Daily Dose

Daily Dose of Conversation – Boards vs Blogs

8 Comments / Community Chest /

Amy Gahran has posted 10 Reasons Why Blogs Are an Awkward Conversation Tool and while I do agree that they can be, for some of the reasons she’s listed, I have some points to make… (This stems from the comments from one of her posts, Missing the Conversation for the Blog, where my pal DnW asked questions about Blogs vs Boards.)

1) Amy says Blogs aren’t intuitive – and boards are?  Do you know how many times today I had to explain how to use a message board?  Do you want to know how many times I’ve had to explain it in the last 10 years?  Do you want to know what happens when you change your message board software from linear to threaded?  Or make even a tiny little change to your message board format – much less change software entirely?  Blogs may not be intuitive but for the most part it’s pretty obvious that the little link under a blog entry that says "comments" means you can see comments and maybe even make one. 

2) Blogs are busy.  Yes, many of them are – and many of them are not.  But have you looked at a message board forum lately?  Unless you own the forum and keep it nice and clean you’re going to find the left side, right side, bottom footer and header incredibly busy.  Have you looked at iVillage message boards lately?  And remember, you can unbusy a blog really easily – RSS feed reader!  Some message board forums do offer email digests so you can unbusy those as well, but not all do. 

3) Unthreaded comments – again, look at message boards.  They don’t all offer threaded views and when they do, the threading does not always work.  Plus you have folks who don’t know how to use the darn things so if you’re reading them in an email digest you have this mess of previous comments tucked into what you’re reading and it is impossible to follow.  (That MF yahoo group I mentioned the other day drives me insane at times for this reason)

4) Comments don’t equal conversation – very, very true.  But this isn’t a problem related to blogs only, it happens everyday and all day long on message boards.  Oh does it ever.  It’s like pulling teeth sometimes to convince people to talk to each other on a message board.  And those poor message board posts don’t always get comments either.  Or they get one comment from a moderator saying "hi and welcome" or "hi, go read this article" and that my friend is that.  *Amy puts an aside here regarding some of the best conversations taking place between blogs, much as I’m doing with Amy right now.  This rarely happens on message boards and in a lot of cases message board moderators discourage such things.  What stays on one board should stay on that board and not be discussed "behind those people’s backs" on another message board.  This behind people’s back, cross board talking causes flame wars like you would not believe because it feels secret and like an attack.  I don’t think Amy is going to consider my post an attack on her – (I’m going to send her a trackback and encourage her to share her thoughts about what I’ve written. ) And, another thing that happens with this type of between blog conversation is you’ll find people who read my blog but do not read Amy’s will go and visit her and they will comment.  The same may happen for me  with people who read Amy’s blog but do not visit mine.  Expanding our horizons and our interaction happens so much more easily on blogs than on boards.

5) Comments don’t always get replies – again, typical of message boards as well.  No reply at all or a moderator directing the commenter elsewhere.  You can’t force people to converse or to respond to your thoughts, whether it is on a board or a blog or in face to face interaction.

6) No easy way to follow up to comments – this is a universal problem.  If you’ve got good blog software or good board software then this isn’t an issue.  Bad software, it’s a problem.

7) Turning off the comments (and trackbacks) – unless you own (or manage) a message board forum, you can’t do this (and sometimes even then you can’t do it).  There are times when you want to say something and you truly don’t want a visible, public conversation.  That does not, however, stop others from having a conversation with you – it just means they have to initiate the conversation on their own blog or within email.  Look at Winer – he has no comments but he still has conversations with people who chooses to converse with.  he is not inundated with comments from those who he has no time to converse with.  He’s got the control, with blogs, to have the conversation he wants to have.  That can make sense from someone like Winer who umm has a tendency to whine about stuff.  😉

8) Inequality – This is certainly not a blogcentric issue.  Message board communities are incredibly "cliquey".  Have you ever tried to break into a very tight message board forum?  Have you ever spent a week reading every message board post, commenting about things that interest you, introducing yourself only to have your posts ignored by everyone except the moderator?  Even if the message board community has welcomed you and encouraged you, it’s very difficult to jump in and start talking when everyone "around you" appears to be the "best of friends".  Besides the whole "A list" thing, I find this happens less on blogs than on boards.  Even people like Scoble are pleased when someone new visits them and posts an interesting comment.  I have not met a blogger with a stat tracker of some type who was not thrilled to see a new IP address in their logs.  Visitors may not know about that excitement but if you read some blogs (not the A-listers) you’ll quickly realize this is a huge deal – people blog about this all of the time!  If you want to feel loved folks, post on 3 news to you (non A-list) blogs a day. 

9) Lots of people don’t like blogs, and that’s ok.  (though I will smile at DnW just a little bit) But a lot of people don’t like chat and a lot of people don’t like boards.  That’s ok too. A lot of people don’t like face to face interaction, either.  Or the telephone, there’s a lot of telephone phobia in the world!  Some of my best cyber friends read my blog, but are not bloggers.  I do believe that many of them like it when I blog because I ummm talk more than I do on my board.  (sorry guys) And one cyberfriend in particular is not so great on boards but give her a blog and she’s awesome… and as a personal aside, she’s better on the boards now too.  Much more talkative and open.  It’s like she found her voice on her blog and it carried over to the boards.

10) It is faster to talk – and it is often faster to post on a board.  But, with a blog the words live on for as long as the blogs are there.  It’s so much easier to pick up where you left off when you’ve posted on a blog.  Trackbacks are beautiful things.  And, let’s talk stats again – I can look at my stats and see that the post I wrote about popcorn almost 9 months ago gets a huge number of hits (huge is a relative term, I’m not an A-lister!) so I could write more about that if I wanted to draw more people in.  With a message board, that’s not going to happen (unless you own the forum and have really good metrics but who has those???).  And of course I could ask Amy if she wanted to Skype about this or I could call DnW on the phone and say let’s talk this out and it would be faster – but then it would be just us, and we wouldn’t be drawing more folks in, hearing new perspectives and learning from a wide range of experiences.  Faster is not always better, in fact it generally isn’t when you’re talking about conversation.

I could go on and on and on but I see that I already have.  And in case anyone is getting the impression that I don’t like message boards, that would be incorrect.  I love them.  And I love chat too.  All tools for conversation are good and all can be awkward – and sometimes awkward is good.  But ummm I’m not fond of the telephone.

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It felt like church to me…

2006, Books in Bed, Non-Fiction, Religion /

The Peabody Sisters was one heck of a long church sermon! That’s how it felt to me, Unitarian Universalist that I am. Imagine sitting in church nonstop for a week… you non UU people will probably not understand it but the UUs will.

And then, once you UUs have imagined that – imagine not that you’re listening to a really great minister like Reverand Barbara (who is no longer with our congregation, unfortunately) or even Reverand Jack (also no longer with our congregation) but instead some really dry and might I say boring interim minister. That is what The Peabody Sisters felt like, to me.

Of course I did learn that the mighty Elizabeth Peabody is almost solely responsible for Unitarianism and Transcendentalism and all that is right with education. And if folks had only listened to her, folks like Hawthorne and Emerson and Channing and Mann and most especially Bronson Alcott, they would have done far better in their lives. To read this book, Elizabeth Peabody was the founder of it all – at least all that took place in the 1800’s.

That is the only thing that made the book worth sitting for – how often do we hear that a woman was responsible for all the great things (and yes some not so great things too). It got to be a little much, and I kept expecting Elizabeth to have invented the lighbulb and walked on the moon, but I still smiled everytime Elizabeth was the force behind the man or her ideas were used by some man to achieve great things. Oh and Mary and Sophia (the other women that make up the “sisters” weren’t so bad either. Not as great as Elizabeth of course but what can you expect). Woman Power! Go Girl! Hear Me Roar!

OK on to something that I am sure will sound nothing like a church sermon, boring or otherwise. Gosh I miss Reverand Barbara!

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Daily Dose of Food – The Letter D

Foodie /

Today’s Diet is brought to you by the letter D a la Slashfood.  My wonderful pal, Elaine Magee aka The Recipe Doctor is playing the game on her blog so I’m going to play too… using two of my favorite Recipe Doctor cookbooks!

First up, the fabulous Fry Light, Fry Right!  In it we find: Better Than Domino’s Dots, Devil’s Food Cake Doughnuts, a Raspberry Dipping Sauce, Double-Decker Tacos and three great Dips!

Moving onto the latest and greatest cookbook by Elaine Magee, the Comfort Food Makeovers Cookbook you will find: Day After Thanksgiving Shepherd’s Pie, Day Before Mashed Potatoes, Deluxe Banana Pudding, Dumplings, and a Dry Rub for an Herb Roasted Turkey Breast w/ Apple Cider Gravy.

More D recipes can indeed be found, these are just a few.  I DARE you to buy the books (or get them at your library) and try a few.   This post has been brought to you by the Letter D and the number 4   (because that’s how many years I have known Elaine Magee!).

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Daily Dose of Music – With a Twist

2 Comments / GLBT, Melissa Ferrick, Sights & Sounds /

Sony is launching a new music label, Music With a Twist.  The line up will include GLBT artists "who have mass appeal and hit potential across all musical genres". 

What, exactly does that mean?  And do GLBT musicians want or need a separate label?

If it means they’re looking for GLBT artists whose music reflects who they are and where they’ve come from and truly resonates with the GLBT community, then heck yea.  Why not?  Colleen asks "Would Elton John jump at the chance to be on Music With a Twist?" – that’s not a fair question at all.  Obviously at this stage in the game, he wouldn’t.  Why would he?  He is gay, certainly, but his music doesn’t reflect his homosexuality, the GLBT culture or anything else that’s gay.  30 years ago would he have jumped, I think he might have.   The real question is would a group like our local group Redboy jump to join?  I haven’t talked to them but I bet you they certainly would.  I’ll ask TJ (the non lesbian boy drummer in the band) the next time I see him and get back to you on that.

If it means they’re looking for GLBT artists whose music is gender neutral and watered down for mass consumption, then I cannot imagine a GLBT artist wanting to be included on such a label.

Look at what happened to Melissa Ferrick and Atlantic.  Lesbian chic was in and still Atlantic didn’t know what to do with her.  They had a special gay marketing group and still they didn’t know what to do with her.  If this is more of the same, then Music With a Twist isn’t going to work for a lot of artists or for GLBT consumers. 

And speaking of Melissa and twists – Here she is talking about this little label and it’s looking like she’s either in or she wants to be in.    Which again answers Colleen’s question – Elton may not want in, but Melissa does. 

As Melissa will tell you during every performance, it isn’t about whether you are gay, straight, bisexual or transgendered – it’s about the music.  But she’s smart enough to know who got her where she is and what it takes to get her where she wants to go.  A solidly promoted alternative label like Music With a Twist can allow her to use the GLBT fan base in a positive way – and from there the music will do the rest.

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Daily Dose of Kids – Memories

1 Comment / Day to Day, Kid Talk, Memories /

Badgerbag, on whom I have this weird blog crush fascination cause she scares me, wrote an interesting and thought provoking essay on Mommybloggers last week.  It inspired me to talk about a little childhood memory issue we laugh about here at the Flamingo House… Proof that a child’s memory of an event, even at the age of 11, is different from the memory her parents have of the same event.

Picture September of 2001, the week after 9/11.  I don’t know the exact date it was a weekend, still definitely September.  TW drove up to SC as she often did.  Chris was off somewhere with his friends and for some reason I decided we would go to the Clemson Little Theatre and see Cinderella.  With Michelle.  And before that, we would take her to dinner at Friends, our most favorite restaurant in Anderson.

Sounds ok, right?  Well ummm, no.  It was doomed from the start.  First of all, I am not at my best in September.  I’m moody and quiet and sullen and not in the mood to deal with anyone else’s feelings or moodyness.  Always a risk to do something unusual, not in the general routine of things or stressful with me in September.  And of course there was the fact that Michelle and TW were still feeling their way into this weird relationship.  Territorial behavior was always a possibility with them.  Again, not something I deal well with when I’m at my best and did I mention it was September?

We have dinner and that’s fine.  Weird but fine.  We drive to Pendleton and we’re ok.  TW on the aisle, me in the middle and then Michelle beside of me.  And for some reason, 9/11 maybe (?), they decided they needed to have us stand up for the National Anthem and then announced that we’d have a moment of silence in memory of those who lost their lives in 9/11.  This was too much for TW and she did what she always does … she giggled.  out loud.  during the moment of silence.  I wanted to kill her.  Michelle looked like she wanted to crawl under the seats and go sit with a normal family.

We survived the first portion of the play, and at intermission we wandered to a nice little room with food and beverage and I tried very hard not to just walk out and sit in the car for the rest of the play.  Michelle was quiet and stuck close to me and as far from TW as she could get.  It was not pretty.  We went back in, watched the rest of the play and then it was over.  We get in TW’s car – this was back when we still let TW drive lol and head home.

Five minutes into the drive, Michelle my hypochondriac child, began to threaten to barf.  Angel hair onion rings which she loved but we were evil for forcing her to eat.  Threatening to barf these angel hair onion rings because of TW’s driving.  It was making her queasy.  So TW stopped at the gas station, got into the backseat, put Michelle in front and I drove us home.  I was not amused by this.  At all.  I was done with the both of them.

We made it home.  Michelle barfed up her onion rings and swore never to eat them again.  (Even now, the smell of angel hair onion rings sends her to the bathroom.  Even mentioning them will get her to growl at you about barfing).  I collapsed and the rest of the evening in the dark attic bedroom was less than pretty. 

Since then TW and I have referred to the infamous Cinderella weekend – when nothing goes right, but you’re still together and glad to be together.  Michelle, however, often waxes poetic about what a great time she had going to see Cinderella with us at Clemson.  She does not seem to remember the moment of silence fiasco, her mother’s stoney silence or her whining that TW’s driving was what was causing her to feel like barfing.  No.  All she remembers was what a wonderful time she had at that doggone play.  With us.  Her two moms.  Who she loves.

Kids and memories.  You cannot predict what they will remember or what spin they will put to their memories.  All you can predict is that they won’t quite the same as yours.. 

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Feminist Bookstores?

Bookstores, Feminism, GLBT /

Do we really need feminist bookstores anymore?

I saw this tiny little question linked to a tiny little article about a bookstore I’ve never been to.  I was immediately sorry to realize that even though we’ve been to Atlanta many, many times and we’ve been to quite a few bookstores, we have never been to this one.  When we go back again, which will be soon, we will seek this one out and enjoy it while we can – since it seems the end may be near. 

But beyond this particular bookstore, the question is what really stuck with me.  Do we?  Do we really still need these kinds of bookstores? 

Of course we do!  Ummm or do we?  I’ve gone back and forth with this, over and over again for two weeks and I still don’t know the answer.  Not for myself or for the collective "we". 

I didn’t grow up with a feminist bookstore.  I don’t think I visited my first one til I was in my late 20’s.  Until I moved to Gainesville in 2002 I did not live in a town that had one.  So do we really need them?  I did fine without one, right? 

One of the best things about this town is it’s tiny little women’s bookstore, Wild Iris.  We don’t go often, we can’t afford it!  Everytime we go in, we walk out with a ton of books and another $100 (or more!) on a credit card.  Just knowing it is there, though, makes me happy.  It makes me happy to hear my almost 16 year old say "Oh I bet they have that at Wild Iris".  It makes me happy to hear her say she went in to browse at Wild Iris while she was wandering around downtown.  When we had our mommy and me day last month, we enjoyed going in together and browsing and talking about the books and the women’s comic books and just being there.  In that female space. 

Last year (or was it the year before) we thought Wild Iris might close.  Luckily a new buyer was found and it survives.  And it appears to be the only surviving feminist bookstore in Florida.  Imagine that…

This still doesn’t answer the question – or maybe it’s the wrong question altogether.  Maybe it isn’t about need, it’s about want and the answer to that is a definite yes.  We still want feminist bookstores.  Definitely. 

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Daily Dose of Frustration – Squidoo

2 Comments / Pet Peeves /

Well I gave it a shot.  Three shots actually.  But Squidoo just isn’t going to work for me.

The first time I tried to build a lens, I had so many time out issues that I gave up with only one lens created and nothing on it at all.  I waited a few weeks and tried to edit that one.  Time out issues and lenses that said they were saved and published with new data only to find out, they weren’t.  I came back again yesterday and tried again.  And again.  And again.  I tried today, too.  Again and again and again.  Same problems.  Server times out.  Cannot find server.  Edits that appear to be saved only to disappear into thin air.  The flickr and amazon feeds don’t load or don’t load with any consistency.  It’s just not worth the frustration.  I have six and a half kids, 2 dogs, 4 cats, 3 turtles and a couple of hermit crabs.  I don’t need Squidoo frustration, too.

Good luck lensmasters.  Let me know when Squidoo has solved these issues… and when they have a bloody log in on the front page.  Please.

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Daily Dose of Spirituality – The Hermit

Day to Day, Religion /

"It is in community that we find our true self,  the speaker intoned.



I thought of the serious probing dialogues, the endlessly unfolding spiritual conversations, the communing, the groups, the schools and congregations, the clubs and societies and parishes and sanghas, the churning, interpersonal spiritual processes. It was positvely oceanic. I sat on the beach, high and oh, so very, very dry."

Go look, go read, go think.  One of my favorite bloggers.  She made me sigh and think and smile and sigh some more, today.

Night of a Stranger

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Daily Dose of Mystery – Birds

4 Comments / Questions and Answers /

I made a mistake, it happens so rarely I should have known it would come back to haunt me somehow. The mistake wasn’t a big one, just a little tiny thing but it’s caused some issues and now we have a mystery on our hands.

Quite some time ago, almost 5 years ago actually, I mentioned in passing to TW that I liked flamingos. Lawn flamingos in particular but all flamingos in general.

40flamingos.jpgWell folks, don’t make the same mistake I did. Telling TW you like something leads to being inundated with that thing. In every type, shape and form. From halloween pumpkins carved with a flamingo to flamingo lights of all sizes and types to flamingo statues and yes, yard flamingos. 40 of them for my 40th birthday and a variety of others just for everyday.

After almost 5 years of this, I’ve finally gotten her to stop buying every new flamingo she sees, though others still tend to gift me with flamingos. My sister, (yes THAT sister), sent me clothes for a yard flamingo a couple of years ago. I do not EVER “do” clothes on animals, statues or otherwise. For my birthday last year she sent me the most unusual flamingo trimmed jeans I’ve ever seen. Anyway, you get the point right? They don’t call our house The Flamingo House for nothing.

This brings us to the mystery, well almost to the mystery.

We live in Florida where the lottery symbol is the flamingo. We live in a state where there are simply a lot of flamingos. Wild, in zoos, in stores, store logos – you name it, Flamingos.

Oddly enough, in our college town, you don’t see many lawn flamingos. At least not in the neighborhoods we travel through. But all of a sudden, the folks down the street have acquired a couple of flamingos. Only in the winter. And they wear wool scarves and they move, from yard to yard. Though never to our house. They seem to prefer the houses at the bottom of the hill which is fine by me because I ummm have enough.

And a house around the corner, they too have acquired flamingos but they don’t seem to travel from house to house. Maybe because they have lightbulbs and know they need to stick close to home or risk losing their light? I dunno, I haven’t asked them why they don’t travel.
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So as we are pondering the recent acquisition of flamingos, by apparently straight folks (because I know you were guessing gay people had moved in, weren’t you?), a new bird appeared in our yard. Overnight.

It’s not a flamingo but it goes well with our flamingos. Except that it is orange and blue, gator color, which I’m not really a fan of. At first we thought he was rainbow colored but he’s not. Various shades of orange and blue. Hmm. Where did he come from and when is he leaving?

We thought maybe the 1/2 child left him as a surprise. But no, he swears he has no clue and he’s not a good liar. We asked the friends of the 1/2 child and the other two teens in the house. Huh? was the response. I finally remembered to ask Chris last night and he was completely confused. He thought I was going to ask him to fix one of the birds or move it or do some other chore. When he realized there was a new one in the yard, he first said “ha I hadn’t noticed” and then said “ummm who would bring you another yard bird?” I didn’t bother to clarify that chickens are yardbirds and this is not a chicken.

While asking him, the small children overheard my confusion so I asked them if they knew anything about it. Ha, they hadn’t noticed either. (We’re one heck of an observant family or we’re just use to weird birds living in our front yard – you guess which it is)

So where did this thing come from? Why is it here? Will it someday disappear again? Soon maybe? Would any of you like to come pick it up? Maybe I could freecycle it? But then if someone left it for us as a gift, (Maybe one of the many neighborhood fans of mamma cat?) might they have their feelings hurt if it went away?

It’s a mystery and it’s keeping me up nights.

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Daily Dose of Blogs – Vote

6 Comments / Daily Dose /

My blog buddy, Fatblogger, is up for Best of Blogs in the Diet/Fitness category!  (hmmm wonder who nominated him…)  The guy is painfully shy it seems and does not want to vote for himself.  So it’s up to us to do two things:

First go to his blog and tell him there’s nothing wrong in voting for yourself.  (Unless this is Survivor where it’s not permitted to do so)

Next, we all need to go over to the Best of the Blogs site and VOTE FOR FB (aka fatblogger)!

As some of you know, I spend a lot of time thinking about diet and nutrition and exercise and self-acceptance.  Well I can tell you that FB’s blog is the only diet and fitness blog I read religiously.  When time gets short, I skip the others.  But if FB has blogged, I will save his post til I have time but I will not EVER skip it entirely.  So go vote for him – and add him to your reading list. 

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