Wednesday, February 23, 2005

FACE

Anonymous Midwest Girl now has a face to go with her namelessness. I'm tripping, well, because nameless and faceless seems a bit easier to deal with than only nameless but with a face. Whatever.

In other news, I got officially fingerprinted again yesterday and my prints have been electronically transmitted to both the FBI and the DOJ. This costs over $70, and why? Just because I want to change my name on my flipping teacher credential, which I could do for less cost when I renew - BUT, I've applyed for a job in Oregon and am applying for an Oregon teacher's license, so I want everything to be in the free and clear and no mistakes about who the heck I am. SHEESH!

Thursday, February 17, 2005

Body in Oakland, Mind in Oregon

When I get a chance to sit down at my computer for 30 seconds these days, I'm going to The ODOT Cottage Grove Cam. Basically, it just shows a view of I-5 about 2 miles south of Cottage Grove, OR. Where we want to move to.

Out of the mouths of babes

This morning, my husband started singing that old Mr. Rogers theme: "It's such a good feeling/to know you're alive/It's such a happy feeling/you're growing inside/and when you wake up happy to say/I'm going to make a snappy new day..." I joined in, we had a big musical number finish, and then the almost-9-year-old son pipes in:

"Is that the Beatles?"

Well, I'm comforted that he knows who the Beatles were, anyway. But it shows a serious lack of good parenting on our parts that he doesn't know who Mr. Rogers was.

Friday, February 04, 2005

Now I'll believe anything

KIROTV.com - Weird Headlines - Oregon McDonald's Calling Drive Thru Orders To North Dakota

So, you drive up to the order speaker thing - and you're talking to a minimum-wage worker half the country away, which undercuts your own state's minimum wage laws and saves the company $2 an hour. As if McDonald's hadn't already sunk low enough.

Thanks to this blogger who called it to my attention.

Sen. Clinton's frank talk on abortion

Joan Ryan's column from the SF Chron: Sen. Clinton's frank talk on abortion.

Go, Hillary, Go!

Wednesday, February 02, 2005

Come See Our Brutal Democracy / Freedom rings in Iraq! Bush was right all along! American wins! Or, you know, not

Come See Our Brutal Democracy / Freedom rings in Iraq! Bush was right all along! American wins! Or, you know, not

Cost of War

The brutal accounting: Cost of War

Random: No Citizen Left Behind

Check out this suggestion of government reform following the "No Child Left Behind" model.

Advertising?

So, whilst schlepping around the interweb this morning, I came across a link from Google, promising revenue if you allow advertisers or searching from your site.

Way ethical issue for me.

On the one hand, I'm a middle school teacher. My income was cut by 4% last year. I'm supporting a family of four, and the only reason that we can squeak through is that my husband takes in a colleague's baby for daycare while he is staying at home with our daughter, and I do tutoring on the side.

So, the thought of any extra income at all is very tempting.

But then I started thinking about how dishonest it would be to be trying to get my friends to visit my blog (or how even more dishonest it would be to put up the links on my teacher website) and be not-so-secretly hoping that they would click on the ads so that I would get a check every month (The rules of the advertising agreement stipulate that you may not a)click on your own ads and b)put anything on your site that would encourage others to just click on the ads to generate revenue).

I got the application half filled out anyway.

Then I started thinking about how my friends would probably not click on any advertising anyway - See, my friends are way too sophisticated for that. So it occured to me that I would be opening up my blog to being monitored by some schmuck at Google, and it wouldn't really get me any extra money anyway.

So I closed the application window.

I'm still thinking about it, though. What about starting a new blog, and inviting hits by lots of "d00d, herez where the gurlz are" type of posts?

Just a thought.

Tuesday, February 01, 2005

Anonymous Midwest Girl

Part of this whole blogging "thing" is that I am constantly browsing other folks' blogs. This one looks pretty cool: Anonymous Midwest Girl. Somebody with a sense of humour! She obviously doesn't have kids, since she has so much time to write.