Breaking in the new diggs

Welcome to A (new and improved?!) Day in the Life Least Expected!

No, I have no idea what "arthemia" means and, yes, I fully agree that the dang white boxes in the footer are about as obnoxious as they come, but (clearly) this is a work in progress. I'm hoping to finishing migrating all of the last three years' worth of posts from the old Wordpress site soon and then I'll be shutting it down for good. While I know it's annoying when your favorite peeps change their address, I'm hoping this will be the first and last move for A Day in the Life, making it easier for you to follow, better for me to blog and, sometime down the road when it truly become ineviteable, less painful to turn the blog private. Unfortunately, I don't think I'll be able to move over any of the great comments you've left in the past, so I suppose it's time to get a fresh start (hint, hint). In the meantime, make yourself at home ... and let me know what you think.

(PS And if anyone else has used the arthemia code before and knows the magic trick to replacing the logo code and/or removing obnoxious white boxes ... my ears are ALL yours!)

To be, or not to be? You decide.

All right. It's been a long time in coming and it's finally up for an official, democratic vote. Should A day in the life least expected go private? To be sure, both public and private has its pros and cons ...

If you haven't noticed, the little cluster map widget on the bottom of the home page pays tribute to possibly unsuspecting visitors from all over the globe. Sounds like a tremendous invasion of privacy until you realize that all but perhaps one of those non-US (as well as non-Spanish and non-Swiss) blobs are not international peeping toms, but rather either Marcel or I in our travels. Almost like new-age postcards, we started a tradition of logging on wherever we may be (ok, maybe more him than me) just to get a new blob. That said, and as spread out as friends are in the States, there ARE a lot of unaccounted US peeping tom blobs ...

Perhaps the greatest plus to going private is a corresponding ability to "speak more freely", namely perhaps, in the area of work, which could potentially get (yet?) more exciting as the liklihood of my going to work somewhere "in the field" this spring becomes more and more real. And I would know each and every person checking in for the latest and greatest news (no, it wouldn't become a popularity game - honestly, I like having readers, so if your name sounds even remotely familiar, I'd let' cha in ;-)

Those of you who run live RSS feeds to see when the blog had been updated might be a little put off by the fact that (I don't think) RSS feeds would be available any longer under private status, and live feeds from public pics posted on Flickr would no longer function. Once I "invite" you to the blog, you would need to sign in to read, though I'm not sure if it would be every time or just the first time.

So what do you think? Continue as is as a public and slightly tight-lipped venture, or take the leap to freedom and go private? Let me know ... go vote!

Keeping in touch in this brave new world

"Ever-more-real virtual encounters could make us forget what we are missing ... the smell of a grandmother’s cooking, the warmth of an embrace. In interviews, older grandchildren who video chat with grandparents say they visit them less, feeling that they have already “seen” them".

I read a great article in the paper (can we still really say "in the paper" if we read it on-line?) the other day by NY Times columnist Amy Harmon that I just can't quite seem to get out of my mind.

Quite frankly, as one who's far away from family at the moment, I love the latest (and greatest?) techno-communications "schtuff" ... Skype, blogs, Facebook ... Thanks to these "tools", I find that I feel closer than ever to the daily ups, downs, excitements and disappointments in the lives of close family and friends. I often feel terrible for being the "long lost stranger-sister" to my littlest sister in particular, and seem to think that somehow, "if we only used Skype", it would take the "M" out of big sister M.I.A. That said, I have always said that joining Facebook is the number one best way to ruin your high school reunion ... I mean, really, why go at all if you already know what everyone is up to, how they are doing, what their kids' names are and what their partners look like?

But are we heading into a brave new world of distinctly inhuman relationships? Is video chat, blogging, etc poised to be the beginning of an end? What future is there for a generation of kids raised on "digital grandmas". And when it really comes down to it, when you "see" each other over the computer, does it lessen your "need" to see your loved ones live and in person?

"Some veterans of the technology fear that the video cam has started to substitute, rather than supplement, actual time together. Jennifer Ray, 24, of San Antonio, and her brother persuaded their parents to get a new computer so they could all video chat with their respective toddlers on split screens from different states. Now the siblings commiserate about their mother’s unwillingness to travel".