I expect both to be rather high this weekend. I have already begun the hot bath marathon I always complete when I get sick, and my brother has already begun the body count in Killzone 2. I don’t remember seeing him so giddy over a game, but if it makes him happy…cool. I feel like one of his victims, though. I’m achy, stuffy, and even my eyes seem blurred. Bah.
Send bath salts, please. I’m already pruney.
A long time ago, I was a sophomore at WVU. I had just changed majors and was anxious about my new major and the people I would be sharing my classes with. Almost immediately, I recognized a chick I had seen in a record store wearing a “Beckley College” sweatshirt. Since Beckley is relatively close to my hometown, I worked up the courage to talk to her, even though she looked like she didn’t want to be bothered by me or anyone else.
That chick was Kim, and she left me a comment this week. 🙂 Anyway, soon after that first day of class, Kim, Karmen (another homegrown West Virginian), and I had formed great friendships. I will absolutely never forget the sisterhood we shared. I had never had girlfriends before, and really haven’t since. I will remember the time we spent laughing, crying, spying, and growing to be the best time of my life and I can’t imagine what my life would have been like without them.
For what it’s worth, ladies, I think of you often, even if I don’t keep in touch like I should. :love:
I’m not going to lie; I loved this episode. Give me an hour of John Locke every week and maybe I’ll get all the way back on board. I guess Broyles Abaddon had to die because of “other” commitments. Heh. I’m cool with that. Too bad Adebisi HATED working on the show and will almost definitely not come back. Aww. Ooh, that person, that Locke saw, with the backpack? I nearly shed a little tear. For reals.
The Top Chef finale is airing right now, and as of right now, at 10:49pm, I don’t think I’m loving it.
Hate. Pussy out of making dessert and have it pay off? Fail, show. Fail.
I have spent hours upon hours trying to find the “perfect” startpage. I have come to the conclusion that there is none; at least for me. I want a way to include feeds, mail, pictures of Hob and Istar, my Vimeo vids, my calendar, and more. All of the startpages pretty much offer these things, but in different ways.
I, like many others, started with igoogle, which was fun for about 15 minutes. Not too long after I designed my page to my satisfaction, they forced a lot of dead space on users by moving the tabbar to the left. That, and the fact that theming is so very limited meant that I needed an alternative, which led me to Netvibes. Netvibes is one of the best presented options I’ve used, but the lack of true customization leaves me a little unsatisfied (for instance, there is only one theme that does not have glaringly white widget backgrounds and the “extra” customizations, such as tabs, look cheap). Do not let their claim to have 1000s of widgets woo you…most are third party widgets, which always look tacky and include links to the widget’s “home”. Blech.
Pageflakes was my next trial, and I really like the flexibility it offers, but the native design looks very 1995, and not in a good way. It is by far the worst looking option, but has some really great flakes. Shame, really.
While searching for ways to overcome the issues I have with the above-mentioned sites, I found a link to Protopage. This is my preferred page, and I love it up to 95%. The lack of love is for an (apparently) outdated feed reader that can’t even find half the feeds I give the exact address for. I can circumvent this problem by using Feedburner feeds, which seem to work 100% of the time, but it’s still a gripe. Another gripe I had was that my thumbnail images weren’t showing up in my own feeds, but they were in everyone else’s feeds. I solved that problem by not using the “singlepic” function of the Nextgen Gallery plugin. Again, this is a non-issue with other readers, so I’m not sure why Protopage can’t handle them. Since there is no real calendar option beyond the most basic, I’m able to use my ics calendar from Netvibes, and include it as a widget on Protopage by use of the “webpage” widget. Niiiice. Widgets can be free positioned and resized, colored any way you want, and choosing a background is much easier than in other services. There are basic ads at the top of the screen, but you can close them forever (or until you reload) with one click, then they collapse. Not too bad.
The latest, and definitely most fun, option I found this weekend is Schmedley. Since Schmedley is so new, there is very little to choose from, but given a few more “schmidgets” and the option to resize the schmidgets (they are HUGE), this will become my favorite. The Gmail reader is wonky as hell, as it pulls emails from archived and trashed mail and never from my inbox, but the POP Mail seems to work a little better. The retro design of the logo and amazingly cool backgrounds make this a top contender for me. I just hope development continues!
If you try any of these out, let me know what you think!