Comments (2) The iTunes Giftcard Giveaway winners are:
Lauren @ Lauren Runs and RunningLaur! Please send me your mailing addresses, ladies, and I will put these in the mail.
Yesterday we spent the day in Long Island checking out a few towns on the water and seeing where Gina and Steve grew up. We’re having so much fun! I don’t want to go home! At least I know we will be back in November.
Ahh! You know what I remembered during my run today*? It’s my six year blogiversary! I’ve been blogging for six whole years. Wow!
I think I say it every year, but the best thing about blogging is the people you meet. I’ve met my best and closest friends through blogging! And there are a ton of you I want to meet in person. Thanks for reading and supporting me!
As a thank you, I am giving away two $10 iTunes giftcards (there will be two winners)!
(Yeah, those are the actual cards – I apologize for any teeth marks on the pink one)
$10 iTunes Giftcard Giveaway Rules
*Which went surprisingly well, considering it was 96 out when I started! I ran 8 miles and felt great!
I’ve been spending the last month cleaning out my personal email by unsubscribing to all the random emails I get and don’t care about (Bath & Body Works, Victoria’s Secret, Livestrong*, etc.) as well as deleting folders and emails. Some of the companies make it kind of cumbersome to unsubscribe (you have to read through a bunch of crap and select different options instead of just clicking “unsubscribe me”) but I have been diligent in trying to figure it out.
Until today, none of the companies made it funny when I unsubscribed, but Groupon takes the cake for that. They present this video when you unsubscribe, asking you if you want to punish “Derrick – the guy who thought you’d enjoy receiving Groupon emails.”
The audio didn’t work, but basically, this guy says something to Derrick, punches him then walks away.
Then they ask you to resubscribe to make it up to Derrick.
I thought it was clever and it made me laugh. I won’t be resubscibing though. I don’t like how they changed their emails to make you click through to their site to see the deal. Too much work! It’s like all those blogs with the summary (abbreviated) feed in reader – too much work for me to click through. If you don’t catch me with your title and first paragraph, I probably won’t be reading it.
Do you unsubscribe to mass emails or just delete them out of your inbox? Are you less likely to read a blog that uses an summary (abbreviated) feed in reader?
*Actually, they make it really confusing to unsubscribe so I am not sure if I did that one or not.
When I was in Kansas City on Monday, I had a chance to meet up with Laura, who reads my blog.
We only had a short bit of time to meet, but we had a blast chatting. Laura is a great conversationalist, and such a sweetie (and what a knockout – she’s so pretty!). I think everyone needs a friend like her – she’s a great listener and shows genuine interest in what you are saying – just being around her makes you feel good about yourself.
And would you believe that Laura has two young kids? She doesn’t look like it! Her 18 month daughter, Ava, was actually there when we were chatting, and she was being such a sweetie, just playing with her books, then showing extreme interest in my Chai Latte to-go cup right before we left (she was being so cute – pretending to drink out of it (it was empty)).
Laura was training for the 2010 Chicago Marathon when she found out she had a stress fracture in her hip! And it’s taking forever to heal. She said her plan now is to take a full year off from running, then start back slowly again. We decided we’ll have to do a race together someday! She suggested the 2012 Chicago Marathon (Laura lived in Chicago the first 10 years of her life, before moving to near Kansas City).
When we were chatting, Laura told me that she found my blog through a comment I left on the blog of a friend from her running club. That person has since stopped blogging, which is a shame – I could totally relate to her and loved her blog. But I am happy it brought me and Laura together! She is a total sweetheart and I can’t wait to meet up with her again!
Our conversation got me thinking – I read so many blogs now, that I can rarely remember how I found that blog in the first place! Some, I can, but not many. I think I find a lot the same way Laura found mine – by comments on other blogs.
Do you remember how you found the blogs you read? Any fun stories to share about finding blogs? How did you find my blog?
Do you guys ever read Hollaback Health? It’s a fun blog about healthy living blogging and social media – and breaking the blogging “mold.”
There was a post up yesterday about the trend of ending posts in a question, often in bold, or even bold and italics. In the post, they said that people do this for two reasons – because they genuinely have a question to ask, or because they are fishing for comments.
In the post they suggested that the question is not necessary – if the content is good enough, there should be discussion anyway. No prompt needed.
I found this interesting. I have been asking questions at the end of my blogs posts since at least October of 2009 (and I am not sure why I started doing that). And of course I did it to get comments, or rather, feedback. I tend to think of my blog as kind of a social experiment – I love hearing what people have to say about things, and I love finding other people I relate to. I look forward to reading comments, and interacting with people. I used to respond to every single comment I received. I still respond to a lot of them. Reading comments is one of my favorite parts of the day.
Anyway, here I go…
Do you think putting a bold question at the end of a blog post is superficial, and just a way to fish for comments?
You can be honest with me. It may or may not change what I do, but as always, I love to hear (well, read) your opinion.
I actually have a lot of thoughts on this topic, but I want to see what you guys have to say first!
It seems that WordPress is turning off all comments on new posts, even though I have comments turned on on all new posts, and turned on in the discussion settings. I’ve tried deactivating and deleting all plug-ins and that didn’t help. If you know anything about this, please email me at kimilax@yahoo.com. Thanks!
(I noticed comments are working on this post – they do not show up in the post preview.)
I am having the most awful two days, technology wise.
WHY does this sh*t piss me off so much? Seriously, I wanted to cry when I went to bed last night. I feel like something is wrong with me for letting these little things bother me so much.
I need help.
(How ironic that starting last night and until midnight tonight is the National Day of Unplugging. I think it is going to become the National Day of Destroying Your Personal Electronics for me.)
What would I do without Helper Cat there to assist me in the bathroom
and in the kitchen in the morning?
Surely, I would be at least 20 minutes behind schedule. Thanks Helper Cat!
Now, if only Helper Cat could help me get through all the unread items I have in Google Reader… yikes. It may take me some time folks, but I will eventually catch up with reading your blogs!
What do you use to keep track of the blogs you read (Google Reader or other/nothing)? When you travel and fall behind on reading blogs do you try to catch up or just “mark all as read”/skip the posts you missed while you were gone?
I always try to catch up – yeah, that’s me, commenting on the thing you wrote over a week ago!
Comments Off on Commenting V It’s a Tuesday. For the past six weeks my web host has turned off my comments and changed my WordPress Discussion settings every other Tuesday (they’ve done it three times). Did it happen again this morning?
Unfortunately, yes. I even woke up early to take care of it.
Maybe when I talk to them this time, they will actually do something about it. They wouldn’t last time.
Probably Not.
Comments purposefully turned off.
Just documenting that commenting turned itself off again.
I am so effing sick of this. I cannot figure it out.
I am noticing it happens every two weeks, on Tuesdays, if that means anything.
Update: I talked to my hosting service and they are the ones turning commenting off, because of “spam,” but they won’t tell me much about it. Great.
The old code didn’t work so I used this:
UPDATE wp_posts SET comment_status = ‘open’;
Comments closed on purpose.
Hi! I'm Kim, a 34-year-old living in Chicagoland with my husband, Steven, and our cats, Khali, Apollo, and Starbuck. I work in the design industry (architecture), follow a vegan lifestyle, am addicted to running, and am an ACE certified personal trainer (working at Essential Fitness, LLC ("Efit"))! I write about a variety of topics, and consider this a "life" blog - a place I can share anything that's on my mind. Please visit the "About" page to get a better idea of who I am! :-)
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