Comments (19)

By kilax, November 1, 2010 1:29 pm

I closed comments on my post from earlier today because I had three family members ask me if it was about them or another member of the family. No, it’s not. That is why I should not write crap like that! Sorry to transfer my stress to you all! I had a wonderful time with my family this weekend, like I usually do.

This whole situation (writing the blog post and taking it down) makes me think about what sort of presence I want to have online. Now that I am on twitter (kind of), I have noticed way more snarky content than I ever care to see, and I am noticing it in some blogs I read too. I don’t need those negative vibes in my life, because I have them in person already! And I don’t want to contribute to that online. So I’ll try to avoid those vague, whiney posts.

Comments (30)

By kilax, October 26, 2010 5:21 am

During my run on Saturday with Erin I was telling her how it bothers me that the path is so beautiful, and the trees so vibrant, yet I can’t capture it on camera.

Here is an example of a photo my camera took on Saturday:

Kind of drab, right? Here is what it really looked like:

There is a part of the Des Plaines River Trail where it curves (if you are headed north) to go along Route 60 and all of a sudden you are surrounded by these tall, skinny trees. And when we ran through it, it was a beautiful sea of bright orange and yellow. It was amazing. But you could never tell from the first photo. It looks so blah.

Here is another example. It was a bit overcast, but the trail did not look like this:

It looked like this!

Subtle difference, but I want you all to see what I am seeing. Not what the camera captures. And I am pretty sure that if I had a nicer camera and was not running while taking photos, it may actually capture things as they are, but for now, I edit.

Some times I have to edit photos of myself too. I might take a photo like this:

and remove that GROSS ZIT, EWWWW!!!

In this case, I am not editing it so you can see what the camera sees… I am sparing you from my gross zits (I have one right there now too – wah).

And in this photo, I would actually cut my arm off, and re-position it to make it look like I was standing there with my left arm at my side.

Just kidding! I am not going to lie about WHO I am – you can always count on me to take plenty of goofy photos to share with you. Like this one, when we were in my dad’s speedboat and decided to open our mouths and see what would happen (because of all of the wind):

But that is edited! Here it is before:

I like to add some “punch” and contrast to my photos.

Do you edit your photos before sharing them (either sharing them on your site or by any other means)? Do you take a TON of photos?

On some runs, I may take over 50 photos. I think I took over 125 at the corn maze run. I like to have a lot of options for editing! And sometimes random snapshots turn out really neat.

You guys can tell I edit my photos, right? Or could you not see the difference here?

I always feel like it is obvious when I am done working on them.

Comments Off on Commenting III

By kilax, October 26, 2010 4:34 am

Just documenting that commenting turned itself off again.

Comments closed on purpose.

Comments (4)

By kilax, October 12, 2010 3:17 am

I woke up at 2:30 am and could not sleep so decided to log in and reply to all of your wonderful comments and look at that – comments are turned off again, and all of my wordpress “discussion” settings have been changed. They defaulted back to requiring users to be “registered” to comment, as well as requiring an administrato to approve any comment before it appears.

And all comments were turned off on ALL posts and ALL pages. AGAIN.

This has happened to me on September 24 and October 10, 2009. Both times, I’ve had to run this SQL command:

UPDATE wp_posts SET comment_status = ‘open’ WHERE comment_status = ‘closed’;

Then go back and manually change the Discussion settings, and turn on commenting on pages.

I cannot find a forum that tells me why this is happening. Some suggest that plug-ins may be doing it. Others suggest that it may be my wordpress theme.

Either way, it’s a huge pain and causes me a lot of stress.

If you notice comments are down, ever, please email me at kimilax@yahoo.com. And please forgive me for not knowing how to fix it permanently.

Comments (6)

By kilax, September 24, 2010 11:57 am

I am trying to get commenting working. Thank you to all who have alerted me. Please email me if it still does not work.

Because my BB is awesome, I cannot see what I am typing right now. Basically wordpress turned all commenting off on all of my posts today and when I ran the MySQL command to fix it, it changed all of my “discussion” settings (telling people they had to “log in” to leave comments). It should be working now. If you use wordpress, let me know if you want the MySQL command in case it ever happens to you.

Sorry about all of this!

Comments (19)

By kilax, August 31, 2010 11:04 pm

Two blogger meet-ups in one week?! Lucky me!

As you know, I met up with Amanda (Vegacious) on Friday on my way to Kansas City. When I wrote all about it, Lauren (When I get a little, run run run…) told me she would be in KC on Tuesday and asked if I wanted to meet up.

Of course!

I made sure to remove the GIANT bowls of tortilla chips out of the picture. Ha!

I first found Lauren’s blog back in December when we participated in a holiday gift exchange and were assigned to each other. I didn’t know any AZ bloggers at the time, and loved reading about how she could actually run outside in nice weather during the “winter” months! Ha ha.

It was great to take a break tonight and have a nice, light-hearted conversation (not saying anything about Lauren’s conversational skills – just that that’s all I could handle!). Lauren is very personable and easy to talk to. I could tell that we could have talked and talked and talked, especially since she’s has a structural engineer degree and I have an architectural degree! Ha. We could tease each other for ages. I hope we get to meet up again sometime, when I am not trying to get back to the hospital at a decent hour…

We talked a bit about twitter and Lauren told me that’s where it’s at (or, that’s where she likes to dish). Who else uses twitter? What do you like/dislike about it?

Honestly, I haven’t checked it out much, but I am kind of curious…

Comments (21)

By kilax, August 28, 2010 5:58 pm

Thank you for your comments yesterday on the family emergency. We have a family member in severe condition and I appreciate your thoughts!

I had to drive from Round Lake, IL to Kansas City, MO yesterday. Instead of going straight there though, I made a few stops on the way (the trip ended up being 570 miles) – in Evansdale/Cedar Falls to see my parents and sister, and in Ames to grab dinner with Amanda, from Vegacious.

I find it amusing that I don’t mind talking on the phone with a blogger and look forward to meeting with them for the first time, but that I don’t like doing that sort of thing for work. Is anyone else like that – are you more comfortable with meeting/talking to other bloggers than you are in other social situations?

I’m not saying I am a social misfit (well, that much), just that I find myself more comfortable talking to bloggers – probably because I already know a bit about them.

Anyway, back to the point. I found Amanda’s blog about two weeks ago through the “blogs by location” function on Healthy Living Blogs. I was looking at bloggers in Iowa, and was excited to see one in Ames, where I went to school. I started commenting, and even won a giveway on her blog. So when I was driving through Ames, I thought, “why not meet up for dinner?”

Meeting with Amanda went like many of the other blogger meet-ups I’ve done. You talk and talk and don’t want it to end! Unfortunately, I did have to get on the road, so I hope I will get to visit with her again someday! She’s really down to earth and excited about life… which I love.

So why the post title? Amanda took a few pictures of our food with her new Canon Rebel, then we had the waitress take a picture of us together. From Steven’s Canon Elph (which I use):

From her Rebel:

Ugh. Those DSLRs take amazing pictures! So much clearer! Look at the pictures here she took of our food. It looks like it is from a magazine.

It would be fun to play around with one of those cameras someday.

Comments (20)

By kilax, August 19, 2010 9:14 pm

From here

I was reading an informative post on one of my favorite blogs* today and decided to read the comments to see what other people were adding to the conversation. I was surprised to see a commenter with the exact same name of a coworker of mine. That doesn’t seem odd, but this coworker has a very unique name, let’s say… Alexiou** (for story purposes).

I didn’t have time to go in to full detective mode, as I was about to turn my computer off and get off the train. However, I did have a chance to click on the Alexiou’s blog and see that the header was of the Chicago skyline, as well as email the (original) blogger to ask if they knew anything more about Alexiou.

The blogger responded that she didn’t, but I had a chance to look at Alexiou’s blog again after my run… it’s totally him – there’s a picture!

What are the odds that I would run across a coworker’s blog, while reading an internet friend’s blog (who is from New Jersey)?

So now the question is, do I invade Alexiou’s privacy and read his blog? Should I tell him that I found it when I don’t want people at work to know about my blog?

What would you do – would you read the blog and tell the coworker you found it? Read it in stealth mode? Not read it at all?

Steven actually asked me what I was going to do. He asked if I would care if a coworker searched me out on the internet. I told him that I put this blog out in the public, so if they want to, they can. That’s their right. If I wanted to make it private, I would.

So, I will probably check out Alexiou’s blog and see if I find it interesting. But I still don’t want to introduce my blog to my coworkers!

*I would link, but I do not want to lead to a search for unique names on that blog!
**This is not the actual name. In fact, this is my family name. Ilax is a derivative of the Greek last name Alexiou. My great grandpa Nicholas came here from Greece. When Christina was in NYC, she found his name at Ellis Island.

Comments (39)

By kilax, July 21, 2010 4:32 am

It’s my five-year blogiversary!

I started blogging on July 21, 2005 because I wanted a platform for sharing my adventures in Italy with family members. Now my blog has evolved in to so much more for me. I was actually having a conversation with Steven this Sunday night about all the things I/we wouldn’t be doing if it weren’t for blogging. It started with me saying he wouldn’t be doing autocross if I weren’t blogging, because I met Erin through her blog, and her husband introduced Steven to autocross.

What else was on the list?

If I wasn’t blogging I wouldn’t…

… have met some of the awesome friends I have / made connections around the world
… get as much varied advice/input/experience shared with me
… be staying in touch with certain people
… be taking as many pictures
… be documenting my life as much as I am
… (according to Steven) stick with running as much as I have
… be trying as many new recipes
… be improving my writing skills? (it’s questionable)
… be learning as many fun random facts
… be wasting so much time on the internets

and most importanly

… always have a place where I feel like I can express myself

What is on your “If I wasn’t blogging I wouldn’t…” list? How many years have you been blogging? Why did you start?

Comments (33)

By kilax, June 8, 2010 6:03 pm

I am usually so far behind in reading blogs that when I do get around to leaving comments, I am leaving comments on multiple posts, that could be days old… all at once. Is that annoying? Does it annoy you when people leave a lot of comments on multiple posts on your blogs within a few minutes?

 Loading ...

I just wonder because that seems to be the only way I can stay caught up. And that is with skipping the stuff I don’t feel it’s necessary for me to comment on.

I may have asked this before, but when do you read blogs?

 Loading ...

I read them while commuting on the train. So, being in DC for a week really screwed me over in that regard! It kind of screwed me over in a lot of ways. It totally threw me off whack, schedule-wise, health-wise and work-wise (unfortunately) and coupled with two back-to-back weekend trips to Iowa, I am feeling overwhelmed and worn out. But I swear, I can see the light in the end of the tunnel!

Anyway, I am curious about your blogging habits/thoughts. I am not stressed about being behind in my reading, I just miss it!