I finally got permission to approve mozzie images for ODP! This is something I’ve been offering to do for a couple of years now. I’m also probably one of the more qualified individuals to do it, as I’ve been creating mozzie images for years, too. I’d offered and offered, then finally applied for the category through the usual channels. Only one editor can approve or reject such applications, and I was rejected because they had things “under control.” There were less than 100 unreviewed at that point, and a couple of days ago I noticed there were more than 200 unreviewed. I’d been continuing to offer to help, e-mailing staff, and I’d gotten the verbal okay from the two other category editors (who don’t have authorization to grant access to the category) to join them there. I finally sent e-mail directly to the senior staff guy, carefully explaining my qualifications and interest, and he immediately replied saying he’d granted me access. Well shucks, I should have done that ages ago! I’m looking forward to working on that project.

Morning squirrel count: 10

I’m currently working with shedragon to clean up the ODP’s Blogging Tools category, but it’s a tough job. Currently the category is a mix of all kinds of sites, not all of which belong there. I’m trying to figure out a better structure for that section of the directory, and I’d like to solicit the help of anybody reading this.

Some of it is easy to figure out; I’ve already established a category for Templates, and something for Remote Commenting would be fairly straightforward. Where I’m running into trouble is determining an appropriate directory structure, and clear category names.
Read the rest of this entry »

Somehow donaldb and brigid23 have managed to get CSS stylings into their ODP profiles. My own first attempt failed miserably! (I am also playing with the latest version of TopStyle.) Regular editing has not been going well today either, the system is really slow and keeps timing out whenever I try to power-edit.

Today was not a great day; for some reason I felt really angry for a lot of the day. It was weird…there wasn’t anything to provoke me or cause me to be so upset, but I just felt full of rage. I’ve been having a lot of problems controlling my emotion recently, I’ve even had a few full-blown panic attacks…and I hadn’t had any in a really long time. I just feel angry and scared a lot. Yukka-pfeh.

I’m trying to work on that damn lesbian metanode, but it’s hard. I did get good news via the mailing list for DykeWriters; Tracy is implementing a set of daily topics and she thinks I’d do well with the “writings on sexuality” discussion.

It turns out my company’s year begins at Labor Day, rather than in October; this means I have the rest of August to use my vacation time rather than the next couple of months as I’d expected. I still want to make use of our Six Flags season pass, so I am looking into Montréal: I found a $164 (round-trip) fare through Orbitz.com and if I can find a good rate on a hotel maybe we’ll go the last week of this month, or something. (Montréal works for Six Flags because they bought La Ronde, plus I’d love to go there again: I haven’t been since I was 12.)

Morning squirrel count: 6

Okay, so…current projects. I guess this is mostly for my own purposes, but making it public helps me want to get it done so people can see what I’ve been working on. (Sort of like dieting, heh.)

Read the rest of this entry »

Morning squirrel count: 8



I didn’t update much for the rest of the weekend because we were busy! On Saturday night we’d just come back from renting Soul Survivors when I got a call from enarra (in Ontario) saying she’d just talked with newwave’s wife (in North Carolina) and that newwave was trying to get in touch with me from somewhere in Delaware. I knew he was going to pass through town sometime on Sunday, so I’d e-mailed him my phone number and directions to our house…but apparently he didn’t have the information with him. I finally called him and he said he was 20 miles north of Baltimore…and knowing he didn’t have a place to stay, I invited him over. I told him to take 495 West and call me from there, and when he did I told him to take 66 West. The next call I got was from kizz, who I hadn’t known was with newwave - and so I talked them in from 66 West. They were pretty tired when they arrived, but we chatted for a bit and then watched Soul Survivors, which we’d only rented to see androgynous creature of the night.



I woke up too early on Sunday, so after newwave and kizz left I went back to bed. Yesterday afternoon my girlfriend and I went with her parents to see Undercover Brother, which was actually pretty darn funny. Then last night A was pretty depressed…we had a rough time. She’s going to have a drag of a day, too. I’ll be walking home tonight because she has a class from 6-10pm.



Whee, I just got e-mail setting me up for my first round of Blogger Insider! Unfortunately I can’t reach the site of the person I’m paired up with…will have to try again in a little bit.

I just added a bunch of links to the Incubus category. I couldn’t help noticing that the total number of links is now 13. The curse of Incubus lives!

Could this be the largest “requested cats” page? I’ve never seen anybody with their detail=2 quite that long. And so many of them are removes!

It’s been remarkably quiet here today - only a few conferences, and the phone hasn’t even been ringing. Our president was out yesterday and today, and then on Monday the vice-president will be out as well, leaving just me here to run things, with the bumbling engineer around as emergency backup. I don’t mind being all alone, really, it’s much more relaxed that way. I have gotten very little work done while the president has been out.



I’m so glad it’s almost the weekend; it feels like it’s been a long week. Tomorrow I am going with A, :MK: and her boyfriend, and their parents to the Hillwood Museum for a tour of the mansion and gardens, and then I will be leaving from there to go to my rolling class at the Gaithersburg YMCA (it’s run by Potomac Paddlesports, they just use the Y’s pool). Sunday I will go up to visit my mom for Mother’s Day; I don’t know yet if my girlfriend is coming along or not.



Update, 4:53pm Forgot to mention that I got nominated for a couple of Mozzie Awards, hooray! I’ve been with that project since it was GnuHoo - late 1998 - I’m so glad to finally be nominated (you can’t nominate yourself). I’ve got my name in the running for Best Editall and Most Dedicated Editor - the two categories I’d most love to win, too.

I’ve still got some leftover invite codes, and I was thinking of creating an ODP community. Would there be any interest in that sort of thing? It could be useful for discussing, venting, seeking help…okay, I know that’s what the forum is there for, but this way we could include HTML and pictures and all of that.



Oh, and before I make a cut for the poll, I discovered a free hit-counter website that uses a very familiar lizard on one of its available counter graphics. At least it wasn’t one of mine!
Read the rest of this entry »

I itch.


I’ve spent most of my free web time playing around at ODP.

• I came up with a few new mozzies by request - somebody wanted a pierced mozzie, so I made one with a big nose ring, and one with a smaller, silver nose ring. I then realized gold looked much better on the mozzie, so I changed it to a gold nose ring and tried adding ears to the poor lizard so it could wear some gold earrings. I created a number of mozzie images a couple of years back using Microsoft Paint, but it is so much easier with PSP6 so maybe I’ll do them more often. Somebody else had requested a mozzie in a maid’s outfit, but I don’t like the way mine came out.
  
• Nobody in the deaf community seemed to be very interested in the whole issue with the deaf lesbians who wanted a deaf baby, so I decided to just get into the topic on my own. So far all I’ve done is put together a list of articles from around the world, but I did find what is apparently the birth mother’s e-mail address and AIM screen name, so maybe I’ll contact her and say “hey, there are those of us that support you even if the rest of the world doesn’t.” I’m sure she knows there are people who are, but there are a whole lot of negative voices and I figure a positive one is always welcome.
  
• There was discussion in the ODP forum recently about queer sites that were specific to a certain area. I’m quite proud of the queer Washington DC category, but apparently the queer West Hollywood category has only three sites - and that’s West Hollywood! Apparently the NYC queer category is also pretty low on content, so I’m working on those two areas now. (I’ve already found a story of amazing idiocy on the part of the people who make CyberPatrol.)
  

I continue to itch. My boss comes back tomorrow; the temp was a failure, I almost could have done better on my own. I only got a couple of hours’ sleep last night, so I’m pretty tired. But ooh, I want to mess with my user icons while I think of it.