September 30, 2004
posted by Colleen Shirazi at
10:23 PM (Pacific)
Another day, another "dollah."
I was reading this car joke book my son checked out of the library. Some of it was actually quite funny. I'm drawing a blank now...
Q. What's harder than driving a car?
A. Paying for it.
Q. Why did the man go to sleep under an old car?
A. So he could get up oily in the morning.
Q. Why did the man call his old car Shasta?
A. Because shasta get a new battery, shasta get an oil change, shasta...um, I really am drawing a blank...
Q. What happens when car tires get old?
A. They get retired.
Q. How does an elephant get out of a sports car?
A. The same way he got in. (My daughter got this one right.)
It was that guy on Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn...Patrice O'Neal...who said...this was months ago...that they already had Osama Bin Laden. i.e. he was already captured. Right before the election, they'll bring him out. "We got Osama Bin Laden!"
It stuck in my mind and I am really waiting now, to see if they whip out Osama Bin Laden right before the election.
O'Neal is one of the funniest comedians on that show. The best configuration is him, Jim Norton, Nick DiPaolo and that guy, Greg Giraldo.
September 22, 2004
posted by Colleen Shirazi at
5:12 PM (Pacific)
That's it! That's what I've been trying to put my finger on for years.
I was watching Blue's Clues today...okay that is the kind of show you watch when you have kids who watch it...Joe got a "love card" (a valentine, basically). It was unsigned, so you get three clues to figure out who sent it.
A mop
A castle
A glass slipper
Lol...I got it on the first two clues, hell I swing a mop, don't I? Anyhow. It struck me that it is Cinderella Syndrome...that idea of keeping you hidden.
Herm...well, cyber-sex is here to stay. shrugs I don't put much stock in it, myself. For a start, I've seen first-hand the kind of fraud that some people perpetuate on the Internet.
Then...how long would you "date" online before having cyber-sex? Is it cheap to do it on the first "date"? How far do you "go"? It's way too nebulous. How do you slap a guy's face online? lol
I have not had dim sum in...years, easily. I used to eat it regularly. Now I'm dying for a good "bao"...the pork one, not too doughy.
I remember eating just that after the earthquake in 1989. We don't get earthquakes on the same scale as Southern California (knock wood)...the Loma Prieta one is the only remotely major earthquake I've experienced.
I actually wrote down my thoughts directly after the quake. Now of course I can't find them. I do remember a few things... I was working in the China Basin building at the time, so that was not downtown--I could see downtown. I saw this...line...of yellow-grey smoke, rising up from the City, rising among and above the tall buildings.
Somehow...I must have walked from China Basin to downtown. I really don't remember. Everyone was out on the street, walking. I went downtown to get my mother from her job.
The electricity was out, meaning the only buses running were diesel buses. (San Francisco does have electric buses; they sat on the streets wherever they had died.)
Likewise, the traffic lights were out. A lot of people gave up and just started walking home, since the buses were moving more slowly than the people walking on the sidewalk.
My mother and I were stuck in the 38 Geary bus...too stunned to get out of the bus. You do go into a form of shock. It took hours to get home.
We were very lucky. I remember some cosmetic bottles fell into the bathroom sink. I honestly can't remember anything else moving although I suppose stuff must have moved. Nothing dramatic.
The next day everyone was out on the street in the neighborhood. The restaurants were open after a point although I can't remember...I am almost sure it was the day after the earthquake--my mother and I went to a dim sum restaurant and got the usual--two pork buns and tea.
September 15, 2004
posted by Colleen Shirazi at
3:16 PM (Pacific)
Mmmm...I've been working on a downloads page for the site...you'll be able to download three of my game applets. So I've been making the code more configurable and overall better.
It's funny why you can't put your motherhood experience on your resume. I'm still trying to figure that out. I don't mean having one kid and having someone else do the grunt work. :) I mean those five+ years when you can't sit down, breathe, eat a hot meal, sleep, and so forth, taking care of young kids.
How is that not work? Why is it work if you do it for someone else's kids?
There was a scene in "Nip/Tuck" (which I am watching; it's worlds better than the first season)--warning, SPOILER--do not read between the commented sections if you're still working through season one--
There was a scene in "Nip/Tuck" that cracked me up. It had to do with Christian being the biological father of Matt, and Sean being the guy who actually raised Matt.
Matt had gotten into trouble with Ava's son, where Ava's son started a fight. Both kids got called into the principal's office and were going to be suspended.
Matt called Christian instead of Sean. Christian came down to the principal's office along with Ava--and their solution was to try bribing the principal with free plastic surgery.
When Sean found out about it, naturally he was pissed and told Matt to call him next time, not Christian.
Of course there was a next time, so Matt called Sean instead of Christian.
(I do realize this sounds rather soapy; bear with me.)
Sean immediately asked Matt if he had done so-and-so. Matt said no. Then Sean asked the other kid, Ava's son, if he had done so-and-so. Ava's son admitted that he had, that he was to blame for the incident.
Then Sean told Matt that Matt would have to report to Sean's office every day after school, and that if he didn't, Sean would send Matt to a military school of Sean's choice.
Hmmm...so...if I were hiring, I'd pick the candidate who stayed home and raised young kids--if the candidates were similar enough, skills-wise.
September 11, 2004
posted by Colleen Shirazi at
10:34 PM (Pacific)
*grumble* I see I have not changed the name of this blog yet...
Here is an image that's been running through my mind for days now:
Housework should be done with a cigarette in one's mouth, a beer buzz, and a piece of cloth tied around one's head, to the strains of the Rolling Stones' "Satisfaction" played at top volume... I also picture Robert Duvall in the background of this scene, declaring firmly, "I love the smell of Lysol in the morning."
I'm not trying to be funny, at all. That is really the image I've had in my head.
Then again I've imagined the following headline:
As Usual, Another Generation of Bright, College-Educated Women Ends Up Mopping Floors
I'm not being bitter. I've given up on that; I'm too old. It's just...a little bit fascinating to me, because in the 70's, I read stories written by women who went to college and got degrees in the 50's, and puzzled over the exact same thing. In the freakin' 70's! Thirty years ago.
I suppose it has all changed by now, or is changing. Is it? My generation of men does not clean nor cook. It is generational; try changing an old man or old woman and see how far you get.
Hmmm...the usual...certain people ripping off our ideas, and kicking us in the teeth as well.
The ripping off of ideas, that doesn't bother me. It's the teeth-kicking aspect. Actually the two go hand in hand. People who have no originality, tend to be antagonistic toward those who do. It has to do with "hiding" you...so that no one will know where they're getting all these wonderful ideas from.
shrugs
I'm having a Barry Goldwater moment, actually. Poor Barry Goldwater! Apparently he was denounced as a left-wing commie pinko liberal bastard at some point, and now you no longer hear about him one way or the other.
I know I'm being unfair; it is not only the Republican Party that suffered a change. Corruption has no party affiliation after all. If George W. Bush is worlds away from Barry Goldwater, can we honestly say that Kerry is FDR?
What the hell happened to us?
Is the solution campaign reform, or is it the return of the Fairness Doctrine? We can't have the return of the Fairness Doctrine without campaign reform; we can't have campaign reform without the return of the Fairness Doctrine.
I debated about whether to post a pic of the Twin Towers today. It still feels sad. Too sad. I decided against it.
September 10, 2004
posted by Colleen Shirazi at
4:05 PM (Pacific)
Hmmm...good software. The FTP was dorking around, but it wrote my last post to the blog anyway.
I've been more than happy with Infinology for what will be two years this October. They've been pretty responsive. They were the first to offer the huge package for the bare-bones price...it has been duplicated since, but we have no reason to switch.
We do have to pay extra for our mySQL database and it's prorated depending on the size you want.
Some men change their party for the sake of their principles; others their principles for the sake of their party. ~Winston Churchill
If God wanted us to vote, he would have given us candidates. ~Jay Leno
Mankind will never see an end of trouble until... lovers of wisdom come to hold political power, or the holders of power... become lovers of wisdom. ~Plato, The Republic
In order to become the master, the politician poses as the servant. ~Charles de Gaulle
thebroadroom has gone commercial! Well not really. I'm setting up the script so that we can sell ad space on the pages. It'll take me a while, the script needs to be installed on every page of the site.
I have a test jpg up so we'll have stats on how many impressions the ads will get. The price will depend on the number of impressions, so that in itself should take a couple months.
I can admit I'm pleased with the site. We took something of a traffic hit when we acquired The Lipstick Page, since we had to divert our efforts into getting that going. Still we're #15 on the Alexa.com women's directory, and our Google Page Rank in the Google women's directory is 8.
Okay, I've finished putting the test ad on the Arts & Leisure section.
As the election nears, I feel less and less excited. I had to laugh though. Bumper sticker:
If you want Bush out
Impeach him
I'm voting for Nader.
Where is Pat Buchanan when you need him? Does he not now strike you as the most reasonable, moderate person you ever heard of? Along with Arianna Huffington?
I'm kicking myself...I had this Barry Goldwater quote. I did. Now I can't find it. Goldwater said that he started out being a right-winger, then he became a centrist, then he became somewhere to the left of Karl Marx...lol...and his politics never changed, the whole time.
The greatest enemy of the right wing, is not the left wing. It is what used to be the right wing.
Cripe! What happened to Spacefem.com? Here is the Livejournal.
September 7, 2004
posted by Colleen Shirazi at
1:57 PM (Pacific)
Hmmm...I've decided to use my real name on my websites.
Josephine Green is a pen name. I named myself after this Java professor I had back in 1998 (natch--Joseph Greenwald), but now I am looking around at paying jobs and I can't ask potential employers to guess whether or not my work is my work. It's my work, I'm proud of it and I want my name on it.
In fact everything you see on thebroadroom--not the content, but the infrastructure of the site--is my work. The only part of the entire domain's infrastructure that isn't, is Dain's stuff.
Why the pen name to begin with? I started working on the Web in 1998. At the time, I was cautious of the kind of people you'd meet on the Internet. It would have been different were I a man. Now...what the heck? If a man can get credit for his Internet work, I think I should.
Of course there is the dreary aspect of converting every reference to Josephine over to Colleen. URL's will definitely not change. Site names will not change. The name of this blog will have to change, since it would be too confusing otherwise.
September 5, 2004
posted by Colleen Shirazi at
10:23 PM (Pacific)
Hmmm...gorgeous day today. Well, it was hot, but then we went to the beach. :)
I have so much work to do on the sites, now that both sites are actually next to finished. *grumble*
September 3, 2004
posted by Colleen Shirazi at
10:38 AM (Pacific)
whew I feel better now. I think I just needed a break of some sort.
I talked to my C professor :D He's so cute. Um. What was I saying? He liked the sites...that is really important.
I went back and fixed up the side menu. The code...really...was bad. I knew it was bad. I slapped it up and got it working but software-wise, I wouldn't actually show it to anyone. Now it's fixed up, it runs much better and it's easy to add and change items.
Next I will need to design our own advertising. We're going to sell text links on both sites--thebroadroom and LP.
The text links will be $20/month. The ad position is first come, first served, so whoever applies first gets the top slot.
So far it's not bad. I set up some affiliate text links on LP to--make sales obviously :) --but also to see how many impressions the ads get.
Right now they're on the default header--which covers the main index page and some of the other pages in the site--and on one of the forum headers. I checked the Lancome ones, for period 9/1 to 9/2 two links got 2,000 impressions. That's 2,000 *highly targeted* impressions.
For thebroadroom, we have a lot of ad space because I took down some of our Google ads. I'm going to design something like the Google ad box, it will be a rectangular box with say 4 or 5 ads in it. Again I can test it out with affiliate text links to track the # of impressions.
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