life

The Hodsden House of Smith Employment

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Today is the first day of Kevin Smith's "internship" at the Hodsden House of Smith Employment. Much to my surprise, I'm actually nervous about it. This won't be the first time I've hired one of the Smith brothers. And it's not that I don't really enjoy the company of the Smith family (still unclear if Mrs. Smith will ever talk to me after last year's bitter zucchini incident), because I do a lot.

It's just that I've had all of three conversations with Kevin.

Ever.

And none was over 4 sentences long.

And the longest email conversation I've ever had with Weak Sauce, er, Dollar, er, Kevin was my summer job offer, followed by an acceptance of the offer. As in, not much of one.

So, he's the quiet type. And I have no idea what he's thinking. And I'm all nervous about it.

Bah.

Instant Karma

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Mom recently sent me a care package. She must have sensed I was feeling blue, and sent the cheer-me-up box.

In it was small fat book, Instant Karma, by Barbara Ann Kipfer. It lists "8879 ways to give yourself and others good fortune right now." On this book was a note:

    "Every week I pick a different saying and focus on it for the whole week. It works! XXOOXX M"
Did I mention how great my mom is?

Well, she's the best.

So, now I have my instant karma going.

I figured I'd start on page 318. This week, I'm going to "believe people tell the truth."

This will be difficult if I watch any CNN or read any political literature. I wonder if I can stick to just the Economist this week...

Sam training with Ally and Cole

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Tonight I started my child watch training with Cole and Ally. Bharat and Jen were kind enough to let me sit the two of them in order to prepare for Sam's visit. I've come to the conclusion that sitting for those two didn't help me much: they were great, not nearly demonic enough to help me out.

Jen made us grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner. Mmmmmm! Tas-tee! We had carrots and cauliflower, too. Much to my surprise, Cole ate his whole half of a sandwich without prompting. Ally did a good job, too.

Near the end of the dinner, Cole started making cheese balls, rolling them in his hands and handing them to Ally. Ally would lift her hand high, bring it down, smash the cheese balls and cry out, "I squished the cheese ball!" This continued for at least 10 cheese balls, after which the remaining balls bounced off the high-chair and into Moxie's waiting mouth.

That dog can round up cheese balls faster than any other collie I know.

I finished my sandwich first, and started cleaning up. Ally finished second and wanted down. She started prancing around with her sippy-cup. When she finished, she threw the cup. All done, right? Well, the cup smacked Cole right upside the head.

Great.

I told Ally she couldn't throw anything unless the person you are throwing at is looking at you. She looked at me all bright eyed, "I can throw?"

Huh?

Oh.

Whoops.

She ran over to her toys and picked up a ball and threw it. Right at Cole. Great. I stopped her and asked if Cole was looking at her when she threw the ball. When she said no, I told her again that whoever she's throwing at needs to be looking at her. She said okay, and then started throwing with me. Better, but I later learned there's no throwing in the house.

Cole and I started throwing, too. Cole would throw a ball at me and I was supposed to throw another ball at the same time, with each of us catching the ball thrown at us. I misunderstood the game, and kept timing my ball throws to smack his ball throws. They kept both flying backwards over Cole.

Cole was very patient with me, though. He kept throwing with me until I clued in, and started throwing the ball to him as he threw his ball to me. My throws starting getting fairly accurate.

Accurate to smack Cole in the face when he missed.

Every time.

Ally, meanwhile, was becoming bored with the whole ball throwing, and started walking around with objects in her mouth. Having flashbacks to my knocking out my two front teeth when I was four, I removed the objects from her mouth and asked her to keep things out of it. She didn't listen, and kept putting more interesting and varied objects in her mouth. The last two being one of Cole's shoes and my left foot.

Eventually, Ally picked up a book and we started reading. We did the barn yard dance, learned about race car driving, and thought about reading about the birds of north america, but decided against it.

Much to my surprise, after about five books, bedtime happened. When I said it was time for bed, Cole stood up and said, "Then we have to brush our teeth." They both calmly walked into the bathroom, Ally standing on the toliet and Cole on his step, reaching up for their toothbrushes.

Who trained these kids? What twilight zone am I in? Where's the punked/candid camera?

When we were done with the teeth, which involved sucking on the toothbrush more than actually brushing of the teeth, they walked into their bedroom. I asked Cole where Ally's diapers where, and he led me out to the family room. He climbed up a step and onto a dresser where he walked across it, doing a little jig. Eventually, I figured out he was pointing out the diapers were on the dresser, and pulled Cole off. I went back into the bedroom expecting to find Ally.

No girl.

Huh? Did I just lose that little girl?

I wandered back to the bathroom.

No girl.

Back into the family room.

No girl.

Ally?

No sign of her.

I rushed back to the bathroom.

Nope.

The office?

No.

The hall?

No.

The living room?

No.

Panic has started to set in. I left her alone for thirty seconds in a closed house and I lost the child? How the hell do you lose a kid in an all-doors-shut-and-locked house?

And then I heard Ally giggling in the kitchen. When I rounded the corner, she was naked except for one sock, her jammies strewn across the kitchen floor, diaper on the other side of the room. She stood up and started running away from me. Eeek! Naked baby! Flee!

The taste of freedom did something, because she declared she had to pee, and hightailed it to the bathroom. When I plunked her down on the toliet seat, I didn't plunk quite right, because she started peeing a stream that went into the tub 2 feet away from her.

Damn, girl, keep that talent, will you?

Eventually, I managed to get her clothed again, and both of them into their respective beds. With the noisemaker on (what is up with people and their noisemakers? Kris can't sleep without one and it drives me nuts. I remember Jenny having the same habit, of having a noise maker on to help her sleep. Argh.), Cole with his stuffed animals in bed and Ally in her crib, I snuck out of the bedroom.

Or at least tried.

Ally wanted to hold hands with Cole. "Hands! Hands!" Which meant, standing in her crib, reaching up to Cole, who was reaching down to touch hands with Ally. It was cute, and quite endearing, but I was told to remain firm and leave the room.

So I did.

Only to hear, "Kit-ten! Kit-ten! Kitt! Ten! Kitten!" a few moments later.

Heh. Adorable in a way only a 2 year old can be.

After about 10 minutes, Cole was asleep. Ally, however, I could not get to go down. She kept calling me, and babbling incoherently. When I left, she would scream.

The cycle would be, "Be firm. Be firm." Leave. Scream! Return.

After a half hour of this, I figured out I had forgotten to give Ally her pacifier. All she wanted was her pacifier to go to sleep.

One pacifier and two books later, Ally was asleep. Yay!

All in all, a good evening with two remarkably well behaved children that did nothing for my Sam training. Maybe if I poked and prodded the kids they'd turn into monsters for me to practice with.

Maybe with a lot of prodding.

Admittedly, the best moment of the evening was the discovery of Bharat's secret for accomplishing many, many things. And I'm about to tell the whole world. I wonder if I should ask Bharat if it's okay to tell everyone about his Time Turner first...

Words I never expected to hear from my mother

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To:         Kitt
From:       Mom
Subject:    IPod

Got my fancy silver one! I'm happy, but stayed up WAY TOO
LATE ripping songs. :|

My mom. Ripping songs. And knowing the lingo.

Word.

Six of each of us

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One of the comments Jonas made last night, mostly in response to my comment that I know another Mark Smith was that there are, on average, six people in the country with the same name.

The distribution is probably a bell curve of some sort, with Kitt Hodsdens on one side, and Mark Smiths on the other. Although it makes finding me that much easier, I like having a relatively unique name. As far as Google and Yahoo! know, I'm the only Kitt Hodsden in the U.S.

Which makes me reluctant and not very likely to take Kris' much more common last name. With his last name, I'd probably have google duels with a lawyer in San Francisco, a 22 year old in Germany, a Colorado College graduate, some woman in England and a "Miss Kitty" who died recently in Florida.

And I wouldn't have the cool urls that I have now.

Sorry, Kris. You lose.

Another Mark Smith?

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Note to self: even if it's a tech meet-up, I should still dress like a girl when I go.

Last night, I managed to make it to Tag Tuesday, as mentioned yesterday. And I'm very glad I did.

I managed to meet a few people I've been wanting to meet for a while, as well as meet up with an old acquaintance, and meet some new people, too.

I finally met Jonas Luster. I'd been hoping to meet him for a while now. I've been following his site for a while, and lamenting his switch from Drupal to Wordpress.

Jonas (pronounced as Yaw-nas by Jill, whom I also met last night) kept insisting he had met me before when I walked up and introduced myself. I told him we hadn't met, and he said sure we had and started listing conferences he had been to recently. When I told him I hadn't been to a conference since SiGGRAPH, he looked at me in disbelief, and turned to Niall to ask where the two of us had met.

Which is how I met Niall. We talked a bit, before Kevin Marks, who was going to be presenting, came up to talk to me. Turns out all of these guys work at Technorati. Go fig.

As did another Mark Smith. He goes by "Junior", and works at the opposite end of the building from Ian, who noticed my brand spanking new running shoes. We laughed about it.

At some point, I did manage to meet Matt, who seemed surprised I didn't know who Stewart Butterfield was. For those also not in the know, he's one of the two founders of Flickr, an online photo sharing site.

Eh.

I enjoyed talking to Matt, Mark and Kevin. After a while, though, people who knew each other showed up, and those of us not in the clique were left to fend. It was a little uncomfortable, so I made the best of it and talked to other people.

The entertaining surprise of the evening was seeing Dave McClure. We talked a long while (he's at Simply Hired, so we spent time talking about job-posting microformats, the job-hunting online sphere and a bit about community development and startups.

It was really nice to see a friendly face (and an ultimate player!). I don't think I ever truly appreciate how great the ultimate community is in terms of comform, belonging, friendships and networking. Always something to talk about, always a friend nearby.

When the presentation finally started, absolutely no one could hear anyone, and the presentation slides were projected onto the ceiling.

Note to self: do not try to give a presentation at a brewery.

Eventually, everyone clued in, and we headed outside, across the street and talked in a huddled group.

The party ended when we heard, from the Coast Guard alert station right next to where we were, a tsunami warning for the coast of California. Turns out, there was a 7.4 earthquake off the coast of Humboldt county, about 250 miles north of the Bay Area.

In disbelief, we all disbanded. We were going to continue, but Jonas insisted we all notify anyone on the coast that might be affected.

Zoom. We left.

Time to start getting involved. I guess.

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Things are happening around me that are quite exciting. The area seems charged like it was back in the late nineties. Cool things are being developed, people are excited about the new opportunities, toys are around everywhere. Just a general feeling in the area that I can't say I've felt for a long time. Not quite heady/giddy days of the last bubble, but definitely one of promise and hope.

And in that vein, while recognizing that networking is crucial for new ideas as well as contacts for help, I've decided to come back out of my work shell and look around, start meeting up with these people that are moving and shaking things up around me.

In other words, I'm in the Bay Area, I might as well milk it for what it's worth.

I'll be attending the Carson Workshop on "How we built Flickr" next Monday. I was looking forward to meeting Matthew Mullenweg of WordPress fame (and who seduced Jonas away from Drupal), but he's heading to New York this weekend, so that one's nixed.

I have a bet with Mike, who is also going to the workshop, that the men to women ratio will be like 17 to 3. Though, from the pictures on the Carson site, I'm thinking it might be 19 to 1 (me).

Bah.

I'm also heading up to the city for the Tag Tuesday to meet up with a couple tag developers, see what they have to say. Since I'm finishing up with a tagging project for a client, other reference points would be nice.

And since tagging now works on my other site it'll be good to compare notes on implementations.

And then there's the Blogher conference in late July. It's a mostly "women in blogging" sort of thing, though men aren't exactly excluded. To be honest, I'm going for two reasons: to get information on what bloggers want in order to develop drupal modules for them, and to meet Heather B. Armstrong.

I have no shame.

All in all, a good start to this groundhog's shadow check.

I'm an idiot

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Sigh.

I'm an idiot.

I've been fighting Yahoo! for the longest while. Like, for years, trying to get out of their search engine databases.

Well, I posted a comment to Slashdot, and included the contents of my robots.txt file. If you look at my post, you'll see the typo. And now I'm the laughing stock of the Ask Slashdot post.

Sigh.

That typo that's been there for five years. Five freaking years.

I'm an idiot.

Fortunately, I'm not quite the idiot of one of the follow-up comments, who thinks I'm a guy.

Ah well, time to laugh. I've been (mini) slashdotted.

Sam visit conversations

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catclawfarm
9:48

For the flight.
khodsden
9:48

Hi!
48:29

Here I am!
chrhod2
9:48

Oh. Shall we pay?
catclawfarm
9:48

Hey Kitt ... Sam wants to make cupcakes with Auntie!
khodsden
9:48

Here I am!
48:34

WHOO!
48:39

That's one project.
48:46

Pay?
chrhod2
9:48

For his flight.
khodsden
9:49

So, my plan is to fly out Sunday, meet up with Sam, fly back with Sam on Monday.
49:24

Fly back with him on Thursday.
49:38

Nah.
49:46

It's a discounted ticket.
49:48

Youth rate!
49:49

catclawfarm
9:49

What a fun time!
chrhod2
9:50

That sounds good. He is looking forward to it. I little hesitant about going without Jax, but I told him there would be so many big boy things to do.
50:42

He remembers your backyard and the bigwheels.
catclawfarm
9:50

Sounds like they'll have some together time before Kitt gets here, so I'll talk it up too.
khodsden
9:51

Oops. Buy another Big Wheel for Sam. On my list.
catclawfarm
9:51

Is he afraid he'll miss something without Jax or just separation anxiety in general?
chrhod2
9:52

Flying a kite would win him over. Loves the park. Separation anxiety. He is the sensitive one.
catclawfarm
9:52

Kitt, don't forget movies ... he likes those ... at the theater.
chrhod2
9:52

Yep, he LOVED Madagascar. Would like to go again.
catclawfarm
9:53

He could walk the dogs!
chrhod2
9:53

Jackson gave himself another black eye. I was vacuuming, so I didn't see it happen. He said, I fell.. hit floor... hurt eye.
catclawfarm
9:53

Leave them at the park!
chrhod2
9:53

Yes, the dogs would be another coo.
khodsden
9:53

Flying the kite, movies, the park.
53:53

Dogs.
53:55

Check!
53:56

catclawfarm
9:54

Ouch! Did he injure his eye or just blacken it?
khodsden
9:54

Poor Jax!
catclawfarm
9:54

Play with Liza ... big wheel races.
54:46

Pizza party ... he likes to pick the pepperoni off.
chrhod2
9:55

Small cut. But fine. He is going to the eye doctor tomorrow to see if he can't see. He has been falling a lot lately. Had stitches three weeks ago.
catclawfarm
9:56

Not judging distance or just in a hurry?
chrhod2
9:57

That's what we are going to see. He is very sturdy normally.
catclawfarm
9:58

BTW, you can leave the car here when you go to WI. I'll see if E can take you over or I'll figure something out with work so that I can take you.
chrhod2
9:58

Thanks.
00:06

Well girls, it's getting late and I still have lots of homework to do. This was fun. I think Sam will have a great time with auntie Kitt and Jax will have a great time with Uma.
catclawfarm
10:00

I'm about out of energy here ... it sound like the plan is coming together, so I think we're good to go. And we'll just plan on Disneyland later in the fall when there's not so much going on. M, good luck with the class!
00:23

I'm sure looking forward to it!
00:33

Hugs to you!
chrhod2
10:00

Sounds good. Good night girls.
catclawfarm
10:02

so where are we now?
03:27

Kitt, Kitt!
04:48

I'm headed to bed ... too tired, too much work. Sigh. Time to get another job ... the one I have sucks. And with that ...

Why can't I get OUT of Yahoo! search?

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I don't understand this. I really don't.

There are so many sites clamouring to be on search engine site results pages, why waste your time on sites that don't want to be there?

I have many domains. Some, like this one, have lots of content. Some I'm building the content up. And some have absolutely nothing up yet.

Of all of those, some I just don't want on search engines. This one in particular. If you know who I am, you can find me. But I'm not interested in random people finding me. I post all the pages I want random people to read over on my dot-com site. Sure, I could password protect this site, but then my Mom, my ex-coworkers, or the casual friend (or even the boyfriend from high school whom I do want to contact me) can't just pop in and see what's going on.

To request search engines spidering a site (i.e. loading every page and following every link on the page) not search a particular page or part of a site, a site own needs to set up a robots.txt file. This file says which search engines can view what part of the site.

Only it just requests the search engine spiders to limit themselves to particular parts of the site. It doesn't actually stop them from viewing the site.

My robots.txt file basically says, "Don't search this site. Go away." I'm not interested in having search engines hit this site. This site is for me and having the search engines crawl this site amounts to stealing money from me in terms of bandwidth and processor time. I don't like it.

Most search engines honor the robots.txt file religiously. Google is great about it (see?). Some are less good (MSN). And some (Yahoo!) completely ignore the robots.txt file while claiming they honor it.

I sent an email in April asking them to remove my site. They replied with a form letter telling me to fix my robots.txt file. When I responded my robots.txt was exactly to the specification they sent to me, the search results dropped from 900+ down to about 500. A month later, they're back up to over 1050.

I sent another email to them today. This time, much to my chagrin, I threatened legal action. I hate doing so. I hate even suggesting contribution to the litigious mentality that seems to permeate modern culture (They look at you wrong? Sue them! Not doing what you want? Sue them! They type your name wrong? Sue them!). But I'm not sure what else I can do to get them to honor my requests.

Boo.

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