Lexical Light

Updating My Library Thing

I've changed one of my Typelists from "Books I've Read in 2006" to "Books I've Read Since 2006." I was going to create a new list each year, but figured I'd save myself the trouble. If someone is really interested in what I read each year, it can be sorted when viewing my list in LibraryThing. LibrayThing is so cool. One of my favorite books I've run across this year is Sacred Stacks: The Higher Purpose of Libraries and Librarianship. (Man, it's $32 at Amazon. Better keep an eye out for it at Half Price.)

Registerfly Reviews

I'm not on a vendetta or anything, just wanting to help people like me find info. After yesterday's "Vote of No Confidence" post, I went to webhostingstuff.com and found some reviews on Registerfly.

Click here for the reviews. It's not that I want Registerfly to not do well, I just don't want others getting stuck with them while Registerfly figures out what to do.

(I found webhostingstuff.com when I googled "hosting services group" nj in an attempt to contact the company on my credit card bill.)

Update: I was going to post some reminders about not using Registerfly, but my little efforts would pale in comparision to the guys at Registerfiles.com. There's much more to it than bad service. Wow.  So, I'll post this today and leave it at that.

As I develop the idea for my crayon venture (on and off line) I'll be looking for good resources. I need to remember to share them here. 

Feb-RU-ary

This month's phone message went something like this: "It's FEB-RU-ARY (anyone get the annunciation there?) and at the Smith house that means......The Love Boat, soon will be making another run, The Love Boat, promises something for everyone...(sung in my best/worst lounge lizard voice)."

If you're a FTF friend who hasn't had the pleasure of experience that message yet, time's running out. Call now. (And get a bonus gift.) For my web friends, I'm sure one day I'll get around to posting audio clips of my lovely phone messages on my blog. Oh, the bliss.

Son & Mom Fix Toilet

Yes, it is almost headline worthy.

Lately we've had to double flush* in one of the bathrooms. How annoying. Today I decided to take a look in the tank to see if I could figure it out. I thought I saw the problem, but before I did anything I wanted to make sure I wouldn't mess something up.

I went to howstuffworks.com to learn how a toilet works. (I found the site while doing crayon research.) They had an easy to understand explanation and a fabulous flushing animation. Gameboy & I did the experiment mentioned. He can now amaze his friends by flushing a toilet w/out using the handle.

Besides having all that fun, we actually fixed our toilet. (The filler valve was out of the overflow tube.) Now I feel especially clever. 

Of course, this will probably be one of those things that everybody but me knew, like knowing that polar bears and penguins don't live together, but I don't mind. I'll revel in my new found knowledge just the same. 

*Reminds me of the King of the Hill with the water saving toilets. Peggy was up to six flushes. :)

Vote of No Confidence for Registerfly

Oy. How many times have you been on hold with a company and as your position in the que moved up, so did the estimated hold time?

(Rant/Tech Stuff Warning:  Contents may be boring to those of you with no interest in tech stuff. Permission granted to skip this post.)

23 minutes ago I started out as #6 in the que w/a hold time under ten minutes. (Don't remember the exact time.) Now, I'm #2 in the que with a estimated hold time 23 minutes. That's crazy.  (Hooray for a speaker phone so I'm not stuck w/the phone in my ear.)

That's what has happened w/me on the Registerfly support line. I'm calling to dispute a charge on my credit card.  The actual company on the card is Hostingfly, but when I called their support line, the message skipped right to "Good-Bye." At least they didn't keep me on hold.

(I'm now at a 26 minute wait.)

When I set up my crayon domain name, I started off using Registerfly because that's what hubby used to register his domain.  I spent a few hours messing with the Registerfly site and never got my domain registered. (Thankfully.) I decided to ditch them, knowing I risked losing $10 or $20 bucks, but I was willing to risk it.

Call update: Woo-hoo - I'm first in line at 9:59 am - we'll see how that goes.  Switched from hold music to regular person voice - could it be, a real person? - grab the phone.....no, it's a message, something about "Thanks for calling Registerfly, we're unavaialbe/able to take your call, please leave a message." Back to the automated voice, "The user's mailbox is full. Please try again." I can't believe it. Why not just tell me straight up that I need to leave a message instead of stringing me along on hold?

When it comes to tech stuff, customer support is critical, especially as a newbie. While I was messing w/Registerfly initially, I googled it, but only found a few reviews on it. One was a chronicle of someone's horrible experience with Registerfly, including them blocking his domain name because he disputed the charge on his card. That's why I wanted to make sure I checked with Registerfly before removing the charge from my card. Though my domain is registered through AT&T now, it's not worth the $10 to get it tied up.

One reason I love Typepad is their amazing customer support. I've never contacted them by phone because their e-mail response time is so quick. Though AT&T's support wasn't great a few years ago, I'm willing to give them another chance because of recent good experiences, including the ease of setting up my domain.

One of my main reasons for posting this, is in hopes of helping someone like myself avoid Registerfly. I'll have to do some more posting, using some SEO tactics to help people avoid Registerfly, but do it in an efficient way. I don't want them to take up anymore of my time. On the other hand, if I can save someone the hassle, it would worth a few keyword laden, set to automatically post entries.

Crayon Update

After reading a bit in Mompreneurs Online, I decided to make the crayon site private until I'm ready to roll with it. Thanks to those of you who checked it out. No doubt I'll be blabbing about it again when it's up. I'll probably mention it off & in the mean time, like now.

Here's a quick pic of a few of the crayons:





The whole crayon idea has gone in a fun, interesting direction. I'll share more when I get to a point where it's solidly working or to a point where it solidly didn't work. Either way, I'll learn in the process.

Note to Self: Google Results

I just created the coolcrayons.com blog the day before yesterday. When I Googled "cool crayons" today my reference to it on this blog showed up as 7 of about 1,330 results. Interesting, at least to me.

My Lastest Creation

No, it's not a baby. (It's been 5 years since my last one, but I guess that's the residual reaction those other five years when I was pregnant seemingly all the time.)

Okay, back on track. (Because I really have to hurry and get ready for church, but I just had to come blog about my new fun.) (I obviously didn't get back on track. Could I do a whole post with one "regular sentence" and one parenthetical sentence? Completely bucking any sense of writing well? I guess I could because it is my blog.)

Really, now about my latest creation. The tip of the iceberg is here at COOLCRAYONS.COM*  Tee-hee. It's the holding page for the site until I can create a blog to forward it to.   

It all started sometime last year when we started the crayon ministry at church. But what to do with 5 pounds of broken crayons? I was intent on finding a use for them. The result is "Cool Crayons." (Fifi came up with the name.) After peeling, sorting, and melting the crayons, we pour them into candy molds. Now what to do with all these adorable crayons? My kids can only use so many. So far, the answer has been, "Use them as a fund raiser for the new children's building at church." The past two weekend, the kids & I sold crayons at church.  We sold over 200 of them. All of the money goes directly towards the children's building. We also made some to put in "Get Well Meals" for kids enduring chemotherapy at the local children's hospital. How cool is that for crayons?

As we're doing these things, I'm streamlining the production process,toying with the idea of doing it as a small, small business. 

I'm not sure what will come of my crayons infatuation, but I'll just go with it for now. BTW, if any of you locals have crayons to donate, just let me know.

(I am so going to be late for church.)

Update, 2:48 am, Sunday (oy):

First, had to change the blog title from Lastest to Latest. Goober.

Second, I've spent the past SEVERAL hours creating the header for cool crayons.com. I was so excited when I figured it out. It's not perfect, but it's good enough.

Third, a little explanation of the cool crayons/Typepad connection. I registered the cool crayon domain name through AT&T. They're not my favorite company, but after trying to deal with registerfly, I was completely thrilled with the ease & quickness of AT&T. 

After setting up the domain name, I set up a cool crayon blog under my Typepad account. (Love the $15/month, unlimited blogs deal.) Then, I went through AT&T to forward the Cool Crayon domain to my blog. I even masked the domain name, not that it was necessary, but just because I could.

All this time I've been enjoying Napster. (Another great $15/mo deal.) For the past hour or so I've been breezing through the U2 playlist. Good stuff, Maynard.

Good night, now.

*(Another Update: 2/25/07, After reading a bit in Mompreneurs Online, I decided to make that site private until I'm ready to roll with it. Thanks to those of you who checked it out. No doubt I'll be blabbing about it again when it's up. I'll probably mention it off & in then mean time.)