Goodbye AOL

I just used the import to Blogger function and it looks like AOL actually did something right. It worked seamlessly..... More likely someone over at BLOGGER did something right. Sigh!

I imported this journal in it's entirety over to Blogger and put it in a new blog and named the blog Adventures of an Eclectic mind - AOL Edition. I don't intend to use that blog for anything except a holder of my AOL memories. I will continue to blog at Adventures of an Eclectic Mind. I put one entry in the new blog explaining to people what the blog was, what AOL did, and directing them to the blog I am currently using.

So, this is farewell... I don't plan to post here anymore. I do plan to leave this journal up till the end so people can find my 'forwarding address'.

Goodbye AOL and thanks for encouraging me to move on to better services.

Tags: Goodbye AOL

The Deathrows of AOL Journals...

Yes, yes, yes... I know I promised stories from my great adventure, but I seem to have returned to find something of a disaster happening in J-land. It seems that AOL has decided that the Journal product, along with all of the Hometown stuff, is to be discontinued. In other words they are kicking us out. I can't say that this is totally unexpected. I have been pessimistically mirroring all of my entries on a Blogger Blog for a long time now, every since the Banner fiasco. After the way AOL handled that, I wasn't sure I trusted them to stick around and support the Journals product. It seems that unfortunately my paranoia was not so unfounded after all.

At first glance this seemed to be a pain, but I have been playing around with moving away from AOL for a while now and this is just the push I needed. I tend to go with the established (read easy) path unless pushed. With Journals and FTP space gone -- and I am sure AOL Pictures soon to follow-- the only thing left that I really use on AOL is my e-mail account. I will probably continue to always have that e-mail addy as long as AOL continues to support e-mail because it is the one I've had since like 1995 and everyone has it, but I see it becoming the account I check like once every couple of weeks to be sure that nothing ended up there.  Why? Because:

• I have a g-mail account, which I plan to migrate all my e-mail traffic over to
• Blogger will now be my main Blogging platform -- at least for now and until I decide to do the whole domain/host thingy -- again, I've always preferred the customization over at Blogger anyway
• I have a free Flickr account, which I will take Pro tomorrow. It's a better platform than AOL Pictures anyway and the only reason I haven't been using it is just pure laziness of habit. Plus I have been wanting to do more with my pictures over at Flickr anyway and maybe this will be the push I need to do so
• I was only using AOL FTP to host my animated graphics. I will now move those over to Photobucket
• AOLalerts were always lousy, so I have a Bloglines account up and running and have been using it for years already. Now it is just a matter of getting everyone's new Blog accounts into Bloglines and deleting out the old AOL Journal ones
• AND Live Writer is integrated with Blogger and it was always a pain having to copy and paste the entry into AOL anyway. With Blogger all I have to do is hit the publish button

So... I'm thinking maybe I should THANK AOL for being butts and kicking us out. My only fear is that some of the people I enjoy will either not continue to blog or I will miss finding where they have gone. Otherwise I think this may actually turn out to be a good move, at least for me.

If anyone who is making the move needs any help with getting their new Blogs set up, or have questions about Bloglines, Flickr, or Photobucket feel free to ask.

Another place to get help is here. Rachel has set up a bulletin board for people to help each other, ask questions, and post their forwarding links. You have to sign up for an account to post, but it is free.

This will most likely be my last post that I 'mirror' over at AOL Journals. From now on I will only be posting here. I will put one last entry up over at J-land directing all my friends over to my Blogger Blog. Eh, and an era ends.

I've Been on an Adventure!

 

I've been on an Adventure! I am currently sitting in an airport waiting for my flight home. I was told I would have internet access during this little foray, but this turned out to be not exactly true. Turns out that this is the first time I have been online since Sept 11. Details to follow as soon as I get home and get a little caught up.... by the way, I have 4572 entries waiting my attention on Bloglines and 1840 e-mails.

What a Girl Needs.... & Other Random Things!

That's a title from a really cute movie, but this post is from a meme that I saw over at Donna's. I don't usually do these, but it was cute, so........... Here goes:

The rules: All you have to do is Google your first name with the word needs behind it and post the first 10 results. Don't forget to tag people (if you are the tagging sort)!

1. Jeanie needs more support to accomplish day-to-day tasks. (Like maybe making timely blog posts?? Maybe someone could do my laundry while I play on the computer? LOL!)

2. Jeanie needs more constant attention. (Well... duh!)

3. Jeanie needs a hug. (hmmmm... don't we all??)

4. Jeanie needs a Shooter. (well... alrighty then! and here I don't even hang out at bars and still this one kept showing up... maybe I DO need a Shooter!)

5. Jeanie needs to bother her parents. (Since I'm 48, I think I can skip bothering my Mom about most things...)

6. Jeanie needs a vacation. (Hell Yeah!)

7. Jeanie needs: MicroSoft Framework 1.1 or higher. (I'm a tech geek, but I think I can pass on this one.)

8. Jeanie needs to establish dominance and take responsibility for it. (Dominance... Like World Dominance maybe? I can do that... bwahahahaha!)

9. Jeanie needs her own show. (Eh.. not so much.)

10. Jeanie needs help and an hour to get ready for a date. (If I'm getting ready for a date I definitely need help.. and probably more than an hour. LOL!)

O.k.... that was... interesting. I'm with Donna on the tagging thing, so if this looks interesting.. Consider yourself tagged!!

Now for the random bits. I have a bunch of pictures I need to work on, a new program to work on them in that I need to learn all the new parts of. In addition, I have plenty of housework I could be doing, and I have an afghan that is a present I should be finishing... and yet, what am I actually doing?

Well....

Have any of you seen the advertisement for Spore? It's a new game that is coming out where you create your own characters and then follow them thru evolution from little cells to space travelers. Anyway, they released the creature creator early and it is very addictive. Here are the creatures I have so far, and I am sure there will be more! Check out some of the absolutely amazing creations by some of the other people who are playing with this adult version of tinker toys!

There are two versions of Creature Creator. One is free and you can download it from the site and play with it. It has 25% of the parts and you can upload your creatures. The other version (the one I have) is the full version and costs $10 and gives you access to 100% of the parts and you can also upload your creations. Just be warned, you can spend a LOT of time playing with this!

Grrrrrr!!!! I uploaded a couple of pictures of my creations, but apparently AOL Journals doesn't support PNG files. Sigh! You can either click on the link above to see what I've made, or pop over to my Blogspot journal -- which DOES support PNG files!

The other thing I have been up to is also fun, but not the same type of fun. My Grandson recently had his 6th birthday and I bought him a Webkinz. His is a little monkey and he named it Banana. Isn't that cute? I also got one for myself so that we could play games and talk on the Webkinz site. Mine is a Bengal tiger and I named him Rajah. Now, this is a great kids site and is actually set up very well for keeping kids safe from what I've seen so far.... Currently I have bought furniture for my little Rajah, and clothes, and I cook him food, and he has a scooter, and a swimming pool and we bought seeds so we could garden and an outdoor yard....  Yeah, I think I've spent more time online with my webkinz than my grandson has! LOL!

      

I sometimes amaze myself with the silly things I find that amuse me, still I have to say I am rarely bored! LOL!

 

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Suddenly the Interweebs make sense...

Did you ever wonder why the Internet was created? Why people keep blogs and now exactly what they twitter about? This guy seems to have figured it all out. It's so obvious to me now...... LOL!

 

 

Everyone Loves a Baby

This is a shot I took several months ago and have been meaning to do something with. I took several shots of this Momma and Baby orangutans interacting, and it was very difficult choosing just one. I finally decided on this one because I like the expressions on their faces. The second runner up had the baby making 'kissy lips' at Momma, but it wasn't as sharp as this shot. I still might revisit it sometime in the future though.

Although this particular photo was taken at my local zoo, I was thinking about one of the innovative things we saw when we visited a different zoo. The National Zoo has the coolest thing set up for their orangutans. They have a "Think Tank" for them to interact in. The animals don't live at the "Think Tank" though... they live in another exhibit that is a fair distance away. The Zoo came up with a pretty ingenious way to allow the animals to have access to the interactive exhibit and their house.... they set up something called the "O" line. It is a series of cables that are set on towers and allow the animals the choice of where they want to be!  We really enjoyed the exhibit and the unique way the curators figured out to make the situation not only work, but be another form of enrichment.

Hope everyone is enjoying their weekend. I'm trying to finish up a project and still trying to play with the new program. So far there is only one change I dislike and I am still hoping that there is a way to 'do it the old way'. Most of the improvements have been nice. Still, sometimes they change something that doesn't really need to be changed though. Sigh!

One of the improvements I like is  a way to upload directly to Flickr from the organizer. I've only got a free account over there, but I have been thinking about upgrading to the Pro account and this might be the thing that pushes me to actually do it. The only reason I've not gone 'pro' before now is the thought of taking the time to organize and decide what to upload. This may actually push me to get my butt in gear and get my online life organized... well, at least the picture part!

 

 

 

It's Thursday... and I'm actually posting 2 days in a row! ;p

Ooooh... Look! Two days and two entries! Don't get used to it, but I do plan to be around a little more often than I have been the last couple of months.... which would be like um... Zilch. I've been around the interweebs.  I read journals/blogs. I even do online research. I just couldn't seem to find time (or maybe inspiration) to actually write an entry. Part of this has been my lack of time to play with (or even take) any photos. Now, why would that keep me from posting? I'm not sure, but I have gotten into a habit of posting a photo along with an entry even if the photo had nothing to do with the subject matter. No time to play in Elements equals no new photos to post equals no posts. And part of the problem has also been that even though I'm busy, I'm boring!

Yesterdays photo was me playing with my new Photoshop Elements 6. Yep, I went straight from Ver 4 to 6. I skipped Ver 5 because it didn't offer anything new that I felt was compelling enough for me to switch from the version I was used to. I'm not sure I really needed this version either, but it had a couple of new features I was curious about AND I found it on sale for half price. I had been wanting it, and I had some birthday money burning a hole in my pocket. LOL! I only played with it for a few moments, but I think I really like the improvements in this version. The new interface is really nice. I don't know if it is new for Vers 6 or from 5, but I like the darker colors and ease of switching from one thing to another. I also think the organizer is faster than the version I was using. I still haven't deleted Ver 4 from my hard drive because I want to be sure I have all of my brushes and things switched over to the new version before I do that, but it is just sitting there for now.

I'm also recycling! I'm sending the disks and the books I bought about Ver 4 to my DIL as she was interested in it when she saw it on my computer when we visited. She has been using whatever came with her camera and it was very basic. I think she is ready to move up to something a little more, and I am glad to be able to help her out by sending along Ver 4 to her.

Tonight's picture is from a photo shoot that I did for a friend who needed some new publicity shots. After we were done doing her pictures we had her daughter do a few poses with the horses since they were already cleaned up and looking pretty. She is a lovely girl and with such subjects it is almost impossible to take a bad picture. I'm finally starting to go thru the rest of the shots I took from that day and get them printed out for her. I worked on her mother's photos right away so she could send them out, but hadn't gotten around to her pictures till now. She has been amazingly patient..... and I've been amazingly slow! Still, I thought I would post one of the shots here and see what you all think of it.

Oh, Oh, Oh, I almost forgot to mention. I'm officially a published photographer!! One of the publicity shots that I did for my friend (during the photo shoot mentioned above) just appeared in a magazine. She showed it to me today. The ad for her appearance is on the inside of the front cover and it is one of the shots I did for her! Yeah, I know it's not like really being published, but I'll take it! LOL!

Anyway, here is the shot of her daughter and Ricco. Some of you might remember Ricco. He is an Andalusion stallion and I have had shots of him up here before.