The SPL website

This post relates to thing #23: to peruse the SPL website. First off, hats off to all who have worked on the site during the past year in whatever capacity. Creating and maintaining a functional and "user-friendly" website is a huge (and largely thankless) task.

I, unlike my friend akajill, tried the exercise of placing a hold on "Twilight" while at work, and I clicked the mouse 3 times. Yea, me! I did do some health research after getting some bloodwork results. They (Sutter) should make the notifications of results a little more user-friendly because I did not quite understand what some of the abbreviations were. I did find some money saving advice. I could add one: potty train your kid as soon as possible! I did not need to peruse our site for job resources. It seems I am using that information all the time. I just hope I don't need to use it for myself any time soon! :)

I will have to double check, but I think I have one more "thing" after this. But I am sure I will find things to post until the end (and maybe after!) just to keep from getting rusty.

What is that Thingfo?

Apparently nothing. I signed up for Thingfo just like I dutifully signed up for other things on the 27 Things list. Thingfo does not like me. I took a tour of the site and read the FAQs before doing anything else. So far, so good. But then it all fell apart. Every time I tried to sign in, it would not recognize my password. So I would reset my password (to the same one it was the first time) several times over. Then I would try to get started and it would give me the 404 message, which is something like "What are you trying to do? Get out of here!" Cute, but not very friendly. So I'd try again only to be kicked off the site. Honestly, I suppose having your twitter feed on your blog could be useful for some, but I don't find it quite necessary for my blog. Perhaps the people at Thingfo know this, and so I am not allowed to move past the home page. Oh, well. I am not going to lose any sleep over it.

Chirp! I mean, tweet!

I am skipping ahead to Twitter because my cousin Danny posted on Facebook that he surprisingly updates Twitter more than Facebook. Ever curious, I signed up for a Twitter account and promptly started following him and Eddie Izzard and a few other people. One person even started following me (thanks, Marjorie!) Danny is a writer for television, so it is interesting to read about some of the things he does on a regular basis. He hasn't lost that East Coast mentality even though he lives in L.A.


John introduced me to Eddie Izzard's comedy, and that guy (Eddie, well, John, too) can be just hilarious. Makes me glad I took French when he slides into that language during his stand-up routines. Anyway, he seems to really like tweeting about the weather in England. You just never know when that info will come in handy on the reference desk! Plus I learned a new bit of slang, which, unlike the slang John recently learned, is socially acceptable. Apparently to label something "pants" (Eddie tweeted that he heard the weather in LA is pants) is to say it is bad. I don't know how that meaning came about, but I'm looking forward to working the term into a conversation soon.

Several articles I read about Twitter said it is best to not use the web interface, and it seems I will have a lot to learn before I stop looking like the newbie I am. However, because I cannot access the web on my phone--I have enough bills as it is without upgrading to a more expensive cell phone plan although John and I have about a billion rollover minutes so why can't we trade those in for text messaging credits or something--I am not sure how convenient this will be for me. I'll keep working with it, though, just to try to stay current and hip. Especially since Valley Girl talk went out ages ago! Fer sure, fer sure!