When I logged in to my blog this morning I saw I had surpassed the 4000 mark for Number of Entries and am around 4040 now. It just came and went…4000 entries. That’s a lot of blogging.

Blogging has changed so much in the 6 years I’ve been at this blog. I had tried to blog several times since 1999, before they were even called blogs, but this particular blog stuck because I when I started it I was pregnant with a child I would eventually miscarry and this blog became the place I could talk about struggles associated with being a spontaneous aborter who was trying to have a kid. I guess it was the kind of thing I only felt comfortable talking about online, so it motivated me to keep this particular blog going even though dozens had failed in it’s wake. (Fun Fact: I even started a blog one time writing about the show Temptation Island. Who knows why that didn’t stick?)

Six years and 4000 entries later and I can’t imagine my life without this blog. I’ve made so many friends, been inspired by so many people, and documented so much of the life of my family that I can’t imagine how different things might have been without it. And because I read so many blogs, and know how blogs have touched my life and helped me by showing me there are others like me, I’m honored every time I get an email or a comment telling me the same thing. It’s an interesting circle of influence we have online, we can read another person’s words and suddenly no longer feel alone. And then, on the other side, if I feel alone I can write about it…allowing me to no longer feel alone in my situation.

We also share joy. I look at the pictures of your wedding dress or of your nursery or of your remodeled kitchen and I’m so proud and excited and happy for you. I know that many share in the joy I post of my crazy kids and the stories I tell of my happiest moments. I just can’t imagine not having that in my life, that ability to share by reading and by writing. It has made my life better in so many ways, this blog, sometimes I feel like I owe it a big Thanks!

So…4000+ entries. I wonder how many of them are about pregnancy-related boob sweat? Or trying and failing to lose weight? Or my kids pooping on something? It’s a hodgepodge we have going on over here, that’s for sure. I think that’s the other reason why this incarnation of the blog actually stuck six years ago, I quit stressing so much about what to write about. Some days it was about the struggle to have kids and the fears of miscarriage. Most days? It was just about the mundane. I just made a point every day that I could, to write about something. To challenge myself to find something in my life I could make funny or interesting. And if I could do neither of those? I’d just fall back on the boobsweat.

And while I do use Twitter a bit, and Facebook a bit, my home will always be here at misszoot.com. Thanks for sticking with me the last six years and 4000 entries. This month is going to produce a lot of changes in my life and I’m looking forward to sharing each of them with you. And if there are no changes to discuss? You know there’s always a fallback plan. We’ll just talk about Temptation Island.

The other thing I found was that when I clicked on “Your Stuff”, there was a box asking me for my thoughts!

Now, evidently this has always been there and I’m just an idiot for not noticing, but I don’t know if I ever click on “Your Stuff” because, well, it’s my stuff so I know what’s there. But after finding the “LIKE” thing (that is new, right?) I guess I was just going click crazy to see if there was anything else new.

So, of course I had to type in it and guess what! It showed up on my sidebar! It’s like Twitter + Google Reader going on there. I mean, I don’t want my thoughts pushing back the articles I shared on my sidebar like they’ve done now…but still! So cool! I’m surprised I haven’t seen more people use that function yet. Of course, I have no idea what I’ll use it for (if anything) but I’m bound through adoration to proclaim my love for everything about Google Reader.

My point? I LOVE the new LIKE feature on Google Reader. And I LIKE the old Shared Thoughts feature.

What do you think? Are you going to “LIKE” this if it shows up in your Google Reader? I will because I can not resist something so awfully meta.

What you are seeing is my Google Reader window as it looked a few minutes ago. Now, the feeds you see in this image indicate the feeds that have updated since I last logged in to my Reader. Once I’ve read the feed, it disappears from the list. (Something you can change, of course.) What the red arrow is pointing at is one of my favorite features of the feed reader. My Friends Shared Items. Anyone who is one of my Google Contacts and who uses Reader to mark feeds, if they click “share” at the bottom of an entry, I’ll see it in that section. I’ve discussed before how much I love this feature and how some people share some of the coolest things. But the new thing that I’ve been meaning to talk about? Follow the red arrow below.

That arrow points to the new feature. See, now you can leave a comment on an item inside the feed reader for your other feed reader buddies. If you want to keep up with the comments on shared items, you click that little link “Switch to Comments View”.

Here you’ll see myself, Pink (my Google Reader Twin) and Sarah discussing the “New Moon” trailer (Of course. What else would we be discussing?) Anyway – my point of all of this is: USE GOOGLE READER. And more importantly? SHARE ITEMS. I want to see what you like! And maybe comment on it! Especially if it involves Taylor Lautner. I always have something to say about him.

Turns out some malicious code had been inserted into one of my recent WordPress entries. How they did that – I have no idea. I have changed all passwords and upgraded the the latest copy of WordPress to keep it from happening again. But, I thought I’d share with you how I found the code.

One of the articles someone sent me mentioned the term “iframe” as a way to identify this type of malicious code. I loaded up my blog and then did a “Ctrl+U” to view the source of the page. Then I did a “Ctrl+f” to search the page for the phrase “iframe”. I found the line of code you see in the below picture.

Oddly enough, it was inside an entry I had written recently. When I went back to my WordPress dashboard and went to edit that entry, I found that line of code inside of the entry. I have no idea how it got there but I removed it immediately. I am hoping this solved the problem (I did a database search for similar results and found nothing else) but more importantly – I wanted to help others who may have been as lost as I was to hear their website was triggering virus alerts.

So…if you get an email from someone saying your website turned on their virus alerts or gave them some sort of “Malicious Code!” warnings – do a search for the term “iframe” and hope you don’t find anything.

Stupid hacking bastards. Why can’t they leave a boring Mommy Blogger like me alone? Bah.

But I’m giving it up. I know I’ll get roasted for being anti-tech. But, what I really am is pro meaningful communication. And somewhere along the Internet highway we fell under the spell that more communication is better communication. Sometimes more communication is just noise.

I still use Twitter pretty minimally. Lately I’ve used to to update several people at one time, and I do find it a good way to pass time if I’m bored (and maybe stuck on the shuttle ride from hell) and forgot my book. I also follow a bunch of people on Twitter who I like to keep up with (Jimmy Fallon twittered on the Today Show today! Hee!) in that celebrestalker kinda way. (What? I admit it!) But I do feel like sometimes I forget that 140 characters is not enough to nurture a relationship or friendship. Sometimes it’s just enough to offend people.

I think I may take this as motivation to write a few letters this week. Dig out the gobs and gobs of awesome stationary, buy some stamps, and communicate the old-fashioned way. Just for the hell of it.

Do you like it? I used another tagline derived from Dr. Horrible, I just couldn’t help myself. (I think someone else who might be giving her entries titles from Dr. Horrible would commiserate.) I got the DVD for Christmas and am still quite obsessed with it. I decided I wanted something a little more cheery around here so I went for birds. And then immediately regretted that I chose these birds as soon as I realized how close to the Twitter site my design now looked. sigh. I just can’t win, can I?

I made a few changes on the sidebar, adding a section that will show the political movements I’m keeping up with. There’s one there today that’s even great for the conservatives in the audience. Please remember, while I tend to err on the Liberal/Progressive side of politics — I still sometimes may offer something on the sidebar that the conservatives would like as well. I’m not going to direct you to any of my Reproductive Rights efforts, but justice for military men who might have been knowingly poisoned? That’s a non-partisan issue if I’ve ever heard of one.

I also took out my husband’s and son’s flickr updates from the bottom of the page. Since they updated flickr like…never? Seemed kinda silly. I did, however, add buttons for most of the projects I’ve been involved with recently or things I’m proud of joining.

On top of the new design, I finally upgraded to WordPress 2.7. And let me tell you? I’M SO HAPPY WITH IT. So far, anyway. My category box for my composing page? Is back on the side (instead of below where I always forgot about it) so I’m hoping I won’t have as many entries accidentally filed in the default category anymore. Not something any of you probably notice or care about, but for someone slightly OCD like me? I’m thrilled.

I like the interface better all together. Everything just seems prettier. Silly, I know, but the prettier my interface? The more fun it is to blog.

So – that’s it for the Geeky McDorkerson updates for the day. Let me know what you think! Unless you hate it all, then please don’t say anything. THANKS!

Also, I was told that the birds below – separating the entries – look kinda like bras. Do you agree? Should I re-order them to look less…bra-like?

NaBloPoMo starts SATURDAY. That is a crappy day to start National Blog Posting Month, but I heard that Eden’s efforts to change the calendar this year to move November 1st to Monday didn’t work.

(Just kidding! No one tried to change the calendar! I promise!)

If you’re going to participate, set up an account at the above link. I think there are some issues going one with friend-ing and such, but if you want – here’s my profile. I would love to be your NaBloPoMo friend! You don’t have to set up an account to participate, of course. All you have to do is vow to write a blog entry every day in November. EVERY DAY. Last year I upped the challenge to myself by writing 100 entries in November. And I did it. But I will not be pledging that again. I’m not that KRAZEE.

I think I am going to challenge myself to comment more. I’m not sure how I’m going to do it yet, but I’m going to figure out some way that both motivates me to comment on YOUR site while also motivates YOU to comment on MINE. Because I’m a selfish comment whore, of course. I’m also trying to think of some way we can help each other come up with topics every day – I’m open to suggestions if you have any. This is a group effort, I believe. We can’t do it alone.

(Someone is making this awfully dramatic…)

So – are you going to play?

AndyZ and his Extra (Cute) Chins Say You SHOULD

Then, I noticed it on some of your blogs and badges too. And no offense? But it bugged me on your site too. Mainly because I wanted to know WHAT WAS MAKING THIS HAPPEN? I was slowly but surely losing my mind.

So, I search the flickr forums for help on the issue. I found this thread. It involves a lot of mumbo jumbo about CSS and code and such. Some of it made sense, some of it did not. However, I did use that thread to figure out how to fix the issue. It was typing in ONE character in TWO different places. SO EASY. I thought I would share the fix with you.

If you are having this problem, you probably have code that looks like this on your design page. The names of your divs may be different (mine are flickrbanner and flickr_badge_recent_side) but essentially? The same bit of code. (In wordpress…click “design” and then “edit theme” to find your stylesheet.) All you have to do? Is type an “a” in the right spots.

Now, if you want to know why this works? Or if you flickr photos are styled differently and may need a different fix, then I suggest you read that thread. You may find what you need. But, if yours is styled like mine? You don’t have to wade through the confusing Geek Speak. I did it for you! Now, look how pretty…

Then…two things happened. One – I discovered that the article pissed a lot of people off. Two – I discovered that I had pissed Twitter off. Since the article mentions the followers/following numbers…I paid attention to the number of people I was following for the first time ever. It was like 450+. I clicked around awhile to see how that numbered compared to others, and when I came back to my profile? It suddenly said I was following SEVEN people. It went from 450+ to SEVEN in a matter of seconds.

I figured it was a glitch because all of the photos of people I follow were still showing up and their updates were showing up on my main page. So – obviously I was following them – Twitter just couldn’t count. THEN…later that day…the updates stopped appearing. Suddenly my front page showed only my own updates. And then…today? The pictures of people I follow disappeared.

Evidently I have angered the Twitter gods. Suddenly I am not longer following anyone. At least according to Twitter. I’m going to give it a few days and if it doesn’t fix itself, I’m going to have to go re-follow them. All because I casually mentioned that there were somethings that annoyed me about Twitter.

So – Let me explain myself before the Twitter gods delete me all together. I’ll touch on some of the points of Maggie’s article that either had me shouting, “Amen!” or “Uh Oh” because I’m guilty of some of the offenses she mentions.

3. Consider pausing between tweets.
Twittering 30-plus times an hour pushes other people’s messages off followers’ homepages, and sends mobiles into convulsive twit-fits (to say nothing of excessive SMS charges). If you have a lot to say, but still want to engage with followers without alienating them, consider making more liberal use of DMs.

Also, don’t you occasionally need to use the restroom? Please don’t take your phone in there. Thanks.

I have logged into my Twitter page before and seen 20 tweets from one person IN A ROW. And all 20 of them are in the last 5 minutes. I’ve never un-followed anyone because of this, it’s just something that I find a little annoying. See, Twitter – it’s not you, it’s them!

5. Accept that some people will use lots of @s.
If you’re getting a lot of nonsensical @ messages because you don’t follow the same group of users, either subscribe to the people being mentioned so you can follow the thread, or turn @ messages off. And then stop complaining.

This is the key part: because you don’t follow the same group of users. I follow a bunch of people who follow people I don’t follow. So, yeah, I get VERY confused. I find myself sometimes very lost and that’s exactly why! I don’t follow the same group of people that the people I follow, follow. (Are you confused yet?) Now…I’m not going to turn off the @ messages (yet), but I will take Maggie’s advice and stop complaining. That’s just annoying.

8. What’s rude in life is rude on Twitter.
Passive-aggressive tweets are never as inscrutable as the sender thinks. When you’re being mean, even covertly, eventually everyone figures out the target. And then they start firing the arrows back your way.

I have been the target of criticism a few times on Twitter, that’s never fun. And there have been other times where I’ve seen someone else get attacked in the same passive-aggressive manner. It always makes me feel VERY uncomfortable. Like, I immediately want to cover my ears and run away. I never like to participate in conflict because it upsets the peace-loving hippy inside of me. So this part of twitter? The comfort it gives people? Makes me uneasy. Why can’t we all get along?

12. Leave when you want.
If you want to stop following someone, stop. There’s no need to send a breakup note. Unless you’re having Twitter sex.

I never quit following anyone intentionally. I did accidentally follow EVERYONE following me once, and found out there were a bunch of spammers out there. So I un-followed them, but they don’t count. I’ve never un-followed anyone but I WOULD like everyone to know that I don’t pay attention to who is following me, so if you un-follow me? I won’t notice so no one’s feelings will get hurt! I understand that my tweets are boring…it won’t hurt my feelings at all if you un-follow me!

13. Plug moderately.
Lots of people ignore this guideline, but if you’re almost exclusively using Twitter to plug your blog posts, events, or products, or to ask people to vote for one of your projects on Digg, you’ll lose some followers.

This annoys me. Period. People who ONLY tweet when they have a new entry on their blog. I should probably just un-follow those people. OH, WAIT. Twitter did that for me! As it is right now, I’m not following ANYONE, so NO ONE I’m following does that. Anyway – I do NOT mind the occasional plug, but when that’s all it is? Bugs me…that’s what I subscribe to RSS feeds for.

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So, there’s where I stand. I don’t hate you, Twitter! I just get irritated that – like everything in life – some people don’t want to do it my way! The nerve! I know that’s unrealistic and to be honest? I don’t spend that much time on Twitter anyway. So, not too big of a deal. I think Maggie did an excellent analysis of Twitter and it’s users. And I’m even guilty of some of the annoying things she mentions. If Twitter ever sets my account back right again, I’m going to treat it better. I PROMISE.