“Akismet has caught 16981 for you since you installed it.”
Having a poke around my WordPress dashboard, I realised quite how hard Akismet has been working for me since I upgraded to WP2, many moons ago.
Sometimes the best features of an app are the ones you don’t notice.
Mr. P and I have been married for over two years now. Happily so, no looking back, shared bank accounts and wedding rings*, the usual, ya know.
The one thing that’s not in the picture and probably won’t be for many moons is babies. We’re DINKY‘s (Dual Income, No Kids Yet), and I really have no problem with that.
Steph blogs about being 35, not married, and with no kids, and getting asked The Questions – “Why aren’t you married?”, “Why don’t you have babies yet?” – constantly. I can’t count how many times I’ve heard the second question, more or less jokingly from friends, family and.. complete strangers sometimes.
Let’s set the record straight. I’m 25, and because I found the man of my life and married him when I was 22, it doesn’t mean I necessarily want to skip forward on all the great stuff one gets to do during their 20’s. I enjoy the freedom we have at this point in time way too much, and I’m just not in a rush to procrate and watch mini-me’s running around, pooping and snotting everywhere.
I have a feeling of great respect, almost reverence, for every mother (and father) who manages to raise little munchkins. I really have no idea how they do it. I took care of a devastatingly charming one year old boy this weekend while others around me were doing some house renovations, and after a couple of hours, I was begging for someone to swap jobs with me so I could go back to sweeping floors and painting ceilings! So – much – energy!
It’s not that I necessarily don’t think I’ll ever be able to manage raising kids, it’s just not on the radar for the next few years. Especially with Mr. P who’s got the maturity of a 12 year old sometimes! 😉
So in the meantime, I plan on spending the next few years working my arse off on starting our own business, making the most of dinner parties with friends (the ones who can get away from their kids for an evening at least…) and owning cream coloured dining table chairs** and stuff that would never be baby-proof.
I know this post will make absolutely no difference to the frequency at which I hear The Question, since those to whom this is directed don’t read blogs, but at least I’ve had my rant, and I’ll just smile and think of this entry next time someone rattles on about how we’ve been married for over two years and should definitely have little pooping critters around by now.
Right, I feel better now.
[* Question for other married women: Do you always wear your wedding ring? Does your other half? Does it bother you if they don’t always wear it? Reason being, I occasionally take mine off (doing dishes, painting, etc) and forget to put it back on for days on end, same for Andrew, and most girls I’ve said this to were horrified at the thought, and most guys said their wives would probably kill them for doing that. Is it really that big a deal?]
[** Definitely not baby-proof and probably not Claire-proof either ;)]
Now, I’m not one to usually blog about my dayjob much. Or about coworkers. It’s never that great an idea.
But today, I’ll have to thoroughly break that rule, and share the laughs on this one. This is what happens when we let some of our dev geeks out to play.
“What happens when you go out for the day, spend several hours at a charity Dragon boat race (whilst having a couple, and I do mean a couple, of beers), then head off to a local pub for several more beers and then decide to head off for a curry on your bike while wearing flip-flops . . .”
Thanks Taz & Adam for the clip – Pure gold!
Everyone has aspirations and dreams, things they’d like to do one day but that they deeply believe to be out of reach or impossible.
What gets me is that sometimes those “impossible”‘s and “can’t do it”‘s are entirely possible, and the barriers are imaginary. The two most common examples I’ve heard of this syndrome are A. Someone in their early 20’s telling me they’d LOVE to live abroad for a few years, and B. Someone who has a particular and unique skill and would like to start their own business.
In both cases, there are real and imaginary constraints which need to be worked through, but I strongly believe that most people should go ahead and plow through the constraints and that the fruit of their labour will be worth it in every way.
It takes balls and self-motivation to make that move. There’s no denying that. It forces you out of your comfort zone and into a new environment where you have to take some risks. You’ve got to put your guts in it, but it pays off! The satisfaction that comes out of ticking one of your life goals off your living to-do list.
So do it now, choose one of your own tick boxes and knock down those barriers! You’ve only got one life, so make the most of it!
[Crossposted to thatcanadiangeek]
I know we’re still two and a half months away, but it takes me so long to come up with something I want when my mom asks me what I’d like so I thought I’d start the list now. [Note: Do use common sense to figure out which I’m asking for real and which are just dreams… or go ahead and get me the dreamy ones too!]
Not too much to ask, is it?!
Well, I’m only about 2 weeks late, but better late than never, right?
If you, like me, took two weeks to get with the programme, it isn’t too late to join a walk, a run, or simply support via a donation or the purchase of pink merchandise!
They say cancer affects everyone, either through a relative, a close friend or personally. While it may make the boys giggle, all I can say is girls, women, be informed about what’s involved in breast self-examination and how you can reduce the risks. It could save your life.
I watched the “F*** Off, I’m Fat” show on BBC Three this evening, and I’m seething at the thought that the Beebs has produced such a pile of tosh.
Now, as a disclaimer before I start, I’m not a wee little girl. Well, I’m only 5’2″, but I AM a UK size 14, so while I don’t need to be quite as concerned as some in terms of which shops will stock my size, I do know where they come from.
Ricky Grover, that’s the tosser who wasted an hour of my life talking about fat people as poor victims of society, made some statements that were just mind boggling. I didn’t want to post about this when I first started watching the show, since I know it’s an awfully dangerous can of worms to open, but now I just can’t help it.
First, Ricky sends two teenage girls – UK size 20 and 22 – shopping on the high street for clothes they liked. As expected, they can’t find anything in the trendy shops, which either stop at sizes 16 or 18. Knowing absolutely nothing of fashion, he asks the two girls to choose an item of clothing they liked (which both girls pick in size 10) and he gets the items scaled up and recreated for them. Big no-no – the two girls look like they’re wearing potato sacks!
While he does make a point that losing weight isn’t just about cutting a bit on how much you eat and doing a little bit of exercise, he talks about weight loss as a total impossibility. Yes, it is a lifestyle change. But it’s a lifestyle change that will add YEARS onto your life.
So while it’s funny for him to build a fat people’s toilet in the middle of Basildon, his questions to designers of trains, planes and toilets on why trains/planes/toilets aren’t made to suit fat people’s needs, he entirely ignores the fact that the owners of said trains/planes/toilets are looking to cram as many t/p/t in a limited space to make as much revenue as possible. “Why don’t they make all plane seats bigger?” Well, darling, if you’re willing to pay for two seats every time you travel, I’m sure they can accomodate you. But fat people are like the rest of us, they’re cheap! And until it’s an absolute necessity, airlines, train companies and toilet fitters will try to fit as many butts as possible within a given space to make more money from us.
And as for going to a theme park and complaining that as a group of adults between 20 and 30 stone (that’s 280lbs to 420lbs to non-Brits), they’re unable to go on more than 10% of the rides? Please, think of your argument first, Ricky. I’m no amusement ride designer (unless playing Rollercoaster Tycoon 2), but it’s only common sense that no one wants to be responsible for putting extremely overweight people in high-speed, high-heart-rate, high-G-force situations. While fitting seats of a size that can suit bigger people may be possible, it still sounds like a bad idea to me and a huge insurance risk. Plus, the “more butts in any given space means more money” argument applies again.
So are larger people disabled? I would say yes. I’m sure I’ll have tomatoes chucked at my head for saying this, but it’s the bare truth. Struggling to get in and out of a car, being unable to go up into the loft, having difficulties keeping up with your 3 y/o child? Yes, it’s a disability.
While I don’t support employers choosing not to hire a fat person over a slimmer one, I understand their reasons. Slimmer, healthier employees take less sick days, are less exhausted by physical labour and generally are in a more positive frame of mind. (The first two have been heavily researched, the last statement is my personal observation)
I won’t get into arguments for weight loss, because I, along with everyone else, have heard them often enough. We know there is a basic math in more energy spent than ingested, as well as a personal lifestyle decision.
All in all, a terribly biased and lazily researched show, incredibly frustrating to see someone take the “We can’t help being fat! We’re victims” attitude.
This product made my day. If you just can’t let a bird poo on your car ruin your day, go out prepared!
Grumpy Girl is also home to some very cute tshirts.
Now, I won’t be the first to comment on this. He’s already angered Kat, Andy, Ashley and a number of other bloggers.
So who’s this man? He’s Keith Waterhouse (see the 2nd article) , an aging technophobe who writes for one of the country’s best fish & chips paper provider, uhh, newspaper I mean.
Keith babbles “Seasoned googlers, of whom there is already a vast tribe, are nerds, anoraks and braces-wearers of the worst sort who spend every working moment searching the infernal engine for other people’s blogs.”
Having read the full article, I found it completely daft that someone managed to publish such a pile of shit in a national newspaper. I have no problems whatsoever with people having a dig at bloggers. After all, if everyone embraced the blogging revolution, we’d have nothing left to make us feel cutting-edge, avant-guarde and fresh.
But having a dig at “googlers”? Either he doesn’t understand the name (which, at the ripe age of 77 would be quite normal, no offence intended here!) or he truly thinks that the millions of people, seasoned Internet users or not, who use Google are all “brace-wearing nerds”!
In the first instance, I would usually find it quite sweet that someone of an older demographic at least attempts to join the social conversation on the topic of search engines, however misinformed, but we’re talking about a paper with a circulation of 2.3 million here. Even bloggers with a pool of a few thousand visitors will check their sources before publishing something, but clearly that’s not one of Keith’s worries.
What can I say, I find it boggling that an editor allowed such misinformed rubbish to be published!
that canadian girl 