I think someday someone is going to invent something, the ultimate writers tool, which will let you send your thoughts directly to the word processor. My brain goes a kilometre a second and before I can even make a quick note the next batch of thoughts are crowding out whatever was there a second ago. As I waited for the blog to load I lost track of three ideas I thought I would start out with.

Anyway, onto the news. I am cancelling the freebie AOL tomorrow. My Mom says she was charged for somethings during her free time with them and I should make sure they are not doing the same to me. Especially since I am not yet gainfully employed yet. I have put a new ISP on the same credit/ debit card and I don't want it sucked dry by AOL since that was the divorce settlement money. Oh how I love having money to spend though. I have tried not to go crazy and have a real shopping spree but I did buy a few mostly practical things. One being a book at Chapters, a guide to Canadian writers markets. Its actually called "The Canadian Writer's Market". See? Isn't that really practical of me? I would have bought the CGI/Perl book I found on Amazon but it wasn't on the shelf at the time. The Canadian Writers book isn't very up to date though, it still has InkSpot listed (more than once even) as a resource for writers. Sadly, InkSpot is no longer with us. From what I last heard it may yet arise from its ashes. That would be great. This time I would ignore all the voices and sign up as a writer for the site.

Anyway, back to my portion of reality. I love magazines. Is there a club for magazine addicts? I bought over half a dozen magazines in the past two weeks or less. True, I do want to aim for those markets but still seems like a lot of money spent on a few glossy pages. At least now I can take advantage of some of the graphics and what not with the new scanner.

I am signed up with Sympatico now, as my ISP. It bothers me slightly that they are joined with Bell Canada, a massive corporation, not well known for caring about the little guy. But, I personally have never had any trouble with Bell before. Sympatico looks interesting, better than iPrimus who swallowed up GlobalServe. I would have gone with GlobalServe again if they still existed. Once I wrote to one of the owners and heard back that he was a Pagan too. How nice was that! Made me really want to stick with GlobalServe as my ISP. I would have too if I hadn't moved to the US about 5 years ago.

I would like to put in time at Dmoz tonight. I am editing in Travelogues, Weblogs and Writers Resources - all of which need work. Writers Resources is doing ok but for the Contests category which has an active editor who seems to leave everything sitting in unreviewed for ages. Maybe he/ she has delete phobia? I don't know, but it bugs me to see over 50 unrevieweds when I have just updated the whole Writers Resources category, at least all the areas without active editors.

I want to get BackWash updated tonight too. A lot to do and not much time. Zack is sleeping over tonight and I can be sure he will be waking me up at 6:am. He loves his Auntie and I love him too. :) Stay tuned for pictures once I get time to load them on the site. Have scanner will scan. ;)

The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper. --Eden Phillpotts

There is more talk of HerBlogger at HerPlanet. Stay tuned for more. I think it's so exciting. I hope it can get the go ahead this time. I'd love to manage a really great blogging community for women. I wish we had taken advantage of the big exodus from Blogger several months ago. Now we have Movable Type to compete with too. Still, I'm not sure how they are going to arrange it all. Maybe we won't be in direct competition with Movable Type if we have more of a hosting service than a software package.

Ok, here is my confession... I was an IRC diva. Please don't hate me because I baited trolls and flirted way too shamelessly. I was a confused virgin, out to explore the world of sex and other adult situations. It was fun until I started wondering whether I was really the user or the usee. I'm still not sure. Its one of those snakey tail in mouth questions, it has no end and no beginning.

Think you recognize my nickname, SheDragon? I still think I was the first but I know of three others. If you check ICQ members for SheDragon there are way more than three. Still, I'm the first and I did just about everything naughty and promiscuous on IRC. What, you may ask.

It started with just chatting, nice girl, polite chat. I met a guy who was the channel hot stuff and I liked that. I now know I like the man in charge, the one with the power. Back then I was a nice girl without a clue. As I watched the standard flirting that goes on I began to want that kind of freedom. The ability to completely let go of all your restrictions while remaining faceless and unknown behind a computer screen. It was such a rush! I became a bad girl, surprised the heck out of all the people in that channel who thought they knew me.

From there I had my heart completely broken once. It never happened to me again. I wised up and understood the give and take a lot better. In general women on IRC are looking for a Prince Charming to sweep them off their feet and put them on a gilded pinnacle. The men are looking for someone with big boobs and a nice ass to meet them (anywhere close) for sex of any kind. They prefer younger meat but if she's really female, born that way they don't mind a few flaws. Not too many though! A guys got to have some standards.

Am I picking on men? No, I'm picking on men and women and feeling a little sorry for both. I don't feel self righteous about it, just a little wiser for my experiences. I'm not going to write about just how low down I sunk, it involved a certain IRC channel which no longer exists. I did play in a Truth or Dare channel and chat regularly in a BDSM channel but those aren't the best of the worst. Still, I wouldn't redo it or undo it. Experiences give life flavour, the good ones are wonderful but the less than good ones make you appreciate what you have and how you've earned it.

The big news today is actually two things. First: ThemeStream is closing down. All the writers need to pull out their content before it goes bye bye. I think its a good thing for all the ezines out there. Now all those writers can give their articles to ezines who will appreciate it more and give better promotion to the writers. Its just a good thing all around.

The other news is about Yahoo. They are now aspiring to be the porn capital. Really makes they look like idiots (a nice word for it) after all the years they have deleted sites for having adult content. Even sites which were Wiccan/ Pagan or sites which wanted to give information about sexual fetishes to keep people from being hurt. The real question now is: will Yahoo change their policies for sites on Geocities. Or will Yahoo be afraid of the competition?

I just posted to never never land, I guess, its gone at any rate. This time I'm going to paste it into Notepad before I hit that Post button.

I was at About.com today, the Screenwriters topic is open but it doesn't interest me. I sent it into InkSplatters for someone else to step into, hopefully. I like to hear I helped someone on the list.

I did find an interesting topic available at Suite 101. Its not a big payout site, but the topic is interesting and doesn't sound like a huge time commitment. Its Websites for Women with a monthly article and a database of links. The past manager left in December so its been available awhile. Likely I will be accepted. I think the topic has a lot of potential. I frequently find sites run by women who are doing interesting things online. Some with home businesses and some in creative pursuits, others starting up an offbeat club or a club based on a personal interest.

I was just looking around at WebSeed Publishing. Its kind of an odd site when you look at the scatterings of topics. Some topics like writing are so covered they overlap to the point where you really can't tell one from another. I've applied for one topic but didn't get in. They said they weren't opening that area at the time. Yet, now I can see there are a few near misses. I've sent in another email and will see what happens. Today, I thought about going for an ASCII Art topic. But the focus may be too narrow. Besides, there just aren't any books and gadgets to sell related to ascii art. Blogger was down this morning. Lets see if its up and at em now. :)

Just lost the entry I made. I had the editor open too long and I guess my login to Blogger died. :( Basically I said HerPlanet is tossing DialTone as the new server. They must be pretty incompetent after two weeks of paid overtime and still not getting the HerPlanet sites loaded and working. Now we are transferring to a new server which is through one of the HerPlanet network managers. I'm even going to try loading up my own site. I'm not an ftp novice but I'm hardly an expert. I learn from my mistakes but that means you have to make plenty of mistakes to learn from.

This is kind of neat. Make your own license plate.

Usually I leave ICQ undisturbed in my hard drive. Its great when I'm away and want to talk to Todd, a definite long distance savings. But its kind of useless now that I'm back here and on my own computer again. If my family get using it that would be great. But, so far, its just gathering dust. The women from the HerPlanet site use it to chat but when I look few of them are set on for chatting. If someone is there I'm not really in a chatty mood at the time. The only people making real use of my ICQ are the trolls signing themselves up as "friends". I have it set to let anyone sign up. Its much easier than having to bother rejecting them all. I don't care if they need another notch on their belt to feel better. I've never talked to any of them so it works both ways. Maybe there is some way to delete them from the ICQ site, I might do that, just to be contrary. ;)

I found a nice site called Smiley Divas, part of a Calgon promotion. I especially like smiley graphics so I grabbed a bunch from the site for my desktop. There is a screensaver you can download too. Nice job Calgon. :)

For some reason I'm still signed up with Etour. Its one of those get paid for surfing things but you actually get gift certificates instead of cash from them. I think it should have worked out better than it has. The problem is likely the competition from the cash paying sites which would look more attractive. But, I thought Etour's way of doing things had a better chance of actually paying its users. It has too. I've had a couple of gift certificates from Barnes and Noble. Lately they have been getting less sponsors. Its a first come first serve basis now when you are ready to redeem your points.