Internet Addictions

At least I’m not this bad:

Dos and Don’ts

I’ve been working for a little over a month now. My job consists mainly of researching relevant websites for a links or resource page and then asking the appropriate party if they would please include a link to the Edge Foundation on their website. It’s called link building. I couldn’t even begin to guess how many websites I’ve visited in my quest. The first couple of weeks I visited personal blogs and professional websites and organizations that had resources for ADHD. When I exhausted a preset list I was given, I moved on to .edu websites. I can tell you that I have clicked on 164 different .edu web links. In all that web surfing, I have learned a few things. First of all, I’ve learned TONS about ADHD. TONS. There is so much information out there that it’s unbelievable. I ran across a rather scary website that I thought discussed the pros and cons and gave information about ADHD medications. Turns out that it was a website for anorexics that discussed which medications were the best for losing weight. I was disturbed.

Next I came to discover what should and should not be included on websites, especially professional websites. Granted, this is just my personal opinion, but as someone who is visiting websites for the express purpose of evaluating them and then deeming them worthy of including our link, I’ve become a discerning browser. I’ve compiled a list. These mostly apply to universities and colleges or professional websites but some would apply to personal blogs and such:

1. Include the name of your website and/or the institution you are from on EVERY page. I can’t count the number of times a link has taken me to a PDF or Word document and said link didn’t include the name of the college or university from which is was written. Wouldn’t you want people to know what, exactly, they are reading?
2. Put a “contact me” or “contact us” link on your website and make it an e-mail address.
3. Make sure your contact e-mail address is valid and has a large storage capacity if you don’t check it on a regular basis. I’ve had a few e-mails bounce back because mailboxes were full. It’s a missed opportunity for us both and a waste of my time.
4. Use spell check. I was at a certain website that was authored by a Ph.D. that had spelling and grammar mistakes on it. It makes a person wonder where they got their degree.
5. If you are a professional website and have a “contact me” link, leave your first and last name so that the person writing knows how to address their e-mail. “Dear Ms. So and So” sounds much better than “Dear Webmaster”.
6. Another e-mail issue:  Use an auto response if you are going to be out of your office. It’s a nice courtesy.
7. Pop ups are an absolute NO NO!! Pop ups, even if they’re relevant and valid, remind people of spam and viruses and they’re inconvenient. I was browsing blogs tonight and someone had a pop up that locked up my browser and forced me to restart my computer. It could have been malicious or it could have just been incompatible with my browser. I don’t know but I’ll never go back to find out.
8. Have a search field on your website or a site map or both.
9. Don’t be online in any capacity at all if you can’t figure out how e-mail works. That may sound a bit harsh, but man! If you don’t know how to read, compose, and send e-mail but you have a website that includes a “contact me” e-mail link it makes you look incredibly dumb.

I think that’s about it. Basically, if you have a website or blog that you use to provide specific information to people, you should be as professional about it as you can. Don’t call your website, “Information About ADHD” and then have entries that talk about porn. Not kidding. Wow!

The Best News

I got a job!! Well, it's an internship, but it's a paid internship and I couldn't be more excited and thrilled. It's been KILLING me not saying anything but I didn't know how I'd feel if I didn't get it so I waited. I found out this morning that I got it!! Woohoo!! ::Happy Dance, Happy Dance:: Join me!!

Okay. So the position is marketing for an ADHD company called Edge Foundation. I will be helping them to find resources for parents of children with ADHD and children with ADHD as well as finding ways to get the word out about the company. What's more, is that the position is online so I get to work from home! The company is based in Seattle, Washington so it'd be kinda hard to work from there, heheh.

AND, you wanna know how I even heard about the position??? Through Twitter. That's right people. Twitter. This whole experience is really what yesterday's post was all about in the first place. I told you the Internet could be used for good.

I get to earn some extra money, have something of substance to put on my resume, and it's such a great cause. As the parent of a child with ADHD, I know how hard it can be to find useful information and viable resources on the subject.

Online Social Life

I often joke that I've been giving up "real life" in favor of my online social life. It's easier, more versatile, and it's on demand. If I'm bored, my computer is always there unless, goodness forbid, my Internet is out. If people online are irritating me or my butt starts to hurt from sitting in my chair all day, I get up and find something else to do. When I can't sleep, my computer is there for me to find something to do at 2 in the morning. I can take as much or as little of my Computer Universe that I want. It's completely up to me. But, I'm starting to question how much of a joke it really is.

I've recently started to expand my Computer Universe by joining several online social networks such as MyBlogLog, Blog Catalog, and Entrecard, not to mention that I'm also starting to pay more attention to Twitter. Btw, I'm not linking any of that. Google them if you want to find them or click on their buttons in my sidebar. Through these various sites, I've found a plethora of new blogs to read. So many in fact, that my Google Readers rarely says, "Your reading list has no unread items." I've blogged about my blogging habits recently in a post titled, "Blog Stats". But that's not what this is about.

I found an article online (go figure) today that piqued my interest and made me feel not quite so bad about my own online habits. Read it here: The Web Habits of Highly Effective People. I figure I'm in pretty good company since I frequent many of the sites listed by these professionals and now I have even more online haunts to haunt. This article led me to another article which I found quite interesting about blogging: The Death of Personal Blogs. The author talks about how blogging has morphed from being about people's personal thoughts, feelings, ideas, and opinions to people syndicating their blogs or abandoning their blogs altogether for positions which pay them to blog for other people about certain subjects. I confess, I've looked into this before because quite frankly, I was a little surprised that people could get paid for blog posts. Big companies hire bloggers though, not just dot coms that are here one day and gone the next.

There are other online pursuits aside from blogging and social networking though. People play games online, make an honest living online, keep up with news from around the world, go to school, conduct research, and a slew of other things.

I find it amazing that there are still people in the world who consider the Internet to be a waste of time. How much is too much? That's all a matter of opinion. I think that if I didn't have my online pursuits while I lived in Vermont, also known as the land of NOTHING, I would have lost my mind or ended up divorced and I never would have gotten my Christmas shopping done. It's a portal to the world, to different people, to different cultures, to be really dramatic. I wish that I had had the Internet, as it is today, back when I was in high school. It would have made projects so much easier. I'm thankful that my own kids will have it when they are in high school. Well, provided it's still around: Full Capacity, heheh.

Is There Anybody Out There?

Yesterday and today I've felt like the Internet has been slow or something, and I don't mean my connection. Holidailies was down for a few hours yesterday. There were only a handful of updated blogs to read. I hardly got any e-mail or junk mail for that matter. Traffic to my blog was down. I just had a general feeling that something was and is off. I know. I'm off my rocker.

Anyway, the hubby had his court date for ticket #1 this morning. He pled to a lesser charge and they took $15 off his fine. Big freaking deal. He told me that the judge said there were 500 cases today and that 95% of those were traffic related. He also told me that the minimum fine that he saw was $130. So, if you take 95% of 500 and multiply that by $130, the county is going to make, at an absolute minimum, over $60,000 today just in traffic fines alone. Holy cow, right? His next court date is in February. I'll keep you updated, lol.

I was checking my blog stats this morning and was a little saddened by something that I saw. Someone found my blog by Googling the terms, "holding grudges against husband who is emotionally abusive". Since my husband's worst fault is dirty clothes on the floor and having a lead foot, she wouldn't have found what she's looking for here, but I hope she finds it somewhere else. Her search took her to my Second Chances post in case you were wondering.

And now I'm off, back into The Void.

I Felt So Cut Off!!

My Internet was out until about 4:15 this afternoon. :( We had some pretty good storms come through last night and the lightning messed up my cable and knocked out the Internet completely. IT SUCKED!! I am so completely lost without my Internet. You all know how I am. When I was finally able to log on, between my book club, my RSS feeds, and my regular e-mail, I had 66 messages waiting for me and none of them were junk mail. It took me a minute to sort through it all.

The wet weather and high humidity brought the mosquitoes out in full force. I was bitten on the bottom of my foot today, of all places, and it hurt like a SOB let me tell ya. I've never been bitten on the sole of my foot before and I hope it never happens again. It felt almost like a bee sting.

Our weather is mild compared to what some of our friends are getting ready to go through. There's a typhoon (hurricane for us Americans) headed straight for Japan. Right now it has winds of 145 mph. I'm sending good thoughts their way but I'm worried for them.

I Wasn't Done

My Simpsons post wasn't what I even wanted to post about today, lol. I saw the article first thing after turning on my comp and had to blog about my outrage. Anyway, on to something else.

I'm coming to realize that I rely on non-traditional means of communication too much. How did I come to this realization? Yesterday was my sister's birthday. I wished her a happy birthday by leaving a MySpace comment, lmfao!!! How retarded is that? Especially since she hasn't even logged on to her page since 7/8. The very worst thing is that I don't feel all that bad about it. A pretty, glittery graphic of a half-dressed man is better than an obligatory phone call in my opinion. Think about it. I had to 1.)Perform a search. 2.)Find a website with graphics. 3.)Pick out the perfect graphic to convey my message. 4.)Copy and paste the code to her comment page. A phone call consists of pressing speed dial 5. Big deal. A phone call doesn't glitter and flash, now does it? Nope. And the graphic was to the point without going off on another tangent as would a phone conversation. I would have inevitably ended up talking about myself and what I was up to at some point after we finished talking about what she did for her birthday and what gifts she received.

So in conclusion...Yes, I use non-traditional means of communication, BUT, it's from the heart and I put more effort into it than I would a phone call so it should count for more. That's my opinion and I'm always right.