Jennerosity

This is going to be the first on a series of short posts outlining my goals for 2010.  My process for setting goals is always evolving and this year I’m trying something entirely new and using a spreadsheet to track my progress.¹

My biggest goal is definitely writing related, so I figure I’ll start with that one . . .

Volunteer again as a Municipal Liaison for NaNoWriMo2010
I had such a good time as a volunteer last year and my  head is already bursting with ideas for next year.  I think it’s one way that I connect to the teacher part of myself and it feels so good to bring out those skills and flex those muscles again.²

Participate in NaNoWriMo2010
This kind of goes without saying, but I’ll need to participate again in order to be a municipal liaison.  Not sure what I’ll be working on, though I have a few story ideas that could be developed.  Alternately, I could work on the sequel to my first NaNo manuscript.  And, I’m sure a few new ideas will pop up between now and November that I could use too.

Get a manuscript finished and ready to submit
And get it done by September 4th of next year.  This is going to involve several sub-tasks.  First, I have to finish a first draft.  Then, I’ll have to sit down with the manuscript and do several rounds of revisions until I feel brave enough to let it go out to the world and be read by other people.  I’m sure there will also be some research and my poor husband will have to spend countless hours having ideas bounced off him to make sure it all makes sense.  And, I’ll also have to have figured out who I’m submitting to, which will involve some market research as well.

These are goals that I consider my ‘career goals’ because I want my career to be as a writer.  However, I still have a day job and so I also have an entire set of ‘job goals’ too.

If you want to read about another writer’s journey to getting published, check out Shannon’s blog Daily Pie where she shares updates on her journey as a writer along with lots of other good stuff too.³

Anyone else have any career goals that they want to share?  How about a writing goal that isn’t career related?  Feel free to share in the comments!

1. We’ll see how long it lasts. [↩]
2. And luckily, unlike my actual teaching career, it’s very doubtful that I’ll have to deal with any bathroom emergencies. [↩]
3. like updates on her fitness goals, pictures of her home improvements, an awesomely fun treasure hunt she devised for a little girl, and even more stuff too [↩]

So I heard that all the cool kids are doing some sort of 2009 review post before the year is officially over so I thought I’d jump on the cool bandwagon and do a post as well.  I’m giving you fair warning right now, it isn’t a happy pile of cupcakes.¹

First, some highlights. ((I haven’t done a very good job tracking things, this is just off the top of my head.))

• I won jennerosity.org on a Valentine’s day contest held by BlueFur webhosting company and moved from a hosted blog to a self-hosted WordPress.org blog.
• Traveled to New York with my sister.
• Actually passed my second road test²
• Not only participated in and won NaNoWriMo for the third year in a row³, but also got to act as Municipal Liaison for Vancouver
• And there were a couple of babies born in my step-family⁴

Random Middlings⁵

• I worked most of the time.
• I did belly dancing classes for the first bit of the year.
• I did not eat any of the ‘work candies.’⁶
• I started thinking a lot about what path feels right for me and finally discarded some old titles and am taking some tentative steps towards new ones.

Now the lowlights – you can stop here if you want to; it’s the reason this part is last ((I won’t hold it against you if you do))

• I feel I accomplished next to nothing with my health and fitness.  I finally kinda got the hang of the shoulder shimmy and that’s about it.  And while the shoulder shimmy is not something I find easy, it’s also not something that makes me feel particularly fit or strong.
• I had to associate with people who seriously grate on my nerves and very level of sanity in order to do something I love.  Worse news is that it’s pretty clear they aren’t going anywhere and I’m going to have to find some way to deal with my feelings and the stress of having to associate with them, or give in, back down, and step away from the thing I love.  Not really a fun choice.
• I didn’t get to do any teaching.  And, I do realize that I haven’t been employed in a teaching position in over 4 years now, and I’m still satisfied with the choice I made because I don’t think I’d be any happier if I had continued teaching, but that doesn’t mean I don’t still miss it.  Damn!  Just realized that I’ve now been employed as something other than a teacher for more time than I was ever employed as a teacher :(
• And really, the event that is probably colouring my perspective the most at the moment is that my Step-Father suddenly passed away on December 21st.  So really, that kind of just sucked the wind out of any Christmas or New Year’s festivities that were underway.  I’m saying a preemptive thank you for any kind comments on this post, as I’m not sure I’ll be coming back to respond.⁷  How are we doing?  Everything still sucks right now.  The road ahead is long and I’m trying to tell myself that the bleakness I see now is going to fade over time.  I’m faking it and hoping that I’m going to make it.

I’ve a couple of blog posts related to this one on my mind.  One on preparing for a personal emergency like the one we had, but it may or may not ever see the light of the internet.  Because I like to keep my blog focused on the positive things I might muster some enthusiasm for a post about my 2010 Goals – I have an entire strategic plan mapped out on a spreadsheet, like any good obsessive compulsive geek would have.⁸

1. Why cupcakes you ask?  Well they seem to popping up all over town lately.  First downtown and now there’s a cupcake place by my work and another opening up soon by my home. [↩]
2. Here in BC we have a graduated license system whereby new drivers first take a written knowledge test to become a ‘learner,’ then a short road test to become a ‘novice,’ and finally an hour long road test to get their ‘full’ license [↩]
3. I won in terms of word count, though the story is still unfinished [↩]
4. I’m not a baby person, so that’s probably why this is the first time they have been mentioned on my blog [↩]
5. Because not everything is strictly a high or low moment, a heck of a lot falls somewhere in between [↩]
6. Note that this is different from simply eating candy at work, which I did plenty of.  But, I did abstain from eating any of the candies out of the dish that is kept on the counter at work for our customers.  There was no particular reason for this except for my sudden and arbitrary undeclared intention to abstain [↩]
7. Though I’ll be continuing to blog [↩]
8. Or maybe it is just me? [↩]

Emergency fire equipment at a temple in Kyoto, Japan

One of the things that comes up for me every winter is the topic of emergency preparedness.  Usually it pops into my head at about the time that I’ve stubbed my toe on a cabinet and am hopping around in the dark, in the middle of the night, during a power outage.  Over the last couple of years I’ve tried to be a bit more pro-active about things and have been assembling an emergency kit.  It isn’t exciting or fun, but it give me some peace of mind.¹  I also feel a strange sense of professional responsibility whenever I work on it, since I do work in the insurance industry.

I find it fitting to turn to this project once again today, the day we received our first ‘major’ snowfall of winter.  I reviewed my 300+ blog articles in my google reader this morning and noticed that quite a few were also on emergency preparedness.  Since I didn’t want to brave doing anything outdoors, I decided I would once again review my meager emergency supplies.

I put together a big list of all the things that the emergency lists say you should have.  I used several sources and put together all the ideas and then went down to the garage where we keep most of our emergency supplies and checked off everything that we already have put together.  I tossed out the emergency food supplies that had expired, reorganized, and added a few things to the box.  I still have a long way to go to be as ready as they say you should be.  I’m especially in a quandry over how to store the 24 Litres of water recommended, in a manner that’s accessible and portable, in case we had to get it out of the house.  So, it’s very much a work in progress still, but hopefully by the end of winter it’ll be a little more complete.

How about you?  How ready are you in case of an emergency?  Got any tips, pointers, stories to share?

1. Though re-framing it to be a zombie emergency kit helps to make it a little more fun [↩]

So, one of the inevitable parts of winter for me is always taking a look back at the year that has passed and evaluating it.  Then I sit down and do a lot of thinking about that and about me and about how well those two things match.  Then I figure out what I want for the year ahead.  I find it enriching and rewarding and it usually helps me keep on track.

Right now, I’m in the reflecting part of things.  Because I’m a geek, part of my reflections this year involved all the starred items in my Google Reader.  Last night, I clicked through all of them.  Yup, I reviewed 300+ blog entries from a wide variety of sources.¹  They hit on all my favourite topics of geekery: crafts, organizing, technology, and gaming.  I also culled some things.  Like almost every single recipe.²  You could say that I wrote a metaphorical note to my kitchen that went something like this . . .

Dear kitchen³,

Sorry, but it’s time you found out . . . I’m just not that in to you.

Yours truly,

Jenn

The recipes all still sounded delicious, but I just don’t have the energy to devote to trying them out, and I’m tired of feeling guilty about them when I pass them by in my feeds.  To those who are worried about my general health, since I don’t have any notable relationship with my kitchen, FEAR NOT!  My husband takes very good care of my food related needs!⁴

I haven’t come to any solid conclusions yet, but I am certain that 2010 will involve more geekery.  I may even follow through on my occassional threat to actually DO some of the cool ideas that I star in my Google Reader.  Anyone else have an idea file that they keep?  When was the last time you went through it?  Do you ever actually follow through with your ideas?

1. I’m pretty sure Lifehacker wins for most frequently starred blog posts [↩]
2. Though that only knocked off less than 20 items [↩]
3. See, don’t even care enough to give it capital ‘k’ [↩]
4. And an honourable mention goes out to the lovely wife of my Vizier of Nameology, who bakes and invites us over for fabulous dinners, and never accepts any offers of me helping in the kitchen, because she knows me pretty well ;) [↩]

National Novel Writing Month Winner Badge

I was going to type ‘welcome back’ but YOU never left.¹  It was me who has been gone for over a month now and am ready to get back to some blogging.

Because I know you’re all wondering how it went, let me give you a bit of a run down. Generally, I think it was a stunning success. For my personal writing, I proved to myself that I can write 50,000 in a month even without much writing time during the day at work and while performing all my Municipal Liaison duties. As I expected, I didn’t finish my story,² but I got a good chunk of it done.  As an organizer, we had record numbers of participants, winners, activities, and donations. On a grand scale, our region had teeny tiny problems for its size. So, I’m very happy with how the month went.

I learned a lot through the month of chaos and creativity but I’ll just skip to the parts likely to interest you most . . .

1. I still love doing it, even when I have to organize it.
2. I have a tendency to be verbose with my writing.³
3. I have a million more ideas about writing AND about organizing things for next year.

From what I can tell, there’s a lot of positive energy surrounding the NaNoWriMo experience this year. ⁴  I want to keep the momentum going with the organization and with my own writing as well, so it looks like there will be no ‘off season’ for me.  For those who enjoy my story geekness posts, this probably won’t be a problem for you.  For those who don’t, you may find my blog less interesting.  Now, there will still be other geekness topics celebrated, but they may not be as frequent as my story geekness ones.⁵

Part of the aftermath for me is the slow return to normal life and a celebration of the awesome that has just passed.  We generally like to celebrate awesome, with more awesome, because we are awesome like that.  Part of my celebration is going on right now (and I’m kind of missing it).  You see, BenevoLance just finished a particularly big, tough, un-fun course.  While he was stuck in the dregs and doldrums of it, I suggested he plan something big and fun for the end of it, to give him something to look forward to aside from the end of the tedious course.  So, a big and fun LAN party was planned.⁶  He even took today off of work, so there are a bunch of boys at my house right now playing computer games in my living room and eating yummy food and drinking our booze and I will get to join in the fun after I finish working this afternoon (155 minutes left to go).⁷

1. At least I’m hoping you didn’t leave! [↩]
2. Don’t bother asking when I’ll finish or what the story is about [↩]
3. Ok, so maybe I didn’t learn that this year, but it’s still true [↩]
4. Perhaps I should say, the VanCoWriMo experience, since we coined our own regional nickname this year [↩]
5. In fact, I’ve a few posts that I’ve got planned out already [↩]
6. Yes, I suggested the LAN party because I’m awesome like that [↩]
7. Lucky for me, the party is going to go all night until sometime tomorrow.  I just hope the food and booze last that long! [↩]

Just putting up a post to let you know that I’m putting the blog officially on hiatus.  Not sure when I’ll be back with regular blogging, but for the time being, all the planning and organizing for NaNoWriMo has me officially swamped!  I’ll most likely be gone for the rest of October and all of November.  Hopefully December will see a triumphant return.  In the mean time, if you want to still keep in touch, I’ll be twittering sporadically and I’ll also be updating the Vancouver Wrimos website.

Inspired by the hack job that someone did on my WordPress blog, I decided to write a quick post about the things I’ve done so far, to ensure that my blog is relatively safe from future hacking attempts.

A few quick caveats about this info . . .

1. I’m not a professional blogger or computer person.

2. This information may be out of date by the time you are reading it.¹ I’ve learned timeliness is very important when it comes to certain things like security and plug-in updates and such.

1. Username. Ok, after you’ve gone in and setup the WordPress dashboard, you need to create another identity with administrative privileges and a unique username.  Believe it or not, ‘admin’ isn’t very unique and it happens to be the first username a hacker will try when they want to hack your site.  After you’ve got another user set up, go and delete the original admin account.  If the idea of deleting that admin account makes you a little uneasy, there’s a simple plug-in that will allow you to just change the username of that account instead of creating a second one.
2. Delete the ‘install.php’ file. Otherwise someone can simply type it into the address bar and erase your blog bringing it back to a clean slate state.
3. Passwords. Strong ones are important mmmmkay?  If you need something a little more memorable than the randomly generated gobbledy-gook that WordPress gives you when you start, then I’d suggest you check out this lifehacker article on how to choose and remember great passwords.  And this goes for more than just your standard sign-in for your blog.  You should also have a secure password for your FTP access when you’re transferring files around and for your host control panel.
4. Upgrade early & backup often. When new versions of WordPress or plug-ins become available, you really do need to upgrade as soon as possible.  When upgrades come out it’s often because someone has noticed an area that could be exploited and they’ve fixed it.  Also, it’s important to be backing up your actual content so if something does happen, you can restore it.
5. SFTP. Unless you’ve got a host that’s doing all the setup for you, make sure you are using a Secure FTP client to transfer the files across the internet.  I think this may have been how my blog was compromised.
6. Restrict access to certain folders. Ok, so you’ve got a really tough password in order to sign in, but maybe you’re still a little paranoid.  You can actually set up a password prompt to pop up before you even get to the password prompt screen.²  This involves tinkering with the files on your host so you’ll need access to your Control Panel.  In mine, one of the options is to select a folder and password protect it.  So, for the wp-admin folder, I set up a separate password.  This article about hardening WordPress also goes into some htaccess changes you can make to protect important folders.
7. Database table prefix.  This is kind of like an advanced version of changing your username from the default ‘admin.’  Most people leave the table prefix for their WordPress table as the default ‘wp_’.  If you’re setting up a new blog, try to pick something a little less obvious. If you’ve already set up your database, I believe that one of the plug-ins I mention below will actually go through and change it if you’re brave enough to let it do its thing³.
8. Security Plugins.  There are 2 that I will recommend here.  First is the WP Security Scan plugin.  This plugin will do a scan of your WordPress blog and suggest ways to make it more secure.  It looks for a few of the things I’ve mentioned above plus a few other things.  The second is Secure WordPress plugin.  One of the things that I like about this one is that it does things like adding an index file to your plugin directory so that people can’t navigate to your plugin index and see what you have installed, which they might use to compromise your site.

1. Hopefully at least a few people read this right after I’ve posted and it’s still relevant, but for those stumbling in later, you’ve been warned. Also, a small part of my brain that I think is kinda crazy thinks that I might be able to go back and revise this post periodically to keep it up to date. That’s the crazy part of my brain, so I’m not making any promises that it’ll actually happen. If it does, look for a revision date somewhere at the top/bottom of the article. [↩]
2. I actually get prompted for a username and password 3 times now before I can get in to my blog [↩]
3. see the second part of #4 above [↩]

Yes . . . it’s true . . . today is my birthday.  However, today is NOT my 30th birthday.  Confused yet?  Good.  Hopefully things will become more clear if you keep reading!

In the days leading up to my birthday, I was thinking a lot about what I wanted to do for my birthday.  Even though a nice dinner out would be good, what I want more is to participate in one of the writing challenges/contests coming up in September.  However, due to the work schedule of my job¹, spending the time on writing wasn’t really a feasible option.

But it got me to thinking.  I want to be writing.  I want to be published.  It would be a dream come true if I ever managed to support myself through writing.  It’s what I feel drawn to do.  But, I also have a 9-5 job that demands my time along with a slew of hobbies, social engagements, etc.  But, if I’m actually serious about the writing thing, I need to buckle down and start prioritizing my life a bit differently.

So, next year, when I actually do turn 30, my gift to myself is going to be a finished manuscript that I can start shopping around.  This year will be the third time I’ve done National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) and will be the third manuscript I’ve started.  So, by September 4th, 2010, I want to have one of them finished.  Complete.  Ready to shop around.  I still like the first two novels that I started.  So, it’s just going to be a matter of adding the time and energy to what I’ve started so that one of them gets finished.

And if you’d rather contribute to my birthday present to myself next year than bother with anything else, here are some ideas to get you started . . .

• Ask me how the story is coming and sit through at least 5 minutes as I prattle on.  You get bonus points if you actually remember something plot worthy and ask specific questions.  But, you can also feel free to let your eyes glaze over too.
• In November, leave me alone.  Seriously.  Don’t ask me to go out to social events², don’t phone me, don’t stop by to just chat.  For the past 2 years I’ve written 50,000 in the 30 days of November.  I’ve written about 6,000 words during the other 11 months.  Let me have the 30 days to write as much as I can since that’ll go a long way to me reaching my goal.
• If you’ve got several hundred dollars lying around that you don’t know what do to with, you could always buy me Microsoft One Note, or pay for me to take a writing workshop/online course, or contribute towards a writer’s retreat weekend.³
• If a few hundred dollars is a bit above your budget, but would still like to buy me something, a nice bottle of wine or some fine dark chocolate (think quality, not quantity) really helps to get my creative juices flowing.
• Or, if you’d rather choose an inspirational gift, I’m sure there’s are a few fiction or non-fiction writing books that I wouldn’t mind adding to my collection either.

1. You know, the one that actually helps me pay my bills [↩]
2. I will still be attending NaNoWriMo social events since I’m one of the Municipal Liaisons this year, but outside of that, no invitations please! [↩]
3. Just email me if you want more specific details on any of these options [↩]

Blue WordPress Logo

Last Saturday I was fortunate enough to be able to attend the second annual WordCamp Fraser Valley (wcfv) event! The day was full of meeting new people and learning a lot from the great lineup of presenters that they had speaking at the event. In fact, by the end of it, I think I was one of just many people whose brains were running over with ideas and things to try. Here is a brief overview of what hasn’t fallen out of my head (yet) and how I plan on applying it to my own blog.

The first speaker was Raul Pacheco, blogger at Hummingbird604.  It was a great way for me to start since I just love the natural energy and enthusiasm that he exudes!  His session focussed on how to maximize reader experience.  He highlighted some of his favourite plugins which I will be gradually checking out and adding to the blog as time passes.  I’m already using one comment plugin (though not the particular one that he recommended) and will definitely be checking out the flickr and twitter plugins that he mentioned along with a few others.  Already added to the site is a comment form so that people who want to get in touch with me can do so easily.

Next up was Glenda Hyatt, the left thumb blogger.  After I read a bit about her on the wcfv site, I was really looking forward to her presentation about blogging and accessibility.  I think this isssue is so important that I’ve put all the tasks that her presentation generated to the very top of my to-do list right along with blog security.  A few of the things involve getting into the code of my blog to tweak the theme a bit, so I’m not quite ready to go live with all of the changes, but I’m trying to remember to do better linking and include good alt text for my images.  She had A LOT of great tips that were very well presented.  If you’ve got a blog, you should go and check out her e-book, “How POUR is Your Blog? Tips for Increasing Your Blog Accessibility”.  The advice she gives for increasing accessibility will make you a better blogger overall.

When we got in to the intermediate speaking track, Dave Zille gave a very good presentation about using the custom fields feature that comes with WordPress.  I have to admit, until I read the topic of his presentation, I had never even noticed them sitting at the bottom of the post screen in the dashboard.  And during the talk, I didn’t really see how this could be applicable to my blog since the examples he gave weren’t really relevant to my blogging style.  That was, until I remembered that National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is fast approaching and it might be fun way to blog and add in things like my word count or general sanity level (if I can manage to stay sane enough to put a few blog posts up throughout the month).  Dave’s presentation slides and a video demo can be found on his blog too.

One of my favourite speakers at last year’s wcfv event was Kulpreet Singh.  Last year, Kulpreet talked about blog security (which maybe I didn’t listen to as closely as I thought I did).  This year, Kulpreet presented on mastering and tweaking the dashboard of the WordPress.org interface.  Thanks to one little plug-in (Admin Drop Down menu by Ozh) I find the dashboard to be about 10 times better than it was before.  That alone was worth it!  But I’ve got another list of plugins to customize and tweak things as well.

Most of the Development track was way above my geek level and made me feel as though my brain was melting.  With one notable acception.  It involved the presentation by John Biehler (whose blog you can find here) and the acronyms WAMP, MAMP, and LAMP.  Don’t understand what those mean?  Neither did I before Saturday.  And the short-version explanation is that it lets you install WordPress.org on your local machine.  Which means I can play with it and try new things and break it over and over again BEFORE I do any of that online.  I was so excited about this possibility that I downloaded the little program on my laptop while I was listening to the presentation.  I’ve already got it set up and that is where I’m testing all the other goodies that got added to my to-do list from wcfv.

Like I said up top, these were just the things that DIDN’T fall out of my head.  There were also presentations by Rebecca Bolwitt, who is best known for her blog Miss604; Lorraine Murphy, also known as Raincoaster on her blog and elsewhere; Jeff Kee was there from Sonika Studios Inc.; and George Plumley from SeeHowTwo.com.  Plus, there was a twitter track at the end of the day.  But, that’s for a whole other post.

My blog’s to-do list has quadrupled in size from this one day of presentations.  So readers, where do you go to get new ideas and things to try on your blog?  Got any other great blogging tips for me?  How long is your blog’s to-do list?  Let me hear about it in the comments!

Can you tell I’m a little excited by the 2009 Badges for National Novel Writing Month are here?  Love, LOVE, love the badges this year!  They come in 2 colour schemes and are incredibly steampunky appropriate for my novel setting this year.  In fact, I may need to see about working in a descriptive cameo for this particular machine somewhere in the story.  As one of the Municipal Liaisons for the Vancouver area this year, I’m already right in the thick of things for organizing and planning.  This year, I can tell you that we have some seriously awesome stuff planned for the participants!

Ever wanted to dabble in writing fiction?  Want to throw yourself into a big crazy group writing event?  You know you want to!  Head over to www.nanowrimo.org to read more of the details and sign up now.  Only 73 more days to prepare!