So Dr. FreeRide, over at Adventures in Ethics and Science, posted about The Typealyzer, which purports to take the URL of your blog and tell you what “type” (as in Myers-Briggs type) your blog is.

Let’s just gloss over the question of whether a piece of writing can have a Myers-Briggs type.  Ahem.

Anyway, here’s what The Typealyzer had to say about Omegamom.com:

ESTP - The Doers

The active and play-ful type. They are especially attuned to people and things around them and often full of energy, talking, joking and engaging in physical out-door activities.
The Doers are happiest with action-filled work which craves their full attention and focus. They might be very impulsive and more keen on starting something new than following it through. They might have a problem with sitting still or remaining inactive for any period of time.

My response?  Bahahahaha!  OMG.  I must use a totally different area of my brain when writing than when, say, living my life.  Every single time I take a Myers-Briggs assessment, I end up being typed as an INTP.  Every once in a while, since the dotter has entered my life, I type as an INFP.  (Oh, well, at least I got the TP out of it…)  This is so far off from my own personality type that it’s like night and day, or Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

If you have a blog, you must run it through this little black box, and come back to tell me what “type” your blog is, and whether it is as far off from your “type” as this one is for me.  I’ve just gotta know!

So, let’s see:

Mamasan and Anne suggested Gloria Vanderbilt.  Mamasan also suggested low- or mid-rise jeans, which Wendy, Anne,  and Mrs. Figby seconded.  There were a trio of mentions of “Not Your Daughter’s Blue Jeans” from Nordstrom’s (Noreen, Carol Anne, and Anne), and a couple of mentions of the “curvy” jeans at the Gap (LisaC and an email).

So I decided to try one of the NYDJ’s from Nordstrom’s, one of the curvy’s from the Gap, and one of Lands End’s custom jeans.  Much to my horror, my measurements plopped me into a size 14, since you’re supposed to be ordering by the hip size mostly.  Aaaaccccckkkkk!  I halfway expect them to arrive and fit perfectly through the hips and–as usual–gape like crazy at the waist.  Or maybe just not fit at all–either being too tight or being too loose.  We shall see.

Why am I doing all this?  Well, to be honest, I just hate trying on clothes.  I can handle about an hour, and then I go batshit crazy, start foaming at the mouth, chewing the walls in the dressing room, feeling like ants are crawling all over my skin, and turning into Uber Bitch.  What’s worse is when I do that and there’s no payoff:  Nothing fits, I don’t like any of the jeans I’ve tried on, or there’s a great pair of jeans that just happens to be half an inch too tight, and none of that model in my size.

It’s just an exercise in frustration and aggravation to me.  So I am seeking out the Holy Grail on the intertubes.

(Waving “Hi!” to Wendy and Anne, who delurked.)

As for readership, as one of my long-time readers noted in an email, my RSS feed shows the whole post, and I’d get more hits if I switched to a partial feed.  Now is when we edge close to an ethical question:  Do I provide convenience for my readers (whole-post feed) or do I provide a much-needed ego-boo (partial-post feed prompting click-throughs)?  And the fact that my ego-boo would also provide views on my BlogHer ads is additional ethical fodder.  I happen to know of some people who claim that as soon as a blogger they read switches to partial posting, they immediately drop their subscription as a matter of principle.

The whole readership question is pure narcissism anyway.  It’s a revealing chink in my oh-so-bluff self-confident armor that the drop has made me stick out my lower lip and whimper, “Why is everyone going away?!  Don’t they like me any more?!”  At these times, I have to sit myself down and talk sternly:

“Self.  Quit being a whiner.  You know damned well why your hits have dropped, and it’s called ‘not updating your blogging software and pissing off Google’.”

::sniff::  “But I’m not suuuure!  Maybe it’s not that!  Maybe it’s because I’m getting boring in my old age!  Maybe what I think is good writing, or fun stuff, just plain isn’t, and it’s all been ‘pity’ reading, and they’re just clicking through because they’re sorry for me, and I know they’re all talking behind my back and laughing at me!“ 

Segue into my Self curling up in a quivering heap in the corner of the bedroom and having serious flashbacks to the anguishing angst that is “being a nerd in high school”.  I begin speaking even more sternly:

“Girl, get a grip!  You know that Google blacklisted oodles of blogs who hadn’t upgraded, because Teh Hackers were siphoning off Google search results and gaming the system with invisible SEO terms.  Your Google hits are beginning to pick up again, slowly but surely.”

Self just rocks and moans and nervously curls hair around a finger.  This is difficult, because I have short hair, but Self does it somehow.  This is also a flashback to high school, when I had hair halfway down my back, but the hair beside my face was always filled with split ends and half of it was broken off around chin length because of the constant hair twisting.

BUT!  There is always a “but”:  I’ve read about three or four other bloggers whimpering about readership lately, and they seem like hawt, trendy, interesting gals to me, so maybe it’s all a function of summertime.

At which, Self pops open a suspicious eye, peers at me, and decides that possibly–just possibly–I might be right and Self can come out of the semi-catatonic state and focus on more important things, like the fact that Crayola 24-pack crayons were a smokin’ 49 cents each at the local store, along with other good deals, so the back-to-school shopping was not as frenzy-making as it could have been…

OmegaMom (the blog) is now three years old.  (I figure most of you will read this on the sixth of August.)  Toss me some confetti, sing a song, wish me three more years of blathering.

My first post was nothing much.  My second was more substantive.  I talked about rubber duckies in the fourth (the third was just a pointer to a cool picture).  I talk about my aunt in the fifth.  I yearn for closets in the sixth.  The topic for number 7 was “beauty, order, chaos“.  OmegaDad–aka Mr. OmegaMom–was the eighth topic.  And my bete noire at the time was elk, not moose.  Life has changed a lot.

Last night, while cleaning up bookcases to go into the family room, it occurred to me to wonder–when did the first person decide that smearing smushed up dried honeycombs on wood was a Good Idea?

I mean, really–what on earth prompted someone to do that in the first place?

It’s similar to something else I’ve wondered:  Who was the first person who decided that horseradish might be actually good to eat if it were ground up and mixed in with other foodstuffs?  What possessed this person?  One of my most memorable experiences was when my mom handed me a chunk of what we both thought was celeriac root–carefully cleaned and peeled–and I took a great big honkin’ bite.  It wasn’t celeriac.  It was horseradish.  Let me tell you:  horseradish, in its natural state, is not, repeat not, edible.  I chewed for about five seconds.  At which point, my brain told me, in no uncertain terms, that I was being poisoned.  It was ghastly.  Surely I’m not alone in that?  So what prompted some genius, in the long long ago, to decide that it might be okay if it were used sparingly?

Why is it that I suddenly have nothing I want to say?

I’ve been encountering some good discussions around the blogosphere.  They pique my interest.  I want to discuss them when I read them.  But then, a few hours later, I open up the ol’ bloggin’ software and am confronted with a blank page…at which point my brain goes blank, too.

Part of it is that we’re being very homey right now.  The house is slowly, slowly falling into place; more and more boxes are unpacked, curtains are up, bookcases are out and books soon to be placed in them.  It’s feeling like our home suddenly.  I still feel sad about leaving the old house, but am happy about having more space, and more closets (closets!!!  OMG!  I could just swoon with the joy!).  We have also–somehow–managed to stay on top of the creeping mess here, so things have their places and get put back/away, rather than accreting like a giant midden heap in various spots around the house.

We have light.  In fact, so much light that it is making me feel very odd and out-of-focus.  Twilight at nine p.m. should mean that the weather is almost hot and the flowers are blooming and the grass is green.  But right now, we still have snow in the backyard and ice in the driveway (and in the afternoons, a lovely thin layer of melting ice on top of the slick ice, which resulted in one of our cars slooooowy sliding backwards down the driveway…luckily I noticed this in time to move it back up to a non-icy spot!).  We have birds congregating around the bird feeder, but no greenery.  We have sunshine all day, but no buds on the trees.  My body keeps saying, "Sun!  Woot!  But…but…dude!  Where’s the ’spring’?!"

Then there are the various "just living" things.  Taking the dotter off to gymnastics class.  Doing teleconferences during the day.  Taking the dawg out to do his thing.  Planning a vegetable garden.  Putting up artwork.  Doing the laundry.

Anyway, right now, I open the blog, want to post something pithy and pungent, and find the P&P quotient in my brain has plummeted.

Give me some ideas!

So there’s this thang going on, called NaBloPoMo, which stands for National Blog Posting Month.  The idea is, you should sign up, pledging to write one post per day for the month of November.  Various folk volunteer a variety of prizes, and random drawings are held from all the folk who actually complete NaBloPoMo so that they have a chance to win the aforesaid prizes.

An admirable goal.

Really!

So admirable that I tried it last year.

And then, right towards the final third of the month, I missed a day.  Oh, the anguish!  The gnashing of teeth and rending of garments!

Y’see, Jessica had volunteered a prize of six months’ blog hosting plus a custom-designed blog banner.  And I really, really wanted it.

But I blew it.  And gnashed and rent.

So this year, when rumblings of NaBloPoMo started surfacing across the blogosphere, I was very tempted.

Very.

They’ve also got this way kewl LOLCat badge.  That tempted me even further.

But I kept thinking of the pressure.  And the gnashing and rending.  So I decided “No go to NaBloPoMo”.

However!  Lots and lots of my regular reads did sign up, like Halushki and her sister, Quintessence, ChicagoMama, GrrlTravels, Escaping Suburbia, the Figgy ladies, and lots, lots more.  Even PAGent seems to be sort of vaguely in on it, though it might be NaNoWriMo instead (he has done a PAGent noir post).  Just check out my blogroll; if you click on a link, you’ve got a 50/50 chance of hitting someone who is participating. 

The end result:  I am blissfully free of pressure and I get lots of posts from my blogroll.

It’s very neat:  I wake up in the morning, look at my Bloglines blogroll, and there are 20 or 30 posts to read.  Every.  Single.  Day.

Woot!

On the other hand, how will I get anything done???

(TShapedGirl says of the dotter, “I just can’t believe that she is capable of stomping a foot or throwing a fit…”  May I just say:  BWAHAHAHAHAHA!  And add that today’s post was almost one titled with some play on “Teenage Wasteland”…though “Almost-Six-Year-Old Wasteland” just doesn’t have the same ring to it.  Maybe tomorrow.) 

Y’know, like cow-tipping?  Hyork hyork hyork.

So OmegaGranny got tagged with this list for bloggers.  You’re supposed to star the ones you think are most important, and add a few of your own.

Here they are:

1. Look, read, and learn.
2. Be EXCELLENT to each other
3. Don’t let money change ya!
4. Always reply to your comments.
–>5. Blog about what you know & love.
6. Don’t use filthy language-buy a dictionary.
7. Blog about something educational.
–>8. Be yourself; others will follow.
9. Don’t have too many blogs that will become a chore to maintain.
10. Keep it simple, user-friendly, interesting and organized!
11. Keep the blog simple and sweet!!!
12. Share with others your thoughts and don’t be shy!
13. Never ask for link exchange. Blog hop to increase traffic.
14. Don’t clutter your blog with ads all over the place. IT’S IRRITATING.
15. Don’t comment for the sake of commenting. Some looked too fake and it’s a big turn off!
16. Share something interesting and you will gain more readers.
17. Show that we care to all bloggers, treat each other as friends.
18. Pictures say a million words. Keep them coming!
–>19. Blogging should be fun or you’ll get tired of it pretty soon.
20. Don’t think people will come to your blog if you’re not willing to pay a visit to them.
21. Everyone loves read short posting and, best, illustrated with a picture.
22. Try not to publish more than 5 posts in one blog a day. Even if it’s from feed reader, it’s quite hard to digest and catch up reading everything.
23. Blog: the other window to peek into people’s life, minus the trouble. Keep a certain level of privacy to yourself.
24. Never tell your readers that you are going on vacation. That’s basically telling them to not visit your blog for a week. Instead, write several posts, and take advantage of the timestamp feature.
–>25. Try and write with people in mind that are somewhat similar to you. Allow your audience to identify with your blog and feel at home.
26. The key to a good article is a good introduction. A joke, a question or a picture does wonders.
27. If you are looking to earn an income blogging read StevePavlina.com and Problogger.net, you will be amazed at what you can learn.
–>28. Write for yourself first. Remember that it takes time, effort, patience…and above all, daring.
29. Photos for your blog should always be shot in the RAW! No, not in the buff, but in RAW format. That leaves you a lot more room to play with your subject.
30. Blog about what you’re interested in, and what you want to share. And it’s your blog, you make your rules.
31. Scared of the new digital camera? Go out, take lots of pictures, slowly learn the bells & whistles. Enjoy!
32. I disagree with Rich — until you’re ready for heavy-duty PhotoShopping on a pro basis, stick with .jpg’s. Easier to handle.
33. Resize your pix before downloading to the Internet; you won’t eat up your on-line storage space nearly as fast. Remember, too, that the resolution on most screens is 72 pixels/inch. I resize all my pictures to 6″ wide x 72 pixels/inch (and hype the contrast — the Internet flattens pix). If you have a picture good enough to steal, it won’t have definition good enough for a commercial use; let them get in touch with you for permission to use.

Now, my additions.  Um.  So I have to think here.  Um.

I think my suggestions are themed towards building readership a bit, which isn’t necessarily what bloggers want.  But here goes:

34.  Build a community–either find other bloggers whose styles are similar to yours and comment on their blogs, or find other bloggers who are interesting to you (not necessarily the same thing).

35.  Submit posts to blog carnivals.  Or join a “blog theme of the day” group, such as Julie’s Hump Day Hmms.  Or tag another favorite blogger for a ROFL Award or Thinking Blogger Award or Perfect Post Award.

36.  Post regularly.  You don’t have to post multiple times in a day, or even a week.  But be sure to post regularly or else your readers will go *poof*.

37.  If you do decide to go the Pay-Per-Post way, please, please, please (a) don’t let it take over your blog, (b) do write your own copy in your normal voice, and (c) don’t let it take over your blog.  Did I mention, “don’t let it take over your blog”?  I have dropped a couple of bloggers who went that path.

38.  If you add a group widget, or any kind of widget, first check to be sure it doesn’t break your blog theme.  Then check to be sure the damned thing loads nicely.  Clear your cache, delete all cookies, close your browser, then call up your blog.  If it takes more than a few seconds to load, and causes your computer to slow to a crawl while it’s loading, ditch the new widget.  Also check it in more than one browser; try IE, Firefox, Opera, Safari.

By the way, even though I didn’t star #27, I have to say Darren Rowse’s blog is often fun and interesting, and he does themed post carnivals now and then as well.

So now to tag.  Who to tag?

Sheesh.  It’s hard to think of people to tag.  Hm.

Oh, now, wait.  Here’s a person who will have good tips:  Miss Cellania.  She built her flagship blog around daily joke collections, then parlayed that into guest stints at other blogs, and then managed to get herself some paying blogging gigs so that she supports herself from home.

I’ll also tag Blog Antagonist.  BA has built herself a nice readership since she started a blog to…reject all things blogging.  Har.  BA writes some nice posts.

Another one who has built up a good readership and gotten some pro blogging, too, is Julie over at Using My Words. 

There ya go, Ma.

I have been awarded the “Thinking Blogger” award again, by two different bloggers, an embarrasment of riches.

Blog Antagonist tagged me first.  She and I go back many years on various debate boards; there was a period where I was very angry with her for a variety of reasons, but time passes, people change, anger fades, and, besides, I enjoy reading her blog.  She does good work when she writes from the heart.

Rhonda, of Worth the Wait, also tagged me.  Rhonda is mother by adoption of two children from Russia, and is learning to deal with “instant motherhood”.

Once again, I’m supposed to tag five bloggers who make me think, typically to a specific post that struck my brain in a particular way…I’ve been thinking and thinking and thinking.  Half my problem is that many of the ones I’d like to tag have already been tagged, and part of the meme is to tag someone who hasn’t been tagged yet.

So:

American Family makes me laugh and think about adoption and racial issues.

Cephalogenic plays with words all the time.  Since I’m a wordmeister, I love his stuff.

Wandering Visitor is a medical resident doing her rotations.  Right now, she’s doing dermatology; I don’t know what’s next.  She posts impressions of her work, thoughts about people in general–she’s pretty good.

EnviroWoman’s quest to live a plastic-free life for a year has been fascinating.  She makes you realize just how much plastic there is in our everyday world.  And she’s just plain funny, too.

Johnny has said good-bye; he wrote his farewell-cruel-world post this week.  I am crushed.  He always had an interesting outlook on things, pondered some of life’s imponderables, and threw in tasty-sounding recipes to boot.  So this one is kind of posthumous (postblogous?), but well-deserved.  Read him up quick, because he’s going to delete his blog in about a week-and-a-half.

Technorati: Thinking Blogger

“Best of Blogs 2006″ is what it means here, so git yer minds out of the gutter, gals.

Yes, my nomination from the lovely Miss Cellania made its way through, and I am now a finalist for a BOB Award this year.

Voting for the Best Adoption/Infertility Blog goes from now through April 13.

(I still think Stirrup Queens should win.)

Miss C. is up for “Funniest Blog“, so go vote for her, too, while you’re at it!

Technorati: Best of Blogs awards

Good on ya, mates, you came through quite nicely!  Plenty of ideas to tide me over until something in the news piques my interest.

Now to figure out where to start.  Where to start, where to start…

Dirk asks:

Hey, that’s what AmFam just did… is this national “ask the blogger a question” week?

Yup, I shamelessly stole the “Ask me some questions!  Please!  I’m desperate!” directly from AmFam; it worked for her, so it had to work for me a bit, too.

Why do you use blogger and not one of the other blogging tools?

Because I’m lazy and cheap.  And because, when all my internet buds leaped on the blogging bandwagon, and I, lemming-like, followed them, they were all on Blogger.  So I went there.  It was quick, it was easy, it was painless, and I could concentrate on writing.

When I started posting on a regular basis, I soon realized that Blogger was, at best, a flawed tool.  But it was still cheap–in other words, free!  And there were all these free templates, and I could fiddle with the HTML to customize the templates.  When I looked at other freebies, I either didn’t like them enough, or I discovered, as at WordPress.com, that they strictly limited any fiddling, they only had six templates, and they didn’t allow any other templates.  Bah.

Then there was wind of BloggerBeta, and I waited, and waited, and waited to get an invite to switch over so I could take advantage of labeling and a few other things they claimed would be there.  Then I got the invite, and tried to switch over.

Bahahahaha!

Let me just say that my blog is too complex (har!) for BloggerBeta.  I was stuck in Blogger-to-BloggerBeta limbo for quite a while.  Any time I logged in, it prompted me to switch over.  I’d try to switch over and would get an error message saying that I had tried previously, and there was an error, and they’d let me know when it was time to switch over.  I’d log in again, and there would be that same “switch to Blogger Beta” message. Over and over and over again.

Many people in that same situation have been unable to post at all.

I, however, overcame both some of the limitations of Blogger and got around the limbo by using LiveWriter.  It’s basic, but it has some nice features:  I can blog offline; I can have a WYSIWYG view of my blogging as I write–in other words, it has grabbed my css and layout, and when I write a post, it looks almost exactly what it will look like when I publish and get online (yay!); and it lets me do bold and italic and underlining and strikethrough and colored fonts and numbered or unnumbered lists and blockquotes and weblinks (SBird, here’s how!) with a click of the button; AND it let me post to my limbo-ized blog until I could finally figure out how to get the attention of someone in Blogger support who un-limboized me.

That said, I dearly want to move over to a hosted solution, with my Very Own Domain.  I’ve found a good place, and am planning to move over, using WordPress, with my own personalized template which I am very comfy with.

Why do you post so few pictures?

Well.  Hm.  Sometimes I do a picture post, usually after the dotter and I have gone somewhere and I’ve gotten lots of pics.  But I have some reservations.

First off, there are Weird Folks on the web.  Some of the WFs take little girls’ pictures and w@nk off to them, the idea of which just creeps me out.  Of course, there’s nothing I can do about it, and there may be, for all I know, folks who have already downloaded her pics and are–right now!–”doing it”.  Ew.  I have decided not to post a few pics of her especially because of this issue, some very cute pictures, that I just don’t want creeps messing with.

Then there are the WFs who like to take other people’s pictures (and posts, and sometimes entire blogs!) and pass them off as their own.  WTF?  So far, when I search on phrases from my blog, I haven’t found them.  But I do know of a few cases where someone’s entire blog was plaigiarized. 

Doing pics is a pain sometimes.  You have to download them from the camera.  You have to crop them and resize them.  You have to upload them to a photo-hosting service (or your website if you’re on a hosted site).  Then…then…you can put them into your blog. 

I waffle on the privacy issue.  Somewhere along the line, OmegaDotter will turn into a teenager, and be all bristly and touchy about odd things.  She may decide that my blog is okay so long as I disguise stuff…she may think it’s okay to post pics of her, she may not…

And then there’s the fact that sometimes I’m writing about stuff that I don’t have pictures of…like, say, cute little four-celled embryos.  I could always “borrow” them, but if I do, I like to give full credit–a link to the giving site, a person’s name if I can find it.  Sometimes I forget.  Eeek!

More later.  See how easy it is for me to spew words out if there’s a focus?  You guys have generously given me days–maybe weeks!–worth of posts.  Yay!

Technorati: Q&A, Blogger, Live Writer, pictures