smiling on foot

No sooner did I write the previous post of the woes of Lappy… the new cord arrived in the mail that very day. And it works! The cord was indeed the problem and the new cord is working just wonderfully. What’s strange is that it’s a 3-pronged plug where the cord that came with my laptop was a 2-prong. But I guess that is not important as long as it works!  And it does! Hooray for happy lappy!

My laptop has been out of commission now for some time. It’s strange not to have a laptop. Of course, my Droid smart phone is an adequate substitute, but it’s tough writing out entire emails and blog entries with your thumbs. Right now, I’m borrowing Dad’s computer while he is out cooling off at his local watering hole. My Dell lappy is only 2 1/2 years old… way too young for issues, right? I’m wondering if it’s all the back and forth I did with it to Double J and to NF’s and to HEKD’s and all the other places I’m constantly taking it to.

You see, about a month ago, I noticed that one of the little lights in the bottom left-hand corner of my Dell Inspirion 1525 was orange and not blue. When I looked closer, it was the light above the little icon of a battery. This seemed odd to me since the lappy was plugged in and should be on full power. So I jiggled the cord and unplugged and plugged back into the wall a few times. This made the light go back to blue and all was saved. But then it happened again a few days later and the plugging and unplugging seemed to only work sometimes. Then one day it was dead so I took out the battery and put it back in (a trick learned from the Droid) and it seemed to revive the lappy. I ordered a new battery on eBay and when it came in, the lappy was still only sporadically charging. I changed the battery and it seemed to change nothing. The light would be blue for days and then suddenly orange and then we were looking at dead lappy again. It’s now been completely dead for 2 weeks. No amount of plugging and unplugging or removing and replacing batteries can revive it. My last hope is maybe it’s the cord that’s not allowing the electricity to get where it’s supposed to in the lappy. I bought one on eBay 15 days ago and it has yet to arrive. I’m getting rather antsy for its arrival. The email said it will take from 12-18 days to arrive via Hong Kong post. If I had read this 18-day-hong-kong nonsense in the eBay posting, I never would have purchased through this merchandiser.

And so I patiently wait…

Big news, bloggos, I’ve included a fun WordPress plugin to this here bloggo that allows those with fancy smart phones (iPhone, iTouch, Google Android, etc.) to read smilingonfoot.com in a nice and clean ”mobile view.”  If you do have a fancy smart phone and find that you’d rather read smilingonfoot.com in tiny font from the site (I know you will miss looking at my feet in top header), there is a button at the bottom of the screen that turns mobile theme on and off. Enjoy!

I’ve been telling my co-workers how “done” I am with this tag line. It’s on everything! Even this blog! Well, it was more towards the beginning of the year, but I’m a little late with this post. I only notice it because the emails I worked on in January of last year included this slogan so I’m more sensitive to it appearing in ads all around me. I even received a religious calendar in the mail with “New Year. New You.” on the cover. Can we think of something else, people? Or are the marketing geniuses of the world too busy making their co-workers crazy to come up with something new? In my experience, it’s the latter. Speaking of which… I won’t go into details… but just want to say it’s been an interesting 2010 thus far and I’m seriously considering changing my career. What could I do with myself that would not require me to stay at work until 7 p.m. three nights a week? Something that would allow me to have a life? I don’t know where these 5:00-release jobs are, but I can’t seem to find them in my current career. I guess I’ll just keep plugging along and hope that things get better… either with a change in career or without.

I do have a new assistant, however, and she just started this past Tuesday. Training is HARD. I have to use my brain so much more and I barely have time for these hours of training. The hardest part seems to be explaining how the different parts of an email swap out based on what type of customer you are… how to recognize and think about the changing pieces, how to code it, how to set it up in the online tool we use and how to know if you did it right. If you’ve never worked with this sort of technology, it’s tough to wrap your head around. And if you’ve been swimming in it for 5 years, it’s hard to explain to someone who doesn’t have much experience in this sort of thing how to figure it out. But it’s her first week and she did pretty well. I’m going to have to think this weekend on a better way to explain dynamic content for her for next week… a “lesson plan” if you will (for all my teacher friends).

Speaking of technology:
My American Express online account just sent me a 2009 summary of expenses. It’s pretty cool how they’ve categorized my spending in 9 different categories: Business Services, Communications, Entertainment, Fees & Adjustments, Merchandise & Supplies, Other, Restaurant, Transportation and Travel. These categories are listed down along the left of the chart and along the top are the 4 quarters of the year of which the spending happened. I’m proud to say I did not use this card TOO much in 2009, but I did falter a couple of times… especially at Christmastime. About $1,000 falls into Merchandise & Supplies and you can expand this category for a more detailed breakdown… where you see this spending was exclusively on clothing. Shocking. Bad, bad LK. The other $700 falls into Business Services but when you break it down the spending is exclusively on Health Care Services. This was all my dental work I had done last fall. How cool that American Express can automatically create this chart? And it’s completely accurate. I love technology. Now I just need to put this S back to zero balance for 2010.

A couple of weeks ago, I used kodakgallery.com’s cool little sidebar app to drag and drop my favorite photos from all my 2009 online photo albums and created a “year in review” of photos. This is always an excellent project. It’s time consuming for sure and I remember last year feeling like I’m never doing this again because it’s so tedious to choose the photos, order the photos to my liking and put little captions on each. But I think the sidebar app made it a little quicker for this year. Of course, the captioning is what takes most of the time, but it’s mandatory in order to tell the story of the year. It took me about 2 hours to put this together and the final product always makes me feel great. No matter how depressed I will be about the cold, snow, work, living with my parents, etc… the Year in Photos is a powerful reminder that my life is pretty damn good.

Click here to see my 2009 year in photos! (Apparently, I attended about a million birthdays in ‘09 – apologies for the lack of variety.)

Now as for 2010:
I’m not going to make any “resolutions” this year, but I do have some general plans. #1 is I’d like to move out of my parents house and support myself like a normal 32-year old (33 in 2 weeks!). I’m afraid to live by myself, but it’s something I’m going to psyche myself up for and force myself to do. Sort of like a “personal challenge” instead of a lame “resolution.” I’m close to paying off one of three college loans and then I’ll start saving for the move. I’m still undecided on the condo vs. apt. decision.  However, I’m leaning towards the apartment after hearing about Xtina’s $3,000 termite damage in her condo and year 2 of water ruining the carpet/wall of KDM’s condo. It’s all their issue that they need to deal with and I think owning has just so much monetary risk that’s scary to take on by myself. (Especially if I’m looking to change my career, right!?) #2 for the new year is just to keep up with my health and try like Hell to get to the gym at least twice a week and continue to eat right. I know that everyone else on the planet has this new year’s goal too, but that doesn’t mean it’s less important. I did really well with it in 2009 for the first time in my life and hope I am able to continue with 2010. #3 is just to continue to enjoy time spent with my friends and my boyfriend. I had been so lonely before I met NF and have had some really good laughs and conversation with him in 2009. I really hope this works out and we have a fun 2010 together too. But, of course, the friends play a big part in my happiness too and will continue to make time to see those smiling faces as well.  Hopefully, with the new assistant, I can do more weeknight outings and have that much more of a more fulfilling life.

We’ll see if the new year brings a new me, I guess!  Happy New Year, Bloggos. :)

It has recently come to my attention that I have been given $50 by my VW cell phone service to purchase a new phone with the renewal of my contract. I love when this happens… it’s the 3rd time since I’ve been a member of the VW network.

So, omg, guys – what phone should I get??!!

Now there is the practical Elle Kay inside that says, “Dude, your phone needs to make calls and send occasional text messages and you’re good. Don’t go crazy and spend tons of $$ on a fancy smartphone or anything.” Then super technology-lovin’ Elle Kay says, “Cancel the Verizon network, sign up for AT&T and get yourself the best f-ing phone out there: the mesmerizing iPhone. <insert angels singing here>. But the large part of my mind is saying, “Stick with VW because it’s the best coverage and even works well at Camp Friendly… and get that new DROID phone because reviewers are saying that it pretty much rivals the iPhone.”

I’ve been reading about the Droid phone every workday since last Friday. I won’t go into the list of specifications and its comparisons to other phones. I will just tell you that it sounds fantastic. I had to meet it in person. So I took the 3 Elle Kays to the mall yesterday to play with some phones. When I finally held the droid in my hand and played with the touch screen (which is a brand new thing for me as I still have a flip phone with buttons), it was very user friendly and felt natural. I left the mall wildly in love and had to fight the urge to skip and sing through the parking lot. I heart this droid phone.

One concern is that it’s new with fairly new technology. New technology usually has bugs in it that I don’t want to seriously hinder my serene lifestyle. Should I wait for v2.0 once the bugs are out?

And then there’s the money. The droid phone is $300. There is currently a $100 off promotion online in addition to my $50 to renew my contract. So now the droid phone is $150 for me. Do I really spend $150 on a smartphone? Or do I get a blackberry for free? I always say that if you use something a lot (like every day), it’s a good investment to get the best. A blackberry phone would be fine – they are very popular and people like them. It connects to email, facebook and other apps that you can download. It’s fine. It doesn’t have a touch screen and you’re not able to be in multiple web/app screens at once or play videos, but totally fine. Who am I kidding… the new technology is calling to me like Bongo in the wild. (The Bongo reference is a private joke between my mom and I – apologies). I want COOL. Doesn’t everybody want COOL in their life? And not just any kind of COOL… fun super techie phone COOL. Touch screens are COOL. Having personal and professional calendars are COOL too. Playing tunes that I’ve uploaded, or downloaded from Amazon, or from the Pandora app is also pretty COOL.

And you know… I just got promoted at work which came with a pretty good raise so I can afford it, no problem. A MANAGER with her own assistant should have the best phone VW offers, right? Especially a manager on the e-commerce team… I need to show the peeps at work that I am keeping up with the times with the most fantastic, COOLEST phone out there. Maybe if I was still a specialist, I’d get the Blackberry – but no way now. It’s the droid or bust! I mean, I have an image to uphold here at double j. This flip phone I’ve been sportin’ is pretty lame… embarrassing even. Yeah, I think I’m going online and ordering up myself a big platter of COOL today. You know you’re so jealous of me and my impending COOL right now. :)

The New COOL: The Verizon Droid

So this blog has been super public and live since mid July and there have been a handful of people who have found their way to smilingonfoot.com via searching for other things on the internet. Below are words that they entered into their favorite search site (mostly google) and somehow my blog came up for them and for whatever reason, they clicked and arrived. I’m sure they were all disappointed that my blog is not dedicated to their topic at hand (you know who you are you weird foot fetish people)… but all the people with the cat pee problems definitely got a good recommendation with that new catbox I bought. It was a good solution for my cats, mos def.  And I hope all the skype people not only looked at my entry about skyping with RB, but also clicked through to RB’s skyping post. Perhaps she could shed some light on that analysis. Any who… here are some of recent search terms for this here bloggo:

- if you dont use IM more often, I swear to god, elle kay – smiling on foot [this is my friend, DS, who likes to communicate via my search terms because he knows I check them]

- why dont you ever sign online LK? smiling on foot [him again]

- how to stop cats from peeing on edge of catbox [I feel their pain - get the catbox I have and your dreams will come true]

- precor 100i boston [this person happens to be from Jamaica Plain - but I have many people looking up my fave machine at the gym]

- cat pees over side of catbox [seems to be a common issue... epidemic even]

- giant catbox [what?]

- skype smilings [this is one of many skype entries - I hope they enjoyed screenshots of RB skyping with me]

- night clubs people 40 dance along south “shore of MA” [this savvy person used bing.com and works at Blue Cross Blue Shield]

- skypohontas [someone in Moscow who's obsessed with RB]

- harem pants [someone in Singapore with bad fashion sense]

- LK i know you read these, smiling on foot [guess who again!]

- video smiling woman feet [I have a feeling this person in Athens, Greece just may be my soul mate - I have smiling woman feet!]

- cat tail twitching urinating [what? my cat isn't the only one?!]

Ten years from now, we’re all going to look at each other and say, “Remember when we used to put ‘LOL’ on everything?” And then we’ll all laugh and say, “Yeah, HEKD would start and end every email, facebook comment and blog comment with ‘LOL’ back then.” Then I will recall the time when AMR, Bykfam and myself were returning from our MD vacation and Ozzy’s “Iron Man” was on the radio and Bykfam sang “L-O-LOL-LOLOLOLO-L-O-L” to the tune of the popular guitar riff. That story will get a big response for sure.

Then someone will say, “And remember how we used to ‘put on our lollerskates‘ all the time?!” Oh, the roars of laughter will be immense in the future. The conversation will inevitably start turning down the road of other “text speak” like OMG, FML, IMHO and whatever else we can remember. And then we’ll all sit back and reflect at how silly we were with dreamy smiles on our faces.

If you haven’t skyped, it’s pretty fun. It’s like being in the future talking on TV screens to each other… but it’s laptops… which is fine too. Since RB lives in upstate NY, I don’t get to hang out with her as much as I’d like. Skyping is pretty close to an actual visit and a definite step up from phone calling (of which RB is not a fan of).  I’m not sure if this is specific to Dell, but we both have Dell laptops and therefore have these fun graphics that we can put on ourselves while we talk.  I’ve taken screenshots of a few of our conversations where we laughed and laughed at the graphics and posted here for your viewing pleasure. Click on each image to make larger. Enjoy!

If you’d like to see pics of me skyping on RB’s computer, click here. Yeah, we’re dorks who decided to simultaneously create skype posts to our blogs tonight. : )