Geek at heart

So... I went cruising iTunes for the inaugural 2006 WriMo Radio podcast the other day. I found it :-)

I also found "Grammar Girl's Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing", "AmericanWriters.com -- Creative Writing Podcast", "Tech for Writers", and tons more I didn't have time to subscribe to.

With my new iPod hook-up in the truck I can run around town being a

(wait for it)



G r a m m a r J a m m e r !!!!


*insert evil laugh reminiscent of your 7th grade English teacher here*

Happy Wake-Up Time!

There are times it is really good to be a virtual assistant. This is one of them :-)

A recent study by the Trasnsportation Research Board, "Commuting in America III", found that, among other things, over 13 million ~more~ people are solo commuters than were in 1990.

The Transportation Research Board has been analyzing commute info since 1986, based primarily on U.S. Census data. So, while report is very interesting, it also six years out of date since it is based on the 2000 Census.

The same study also indicated that people are leaving for work earlier, arriving home later, and spending more time on their commute--the number of people commuting over 60 minutes grew almost 50% from '90 to 2000. (Hence the popularity of audiobooks?)

The most interesting thing about the report, to me, was the fact that less and less people are commuting from the suburbs to town centers. More and more people, apparently, are commuting from suburb to suburb as major employers move out to the 'burbs for tax advantages or to be closer to the skilled employees they want to attract.

Another touchy aspect of this report is the immigration stats. It mentions how traffic has increased in border states due to the population influx--during normal population growth it would take 20 years for the next generation to start driving and commuting, but immigration increases the population without the delay. Boy, talk about a hot button issue!

You can view the entire report in pdf format at the Transportation Research Board's website or click here. If you don't want to read the whole thing (I don't blame you!) there's a handy little 'short' (12 page!) version of the findings here.

(and yes, if you happen to stop by both, I shamelessly cribbed this one from my own post on the OffAssist blog)

So Easy to Please

Yep, that's me.

A nice young man named Jeff called me from GoDaddy to talk about my hosting and email, since I've been with them for almost two years and went month-to-month over the summer pending the purchase of my new domain.

I didn't buy any of what he was selling, but he was so helpful (and called me on their nickel, which I appreciated since their one downside for me as a very small business is lack of an 800# for support) I kept his email addy handy for when I am ready to go back to buying hosting in bulk.

He walked me through setting up my domain email in my mail client (Thunderbird) and explained the nitty-gritty details of my domain backorder to me--Good news on that front; it looks like it was just an auto-renew and the current registrars have already moved it to a "PENDINGRENEWALDELETION" server, so "InkThink.com" may yet be mine in the next few weeks!

Woohoo!

I've heard comments both ways on GD over the last couple years, and I have to say I, personally, have been ~thrilled~ with the service(s) I've gotten from them, both the ones I've bought and the customer services. I've had no downtime on my site or my email since I signed up in Jan 05 and the site hosting is simple enough I can work on my own site and have changes live in seconds.

I didn't mean this to turn into a GoDaddy commercial, but, well, they take care of me, the least I can do is say something nice about them in return every now and then, y'know. I hope my clients would do the same for me.

At it Again!

It's that time again :-)

Well, technically it won't be that time until 2 weeks from 12:01am tomorrow, but you get my drift.

I figure that gives me two weeks to find a topic/plot for 2006.

***note to self - run to store & pick up Chris Baty's book tonight!***

Yea, I have no plot. I don't care!

I got so thoroughly stoked doing this last year--I remembered why I like to write, even though I basically have to open a vein over my keyboard, particularly for fiction--so Imma give it another go for 06. I'd ~love~ to make 50K words, but, as of now, I just wanna beat last year and break 10K.

***nother note to self: look for last year's NaNo stuff... did I even save any of that dreck?***

Dallas VA Conference

This is where I'll be the 12th-15th of this month.

Yea, I know, some hiatus.

I'm looking forward to learning a lot.

Grrr...

Apparently domain backordering is NOT enough. At least not when it isn't private. I paid GoDaddy happily to monitor inkthink.com this year, since it's current registration, unused for YEARS was set to expire 9/30/06. I did not make the info private.

The registrar, as far as I can tell, renewed it for another year ON THEIR OWN BEHALF. Most likely cuz they could see it was backordered. I checked with the current registrar. THEIR minimum bid to win a domain is $60! GD would let me do it for under $10 a year!

I would like to be "inkthink.com" it'd be a lot simpler, but I'll be dammed if I'll pay extra for it just because someone found out it was worth something to me. They can go blow - I'll stick with inkthinkva.com... or may switch to some other variant, but Network Solutions LLC can blow it out their... well... I am digressing in an unprofessional manner and will stop.