Saturday, February 23, 2008

Sometime you just feel like ....

Model good behavior, ignore the bad.

That’s a saying a good friend of mine uses for keeping the level of exasperation down several notches when she sees behavior she doesn’t like.

I try to practice the adage as much as possible. Like today, for instance. On Etsy, on the “Site Help” forum, a newbie who is obviously a refugee from a HUGE on-line auction site posted a thread asking some questions. These questions were phrased in such a way you could tell right away the poster was fresh from the other site. The answers were given in a kind, knowledgeable manner by several of the denizens who’ve been around both selling venues. All I could do was offer my welcome, which I did.

I was holding my breath for a nasty comment to come along. I did not pass out because it didn't take long. Fortunately, usually, the nasties are very few and far between. But man, did I want to virtually slap someone into the next browser!

That’s when my friend’s saying popped into my mind. I'm off to do some ironing ... here's a sweet photo to leave you with:


That's our Snickers modelling a lovely necklace my daughter made.

Friday, February 22, 2008

Designing for Donation

For the second year in a row, I've been asked to donate to my daughter's school silent auction to benefit the PTA. It's always a pleasure to do this! Education is such an important factor in life, and we are pleased that all our children have been getting a sterling education from Plano Independent School District.

When we were first looking into the opportunity to move to the Dallas area from Los Angeles, choosing the community in which to live was based on two crucial elements: 1) gang activity and 2) school performance. We found both our criteria met in Plano. It's not a cheap place to live, but we were willing to sacrifice in order to provide a safe place for our children to grow and thrive.

One would think that with the property taxes at the level they are in our community, no further infusion of money should be required for the schools. If only that were so! There are economic and political reasons why our individual schools need more money, and I'm determined to stay neutral in all things political. Suffice it to say, our schools need our support, both in time and money. I'm happy to offer what I can and I'm grateful that my contribution is always appreciated!

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Whoo Hoo!

You can teach an old dog new tricks! Check out my 125 x 125 ad that a lovely and talented Etsy artist made for me. Callista ... you're the best!

But it's one thing to have a beautiful spot ad to spread around the web, it's something else to actually get it to work right. All that beautiful art won't do anything if the correct html gobblety-gook isn't used so folks can click and go where you want. That's where the old dog needed to learn a new trick. Part of the work is already done by the Photobucket people. But their coding just brought the user back to my Photobucket page. I needed to figure out how to link to my Etsy shop.

I was confronted with two referrals, but I was able to figure out the right one to change.

Yeah, I know, y'all who've been doing this stuff for awhile are probably rolling your eyes, but give an old gal a break. I started in on the computer scene when CPM was the industry standard. I left the computer scene when the Intel 480 stopped frying eggs and was being used in business offices. That makes me a fossil in terms of computing.

Anybody ever heard of dBase?