Gimme Some Skins

It may be coincidence, but about three years ago I ranted about the then-non-blogging state of countries that are not the US and Canada in the realm of Friendster and something called Pusit Classifieds. That was settled soon enough after the post was published, however clueless Dave was.

And then I had my Beijing Olympics opening ceremony freakout — just scroll down to the posts below this one.  Not my finest moment. 

I was not expecting anything except maybe government plainclothesmen masquerading as our mineral water delivery boys suddenly flashing their badges as I cluelessly let them in and they take me away to be deported forever and a day for blogging something so heinous; Little Spud had been imagined to cry piteously from the crib as he sees his poor Mama and her laptop getting their asses kicked.  Again it might be coincidence.  I opened my Inbox yesterday and found an e-mail from the Friendster Blogs team.  Cool revamps, the e-mail promised, and would I be interested in checking out the new stuff?  If so, reply to the e-mail.  Yes, please.  Sent the reply.  Auto reply comes back that the team will respond within 72 hours for new instructions.

I received the new instructions today, and the big change was Friendster switched to WordPress blog services.  The instuctions mention that pictures will probably take a couple of days to get transferred to the new digs so I’ll probably check out uploading images later.  Fiddling with controls, I see that the WordPress Friendster Blogs’ more obvious advantages are:

1. More templates — they’re prettier — with preset selection of Widgets. 
2. The sidebar archive list covers everything from the first post to the most recent; in contrast, the Typepad sidebar archive could only display a maximum of 24 links of the months you blogged, and readers click on the  ’Archive’ link on top of the sidebar list to see the rest.
3. Extra Pages you can cram anything your heart’s desire onto.
4. An option to open your links to a new page; Typepad’s links open your links on the same page.
5. Tags!
6. Add media.
7. Multiple blog writers and moderators, log-in features
8. I can decide and manually set how to display peripheral data such as date and time of posting, I can also adjust the time zone settings — I can’t remember Typepad had this feature for the Friendster blogs.
9. Blogs have a password-protect option.
10. Import from Blogger, DotClear, LiveJournal (this one has moods), RSS feeds, among others; export to XML formats.
11. Option of full or partial display of blogs on the page.
12. And the clincher: I can see and comment on my blogs again unless those plainclothesmen happened upon this post and inform the firewalling police just to spite me.

Advantages of the Typepad version over WordPress:

1. Featured photo albums, although I think you can subsitute Pages for this.
2. The Book list and Song/Album list thingies.  On the other hand. the Amazon app that support these sometimes have the product details screwed up and you can’t edit them yourself so you end up killing more brain cells weighing pros and cons whether or not to display these stuff, and again, WordPress has Pages to compensate for these lists.
3. Links to your Friendster Profile and options to feature some of your Profile’s info on the side bar, including your featured friendships. If you like this feature, I mean. I don’t know about my friends appreciating some stranger (who could happen to be like that scary nerd in Copycat) checking out their personal stuff, which is why I never used this feature. 

Because of probably a prior agreement with WordPress, like Typepad before it, the Friendster templates are fewer and less tricked out here than the template selections as you’d see them if you’d go directly to WordPress and start a blog there yourself. Also, more templates there have the custom image header option.  Friendster gives you the standard limited storage, and creative license with the template is off limits unless you pay fees, but it’s a good enough improvement for what Daddy Of Magnus fondly calls yung sa friendships.  Hey, three years of the same six Typepad templates – and three of them uglier than anything I have ever seen – anything is better. 

Friendster ends its list of instructions with: “Once you migrate you can never go back.”  The only time going back became entertaining was when Marty McFly messed up the date as he dared drive something with a flux capacitor in it.  I think this warning means you better back up things like your photo album files, if the only copies you have are those in the Typepad blog.  And so, the verdict for this year’s makeover is: still limited but peachy keen golly gee whiz.

Where The Cows Went

After posting Hammen Cheese, the most annoying thing happened… I Did had two-thirds of the entry cut off.  This was probably because I wrote the latest entry either before the second-to-the-last entry, or on the same day… only they were Drafted on different dates, hence, the different post dates.  However this Drafts/Publish thing works, is this a boneheaded blogger boo-boo or what.

The comments are still alive, though.  Not that they still make sense.  Talk to me, Dave, because reconstruction is a pain.

And rassem frassem to you, too.

Blogs, Banned Stuff, and Boris The Bad Bulgarian

Sent two PowerPoint files to a customer in Bulgaria; waiting for feedback.  The files are supposed to orient his company’s customers on his company’s products.

I’ve  a very narrow concept of Bulgarians, one that dates back to when I was eleven and was reading an interactive paperback called The Codebreaker Kids. There was this guy called Boris the Bad Bulgarian, a graduate of Sofia Spy School but hadn’t had much luck with codes who eventually married the CIA agent trailing him and became a cowboy trained by a gifted septuagenarian codebreaking sister of a soap opera enthusiast determined to encode her diary that contained updates on her soap opera dreamboat-of-the-moment and thus hires the hero who’s named Dinky who befriended Boris the Bad Bulgarian.  Read it, it’s fun… and there’s a sequel, too, only I didn’t get to read it ’cause I never saw it hit the shelves and I’m not even sure if Boris is still there, so my concept of Boris in the first book — and Bulgarians in general — sticks… the one comprising long trenchcoats, dark glasses, fedoras, and really red noses. 

Anyway this is the first time I’m corresponding with this guy so maybe I’ll widen my significantly lacking perception in time… and hope we have a quick response for revisions, kiddo, ’cause I’m LOA-ed by Labor Day. 

S’funny, given the way how things work here.  We have a company in China.  That employs Asian people.  To fix soft files and do some odd jobs for non-Oriental people who neatly explain they just “can’t understand how these things work”.  These were of the race who came up with the software and systems in the first place.  And this, my children, is the real world.

Durnit, I couldn’t meet the Fockers.  And I’ve been waiting to see this flick for so long!  Tomorrow I shall attempt viewing Before Sunset, another movie I missed, and plan on returning the faulty DVD.

Hey, props to Dave — or somebody else — who received my sentiments by osmosis.  Blogs are cropping up from my pals!  I am content.  Now get to the mood thingies, ‘kay? 

And this recent happening deserves another shameless plug.  Everybody?  Friendster.  Egotism and commercialism at their finest.

A Survivor Of Soon-To-Be-Married Nutcases

I’ve a friend called Den Marsh.  I met her in high school.  She’s a fine teacher, y’all, and oh, yeah… Cross-Stitching Lindseyphile recently pushed her to Friendster.  So, yay!  Welcome, and have fun. 

Brief segue.  Getting back on that thing in Displaced: you can get multiple Friendster Blogs blogs if you upgrade your account.  Also… I’m now blogging from China, so I suppose entries starting April should be logged correctly.  Chee, China has the FB blogs and we don’t.  But we have Pusit!

Anyway, Den Marsh.  I went home in February and she sent me a text message saying hello and congratulations.  Also if there’s anything she could do for me.  She would, except go through the maid of honor thing again.  I told her my thanks, but that I wouldn’t ask her to do anything.  Being not in Manila a lot, I thought it would uncomplicate things if I let the family and ourselves do the things we needed.  Anyway, poor girl.  She’s traumatized several times by bride-to-be friends.

Like the time another friend Zashi was about to get married, she hinted very broadly that she’d like it if Den Marsh threw her a bridal shower.  So Den Marsh tried.  She found this restaurant with a private room and everything else.  Unfortunately, I think only three of the people showed up.  I didn’t — really sorry… I had work that weekend plus an important family thing to attend to immediately after, and Cross-Stitching Lindseyphile was already working in Taiwan.  So naturally Zashi was disappointed and told Den Marsh so.  Den Marsh was sad and really affected because she truly tried, dudes.

Then came the time Den Marsh’s best friend, Peggy Sue, was getting married and she tagged Den Marsh to be the maid of honor. Much later, I heard through Cross-Stitching Lindseyphile, and then through Den Marsh’s texts, that they kinda grew apart during that time.  Apparently Peggy Sue insisted that Den Marsh take on lotsa chores, which she did. But Peggy Sue, assuming she had everybody else at beck and call, also ordered Den Marsh’s boyfriend to do other Peggy Sue related chores because “what’s he doing hanging around doing nothing anyway.”  I’m not an expert here, but ordering boyfriends of other people around as if you’re also entitled to it…  Peggy Sue.  Really not cool.

It’s sad, but I hope you don’t take these too personally, Den Marsh… times like these compel people to be in their most un-logical state of mind.  All that phermones and hormones and pressure and compromises and payment?  Blendered into one horrible, giant mess.  I think it helps to lessen the lunacy if you don’t have a budget to follow, and, ha ha ha.  Trust me, honey, you’ll understand when your turn comes next year.

I don’t even mind not having a bridal shower, it’s complicated to sync travel with schedules as it is.  I’m just nervous about the ceremony.  It’s not that I haven’t made up my mind yet and want to end the waiting, ‘kay.  I cannot wait for it to be over soon enough.  Even if I find the act of promising eternal love terribly romantic, it’s a different thing to do it in public, and the ceremony itself is the torture.  It’s like, center stage.  And the Von Trapp trainings in the early 80s didn’t exactly work for this personality. 

Phase two of preparations is about to take place, though.  And yes, I’m ballistic enough, thanks for asking.  And we still haven’t taken care of the baskets of fruit and mee sua and tee kha and fabric and things.  And we need to go see florists. And check the seafood.  And prepare the music list and sample CD.

But chill, Den Marsh, and have no fear.

Suck Ink

Okay, I was wrong.  Pusit Classifieds has blogs. Which I can’t access — the IT guys are paranoid, what can I say.  I took a look at Pusit and whee, it’s loaded with stuff now.  So glad.

Hmm.  Posts are pretty diverse…. female vocalist looking for a band.  There’s an OJT wannabe.  A renaissance person — “any job that I can do!”  Reminds me of that girl in high school who wrote in the yearbook that she wanted to be a music teacher, a kindergarten teacher, an international artist… I forget what else, maybe Kotex endorser.  Anyway she ended with “… and many more!” Gifted kid.  I never saw such enthusiasm that so rivaled Charo’s.  Here’s somebody creative — posting for sex lessons.  You don’t see that very often in the regular classifieds.  But wait!  That’s why this is Pusit Classifieds!

Freelance writing seen through the Net –  one job pays Php100 per 250-300 words.  Another one, seen via Pusit Classifieds, pays $ 0.15 per review.  My mother used to condition me to be a doctor.  So you know what?  When I have a kid, I’m gonna keep telling her she’s gonna be a rock star.  I’ll load her on The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, the Doors, and Jimi Hendrix during prenatal.  Then it’s Queen, The Clash, The Pretenders, The Ramones, REM, Garbage, Metallica, Pearl Jam, and Butthole Surfers in the nursery.  Guitar tabs at age three.  Plucking at five.  Her first amp by age seven.  Her first Strat to smash the amp with by nine.

Hopefully she’ll become a successful chiropractor.

Anyway, unpaid overtimes aren’t stopping anytime soon; I need to chug some extra time for when I take my leave on May.  So near yet so far.

I sent my entry for the logo contest end of March, not sure about my chances but it’s been enlightening.  I actually entered two logos, but the other one’s in DSTS’s name.  One’s using the symbolic tack, the other’s a more literal logo… kind of hard to tell the organizers’ taste.  A lady responded, saying we’ll get the results after their meeting on April 8.

Itinerary post-April: the printers, the sponsors, the florists, and the priest.  Hot dog yes, we’re going for the priests.  We’re gonna be interviewed on faith and commitment before we sign I do’s on paper.  Thanks, Pastor Maguire.  We really owe ya.  Have a nice trip, and take care of all 16 megabytes of it, ‘kay.