I have a lot in my queue to blog about: HostingCon 2006 in Vegas, setting up a blog for Simpli corporate, etc. But one quick blog just for the record:

I’m here at BlogHer, which is a conference here in San Jose (finally! A conference comes to ME!) for women bloggers. So far it’s been fascinating, with a lot of good sessions on what to blog about, what not to blog about, how to reconcile multiple identities (for instance, my identity as “Erica” vs. my identity as “owner of Simpli Hosting”), and, of course, women-related topics like kids, self-image, etc.

The thing I found the most interesting, however, is the men at BlogHer. Since this conference is dominated by women, the men look a bit intimidated overall. As Scoble pointed out, “It is weird being one of only three men in a sea of people at a party. Now I know what it feels like at a usual tech conference, albeit in reverse.” YES. THANK YOU!

So how do the men react to it? They form little groups of men. It’s like they need to have some bonding experience by being the only men at a women-oriented tech conference. During every break, I watch one guy go up to another guy and start a conversation that then allows them to ignore the throngs of women around them. And it’s weirder yet what happens after that. As if they have some male homing beacon out, the other men at the conference come up and join the little group. I’ve eavesdropped and the conversations typically are about some non-blog-related tech item. One of the male groups was having a hearty debate about community wireless, for example. (I admit I was eavesdropping because I wanted to hear the juicy “OMG women” gossip, but it seems as though the male groups are uncomfortable discussing women…probably because they realize with so many women in close proximity, they could get beaned on the head for any comment that might possibly be taken the wrong way.)

This is most interesting to me because I am very used to being the only woman at tech conferences. For instance, at HostingCon, Simpli was again (as far as I know) the only woman-owned company presenting. In fact, at this point, having said this many times and never having been proved wrong, I am ready to declare Simpli the largest female-owned hosting company out there in terms of revenue. (And again, I will state my standard disclaimer that if you can find a woman-owned web hosting company larger than Simpli, I would love to have a mentor!) At HostingCon, the only other women there were either regular employees of a company or someone’s wife/girlfriend. (Or booth babes. Sigh.) It’s tough. I won’t argue that it’s easy being one of the only women out there. But I don’t think we create little “women groups” that exclude men at tech conferences, either. Techie women are used to being in a room with all men and being mostly OK with that. It comes with the job description. But men aren’t used to that. Techie men are used to dominating the scene they’re in. That’s why I found BlogHer, and the men here, so fascinating.

Tags: BlogHer

I woke up this morning with a headache. I wasn’t sure what caused it, so I drank a bunch of water and waited an hour… passing the time by reading a book. After an hour, it still wasn’t gone, so I took some Advil. Now the Advil has worn off and it’s back. It’s most likely a migraine.

I know I get migraines when I’m stressed… and right now I’m very stressed about making sure everything goes smoothly regarding our virtual hosting customer buyout by Empowering Media (reminder to self: post press release online.) I am up to my eyeballs in work, and what makes matters worse is that my friends seem to be constantly calling me and 1) telling me I need a break and then 2) trying to get me to commit to making plans with them that entails a break.

I seriously hate to write this blog, because I probably sound like a grumpy asshole. I mean, really. Who complains about their friends calling and wanting to make plans? Obviously they care about me and are concerned. But the constant phone calls and the pressure for me to make plans isn’t helping. So, in true Grumpy Assholioness form, I refuse to make plans with them, which causes them to really heap it on the form of “You’re really working too much if you can’t even make plans with me” and even the “Don’t you want to see me?” take.

I post this only because I’m really at a loss as to what to do. I need time alone. Alone, as in, no one is around and I get some much-needed time to think about everything. Right now I feel really cornered. I feel pressure from all sides to make decisions about things. Some of my friends want to know if they really matter to me. Some of them want relationships. And all of my friends want more time than I can possibly give.

So I post this to say: I’m sorry I suck and can’t make plans with you. I need time to myself. I can’t make any commitments right now. I probably can’t return your phone call or have dinner with you or spend hours talking about my problems or your problems. I just feel like everything’s going to break, and this halfway-depressed-with-headache state is not helping anything. I can’t get anything done in this state. Just please give me the space that I need, and I promise I will get back in touch with you later when I’m in a state where you will actually want to see me. I do love all of you, but sometimes I need a break, too.

So, this week, if you wonder why I’m not calling you or I can’t make any plans with you, please refer to this blog entry. And in a week or two, when this blows over and I feel better, I will call you (or email you.) I promise. Thank you for caring about me enough to make that phone call or send that email/text message.

Hey, it’s like a coupon…Read this post and I’ll show you how to save $10. That is, if you were going to see “Click”.

Let me preface this by saying that I am a fan of Adam Sandler. I think Sandler has done a lot of funny movies (“Happy Gilmore”), and a couple good-even-though-they-didn’t-have-too-many-fart-jokes movies, such as “50 First Dates.” Now that I’ve told you up front that I’ve liked most Sandler movies, even the marginal ones, I can tell you that “Click” was by far one of the worst movies I have seen recently. Even Christopher Walken (one of my favorite actors) couldn’t pull this movie out of the toilet.

First comes the product placement. And this ain’t no ordinary product placement. This is hit-you-over-the-head-with-a-sledgehammer product placement. EAT TWINKIES!! LOOK, A WENDY’S!!! The first 30 minutes seemed to be nothing but Adam Sandler hocking one product after another. And look, there are the neighbors with every ridiculous toy known to mankind. (Does anyone ever wonder why other countries view Americans as gluttonous lardball consumers? It’s no wonder they do if they see movies like this.)

The movie’s atrocity is compounded by the complete lack of plot of any sort. There is no woman in this movie with an IQ over 80. Every woman in this movie is either a bimbo (including Sandler’s own daughter in the later part of the movie) or a stay-at-home mom with a one-sided “oh, honey, you forgot about your family again” mentality. The movie is degrading to any woman who is a stay-at-home mom. I pointed this out to S, who pointed out that there is no MAN in this movie who makes any sort of intelligent decisions either. Fair enough.

Okay, but at least it’s funny, right? Well… frankly…no. Look, I don’t hold huge hopes for Sandler movies. I like Sandler, but he’s at his best with “The price is WRONG, bitch!” The best I could have hoped for was a quotable quote from either Sandler or Walken. You know, something that we could have walked out of the movie theater laughing about. There were a few cute one-liners, but seriously, I laugh more during 1 24-minute Seinfeld episode than I did during this movie… and really, I’m not that big a fan of Seinfeld.

Even Walken couldn’t do anything in his role. He was given lines that fell flat (“It’s like Tivo… only it’s MEEvo!” Huh?) and left the audience bewildered. Worst of all, they tried to turn his role into a sort of “benevolent guardian angel.” No! Walken should be allowed to be his totally insane self! And that’s where the movie was really disappointing… it tried to teach us all a really cheeseball lesson: “Family first!” Instead of going completely nuts with the plot, it tried to lecture us about how working too much and abandoning your wife and kids on the Fourth of July is bad, because then in 20 years you’ll be the CEO, but weigh 400 pounds and die divorced and pathetic after having 3 heart attacks. (Yep. That was 45 minutes of the movie right there, and it’s just as depressing as it sounds to watch it.) This movie had a great premise… but where was the wacky, totally off the deep end follow-through to go with the original premise? Where were the kids stealing the remote control to raid the toy store? How about the wife stealing the remote to slow-mo intimate moments and make them last for hours? Instead, the writers tried to turn it into a lecture about overwork and how it hurts your family. Yawn.

Save your $10, hit up the microwave popcorn, and watch a couple Seinfeld reruns. You’ll have more fun… I promise.

I’m doing this post more for future reference for myself than anything else, but it might help those of you who use Trillian as your IM client. I’ve been using Trillian since version .6 and I registered my copy in August 2001, which makes me one of the first Trillian users to ever pay Scott Werndorfer money. 🙂 I’ve been a loyal every-single-day user since, and I’ve done a lot of things to customize the heck out of my install.

I started with Trillian Pro 3.1, which is the latest version. The default interface is (mostly) fine with me, but there are a few changes I always like to make. Here they are, listed in the order I performed them:

Get rid of ugly default emoticons
The default emoticons are hideous. Some people prefer to turn them off entirely, but I actually really like the latest MSN emoticons. To enable MSN emoticons, download the zip file listed in this thread and unzip it to [your Trillian install, like C:\Program Files\Trillian]\Stixe\Plugins directory. It will create a new MSN folder. Then go into Trillian preferences -> Skins -> Advanced and under Emoticons, pick the MSN set. (By the way, I found the animated wink creepy, so I found the non-animated version and saved it as \stixe\plugins\MSN\animated\wink_smile.gif. That took care of that.)

Get rid of “blobs” and use real icons next to people’s names
Due to trademark issues (or something like that), Trillian puts a colored “blob” next to the person’s name instead of the actual AIM/ICQ/etc. icons. I think this is ugly. Follow the instructions here to get rid of those blobs and get the real icons. (You’ll need to download the Customizer software linked in that thread to easily enable the icons, but it’s easy to download and works like a charm.)

Slightly more complicated: small toolbar icons as the default and making the chat windows bigger
I used this tweak to make the small toolbar icons appear as the default. Just download the main.xml file from that person’s post and put it in \stixe\interface\Default, then restart Trillian.

The chat boxes are too small for my biggish (1600×1024) monitor. I followed the instructions in this thread to make them larger. I set the default message input window size to 95 and set the type 2 boxes to be 600 width and 570 height. This works well for this monitor.

Drop the status icons to the bottom of the main window
Finally, I set View->Hide My Identity Panel to drop my status icons to the bottom of the main window and get rid of the (IMHO) useless icon/name display at the top of the main window.

YAY!!!!

I finally got my system working.

After I wrote that blog post, I used nLite to set up a slipstream of XP 32-bit with the correct nVidia SATA drivers. I then reformatted the system, partitioned as I really wanted (3 partitions: C: 30GB for program files and Windows; D: 174GB for music and movies; E: 30GB for personal files.) I partition this way so I can always reformat without having to back up all my music and personal files.

Anyway, I got Windows installed and then realized I had neglected to slipstream either the nVidia video driver or the Ethernet driver. Hmm. I grabbed the SD card out of my Treo and dropped it into my laptop, then grabbed the latest nVidia drivers from this link (which is what I was following to slipstream the drivers in the first place.) I downloaded to the card, put the card in my desktop (yeah, every computer I own has a SD card reader) and installed the drivers. Then I rebooted…and promptly freaked out.

The system wasn’t booting. It just sat there and blinky-cursored at me (after I ignored the prompt to boot from CD.) “Fuck…another reformat!” I thought to myself. I popped in the Windows CD. It booted into the setup options and I realized it was seeing my SD card as a potential destination for my Windows install. “I wonder if it’s trying to boot off the SD card,” I mused. I popped the card out, rebooted, and sure enough, Windows came back up. Stupid computer! (Side note: When I have my backup drive plugged in via USB, it tries to boot off that, too. Sigh.)

Anyway, after installing 51 Windows updates (please note I had slipstreamed SP2 onto my CD, so this is 51 updates after SP2), some more drivers, and rebooting a few more times, I had a working system. So far, so good. I’m now copying all my music files off my backup drive. I had all my CDs ripped into MP3, but they don’t all fit on my iPod, so I had them stored on the backup drive. It’s been 6 months since I’ve been able to easily access my backed-up MP3s. They’re copying over to this system now. It’s nice to have them back!

Also, iTunes works now, so either it was a corrupt download problem or it didn’t work under Windows x64 with my system.

All good for now. If the system has any more problems, I will post annother update.