, he thought the current one is just as good. Whatever. I can't even think about it. I'm a moron; let's just leave it at that for now.

Next up, let's talk number of blogs. I currently have three. That's right, three. One month ago, I had zero. Today I have three. And I'm thinking of creating another one. What is wrong with me??? Well, I'll tell you. Before I created my first blog (way back in March of 2011 as you may recall), I had a pretty good idea that the reason I would not be a very good blogger was inconsistency. I know that good blogs (i.e. blogs people actually want to read) generally A) are updated regularly and B) have an overarching theme. I figured I'd suck at both. What I'm passionate about from day to day changes drastically. (You may have noticed.) But overall, I think it's going ok. Turns out that if my theme (B) is stuff that bugs me, I've got plenty to talk about, thus satisfying A. Yeah! But then I wanted to have a cute little blog about my kids, and I wanted to keep that separate from my snarky blog, so that's blog #2. Then I decided I'm going to try to improve my photography chops, so I created blog #3 just for me to chart my progress. (Don't even worry about that one, it's totally boring.) Then today I started writing a post for this blog that was about a new book I just ordered on Amazon and it was way to serious and introspective to post here. So that would be a fourth blog. Really? A fourth blog? Meanwhile, I have a 4 year old, a 7 month old, a husband, a job, 2 dogs, & a house that doesn't clean itself.

But I guess the whole blogging thing is my new leisure activity, and it's kinda nice to have a place (or several) to "think out loud." And as my husband said today when I asked him, "How many blogs are too many?" he said, "I don't think it's the number of blogs, as much as the amount of time blogging." Oh, he is wise, my husband.

So in summary, here's what's bugging me today: my own freaking insanity! But what the heck else is new?

So I'm off to create a new blog. Or maybe not. Or rename this one. Or not. Really, I don't have a clue at the moment. Maybe I'll get a spinny-wheel out of one of my son's board games and let the Chutes & Ladders gods decide.

facebook privacy backdoor

I was just taking a look at my facebook privacy settings.  I was actually trying to fix a bug that won't let me upload photos from my iPhone 4, but I stumbled across a group of settings that I was rather annoyed at. So I'm sharing them here in case anyone else wants to turn these off. You may all know about this one already, but I didn't, so I'm sharing.

Here was the screen I eventually found that was troubling:

Based on what it says here, I'm going to assume that if one of my facebook friends grants access to an application, game, or website, then that application will also have access to everything I have checked here that I also share with my facebook friends. The screen you see above is what was checked by default; I have never modified these settings. Personally, I choose to opt out of the "more social experience."

Anyway, if you want to find this screen, too, here's how you find it.  In the top right hand corner of your facebook page, click on Account > Privacy Settings.

You will see this screen:

Click on Edit your settings from the Apps and Websites section. On the next screen, click on Edit Settings next to Info accessible through your friends.

You will then see the screen from before:

Select or deselect whichever options you're comfortable with. Hope this helps.