I’ve been too busy today to write anything so far, which I think is a very good thing!

I spent this morning, and early afternoon, in GeekLab sessions, learning all about the inner workings of WordPress. I think I may actually have learned enough that I know now why you get that 404 page if you try to leave a comment, although I’m not about to fix it on the fly, I need to dig in, learn a bit more php first, and so on. But this has been a lot of fun, in the past two days I’ve gone to sessions on PHP, Apache Server, htaccess, and CSS. SO helpful.

I was also interviewed today for a segment on PBS’ Frontline about “Digital Life.” Pathetically, I have had a number of dating experiences that have unintentionally popped up due to meeting people online. I’ve dated people I’ve met through ICQ, Friendster, and IRC, and really, not all of the experiences were terrrible (although, as I pointed out to them, I’m still single, so what’s that tell you?). The producer was laughing, but hopefully that’s a good thing. The documentary will air on PBS sometime in January 2010, but bits and pieces will be online in a few weeks – I will post a link here as soon as it’s out.

Tonight there are parties and more parties, I’m sure I’ll end up at a few. Last night I ‘took it easy’ (relatively speaking), and only went to the official cocktail party here, and the Blogalicious party over at Lush in Macy’s. It was very cool to meet the LawMom ladies, though, and totally worth the cab ride over. Plus…Lush? Say that and you’ll get me anywhere.

All in all, this is just an awesome experience, and I’m so glad I came.

This session, the final of the day, is the “Community Keynote,” where BlogHer community members read some exceptional blog entries. I love this session!! I was part of it last year, reading an entry about Twitter, but dear god, some of the other entries people read were amazing. Way out of my league, they were incredible. I went from laughing to crying within the hour, and still read a lot of the blogs I discovered through there.

So! These are some of the highlights from today, although I do recommend checking out the link at the bottom and reading them all. Amazing blog entries, every one.

• Melissa Davis was the first to leave the audience in tears. Very touching story about her Uncle getting in an accident at 24, developing paranoid schitzophrenia, and becoming homeless. Amazing, because she focuses on her uncle – the man – and what his personality was like, what he enjoyed doing. Not on the fact that he was mentally ill and homeless. *and I’m already in tears*
• Karen Walrond had a blog entry about Obama, written back in January. Great quote “it’s not always easy living in a country where you look different.” Sad to hear the passive aggressive racism she’s seen. As recently as December “well, you’re not REALLY black, are you?” Unbelievable.
• JD from “I do things so you don’t have to.” She told a story about what she did when she was 10 yrs old, fell off a picnic table, exaggerated how bad it was, and ended up spending a night in the hospital. It sounds simple here, but believe me, the actual blog entry was very funny – faking the concussion was fun, staying in the hospital was not!
• One of the few BlogHim’s at the conference, Mike Adamick! He blogs in a bunch of places, including the SF Chronicle. Main takeaway? Cell phones are “People Avoidance Machines.” I He’s spent entire parties “on the cell phone….easier than hiding in the toilet.” I LOVE IT.
• Now another BlogHim – Black Hockey Genius – makes an appearance. He wrote this post as a letter to his daughter on her birthday. It is a very sweet post I’m sure any parent can relate to (hell, I’m not a parent and _I_ relate). He’s making everyone cry.
• Danielle Henderson from Knotty Yarn, Subject line of entry “There is something stuck in my vagina.” Very, very funny, something that I think most women can relate to, but I don’t recommend any men read, so, link to her blog, not this specific entry. Hysterical. Women who want to read the exact entry, check it out here.
• Tanis Miller from Attack of the Redneck Mommy (@redneckmommy) talking about raising a disabled child. Very touching – “why can’t people see past the wheelchair or the way he turns his head to the side so he can see, and look at the person he actually is.” She brings home the point that people who insult disabled adults or children are insulting HER children, they’re insulting relatives they may have, that someone you love could end up the punchline to a joke if people don’t stop. (and yes, tears again…)
• Grace Davis had me digging out the tissues with her entry about surviving child abuse. The best quote, I can’t even read it without tearing up – “Forgive yourself, you’re the one who deserves it.” There are a few quotes that can bring me to tears, I guess that’s a new one to add to the list.
• Ok, this is too perfect for me. An ode to diet coke by Wendie Aarons. I may have found someone who’s actually more addicted to diet coke than I am! I can’t do the blog entry justice at all by describing it here, she’s hysterical. And bless her for going off on WTF is diet coke doing putting vitamins in there??? Love it.

This was, and always will be, my favorite session of the conference, and I HIGHLY recommend any women (or men) considering attending BlogHer next year (in NYC!!) make sure to attend this session.

A full list of the blog entries featured at the community keynote are over on the BlogHer site.

…well, that’s not what it’s actually CALLED, but that’s what it’s about.

Interesting comment about people dismissing BlogHer as a conference because they think we only talk about makeup and shoes. Zappos, Lush, and MaryKay may all be here, but I’m learning CSS and PHP. I’m here for techy stuff, the makeup’s just an added benefit. And hey, if Adobe or someone had wanted to show up, I’d love that free copy of Photoshop. But, alas, they’re not here. I did get an interesting laundry strip thingy from Tide, though. Hah.

People also completely forget that not everyone here is a mommy blogger with 4 yr old kids (it seems like they’re targeting the toddler group). Strawberry Shortcake stuff is cute, but utterly useless to me. I’ll give a buncha this stuff to my niece, but she’s too young for most of it. This conference isn’t called BlogMOM. There IS a blogging mommy conference, and believe me, I’m not going to it. Maybe we do need a geeky girl conference? I loved She’s Geeky, what if that was blown out into a multi-day sponsored thing? Hmm. I see potential.

The whole “dismissing this solely because makeup sponsors are here” reminds me a lot of a Quake tournament I ran a while back (with Vangie). Winners, or finalists, in typical tourneys at the time would get mice, speakers, etc. In our case, we flew all the finalists to NYC, took them to Elizabeth Arden for makeovers, and Killcreek & John Romero took them out to lunch. The finalists were finalists because they kicked more ass in quake than anyone else (just like the other tourneys), but we most certainly catered to their tastes. Just like they’re doing here, I will actually use this shwag (well, some of it), instead of giving it all away like I do for most conferences. I don’t see anything wrong with that, and I don’t think it reflects on the conference CONTENT in any way.

Anyway! The purpose of this session was to discuss Sarah Palin’s effect on feminism, or lack thereof. A lot of interesting conversations, and very different views on the topic. One interesting point (made by one of the speakers, I can’t remember who) was that the mere fact that Palin thought she COULD run for Mayor, Governor, then VP, shows she’s a feminist.

I’m not so sure. I think we’d need to know more about how she got started in all of this – I’ve read too much that says she was only chosen as a VP candidate because she was a beauty queen to believe that 100%. But it is an interesting thought.

Personally, I have issues with the tag “feminist.” It contains a lot of negative connotations to some people that I really don’t like. Sarah Palin never identified as a feminist until recently, for exactly that reason – conservatives aren’t about to embrace a feminist. Why is it so negative to say that I’m a strong woman, I believe I can do anything a man can do (assuming I’m physically capable, there are physical differences between men and women), and don’t anyone dare dismiss what I say solely because I’m a woman. I think it’s possible that a ‘few bad seeds’ have spoiled the bunch for us, and it’s something we need to change.

Ok, enough ramblies for now, off to find wireless so I can publish this thing!

Ok, so I admit, I overslept and missed the opening Keynote. The person coming to clean my room woke me up, at least, so I made it down in time for the morning session I wanted to attend.

My purpose in being here – other than to meet all the awesome women here I’ve talked to online for ages – is to get a deeper understanding of WordPress. I’m a little behind. I don’t know PHP, and I don’t know CSS. So, I can’t fix what’s broken. Right now, if you submit a comment, you’ll receive a “page not found” after. The comment will submit, but there’s no “thank you” page.

The problem is unfortunately not with my theme (which the kind folks over at wordpress.org had suggested), as I’ve tried a number of other ones to fix. The problem was a WordPress update. Not this past update, but the one before (or the one before that, it’s been updating like crazy lately).

It drives me nuts that I don’t know how to fix. I’ve been learning some basic PHP (I tend to learn a language a year, last year was Ruby, this year PHP), but still have a ways to go before I can truly dig in to the nuts and bolts of this blog.

This morning was a session on CMS and WordPress, this afternoon a session on CSS. PHP session tomorrow. I’m doing what’s called the “Geek Lab” track. I love that they have this, since I really don’t need a session on MommyBlogging or Blogging to Book. Just not my thing.

Speaking of Mommy’s, dear lord did I get a lot of kiddy stuff. Heather….I will have lots for Alice. But I’ll go through the schwag in another post, it deserves one.

Now to pack up and find the room for the next session!

(Funny note – I was at lunch when I wrote this, but had to come outside to get online. I swear, no matter how hard ppl try (and did they ever try) wireless at conferences is messy.)

Back in November, I left my position at MySpace to move to San Francisco and work for a teeny weeny startup. I definitely missed the startup world, and really enjoyed working in a 6 person company. After Yahoo!, AOL, and MySpace, it was like getting back to my roots.

But, things change, I am no longer working on Operation Turtle, and find myself in one of those funny “wow, I could almost do anything” situations. I wish the best for the folks left at OT and hope that they do get to show the world how incredible the product truly is. I’m moving on, though.

What do I do next. I’ve been emailing various folks, applied for a few positions online, but have saved most of the applying for jobs until I’m back from BlogHer in chicago next week (there’s nothing worse than applying for a job and then being unavailable). I’m a product person, so obviously, that’s what I’m looking at, but this is one of those moments where, theoretically, anything can happen.

In what is a sick twist of, I guess it’d be irony, I had been thinking for months now how much I missed writing, and how cool it would be to take a year and do nothing but write. Write the ‘great american novel,’ so to speak. Now, while it’s safe to say that whatever I write will most likely not be publishable in any form, it is still good for me and my own sanity to get something down on paper. I feel better when I write. And, well, let’s face it, it takes a little while to find a new job. While I hope I find something great and wonderful soon, I’m still gonna have some free time on my hands.

So I’m, slightly unexpectedly, back on the job market. Who knows what I’m going to do. But as always with me, it’s sure to be an adventure.

A couple of weeks ago, I started ranting a little over Twitter about followers and how people see them as friends. The rant began because someone I followed had posted a few messages about only wanting “quality followers” and asking everyone else to please stop following her. So I stopped following her.

To me, that’s a crazy obnoxious egotistical statement. I mean, come on, who do you think you are? Do you really think Matt Lauer tells the Today Show audience that he only wants “quality viewers?”

Either this person didn’t understand what followers really were, or was being a snot. Either way, I didn’t care to see a whole slew of messages about it. I follow enough people that I have a fairly low tolerance before I unfollow people. It doesn’t keep my follow count down like I wish it would, since I keep finding new people to follow, but I do try.

Anyway! Back to followers.

If someone has a public Twitter page, their data is available – to anyone – a number of ways. You can visit the website, you can subscribe to their RSS feed, or you can follow them. Their tweets also appear in the public feed (although there’s a setting to turn that off), and are available through search.

What all of this means, is that you really don’t know who’s reading what you say. The only way to control this is by making your twitter feed private. Once you’re private, you have approval over every person who can read.

I think most of the whining about “don’t follow me” is over spammers more than real people, but that really makes no sense to me. Spammers rarely talk to you. I’ve gotten a number of @ messages from spammers, but they’re not from people following me. In fact, I think the spammers unsubscribe once I don’t follow back. It also seems like the same people who complain about spammers are those who try to get tons of followers. Spammers artificially inflate follower numbers – shouldn’t they like that? If some person hawking viagra really wants to subscribe to my feed…have at it, I’m not interested anyway.

Most of the follow/unfollow behavior is automated. Mention one thing and suddenly a flood of people are following you. It’s not like an actual dude who sells viagra is sitting at his computer staring at your tweets. But really, if you’re uncomfortable with that idea, you should not have a public twitter feed.

I used the TV comparison above, but Twitter – to me – is best comparable to a blog. Some people read a blog by going to the webpage, others subscribe through RSS readers. Some blogs even end up syndicated to other places, on other blogs, to Facebook, all across the Internet. I don’t know everyone who reads what I write, and there’s no way I ever could. And that’s ok.

I’ve talked before about how the tone of my blog changed when I went public, there’s no denying that it did, significantly. It had to, for exactly the reasons stated here. I don’t know who’s reading what I’m writing. I’m the same with Twitter. No question that there are things I will not say on there.

But even I’ve said some things on there I shouldn’t have. For example, I discovered a guy I follow (and who follows me) on twitter lives above me in my building. He seems to be cool and I’m not concerned, but it is spooky. I should never have said enough so he could figure out where I lived.

Facebook, on the other hand, grew as large as it did specifically because it was locked down to your friends. You did only have “quality” readers (if you’re really going to be as obnoxious as to describe people as “quality”), since nobody could see what you wrote unless they were your friend. That, of course, is changing now, with Facebook making status messages more open. More and more people will now see what you say on Facebook, and you’re going to have less control over that.

So the Internet’s trending…again. We were all open, then we went all private, now we’re all opening up again. It’s easier to go from open to closed than from closed to open. People will be much more likely to make mistakes. Hell, I did, and I thought I was smarter than that.

I’m not sure how this is going to play out, but it will be fun to watch.

We’ve lost a lot of celebrities in the recent weeks, and a death is like an emergency – you don’t really know how you’re going to react until it happens.

My reaction to two of the celebrities who died – Michael Jackson and Billy Mays – surprised me.

Billy Mays passed away right in the middle of the Michael fever (same with Farrah Faucett, who died the same day as Michael). I don’t think I realized what a connection I had in my head to him until he died. I read about Billy dying on Twitter, turned on the TV, and there he was selling Kaboom.

We all let Billy, more than anyone, into our houses every single day. It’s near impossible to watch anything without seeing him. I don’t watch commercials, I’ve never bought something from an ad on tv (I do own a snuggie, but I bought it at Walgreens), I DVR everything, either on the TiVo or the DirectTV thingy, and yet…I still know Billy Mays.

I’ve also been watching, and loving, Pitchmen, which anyone interested in consumer marketing really should watch. Invaluable stuff. People have heard me rant many times about “knowing your market” and not making a product for YOU, but for your users. Billy (and his partner on the show, Anthony Sullivan) knew better than anyone else I’ve ever seen how to make sure you were selling products to your market. It was really fascinating to me to see them turn down (what I thought were) really neat products because they weren’t appropriate for their market, and select really strange stuff, because their market would like it…even if they personally did not.

Billy came off as a really nice, sweet guy. A guy who you truly would trust to tell you “hey, buy this thing.” Who you want to sit down and have a beer with. And I discovered that I really expected to see him on tv every day, and that seeing him was somewhat comforting. Some psychologist could tell me what that means.

The idea that I won’t see him anymore, ever again, is unsettling. It’s not true, of course, they’re still running his commercials, and I understand a new season of Pitchmen has been ordered. But still. He’s gone, just like Michael Jackson, at 50.

Michael Jackson was the first VHS I ever saw (Thriller), and the first CD I ever bought (Dangerous). His music is associated with my life. I don’t know how to say it better than that. I hear his music, I remember the time in my life where it came out. It’s just always been there. And suddenly, it won’t be. I’m still a little stunned at that.

Two people who were always there suddenly are not. RIP Michael Jackson and Billy Mays, you both meant more to me than I ever knew.

…as the whole world fights for their URLs. Actually, Facebook’s holding up pretty damn well. So’s Twitter. It’s impressive.

It turned out Facebook.com/Stephanie was taken by a Facebook employee (just after I had checked yesterday). Not surprised – and no problem – I’m http://facebook.com/stephaniebergman.

I know, I’m a dork for caring. But I’m sure not the only one…

Tonight at 9pm PST (midnight EST), Facebook is going to open up vanity URL’s to everyone. Ya know, those pretty URL’s after your name, like that other social network has (ahem, myspace.com/StephaniePBergman or  myspace.com/stephaniebambam).  Despite everyone’s joking, this really is a big deal.  Facebook has fought against this for a long time, really not wanting people to be identified as a URL, but rather, forcing them to use their real name everywhere.

I see this as something that kinda had to happen. No matter what Facebook wishes, I can’t tell someone my name and hope that they’ll find me. It just doesn’t work. They would need to go to Google, or wherever and search for me. Facebook has no guarantees that they’d be the first entry there. In fact, for me, they’re not. If I can tell someone facebook.com/stephaniebambam, there’s no question  where they go to find me. But right now I’d never tell them to look on Facebook, not when I have pretty URL’s to hand out.

All that said, yes, the simplest solution is to buy a domain, which obviously, I have. A domain is the easiest way to go, and as many people have said, with domains being as cheap as they are, there really is no reason not to buy one. Buy a domain, redirect it to Facebook, and you’re done. Takes 10 minutes. Most people aren’t going to do that though. No matter HOW easy it is, “buy a domain” sounds very ominous to some people. They think they need technical knowledge, that it’s hard, and the domain companies out there don’t make it any easier. Look at GoDaddy.com, the UI’s a wreck, and definitely will make anyone think it’s really hard to do. It’s NOT.

Back to my original point. I will be online tonight to grab a URL from Facebook. I haven’t quite decided what I want yet, though. facebook.com/stephanie IS available, and I’d kinda like that for the novelty factor. However, that doesn’t help me with SEO, and unfortunately, I’m gonna have an SEO battle soon – there’s a tv reporter with my exact name out there. If she goes national, I’m out of google. So there’s facebook.com/stephaniebambam, or /stephaniebergman, but those are no fun .

I have no idea what I’m gonna do and I probably won’t until the exact moment I type the name in. But regardless, this will be a funny night. See you all on Facebook in a few hours!!

A Roomba is a little robot vacuum cleaner. Being a robot, it can go out, navigate your house/apartment to clean, and return to the charger base all on its own. I got one for a few reasons:

1) I needed a vacuum cleaner.

2) I didn’t need a crazy powerful vacuum cleaner.

3) I own a dust buster for the bad spots (like the litter box).

4) I hate cleaning.

5) It would be funny for the cats.

6) It was on sale ($68 during a woot-off)
7) It’s just cool.

I’ve had the roomba for a couple of months now, and absolutely adore it. One of my cats loves it as well – I have to hide it from him or else he’d have it running 24/7. He thinks Robbie’s his buddy, and I suppose in a way, it is. The other cat is scared of it. But Harry will happily chase it across the room, try to ride it, and get very upset when it stops running.

The roomba cleans fairly well. I use what they call a “lightbox” to help the roomba navigate from one room to the other, in my case, cleaning the main room, my bedroom, and the bathroom. It kinda works. When the roomba’s really working well, it cleans for about 1 1/2 hrs, goes around my entire apartment, and returns itself to base. Most of the time, though, I find it stopped somewhere in the middle of my apartment, either because it needs to be cleaned or thinks it’s stuck because it’s hit an immovable cat. If it misses a spot there is a “spot mode” I can put it in to have it clean a particular area, but that’s rarely necessary since it cleans so often.

But even when Robbie ‘doesn’t work,’ or gets lost, or Harry stops it in its tracks – my apartment still gets vacuumed. How could I possibly complain about that??

If someone is considering buying a roomba, they need to be aware of, and consider these potential issues:

- It IS a vacuum cleaner, which some folks somehow forget. That means that it is not exactly silent when it runs. To me, the sound is fine. It does not wake me up at night unless it comes into my room, and I can easily watch television while it is running around me (which I never have been able to do with a “normal” vacuum). That said, it is much louder on wood than on carpet, so keep that in mind.

- It is not the greatest vacuum cleaner on earth. This is no Dyson. I think a dust buster (or some other thing for small areas) is pretty necessary if you’re gonna rely on this as your main vacuum.

- It needs to be cleaned often. It will stop running and tell you when it needs to be cleaned, but I tend to clean it every other day without prompting (and remember, I have two cats, so there is hair/litter/stray food to clean up) It’s easy to do and takes all of 5 minutes.

- It bumps into everything. This is by design, of course, a robot does not have eyes and relies on bumping things to tell it where to go. It doesn’t bump into things very hard, but can pick up speed when it moves, so it has its moments where it flies across my room into a wall. There is padding to prevent damage, and people do sometimes add extra stuff there, but I’m a little loathe to add anything else to the roomba since Harry would just rip it off anyway. I have yet to see it hit something hard enough to cause any damage, cats included. But, people who are obsessive about having perfect furniture may not like this.

- It is always out and visible. This is a big deal to some folks. You don’t want to store your roomba in a closet, that defeats the purpose. It needs to be docked somewhere that allows it to easily roam around the entire house, which means it’s going to be pretty visible wherever it is. I do hide mine at night sometimes (just stick it in a closet), but that’s because Harry will turn it on and I don’t want the noise.

- I already mentioned that mine rarely returns to its dock, I think that’s a fairly common problem. So be prepared to come home and discover your roomba is sitting in the middle of the room somewhere.

- Rooms absolutely have to be “pre-cleaned” before the roomba can go. Which, if you’re like me with cats that will set the roomba off at any time, means you need to be very careful about what’s on your floor. Just this morning I woke up to find my roomba stuck on a cat toy in the middle of my living room. The roomba can get over cords with no problem, but stringy things will get caught, and can cause damage.

- Performance may vary, depending on surface. The wood floor in the kitchen and tile in the bathroom clean easily. The carpet in the rest of my apartment cleans ok, but not perfectly. The roomba does detect what it thinks is a dirty area and will go over that spot more than usual, which helps. However, when the roomba goes off multiple times in a day (which the cats will do), the carpet looks AWESOME after its done. A lot of people use a roomba as a “between cleaning” thing, and still vacuum their place once a week.

- It won’t do stairs. It supposedly can detect a ledge and won’t fall down, but I dunno if I’d risk it.

I love my little Robbie. It is fantastic, ultimately does all its supposed to (which is clean), and provides hours of entertainment for my cats. It is very much not for everyone, for the reasons mentioned above. Anyone considering getting one should take all of those issues into account, and really think through if this is for them. But for me, it’s perfect.