To G or not to G

It seems like I go through this thought process every month or so on my own, so I figured I’d open it up to the all-knowing f-list. Right now, my primary e-mail is via my domain (tk at tk dot org). This has advantages and disadvantages. The main disadvantage is that when I give out my e-mail address, I have to decide whether the recipient is someone that I am not upset about handing my website out to…and y’all know what I post here, so perhaps you can understand the concern. This, of course, is only a concern when I’m giving my e-mail to someone who also knows my real-life name and who might potentially be the kind of ass who would want to do harm to a person with my proclivities. Thus, 99 percent of the time, it’s not a concern at all. (I do know that my domain/real-life connection is discoverable, but you have to be trying to find it with some tenacity. For example, there are ways to search the wayback machine and link up my real-life name with this domain, but they’re not entirely obvious. Otherwise, if you know that connection, you’re likely someone with equivalent proclivities and/or a liberal mindset such that I don’t imagine you care. And, of course, I operate on the theory of security by volume…that is, to get to the good stuff, you’ve gotta be willing to sift through a massive amount of less interesting stuff.)

Because my work has required me to become a part of several social networking sites (e.g., Facebook) and because I’m looking for other work, I’ve also established a GMail address that is in no way linked to this site (versus my other one, which is tk at gmail dot com). Because that address gets frequent e-mail, I’ve been using GMail more often than I have previously. It’s made me really come to like GMail.

My domain e-mail has also been known to have problems, and when it does have problems, it is not always immediately apparent. I’ll be sending mail having no idea that the recipient isn’t getting it and vice versa. At one point, any e-mail sent from the webmail was not getting to people, but e-mail sent from T-bird was. Weeks went by before I found out and thus pinged my hosting company as to WTF was going on. GMail is far more reliable.

However, I also have some pride in owning my own domain, and in the 99% case, I’m usually happy to be publicizing my domain via handing out my e-mail. It has on more than one occasion served me well that someone I gave my e-mail to then navigated to the domain. I nagged a husband that way.

I see my options as threefold:
1) Start transitioning friends and family to the (tk @) Gmail address. Set up T-bird to IMAP with the GMail address. Use tk dot org e-mail only for mass e-mails and the like (e.g., when I sign up for e-mails from commercial sites, order confirmations). This removes the problem of directly exposing people to my domain. It’s not like I’d
2) Switch tk dot org over to using Google Apps For Your Domain (GAFYD) for e-mail only. Then, I get the power of G on my tk dot org addresses, mostly…but GAFYD is often behind standard GMail in terms of features. I’m not even confident it has IMAP. It also doesn’t fix the 1% problem.
3) Leave everything as is.

So far, every time I’ve had this discussion, I’ve settled on option 3, as much from inertia as anything. Any thoughts from y’all?

Free Webkinz

So, in honor of the Webkinz anniversary, many stores are giving away a free Webkinz with a $10 purchase. However, the webkinz are limited to the assortment shown here. I already have the frog that is shown there, and it’s hard enough not confusing between my two tree frogs, so I’m putting a general call out if anyone wants one of the free ones, let me know, and I’ll make sure to get it.

My addiction is sad.

Hooray for the plague!

My passover plague is complete! Kawazu, my girl tree frog, and Hera, my frog, joined the plague today, making it complete.

Here’s the plague sitting around the welcome table:

They all had their favorite foods as part of the welcome party. Then, everyone headed over to the control room, where they are plotting for world domination:

Hera has some interesting ideas for Tunisia. But, after a hard day’s work, it’s time for a nap, so they all retired to their customized beds for the night:

Japanese translator?

So, I bought some kikori no kirikabu (chocolate tree stump cookies) while we were in Chinatown. The inside of the package always has the lumberjack saying a message, but I don’t know what the message says.

Click for larger version.

Anyone read Japanese well enough to translate? I can only make out the hiragana, and that’s not enough to know what’s being said.

No tees for me’s

By the way, I am not allowed to buy any more t-shirts. Some spring organizing last week revealed that I have well over thirty t-shirts that fall into the “nice enough to wear out” category (i.e., no holes, no stains, no obvious wear). I also have about twenty t-shirts that are workout/pajama t-shirts. Thus, I have zero need for t-shirts.

If you see me desiring a t-shirt, help stop the madness. Don’t be an enabler.

(I do need some long sleeve tees, especially since 3-4 of mine seem to have disappeared. They may be mixed in with Scott’s stuff…not sure.)

Fruit Drunk

Yesterday, on our way home from Passover in Detroit, we stopped for dinner with a friend in Chicago’s Chinatown. We wandered around and ended up choosing where to eat based on what seemed to be busy, figuring that busy means delicious. We had dinner at Joy Yee Noodle, which I now know originated in Evanston. At any rate, it was the most delicious Asian food that I’ve had in a long time. When they said something was spicy, it really was. Also, they had a fruit drink menu that was 3 large pages long, with freezes and bubble teas. My DH had a Banana Ice Cream Freeze (bananas blended with ice cream). I had a Peach Mango Freeze. K* had a Tropical Freeze. They were all delicious. We were also sitting such that I could see the service staff bringing things from their storage area and freezer to the kitchen. I saw 6 giant bags of strawberries, 8 bunches of bananas, and at least 2 crates of pineapples go to the kitchen in the hour that we were there. Point being, they’re using real fruit. Their fruit drink prep area is visible to the public, too, although it was on a different floor than where we sat. The drinks are sizeable, too…at least 16 ounces, probably closer to 22. (They have a mega size that you can get that is a 50 ounce serving.)

For dinner, I had pineapple chicken with shrimp fried rice, served in a pineapple husk. It was dee-lish. Scott had a pork and beef omelet in a stone bowl. K* had pork Thai lettuce wraps. We all sampled everything, and of it, there wasn’t a dish that I wouldn’t recommend. The dishes the items come out in are just fun. Some dishes come in a little wooden treasure chest.

After dinner, I got a pineapple coconut freeze to go, and halfway through the drive home, I started feeling besotted. I told Scott I was drunk on fruit. When you think about it, that’s a massive amount of fruit to eat in one sitting, for someone not used to it. I probably had 3/4 of a pineapple, 1 coconut worth of milk, 2 peaches, and 1-2 mangoes between the drinks and the meal. I also had a fruit crash a couple of hours after we got home, where my stomach felt gurgly and I could barely keep my eyes open. I fell soundly asleep on the couch at one point. It felt very much like being drunk, although I imagine in reality, I was on a crazy natural sugar rush.

It was so good though. I had some grapes for breakfast this morning…hair of the dog and all.

McFil-A

McDonald’s has stolen the Chik-Fil-A chicken sandwich. On their menu, it’s called the Southern Style Chicken Sandwich. Harumph.

So far, I’ve been showing my displeasure by buying lots of them.

Impressions

I had a braces appointment today, and we took impressions. I’ll have a retainer in a few weeks. The braces are staying on until the retainer is ready, to avoid any movement in the interim. Picking my last ever ligature colors was nostalgic. I ended up getting dark and light blue alternating, just for fun. The color combination seemed vernal to me.

My dentist showed me her lab’s designs for retainers, but she gave me the option of using this site’s designs, too, since I’d pointed them out to her. My dentist spoils me. Anyways, I looked at the ones from my dentist’s lab, and they were okay, but none of them really stood out to me. There was one with black-eyed susans that I kind of liked, and there was another that was a very generic pinwheel design using 3 colors that I liked. But, they had no cats, and I really wanted a cat. So, I’m going to get the boxy cat with dark green sparkly background from the linked site. The boxy cat is particularly awesome because it looks a little like Pancake.

May 6th is naked tooth day right now, but if an earlier appointment time becomes available, they’ll move me into an earlier slot. The date was out a bit because of their availability; they’re in the middle of a move to a new office which is making appointments tighter than normal.

Rejected by Facebook

It’s one thing for a computerized algorithm as part of its regular parsing procedure to reject a two letter name; it’s yet another for a human being assigned to the task of being smarter than the computer to follow the same ill-advised rule.

Congratulations, Facebook. You get to join the wall of shame along with (now-defunct) America West airlines.

Return of Atalanta

Remember the forehead sign?

Long-time readers may recall that there was a time when I wished that people came with a meter on their forehead that indicated whether, for dating purposes, they were interested, sort of interested, or not at all interested. Not long thereafter, I got a nice little lesson in how to tell, in that I went from being unsure about a guy’s intentions to seeing him be around someone he was interested in and realizing how stupid I’d been to think that the little signs I was seeing in regards to me meant anything. Thus, I came to the conclusion that guys are nowhere near as hard to read as I’d been thinking (hoping) they were, that they do make it pretty darn clear when they’re interested and when they’re not. This got validated with two guys (the latter of which being my now dear husband) subsequent to the original target, moving it into mental theory status.

I find myself falling into my old trap recently, with two separate crushes, and I’ve realized that I need to look back and remember my theory of guy interest. It’s just far too easy to confuse friendly interest with more extensive interest if you try to read into each of those little signs. I keep trying to remind myself of the theory, that if there’s interest, he’s going to make damn sure I know, and that I’ve certainly given plenty of positive signs such that he shouldn’t be afraid to say so. Really, at this point, I think I have to resign myself that I was just being hopeful rather than being realistic, but there’s still this stupid little hope nugget that is making up excuses. The good part is that, whether my crushes are requited or not, there’s cool things to be had from the relationships, at whatever level. The bad part is that until I can convince myself thoroughly one way or another, I will be a bit of an idiot around the aforementioned crush. It’s my nature. I call it my Atalanta complex, although my reasoning is partially based on a romantic telling of her story.

(Have I recently mentioned that I’m arrogant? If not, please be forewarned.)

Atalanta is a figure from Greek mythology who was the equal of most men at hunting and sport. There were men who wanted to marry her and men who were threatened by her. The most popular myth about her is that her father set up a race, with her as the competitor and prize, and with death as the penalty for failure. One suitor, Melanion, got a blessing from Aphrodite in the form of golden apples that were enchanted to distract Atalanta and thus won the race. The romantic re-imaginings of this story often have Atalanta being taken with Melanion initially and intentionally falling behind so that he wouldn’t be killed. Certainly, the later myths about Atalanta and Melanion imply that they were happy together, that even with the knowledge of how he’d won, Atalanta viewed him as having beaten her and loved him, at least in part, because of it. (For what it’s worth, I’d agree. Unless the parameters of the race specifically forbid the use of god-blessed tools, Melanion was a worthy competitor. It is mentioned in some other myths that Atalanta had received blessed weaponry from Athena, which she was presumably using in the race, so her suitors should get that privilege as well. Nonetheless, I remember one feminist theory class I took thought of Melanion as a cheater rather than a worthy suitor, and I’m reasonably sure that’s a far more common interpretation than mine.) At any rate, I have a thing for geek guys, in part because I like guys to be my mental equal or better. The problem is that when I do actually have a crush, I tend to dumb myself down, not because I think it will make me more attractive to them in some way…in fact, it frustrates me because I know the opposite is true…but because it’s this weird byproduct like I have to let them win if I’m going to be able to like them. It’s hard to explain, but it’s like my psyche puts the cart before the horse. I wish it weren’t the case, but it’s so embedded in my way-of-things that I have not figured how to separate myself from it.

I do accept that it’s pretty likely that instead of having some far more noble Atalanta curse, I’ve instead got the same affliction that many smart women have in terms of dumbing themselves down around the opposite sex. I just like my theory better, and I like the myth. As much as I complain about my DH beating me at games, it is also part of why I love him. If he could not beat me at games at least half of the time or more, I don’t think I’d like him as much.