All My Little Words

Despite the fact that I won’t touch Facebook with a ten foot pole, social networking and I go way back. It’s true. Before Twitter, there was Myspace and Friendster, and before that there was Livejournal, and even before that message boards like the one at Chic or Shriek (a fashion do or don’t website), and waaaaay back in the dark ages, we used to socially network with personal websites. I was the shit back then – I had my own domain (yes, I still have it) and hand coded my own websites, (yes, plural, I had many, they were legion) unless I was feeling lazy and used Dreamweaver, which back then was considered cheating, but compared to the ease with which we build websites and blogs now, it was a monster to use.

Instead of @replies, we painstakingly linked to our friends websites. There was no concern about privacy – there was no Google, and getting your photos on a webpage could take days, if you (like me) had as many as we anow throw onto Myspace in a matter of minutes.

Back then the internet was still a new thing that no one really thought would catch on, and the only people who used it much were geeks like myself. You couldn’t just do a simple search for friends in those days – yeah, there were chat rooms, but those were lame even then. You’d spend hours combing the interwebs for good websites among the giant piles of crap on Angelfire and Geoshitties, and even more hours keywording and metatagging your site/s so that other geeks could find you.

Or you could find friends on ICQ (I Seek You, hahahaha), which was omnipresent, always on, always ready for a late night/early morning conversation. At one point in time, I had far more far flung friends around the world than I had IRL. And I’ll tell you what, I hope many of them are working in the digital media/social networking industry today, as they put out some beautiful, amazing and complex websites the like of which you just don’t see any more.

These days, it is all about simplicity. We want clean, simple lines, easy to navigate sites, and a plethora of features at our fingertips, just a single click or tap away. And there IS a lot to be said for “User Friendliness”, I agree.
It is nice to be able to quickly snap a little blurb like this out while I’m cooking lunch or keep my friends updated on my whereabouts on the fly.

And that, my friends, is kind of what inspired this. Yesterday, I somehow came across @mashable, the Twitter for the CEO of – you guessed it – Mashable, a Social Media Guide. I slogged through a veritable onslaught of tweets, stopping to read this article or that, when I came across what stuck with me today as the most noticeable article I read on Mashable (yesterday, anyway), Yelp vs. Foursquare vs. Gowalla.

Turns out that Yelp just got into the “Check-In” game by updating their iPhone app to support checking in pretty much anywhere, much like it’s two predecessors, but without the points. Hopefully, they’ll add that soon, because, let’s be honest – stealing the title of Mayor, or getting your Overshare or Super User badges are half the fun.

So of course, I went straight to the ole App Store and updated my Yelp app, so that I could check it out. And today, I went out to play with all three together to see what would happen.

Let me start by saying that I don’t spend a lot of time at THE MALL, but my husband’s wedding ring was waiting to picked up after being re-sized, and what better place to test my ability to check in with so many places to do so?
I drove to Northgate and parked, and sat in the car to check in simply, AT THE MALL. Yelp picked up Northgate Mall right away, no problem. Ditto Foursquare. Gowalla wouldn’t even load, a problem I’ve been having with it from the start. I’m just going to kick Gowalla to the curb right here and now by telling you that I tried a few more times to get it to at least load up, but it didn’t do it anytime during the 90 or so painful minutes I spent at THE MALL, much less let me check in. I would be more than willing to admit that maybe I AM DOING IT WRONG somehow, but – see above. I’ve been doing this kind of shit long enough that I can figure out almost anything on a computer or my iPhone in a matter of seconds without even trying. And as also noted above, everything is supposed to be so easy these days, it shouldn’t matter if I am The Man Who Fell to Earth. If I could figure out how to turn the iPhone on, get to the app store, download and install Gowalla, it should be a snap to get it to load up and check in. Everybody else seems to love it, though, so who knows?!?

Finally out of the car, I went into THE MALL through the Forever XXI store. I was just there the other day, but it was kind of awesome to be in there when there wasn’t 850,000,000 teens, and the clothes weren’t dumped into heaps all over the floor. Side note: Going during the day does have it’s downside – TONS of little kids.
I browsed and wandered through while I tried to check in. No problem with Foursquare, but Yelp told me I was too far away! I tried again immediately, and then later right when I walked into THE MALL, and again as I was leaving and I exited the same way I entered. For some reason, Yelp didn’t recognize that I was IN the store, it seemed to think I was a little over a mile away. Curious. I even tried “Forever 21″, to see if it could match up with another (incorrect) listing somehow. Nope. -1 Yelp.

Next, I headed over to Ben Bridge to pick up the ring. Yelp found that one okay, but no one had entered it on Foursquare yet. I checked in without adding it, (I know, I know, what’s the point of being a Super User if you’re not gonna add stuff? I add a lot of stuff, but unfortunately, it is sometimes unexpectedly difficult to add businesses, and I didn’t feel l like messing with it while I was standing in the middle of the mall.) thus, missing out on the points for that stop. -1 for Foursquare.

Honestly, I was a little lazy and forgetful because I wandered into a bunch of stores for a minute or two and didn’t check in. It didn’t seem worth it when I was just passing through on my way to another destination. At least I’m not a big cheater, I could have checked in at every store I passed! (I know people who do this sort of thing.)

After checking out the food court to see if anything looked good for lunch, I went to get a coffee from Starbucks. Checked in here just fine with both Yelp and Foursquare (Gowalla still down for the count), then used the Yelp app to see what was up at Blue Fin Sushi for lunch. I’d been there for dinner, and thought maybe I’d go shovel in some all-you-can-eat sushi for lunch (it’s better than you might think). First, I got really confused and thought they were closed, because the app shows the lunch and dinner hours, and next to them whether they are CURRENTLY open or closed. As it was 11:28am, it said “Closed” next to the lunch hours, which begin at 11:30, so I was like “WTF Blue Fin??” and I got a little annoyed. I ended up looking again a few minutes later, which cleared up the confusion, but then I took the time to see how much lunch was and ended up deciding that I didn’t feel like spending $16, although I totally would have if we weren’t having dinner at home tonight, and that was going to be my major meal for the day.

After I realized that I am a dumbass and forgot to order my venti latte iced instead of hot, I kind of just felt like going home and pouring it over ice instead of going to the At&T store to look at iPhone cases and to Payless to check out cheap purses. I also skipped looking for jeans in The Gap, and bypassed Macy’s even though I still have a gift card to use there. I ended up deciding that I should just leave and try checking in at a different location. First, I was going to try to go to the new orchid store in Ballard, but I was still hungry, so I opted to just go to Safeway on the way home instead.

I successfully checked in there, on both Yelp and Foursquare while I was waiting to turn left at the light that takes forever to change (oh, the irony) and after getting a few things, came home to write this while making and eating my lunch (Stir Fry!) and drinking my (now iced) latte.

I checked in at home (La Casa) on Foursquare (this is my friend Erik’s fault – he just joined Foursquare the other day and the first thing he did was add his house, an entity known as “The Sausage Ranch”, something which had previously never even occurred to me to do. I won’t add La Casa on Yelp, that just seems too weird.)

Conclusion? The social networking combination of “Tag” + “Hide and Seek” is fun. I got a few Tweets in there while I was at it, too.
I think Yelp is going to give Foursquare a run for it’s money, once it works out the bugs, but only if it becomes more of a game with points or some other reward. GoWalla can go suck it. To be fair though, I’m going to continue this little experiment by trying to figure out what’s up with my GoWalla app so I can give it a fair shake.

Okay, kids, I’m off to go check out some more articles on some of the above mentioned sites and maybe try to fix my Gowalla app. Until next time…

I just realized (like, an hour ago) that it is nigh upon the 2nd anniversary of my friend Bobby’s death.
To this day, I honestly don’t really know if he died on the 18th or the 19th. He was in New York at the time, and it happened sometime in the middle of the night. I got a phone call at about 4am. Phone calls at that hour are never good.

I tried to go to work that day. I don’t know how long I lasted before I became so overwhelmed with emotion that I had to leave. I don’t remember much about that day except that I went straight from work to Liz’s house, where I spent the whole day with her and Eric. I think we played Monopoly. Grant may have been there. Other people may have been, too. But mostly it was me and Eric. It wasn’t too long after that that I sent Eric to rehab.

I remember all the time I spent thinking about Bob, and all the people I talked to about him, and shared stories and memories with.
I proved that misery brings out the best in us by writing the best thing I’ve ever written – about Bob. I was reading it just now and unlike many other things I’ve written which I thought were brilliant at the time, and later realized were just embarrassing, I realized that what I wrote about Bob is still every bit as good as I thought it was the day I wrote it.

I wish I knew him more, so I could write more things about him. He was a great subject. He was handsome and funny and honest. He had THE. BEST. ADVENTURES. EVAR.
How many people do you know who went to Dive School and became underwater welders? He wasn’t working when I met him because his arm was broken, but every day of his life was just as interesting as the ones he spent underwater in the ocean with the sharks, off the coast of South America or wherever he may have gone to work. We had soooooo many adventures together. I don’t know that I will ever know anyone else as fun or engaging or charming as Bob. We missed him when he wasn’t here, and always looked forward to the times he’d get off the boat and come flying back into town with $5 in his pocket after making $30k (or whatever) in something like 2 or 3 months. Whether he had money or not, he was always somewhere interesting. When it wasn’t here in Seattle, it was Chicago or New York or LA.

You know how sometimes you come up with crazy things to do, but then you never do them? Bobby did them, without even thinking twice about. Whether it was dressing up and pretending to be someone else, or getting into a bar brawl followed by a car accident which he would miraculously survive, he would tell me his stories in this offhanded manner, not realizing that they would be unbelievable coming from anyone but him.

One day when he’d been gone for months, he just showed up one day, SURPRISE!!!! at my house, and came right in and started calling out my name. Too bad I wasn’t home! But he was at home at my home. He told me the most delightful story that visit, when I asked about the new scar on his head. It was from a car accident that he miraculously survived, after a drunken bar brawl, if I recall correctly. He went to the hospital and they asked him where he lived. He said “At Bella’s house in Seattle!” as if he were surprised that there were people who did not know this.

After all the things I’ve written about Bobby, I imagine that some people think that we were lovers, that we dated, or at the very least, that I was secretly in love with him. I loved him very much, but as much as I found him handsome and delightful, never like that. I suppose it could have been that way, but it wasn’t because everything about Bob was perfect, and it was perfect that we were never that. Being involved that way might have ruined it (doesn’t it always?) although every woman I ever talked to about Bob loved him, still loved him, and I think always will love him.

I didn’t realize until after he was gone, and a number of girls contacted me about him, and what I’d written about him, that he literally had a girl in every port. That makes him sound like a real asshole, but in talking to these woman, I realized that he made each and every one of those women feel like she was the one. The ONLY one. Whether they were aware that they were not didn’t seem to matter. They all loved him, and he loved each and every one of them. He wasn’t playing them, they weren’t conquests in any way. He was a loving person, and he loved people, and people loved him. While most of us can’t handle “managing” multiple partners, it worked for him because, again, it wasn’t something he thought twice about. He took it all in stride. Every city was like a separate life, and Bobby was a rolling stone, and why should he not enjoy the company of different women wherever he went? It made him happy, and it made THEM happy. The world is a better place for all those women having known him, rather than if he’d only “dated” one at a time, and therefore only been with a few women in his too short life.

I left a comment on his Myspace page, and then I looked down at the last several comments before my new one. It had been a while since the last, but I was glad to see a lot of familiar names in the last half of last year. I was glad to see that he has not been forgotten.
Wish you were still here, mang.

I do not spring clean. This is because I Winter Clean. I New Year’s Clean. I Post-Christmas clean.
Like I said to someone in an email just this morning: “Who wants to clean in Spring?!? Spring is for GARDENING!!!”

It all starts with taking down Christmas. Then we got a new piece of furniture, so the whole living room needed to be rearranged. And cleaned, of course. I’ve had some issues with the kitchen, and how the cabinets over the countertops are too low to out things under, so I had the brilliant idea that removing one that was kind of orphaned on it’s own on the far side of the sink would be a good idea.
Commence with the kitchen rearrangement!

And we switched bedrooms months ago, and I never finished cleaning arranging the bedroom. The process of doing that took ALL DAY TODAY and I am exhausted. But the process of removing the stuff from the room that used to be our bedroom into what is not our for real bedroom caused that room to be cleaned/rearranged as well. So at this point fully TWO THIRDS of our home has been completely cleaned and rearranged. IN THREE DAYS. Holy furniture polish, Batman!

So now I’m going to sink into a coma for the next 12 months, then I’ll do it all over again, I’m sure.

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Originally uploaded by violetblack

Ayuh, we’re cute, a’ight.

Trying desperately to distract myself from what I am sure is a recently broken tailbone.
I really wanted to start the year out with a BANG! so on January 1st, I did the most memorable thing of the year (so far!) and somehow slipped and fell in such a manner that I have spent the ensuing 5 days in varying states of discomfort. I’m not completely disabled, but it’s really hard to do stuff, and the discomfort is really distracting. I’m back to work tomorrow, something which I’m sure will be a joy to behold. In the meantime, I’m finding it difficult to do even the simplest things, such as pay for my Flickr membership for another year.

I thought this would be the year I’d write something every day, but I already fucked that up. It’s probably the year I did a bunch of dumb shit I shouldn’t have done. Oh wait, I already did that one. Like, 30 times. Fuck.