Cooperisms: Chubby

Cooper (age 7): Mom, I love kissing your cheek. It's so smooth and chubby.

The School Bus Makes Me Cook

Well it seems it's time for my annual blog post... holy crap. Seriously? A year?! Anyway. So something about the school bus makes me want to cook. Not just like a PB & J or anything. Oh no. I'm talking serious, "other people will want to eat this" kind of cooking. The kind of food I want to eat. Chef food. There's just one problem. I'm not a chef. My husband is, but when he's cooking I'm too busy with a bottle of wine to pay much attention. There's another problem. We have an (almost) 7 year old who is a picky eater. I don't want to eat chicken nuggets and macaroni and cheese. And I want he and I to eat the same foods in hopes of loosening the picky-eater hold over him. You know, the old "don't make separate meals" thing. I try. So, I've been cooking. And some of it is actually good. Like, really not bad! My plan is share of that here or on another blog. Before next year.

Don't Let Drunk Facebooking Happen To You! - FREE SOCIAL MEDIA SOBRIETY TEST

This press release came across my desk today.... How long have I needed this, right?


"THE SOCIAL MEDIA SOBRIETY TEST" CAMPAIGN LAUNCH:

Don't Let Drunk Facebooking Happen To You!

November 3, 2010, Boulder, CO -- Just in time for Thanksgiving
vacations, holiday office parties and New Year's Eve celebrations, an
Internet security company and an advertising agency have teamed to
launch a new free browser extension, The Social Media Sobriety Test.
Designed as the ultimate "bad idea" protector, The Social Media
Sobriety Test aims to help stamp out posting under the influence --
and let's face it, anyone who imbibes, regularly or not, is
susceptible to online ruin. The free download can be found at
www.socialmediasobrietytest.com.

The Social Media Sobriety Test is a keyboard/mouse-based social-media
blocker that prevents "under-the-influence" posting on sites including
Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube and Tumblr, as well as
custom URLs (like blogs) and/or web-based email accounts such as Gmail
or Hotmail. Users can customize which sites they wish to block and at
which hours of the night (and following day) are the most personally
vulnerable. For access to their social media, the consumer has to
pass one of a variety of randomly selected sobriety tests such as
"drag your mouse in a straight line," "type the alphabet backwards,"
or "follow the finger."

The Social Media Sobriety Test is the concept of Webroot, a leading
provider of Internet security for consumers and businesses worldwide,
and TDA Advertising & Design, a full-service advertising and design
agency.

"We're working with Webroot to offer this as a public service to
anyone who enjoys beer, wine or spirits but doesn't enjoy the
over-sharing that often accompanies one too many," says Jeremy
Seibold, Associate Creative Director at TDA Advertising & Design, in
commenting about the introduction of the Social Media Sobriety Test.
"In the old days, all you had to worry about was drunk dialing -- a
randomly placed call to an ex was certainly embarrassing but it was
limited to him/her and maybe a few friends. Today, the consequences
of a stupid blog post or an ill-advised photo can be instantaneously
spread around the globe. It's our hope the Sobriety Test will come
to the aid of all who are in need of its protection."

For more information, or to download the Social Media Sobriety Test,
interested consumers can visit www.socialmediasobrietytest.com.
Browser compatibility includes Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, and
Safari.

Remember, the stupidity you avoid this holiday season could be your own.

###

What are they teaching him?

My son goes to a Spanish immersion preschool and comes home singing these cute little songs in Spanish. I've started taking an adult Spanish class through the school to refresh my own Spanish.

Yesterday, he was singing: "quieres pera mi mama", which roughly translates to "pear like my mom".

As he's merrily singing in the background, "I am NOT a pear," I mumble, furiously typing into my Google translator, moving letters over to see if I could decipher this. "Those CAN'T be the real words", I beg.

"quiere spera mi mama?" = my mom wants spera. (That's not it. I don't even know what spera is.)

Then it hit me: "que espera mi mama" = waiting for my mom. Aha! "Do you sing this when you sit on the rug waiting for the teacher to open the door at the end of class?" I ask him. "Yes!" he says. Whew! My Spanish classes are paying off!

So then I made the mistake of telling my 5yo comic genius the real way to say it, and the reason the other way was wrong. He thought me being a pear was hilarious and now sings "quieres pera mi mama" with even more enthusiasm. *sigh*.

Migrating from Blogger to Wordpress with Redirects

If you know me, you know I also run a travel website. I had started that website using a boring template through GoDaddy's Website Tonight. Being a cheap-ass and not wanting to pay for more than 5 pages, I started a blog on blogger to keep all my travel articles. Then, I simply linked back and forth between the two sites. It worked fine, but looked very clumsy. Once I started to get some regular traffic... 3-4 visitors a day-- YES!... I thought it was time to combine them into one, clean, self-hosted Wordpress site.

So, here's how I did it: Keep in mind, this is a VERY short outline of what I did. I'm happy to reply to comments about specific points in more detail.

First, I couldn't figure out how to do the custom domain on Blogger, but if I had, that could have been my first step. I didn't, and it still worked out okay.

1. I bought a hosting account on GoDaddy... the economy version. I set that up with a domain name I already had. (different from the Website Tonight URL, so I could do step 5) If you don't already have a domain name, you can buy one here, (and save yourself a few steps later on).

2. Found a free Wordpress theme I liked (or you can buy one), and downloaded it to my computer.

3. Installed the latest version of Wordpress on my new hosted account using GoDaddy's one-step install.

4. Used FTP to upload the new theme, then activated it.

5. Copied all my content from the website tonight URL onto the new Wordpress site, keeping all the page names the same. I found this easiest using the control-c/v in the HTML view.

6. Once the new site looked the way I wanted and had all the Website Tonight content on it, I downloaded a backup to my computer, copied all my pages in HTML format into notepad files, and deleted the old Website Tonight account.

7. Then, I went in to the new hosted account and changed the URL to the one the Website Tonight account had been using. (this is the one that has been indexed by Google, and has some link love already, and is the name I really want to use)

Windows and Linux Hosting Configuration 2.0
-Log in to your Account Manager.
-In the My Products section, select Hosting.
-Next to the hosting account you want to modify, click Manage Account.
-In the Settings section of the Hosting Control Center, click the Domain Management icon.
-Select your primary hosted domain, and then click Change Primary.
-Enter the new primary domain for your account, and then click Ok.

8. Since WP is URL-specific, this part got a bit tricky... I then had to go in and uninstall WP from the URL I signed up with, and re-install with the desired URL (the one I just changed to). I did have to rebuild all my pages, but it was really easy using control c/v in HTML view. Some of the info was picked up automatically with the new install. So, this only took a couple of hours the second time around. I had installed WP 2.6.5 the first time, and WP 2.7 the second time. If I had done 2.7 both times, I think it would have kept all the info with no extra steps. Or, if I didn't already have an active domain name I wanted to keep using. Live and learn.

9. Next, it was time to import the blogger posts into the new hosted WP site. Do this from the WP dashboard.

10. The fancy, make-it-all-fabulous part is next! This link is the way to go... http://laffers.net/howtos/howto-redirect-blogger-to-wordpress
It says it's for migrating to Wordpress.com, but it worked perfectly for migrating to self-hosted.

11. It's done! The original website and blogger blog are now merged into one, clean, interactive site.

12. Make sure to get in and play with the WP site, check the privacy settings, the default was set to 'hide from search engines', so I changed that!! Then, add some plugins for more personality and functionality.

For you non-bloggers, this is all a foreign language, I know. But, if you're considering making the switch yourself instead of paying $1500 for someone to make the switch for you, hopefully this is helpful. If not, it's a good reminder to me what I did. Good luck!!

Snacks for the Road

As I'm getting things ready for the road trip to Iowa tomorrow, Christmas Eve, I asked Cooper to remind me to get some snacks for the road.

"Do we put them on the ground (for the road)?" he asked.

And The Evil Mommy...

My 4yo son wanted me to take him to the sticker book store. I told him, when we went yesterday, to get what you want because we won't be coming back here until at least next week. He's been asking me all. day. long. to take him to the sticker book store (Barnes & Noble) again today. I keep saying 'not until next week'. So he drew this picture of me. Apparently, this is what I look like when I say no. I'm such an evil mommy.

(those are tears, which I didn't start shedding until AFTER I saw this picture and almost peed myself laughing.)
Isn't he a great artist?! I think he captured me perfectly!