Yak yak yak…
This entry was posted on March 24, 2008
Sometimes I’m a really talkative person and sometimes I’m a really shy person. I’ve always tended to be more of a listener than a talker, and other times I’ll get a bit stroppy if I don’t think people are listening to me. I may not talk much, but when I do talk, I like to feel that I’m being listened to.
When talking on IM I have a bad habit of just replying to people with a single emoticon. This has gained me the nickname of “emoticonaely” (thanks Aisling), and my overuse of emoticons instead of words has become somewhat of an “in joke” amongst the people in my buddy list.
When communicating via text message (which I don’t do nearly often enough) I never ever use “text talk”. Text talk makes me really angry. I’ve never had a problem fitting a complete message (complete with proper spelling and grammar) so I really don’t know why people “need 2 rsrt 2 txt tlk”. It’s not that quicker, and it’ll lead to much confusion on my part.
One thing I’ve always wanted to do more is talk to people on the computer. My laptop has a built-in microphone, and a built-in camera, and it would be a shame to waste those features in my laptop. However, I’ve never been able to work the microphone properly and the webcam stopped working a few weeks ago.
Cue Maren stepping in! After a bit of pansying about trying to get a windows computer working (because her Mac OS hates my Vista) she finally helped me to set up a remote desktop connection. It was very bizarre and a little unnerving to see someone else using my laptop. But, with her help I managed to get the webcam working.
Unfortunately, even Maren was stumped when it came to getting my mic working. So, I finally tried what people normally refuse to do - I went back to my laptop case and hunted out everything that came with the laptop when I first got it. I found a disc titled “utilities”, stuck it in the computer, and lo and behold it contained all the drivers needed for my microphone.
That means I can now have video calls with my contacts on msn, and I can also finally use skype! However, I’ve found that my microphone doesn’t really pick up my voice unless I lean in really close to it. Anyone know anything about upping the volume when it’s already set to 100%?
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The perfect website
This entry was posted on March 20, 2008
I don’t mind admitting that I’m a little bit of a perfectionist. I’m not insanely anal about everything, but I’m not happy unless I’m confident in myself and my work. I especially take pride in this website, because I want it to be perfect.
I’ve been thinking a lot recently about what perfection is, and about what the perfect website is. Is the perfect website one that gets a whole shed-load of traffic? Is the perfect website one that looks dropdead gorgeous in every browser known to man?
And once you’ve ascertained what the perfect website is, how do you go about building it? Do you find the right people and the right tools, and hope that everything will work out as planned? Do you do everything yourself?
I’m starting to think that there’s no such thing as the perfect website. There might be such a thing as a perfect website, but I don’t think that there is one website that’s more perfect than all the others.
Could it be that a perfect website is one that serves its purpose well? Possibly. But then, the purpose of this website right here is to be my personal site. It’s perfect in that sense, but it’s flawed in many other ways.
How can one strive for perfection if perfection doesn’t even exist? Wouldn’t that just be a waste of time and effort? I’m not so sure. Perfection is a good goal to aim for, and knowing that you’re never going to get there shouldn’t put you off.
For me, it’s all about the trying to get to perfection that I enjoy. In my quest for perfection, I’m always learning something new and improving my skills. To me, there’s nothing more satisfactory than knowing that I’m improving and doing better than I was.
If you’ve reached perfection, what else is there to achieve? What else is there to learn? How else can you improve?
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Catchphrases
This entry was posted on
You are the weakest link, goodbye!
It seems most TV hosts have a catchphrase of some kind, a little phrase that you can automatically associate them with. That got me thinking about whether it’s only TV hosts that can have phrases like this, or can mere mortals such as myself have those phrases too?
I don’t think I have any specific “catchphrase” (I’m not like Paris Hilton in that I’ve tried to coin the phrase “that’s hot!”), but, there are certain phrases that I say far too often. There are certain phrases that I use far too often on IM / forums, and that I say far too often in real life as well.
If someone says something to me that impresses me even slightly, I’ll often reply with “Oh wow!” and that can often make me sound patronising. I guess I’m just easily impress. “Ooh gosh!” is another common one.
If I’m unsure about something and someone explains it to me, I’m most likely to reply with “Oh! Okay.” which will make me sound even more easily impressed (and possibly even more patronising as well).
I’m not a fan of nicknames / petnames at all. In fact, I hate them. Despite this hatred (call me “rach” and face my wrath), I have a bad habit of calling people “dude”, whether they’re male, female, or non-gender-specific. However, I don’t call just anyone “dude”; they have to be a good friend / my sister in order for that to happen.
When someone asks me how I am, I reply 99% of the time with “Not bad. Not bad.”
Gosh, I’m far more predictable than I’d like to admit.
