Losing drafts?

Has anyone else had drafts seeming to disappear?

I’ve had a couple now lately that I had saved… had previously had the post saved notice at the top… but when I go back later to finish, it’s nowhere to be found. And no longer listed in my edited list. 

Really unusual.. wonder if they will turn up eventually.

Macheist annoyance

I like macheist.

However…

It’s starting to annoy me a bit this year.

 

About half of the aps they have given recently have been ones that will only run on leopard.

Ok… fine… it’s been 2 years since it came out.. I can understand that.

 

But it would be really nice if they told you this before you clicked to download it, or register it, etc.

I’m sure it probably does say it in the pages about each ap… but the download link (and register link when required) are on the macheist page, where there is absolutely no mention.

 

I think I’ve downloaded about 5 different aps starting with the tree in december only to find out after I tried to install that it wouldn’t run on tiger.

and, well, tiger works fine… and I have no real intention on upgrading until its done as a purchase of a new computer.

 

All I ask is for a bit of warning to save my time and efforts…

though, knowing that I couldn’t use half the aps before I spent so much time with the complicated challenges might be enough reason to skip them… so maybe its time to drop the site anyway. because the next bundle will probably just be the same way… and not worth bothering over for the aps that do work.

Waiting impatiently for the last snowflakes

Winterfest is almost over in ww… 2 hours and 6 more minutes.

These snowflakes are starting to drive me nuts though. They are only showing up about every 10-20 minutes, and 1/4 of the time, there is a please wait keeping me from clicking them.

And they keep giving me food. I don’t want eggnog…. I want another one of those pretty turquoise jackets, so we have them on both accounts. Or some more of those pretty icicle trees to decorate a room with them.

Ah well. Suppose that’s what the trading system is for.

Now how long till I get my grass back in the outdoor yards?

Webkinz tetris!

Webkinz has added a new tetris game! Yay!

And pets all over webkinz world rejoice at the newfound wealth sure to come from the parents of their owners.

 

It’s a bit odd though. It was released yesterday at the same time as the new asian theme… so it has a bamboo theme, and this asian-ish music in the background. Just totally different from what I usually expect from a tetris.

The first thing I found that I really don’t like though it that it clears your screen at the end of each level. I’m one of those who usually has stuff built up waiting to be filled in all at once. But, I reminded myself that this is a game aimed at kiddo’s age group… clearing the screen when kiddo has passed a level would be a ton of help for her.

It also shows you the next 6 pieces along the side… and has a hold area where you can flip the current piece with the last piece you hit hold on. Very useful for storing spare “sticks” to be used when needed.

And it has an outline of where the piece will land that you can turn on and off.

In a less kid centered move, the down button doesn’t just drop it faster, it drops it to the bottom of the screen and locks it into place. It seems like it would help more to have different buttons to drop it, and have down just move it down more.

And they do various challenges on the side, like getting 3 lines at once. More distracting than they are helpful, as the time limit is short enough that unless you were already close, there’s no way to make it before its over. When you do, it either awards you in points or in bonus coins… that I’m still not sure what they did. 

It goes really really slow for quite a while… but then all of the sudden around level 10 jumps massively in speed. No option to start at a higher level, so it took about an hour to finish a game…. which brought in 210 points. Not bad, but not the more lucrative use of time in the arcade.

 

But I bet it becomes on of the most popular games played quickly anyway… and probably almost entirely after bedtime! lol

Cheering for waiting in line

Yay ganz!

As a special Christmas gift, webkinz introduced a line to log on!

I’m sure that sounds like I’m being sarcastic, but I’m actually not, surprisingly. I’m actually thrilled. 

 

Why? Because it has been a royal pain to log on since about October or so.

Actually, it had been getting worse since they started selling them in walgreens in july and august… but since october, it’s been almost impossible outside of school hours. 

 

Seriously… on all three of our accounts… it usually took at least 4 or 5 tries to get it to log in. And some nights we never got in. It would load the log in page, and then after you entered your info and clicked, you got the background and a W graphic while you waited. and waited. and waited. 

After that, you eventually got a plain green screen, which would slowly load after about 3-5 minutes, and then you could actually play. Or, 3 out of 4 times, you never got past the W logo no matter how long you waited and had to refresh and try again.

 

But now… after the log in, most of the day it loads right away! During the heavy times, it tells you immediately that you are in line, gives you a wait length (i’ve yet to see it past “short”), and gives you a progress bar for your wait. 2-3 minutes later, your bar is filled and you go right in.

This literally happened all of the sudden yesterday, after I’d been fighting with it for more than half an hour to get kiddo logged in yesterday. Suddenly the lines started, and all was well the remaining times we logged back in yesterday and this morning. 

 

Never thought I’d be glad to see a line.. but wow! If a line is going to make things actually useable again, bring the line on!

Mac giving tree! Yay!

http://givingtree.macheist.com/

Free mac apps for Christmas! yay yay yay!

2 aps now, 2 on the 25th, and 2 for telling friends

 

macheist usually does a really cool bundle of aps from independent developers about once a year that gives you like 10 aps or so for 40 bucks or so, part of which is donated to charity..

useful things like financial programs and password managers, fun things like the best minigolf game ive seen on a computer with amazing graphics, and things like stop motion animation i never would have bought but love playing with now that i have it…

Ironic snow

It strikes me as ironic that snow on a blog makes my computer run hotter… which when I have a bunch of windows open (um.. aka always), is enough to trip the need for the fan.

Not a huge deal… and for that matter the fan is the only time I hear anything at all in the way of running sound out of it… and even the fan is quieter than my former computer was on a normal basis.

Just a bit ironic… given that it’s snow.

New is almost here. Start the “I’m leaving” posts.

It just amuses me how every time they change something here there is a huge pile of posts on how everything is awful now and they are leaving… rather than just getting used to the normally relatively minor changes. 

 

Anyways.. it got me thinking about features that I miss from other sites I’ve used. 

What kind of surprised me was that most of the were actually on opendiary… which while the first of the sites, still seems a bit behind on things. 

 

Things I Miss:

• comments able to be set to private by the person leaving the comment 
  this was really nice… want to say something but don’t want it in the general view? check a box and only you and the author of the post can see it. so useful. 
• friends-only entries
  wordpress has the blog surfer list, that you can add people to and read all the new entries from everyone like the friends list does. however, there was also an option to make posts that could only be read by people you had on that list. (you could also mark specific people on your friends list that still could not read them). this was soo much easier than passwords on things that weren’t real private, but were still not good to be in the public view.
• changing usernames and site urls
  i don’t think the site url was exactly intentional, but rather a function of the changing username. your blog on od has a code… and your default address uses that code. the code never changes, and that address will always point to your blog. for example: http://www.opendiary.com/entrylist.asp?authorcode=D433907 but, your username also could be used as the address… to go to the same pagem and you could change your username. so if you used the second link for giving less trusted people, and the code link for the close friends, and drama developed, all it took was changing your username and all the drama was gone while the trusted ones could still get to your page like normal and with no hassle of moving things or starting new blogs. (that’s my old blog in the by the way, lest you think I’m bothering some poor random person for the sake of an example.. lol)
• interests lists
  somewhat like tags and profile mentions.. but more useful, because you could go to the interest page and find people by interest even if they had never written a word about it. in the mood for someone with a sense of humor, click on the names under hitchhikers guide to the galaxy. in the mood for something more religious, click on the names under spurgeon. looking for someone local? click on the links for your state, and even narrow it down by age groups. 
• random, and controlled random
  the random button was my friend. you click it, and, well, it took you to a random blog that had been updated in the past day or so. but, you could also click into the user circles, and then click random… and then your random would be limited by your user circle you were in. for example, only blogs by people between 20 and 30. not just a flash visit for 5 seconds like http://alphainventions.com/.. it just put you on their page and if you wanted to move on, just click the button again, and if you didn’t, you could hang out and read. many a person i regularly read came via the random button… or found me that way. 

i’m sure there are more…. but these are the ones off the top of my head. and, there were many other things that i didn’t like, or i wouldn’t be on this site now. but one cand remember and dream lol

Road to Bethlehem

For the roughly two readers here that are local… 

http://www.rtbwichita.com/

Pretty cool semi-interactive play put on by the vineyard. 

(and as they put it… no “kids dressed up as animals” cheesiness lol)

Anyone know of a daily check-off site?

Does anyone happen to have a link sitting around for an online daily checkbox?

 

I’ve got links for like weight trackers and blood sugar trackers, and of course online to do lists you can check off… but I don’t really need it to keep track of a number… I just want it to keep track of yes or no, checked or unchecked, for a particular date. 

 

I find that these sorts of random things are always online somewhere, its just a matter of my not knowing exactly what precise words I need to pick to google to pull it up. But I figure with it being the season for nanoblomo, someone might have one sitting around that they use to keep track of that. 

 

Actually, what I’m wanting to use it for is marking one year plan bible readings. I know I miss days, and would like to have somewhere with it tracked as to which ones I missed on their “right” days to be able to come back at some random point and get missed ones read and checked off. Preferably online so it doesn’t matter whether or not I’m at home at the time. 

 

But I’m thinking something designed for other uses is more likely to be sitting around that will do that just fine. Just a matter of wondering words what the person who made it said on their site to describe it… lol