KirstenL4W

I read a post over at A Byootaful Life about why the bloggers, Katie and Puddy, might not like your blog. The reasons listed are more focused towards personal blogs, so I took an interest. On points #1-6, I’m definitely not guilty. On point #7 though, I am guilty. It says, “7. You Have Those Freaky Things on the Sidebar that Say Where I’m From”. I have that. I always thought it was kinda cool. I’m not so much into checking my stats regularly, so I don’t always know where you’re from, but I’m on my blog’s main page way more often that Google Analytics, and I have a pretty decent interest in geography, so I liked this feature.

Here’s what I have in the “About You” section on my left sidebar:

My stat counter. That stays, and it’s going to hit 10,000 sometime. I’d be a lot further along but for some reason my old stat counter quit on me and I had to get a new one. I now suspect it had to do with upgrading to what was formerly known as Blogger Beta and making my template beta-compliant. Same thing happened with my Google Analytics, which I recently discovered. Oh well. But I still want to watch that number grow.

A little blurb from IP2 Location. It’s a script that gets info from your IP address to show your location. I’m at home right now, and it says “Great, now people from LAS VEGAS are stalking me! Powered by IP2Location.com.” Depending on how Cox may be routing my connection, it might say HENDERSON and I’ve even seen it say NORTH LAS VEGAS even though I am nowhere near NLV. So, it does only show your location to you, because it doesn’t collect stats and I only ever see Las Vegas, Henderson or NLV. I am thinking of chucking this, but it has more to do with the script, and I am aware that I have a few scripts running, so if anyone has issues with any of them, please let me know.

ClustrMaps. I like seeing the map fill up with red dots. I was sorely disappointed when it reset itself to zero after a year had passed, as I was on my way and really wanted to see just one giant red blob. That sort of burst my map bubble, but it’s still there because I don’t dislike it enough to get rid of it.

10 Latest Visitor from MapStats. I do believe that this section in particular is what Katie was talking about. I like it, since it’s that whole geography/map geek thing going on again, but I can certainly understand where some people might be freaked out by it.

I don’t have a MyBlogLog visitor thingy or any of its lookalikes that show recent visitors - even though it’s a social networking thing that could be valuable to blog traffic, I just don’t care for looking at them. Not sure why, perhaps that one is just a bit too personal for me. On the other hand, knowing that one of my latest vistors is from Las Vegas could mean that I’ve read my own blog, or Boyfriend has, or a coworker, or a blogging friend that lives here in town but whom I’ve never met. So what do you think? Do any of these things freak you out? Let me know - let me know your thoughts on this and on sidebar content in general.

Boyfriend and I went to San Francisco this past weekend. I’d been there before, but it was over 10 years ago and I had a really bad cold, which I got the day after I got there. This time was a much shorter trip, but I wasn’t dead tired from being sick. We met up with some of Boyfriend’s friends (he grew up there, and knows people) so it was nice to be social too.

Highlights:

Driving through San Mateo county and seeing the redwoods, ocean, and this place (I had some sort of weird fascination with getting my picture taken next to a sign)

Lunch in Haight-Ashbury

A bit of shopping and socializing with some of Boyfriend’s friends

Dinner in North Beach

Driving over the Golden Gate Bridge

Watching the fog roll in along the coast (and boy, does it ever roll!)

Driving through Santa Cruz, a place that Boyfriend wouldn’t mind living in if money were no object

Driving home over the Sierras

Taking lots of pictures with Boyfriend’s awesome camera that hopefully are still there because the number of photos taken seemed to go down. I sure hope that the card didn’t fill up and decide to start erasing random pictures, because we got some really great shots.

Assuming that the pictures didn’t disappear on us, I hope to be able to post some one of these years. We didn’t get back home until 2am this morning, and right now there’s a lot of caffeine in the fridge calling my name. The best thing about this impromptu trip that Boyfriend brought up was that we were so in-your-face together since we left early Friday afternoon until I went to work this morning, and we didn’t bicker at all. We talked a lot over 1500 miles of driving, and saw me out of my element as he toured his old stomping grounds and visited with old friends, and we didn’t even want to be away from each other for a minute - not even now that we are home. And that was the best part of the trip.

Picture not mine - I found it on the internet somewhere. 

When I used the spell check to check the post just below this one, a few things were a bit off. Not my spelling - I know how to spell. The spell check has some weird ideas. “Job” replace with _____. No suggestions. “Shoestore” replace with “Chester” or “scooter”, and my favorite - “Blogger” with “Blocker”. I don’t think so!

And by the way, one of the intellectually challenged project people here in the office now is on a break, halfway through his appointment, and JUST NOW read the signs on the door. He’s one that came in the wrong door and did not read the signs regarding opening times. Because he’s just reading and paying attention to the signs now, he’s about 10 seconds away from going over his allotted break time, which would require me to file a report. I don’t find out what happens to people after I see them for the appointment, but I’m willing to bet this will be the last part of the project process for him.

Not because I’m a freak who’s afraid of everything. I outgrew that by age 6. No, it’s how many intellectually challenged people there are in the world that scare me. There are so many people out and about, walking amongst us, who cannot grasp the simple concepts that get us through our daily lives.

In my work, one of the projects I manage requires people to visit my office at scheduled times. This is kept separate from the other work I do, and it includes having a separate entrance. I have signs on the doors to let people know which door to use, but they’re no help - regular business people go in the door for project people and vice versa. Also, for the project people there is a sign indicating that the office opens 15 minutes before their scheduled appointment time, and if it’s not within that time, I have the door locked so I can get regular business work done. I can’t even begin to count how many people try to go through the door, find it locked, peek in the window, try the door again, peek in the window again, and walk away. The 15 minute sign is at eye level right on the door, so it’s not like I’m trying to trick anyone. BTW, this project deals with people who hope to be on the front lines of national security - that’s the scariest part.

I used to work in a supermarket. I never fully realized how many intellectually challenged people there are in the world until I started working there in high school. There were people who couldn’t figure out how much money to give you, people with a $20 budget who came through the checkout with a full carriage and couldn’t figure out how much they had to take off, little old ladies who insisted a bag with a single item was too heavy (I actually had a lady do this to me with a 5lb bag of sugar), and my favorite, the little old ladies who wanted to get the exact change for you, pulled out a change purse that weighed more than they did, rummaged around in it for about 5 minutes, then announced that the did not have the change they were looking for, when there was probably around $40 in loose change in their purse. All this in the express line. And I can’t even mention the supermarket with a shout out to Coupon Claire. You know the type - 40 coupons, 3 items. Items from the reduced rack for which the face value of the coupon was higher than the price of the item. Always trying to make you pay her for shopping there. Was in 4 times a week and never gave up trying. Oh yeah, customer service is fun.

In my current retail job (job #2, that is) at the shoestore, I get a lot of overseas tourists, so usually it’s only cultural and language barriers that frustrate me and not sheer stupidity. And since I’ve been there awhile, it’s easy to predict what they will want. The Germans and those of African descent will want shoes just above the sizes that we carry. The Asian ladies will want shoes in sizes just below our normal range. And of course the Asians (men and women), when shopping for handbags, will tear the store apart for an hour making their selection, then they’ll want a handbag from the back room that is still in the packaging and has been untouched by human hands. Being an outlet store with a lot of clearance merchandise, this is only possible about half the time, but since they don’t understand much English and/or the whole outlet/clearance concept, I spend about 10 minutes trying to explain this to them before they figure it out and spend another half hour tearing the store apart trying to find one on our shelves that is good enough for them. By this point the store has closed for the evening and I want to leave, so they’d better be buying a LOT - for a big sale I can leave the store a mess, but if they tear through and walk out well after closing without purchasing anything, well, if I were Catholic I’d need to go to confession for the things I’m thinking about these people.

I used to have a similar customer at the supermarket, at least as far as disregard for store hours went. She’d come in about 3 hours before the store closed, sit herself on one of the Handi-carts, and get on with her shopping. Sort of. About 10 minutes after the store closed, she’d finally make her way to the checkout with a list of things she couldn’t find. We’d run around getting it for her because we wanted to leave before the store opened for business the next day. And she loved to buy multiples of the same item - try this one on for size: 150 cans of Fancy Feast cat food (the tiny cans) and she’d want them not only scanned but bagged by flavor. There was to be total flavor segregation - if she had 2 cans of a particular flavor, they went in a separate bag. Double bagged, actually. Caitlin, if you’re reading this, be so glad you never worked in the Salem store! The only reason I’m glad she always came through after the store closed was that I didn’t have to deal with the customers who might end up in line behind her - it happened once, and I do believe they were having homicidal thoughts after having to wait behind her! I did get huge praises for keeping my cool with her (by that point I knew her though, and once you got used to her she was easy to deal with).

Ah yes, customer service. Those of us who do that job know that it should be one of the highest paying jobs there is. If I had a nickel for every time I said, “They don’t pay me enough to put up with this shit,” then I’d be on the Forbes list with Oprah and Mr. Bill from that computer company. What can I do about it (besides trying to avoid those kinds of jobs altogether)? Just grit my teeth, smile, and enjoy the employee discount.

As you can tell by one of my previous posts, I really like Edy’s Cherry Chocolate Chip ice cream. Here, west of the Rockies, Edy’s is known as Dryer’s. I have no idea why they do things like that. It’s the same packaging and mostly the same flavors, except the one that I am looking for. I’ve tried others, but nothing comes close. I’m not really wanting bing cherries in my ice cream (sorry, Ben & Jerry). I want the full of sugar and completely stripped of all nutritional value maraschino cherries. I’ve linked to the flavor in my links on the right. The closest I’ve been able to find is at Smith’s. It will do in a pinch. I did make the mistake of buying Breyer’s in a buy one get one free sale. They have some wild cherry blast flavor. It has bing cherries and a weird banana like flavor to it. Finding your favorite foods isn’t the sort of thing you consider when deciding to move cross country.

More and more people that I know in real life are finding out about my blog. Some of them I tell while others find out by word of mouth. My co-workers mostly know about it now. Time-Flying Dudette gets a big kick out of what I write here. Not sure why exactly, I’m not trying to be hilarious. As long as people are reading it, right?

I’m hoping that with the busy schedule and all the people in the office I’ll be able to find a few minutes to run across the street to that fruit and insect named neighborhood restaurant to get some lunch and especially dessert. I absolutely love their crispy bread pudding. That’s probably why I gained 10 lbs the past few months. I have no willpower, so these people have to make the stuff taste icky. No, no, I know. I need to place the blame on myself. They don’t force feed me this delicious junk food. I just need to get me some motivation and willpower. What aisle is that in?