Elliott, the 21st Century Dad himself, and pioneer of the 50-50-50 Plan for balancing work and family life, asked me to do a guest post on his blog. I gave it a try, and here is the resulting article, “Happy to be a Hapa Girl.” It’s a little bit about my experiences growing up half-Japanese in the midwestern United States, so if that sounds interesting to you, go read it. Thank you!

GeekMomMashup is now being displayed on Alltop, the “digital magazine rack” of the Internet. Yaay! The Alltop team selects the best sites, regardless of whether they are big or small, and loves to find hidden gems. I’m flattered that they like my little nugget of geeky goodness. Thanks, Alltop!

Nothing cures a case of the “Mondays” like doing something thoroughly unproductive for half an hour, right? Here’s an idea…

I love playing with avatar creators, because I’m no good at drawing, and I’m too cheap to hire someone to make me a custom caricature. Now that WordPress has built-in gravatar support, you might be looking for a new image to use when you’re out and about in the bloggy neighborhood.

Here’s one for you to try, from gamedition. It doesn’t build a whole body for you, but you can customize a cartoon head for yourself. There are even some cute and quirky accessories, like a pirate eye patch and 3-D glasses. [EDIT: I had initially linked this post directly to the flash file for the avatar creator, but GamEdition has redirected that to the main page, which contains thumbnails to games that are not G-rated. Just thought you should know before you click.]

Here’s what I came up with after about 30 minutes of messing around with it. I think I like it!

I heard a story about the Typo Eradication Advancement League (TEAL) on public radio, in a “guess which news story is real” game. The mission of TEAL (dedicated to a more perfectly spelling union) appeals to me.

You see, I try not to be uppity when it comes to language, grammar, and spelling. I know I’m not perfect! However, I am the kind of person who gets annoyed when there are errors in publications. I catch myself thinking, “Come on! Proofread that before you put it on television!” “Why didn’t you spell-check before that magazine was printed?” “Don’t they know the difference between there and their?” And don’t even get me started on the topic of apostrophic abuse (the misuse of apostrophes). Please!

Now, a TEAL team, led by passionate proofreader Jeff Deck of Boston, Massachusetts, is traveling the country to clean up spelling mistakes on public displays around the United States.

This March through May, we, sworn members of TEAL, will be taking a road trip around the country to stamp out as many typos as we can find, in public signage and other venues where innocent eyes may be befouled by vile stains on the delicate fabric of our language. We do not blame, nor chastise, the authors of these typos. It is natural for mistakes to occur; everybody will slip now and again. But slowly the once-unassailable foundations of spelling are crumbling, and the time has come for the crisis to be addressed. We believe that only through working together with vigilance and a love of correctness can we achieve the beauty of a typo-free society.

Armed with markers, chalk, adhesive letters, and white-out, they are circling the US, fearlessly correcting typos on all kinds of signs and labels. You can follow their progress on Typo Hunt Across America, and see before and after photos of their noble work. It almost makes me want to put a typo correction kit in my purse and do a little vigilante editing around my own town.

Keep up the good work, Champions of Correctness!

Loretta, over at Blogs We Luv, has posted a very thoughtful, well-researched, and positive review of GeekMomMashup. It was completely unsolicited, unexpected, and a wonderful pick-me-up after a through-the-ringer kind of morning. Thank you, Loretta!

Well, despite the late winter blizzards we’ve been having here in the midwestern US, spring is officially just a week away! You know what that means: spring cleaning!

Do you need to freshen up your online home a bit? Is your background stale? Want to make your badges and banners a little more 2.0?

Here’s a fun, free online tool that you might like. It’s Stripe Generator 2.0.

You may be thinking, “So what? I can make stripes in my sleep.” Okay, yaay for you!

For the rest of us, this is a great shortcut. You choose the colors, angle, width, frequency, and gradient of your pattern. View a small sample, or try the full-page preview. Tweak the settings to your heart’s content, and click the preview update to see your changes *snap* just like that! When you get it just the way you want it, download it.

The best/worst thing about the stripe generator is that you can do whatever you want with it. If ugly colors and sickening angles that don’t tile well are what you like, you can do that! But, please, don’t put them where I have to see them.

For page backgrounds, I like light colors with soft contrast, so as not to distract from the real page content. Of course, there times when you need something bright and bold, too (see my sample above). I was thinking of spring tulips. What do you think?

Okay, I usually try to keep my snarky thoughts to myself, but every now and then, I have to let them out. Otherwise, the pressure would just build up until I had a huge snark explosion, and that would not be pretty, right? So in the interest of mental health, and snarky humor, here is my list of Ten Signs Your Blog Might Be Annoying.

1. Your background and text colors are similar.
2. Your sidebars are way longer than your content column.
3. Your graphics feature seizure-inducing blinkies and glitter text.
4. Your main page plays music automatically.
5. Your sidebar is full of buttons, ads, badges, and awards, of all different shapes and sizes.
6. Your page features automatic audio ads.
7. Your banners or graphics are wider than your columns, and they overflow into the margins, or overlap other elements.
8. First-time visitors have a hard time finding your actual post on the page.
9. You routinely change languages mid-post.
10. More than 10% of your blog is written in leetspeek or lolcatz style.

If your blog contains one of these elements, that doesn’t mean it’s terrible. But if you have lots of these, you might want to consider cleaning things up a bit. This concludes my snark for the day.

Well, it won’t pass for your actual pen and paper signature, but if you want to add a little personal touch to your online writings, you might want to try this. MyLiveSignature.com has a nifty free service that lets you type in your name, choose from 120 fonts, several colors, sizes, and varying degrees of slant, to create a personalized “signature” that you can post on your blog.

Here are some of the fonts you can choose from. They range from elegant script to scratchy scrawls, and you should be able to find one that is close to your own style. Or you can cheat, and choose one that’s completely different from your own! If you have a few minutes to burn, go give it a try. Use it in your e-mail signature, at the end of your blog posts, or just as a personal touch on your profile pages.

And by the way, there are also some signature customizations you can pay extra for, but I didn’t try those. I’m cheap. Cheers!

I’ve been tagged by Holly at Everything and Anything for the Crazy Eights meme. I don’t think you really want to know that much about me. Heck, I’m not sure I can even come up with that many things, but I’ll give it a go! Maybe I’ll change this from Crazy Eights to Just Some Stuff About Me in No Particular Order…

Things I’m Passionate About

• Playing the piano
• My family
• Eternity

Things I Want to Do Before I Die

• Get a Ph.D. in something
• Have grandkids

Things I Say Often

• I love you.
• Sometimes that happens.
• Clean up time!
• I need a vacation.

Books I’ve Read Recently

• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
• Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
• The Lord of the Rings (in progress)

Songs I Could Listen to Over and Over

• “When you say nothing at all,” by Alison Krauss
• “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing,” by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir
• Anything my 3-year old sings

Things That Attract Me to My Best Friends

• Acceptance and understanding
• They laugh with me more than at me
• They have common sense

People I Think Should Do Crazy Eights or Just Some Stuff About Me in No Particular Order

• mummifiedtimesfive
• fiveblondes
• mommamuse
• kinagrannis
• suedoenim
• mamafasha
• daisythecurlycat

Have a wonderful weekend!

After I got my kids off to school this morning, I was sitting in my usual spot, at the computer. I started opening all my favorite sites in tabs, glanced out the window to watch the snow falling, checked to see whether the pages were loading fast enough… Fired up Mail and a couple of other applications, checked Firefox again, started reading headlines.

My husband came down the stairs and was putting on his coat to leave for the office. He said, “Did you see that news story on people who are addicted to the internet?”

I said, “How could I have seen that if I was over here working on the computer?”

I’m hilarious, I know. I admit it; I have an internet dependency.

How addicted are you? How long can you go without checking something online? Days? Hours? Minutes?