Busy Time, Quiet Times

We had a busy Columbus Day weekend. I posted some photos on Facebook (link to photos here, http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=114225&id=705851667&l=9d317e4b55, even if you don't have a FB account) to show the summary, so I won't duplicate here. Anyway, we cut the grass, cut back plantings, and started cleaning the barn on Friday. We continued progress on Saturday by getting and unloading a ton of pellets and then sealing the driveway. On Sunday we completed the barn and worked on screening some of our giant mound (7 yards) of compost from the neighbor.

We celebrated our hard work by dinner out at PF Changs on Sunday night. It was our first visit and we really enjoyed the food. We got the Chang's for Two ($39.95) which included 2 soups (our choice: egg drop), 1 starter (our choice: calamari), 2 entrees (our choice: Mongolian beef and Almond & Cashew chicken), and 2 desserts (our choice: carrot cake and chocolate layer cake). Yum!

Monday was technically our day off. We took a quick trip up to Tougas Farm (named one of the top 10 apple picking orchards in the US by USA Today) and got some doughnuts, apple cider, and pre-picked apples. I was feeling a bit under the weather, so napped while Mike finished shoveling compost.

And now we're back to a regular work week ;)

Even though I haven't blogged lately, I have been thinking about it. The post below from Hooked on Houses caught my eye today. We all know of the Curtis family. I really enjoyed the pictures of their house -- what a great place to live! So, here I am back on action, and sharing little tidbits. Enjoy!

Tony Curtis & Janet Leigh’s House in Palm Springs:

Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh were one of Hollywood’s Golden Couples in the 1950s and early ’60s. Who could forget Tony Curtis in movies like Some Like It Hot (a personal favorite of mine), or Janet Leigh in Psycho? This old Life magazine photo was taken of them in 1959 at home with their daughters Kelly and Jamie Lee. The contemporary California home they lived in–which they nicknamed “Camp Curtis”–is on the market for $1.295 million.

According to the listing by Marc Lange of Capitis Real Estate, the 3,204 square-foot house is in the Movie Colony neighborhood of Palm Springs. There are 5 bedrooms and 5 baths.

Tony Curtis was born Bernard Schwartz. Janet Leigh was born Jeanette Morrison. Bernard Schwartz and Jeannette Morrison don’t have quite the same ring as Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh, do they?

Tony Curtis was Janet’s third husband. She married her first husband when she was only 14 (!). Curtis left Janet in 1962 for a 17-year old German actress named Christine Kaufmann.

Janet Leigh died in 2004 at the age of 77. Tony Curtis is now in his 80s and married to his 5th wife.

Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh’s daughter Jamie Lee Curtis is an actor, photographer, and a children’s author.

It would be hard to beat these views:

For more photos and information, check out this article from the LA Times or see the real estate listing. (Thanks to Nita for telling me about this!)

Check out my Celebrity Houses page for links to all the famous houses I’ve featured. Most popular this week: Star Stylist Rachel Zoe and Coco Chanel.

Looking for something unique and beautiful for your table? I’m loving this Crumpled Porcelain Collection and Sapling flatware from My Sparrow.

The Orangutan and the Hound

One of my friends posted this on Facebook. It was soo cute, I had to share (embedded video from YouTube below).




Have a happy day!

Real Quickfire during Top Chef filming

Just heard about this on Top Chef's Facebook page. Wow (embedded video below).

Share Photos on Facebook by Emailing Them (via Facebook Blog)

Share Photos and Videos Anywhere You Have Email

via Facebook Blog by Sameer Moidu on 7/22/09

After you snap a great photo of friends or shoot a fun video on vacation, you want to be able to share it immediately. We've been working on providing more ways to publish those photos and videos whether you're on Facebook.com or not.

You already can upload photos from your mobile phone via MMS or through Facebook applications on your iPhone, Blackberry and other devices. Now we recently added the ability to upload photos and videos by e-mailing them to your Facebook account.

Visit the Facebook Mobile page to get your personal upload email. This is a unique email address where you can send photos and videos from anywhere you have email access.



After you attach your photos or videos to an email, you can include a subject line that will be used as the caption for the photos or videos you upload. If you're uploading more than one photo or video in the email, the captions will be the same for all of them. You can always edit the captions later by logging into your Facebook account.

You can send as many photos or videos as you want in a single email, within the file size limits of your email provider. After you send an email, the time it takes for an upload to be completed will vary depending on how long it takes for your email to reach us.

The photos you send to us via email will go to the "Mobile Upload" photo album by default and follow that album's privacy settings. We hope that with this new email option, you will be able to more easily share photos and videos anytime you want.


Sameer, an engineer on the mobile team, is up, up and away!

Scheduling Facebook Posts

I set a lot of things to happen automatically in my life: appointment reminders on my calendar, bill payments, donations, e-cards, and even this blog post (written on Thurs and scheduled to post on Friday). I almost always remember events are coming up, but in the busy-ness of life I sometimes forget the day when events actually happen! Of course, today's technology is an  enabler to my forgetfulness -- but -- it is also an aid.

So, where am I going with this? I get weekly Facebook reminders of upcoming birthdays. It is nice to have people remember your events on Facebook, so want to remember theirs, too. The problem is that my up-tick in travel leaves me with less certainty of having an internet connection. You just don't know for sure.

Last week I did some looking around and found a free service called Sendible (you know I'm all about free or cheap). Sendible can connect with social networks, blogs, and email accounts and send messages on a scheduled basis.

Once you have connected with one or more service, you can schedule a message:

Facebook messages can be sent as a wall post or as a private message.

I tried it this week for a couple of Happy Birthday notes and it worked like a charm. What tools make your life easier?

Smiles

Friend Lists: Now in Chat

For us all Facebook heads...

Friend Lists: Now in Chat

via Facebook Blog by Rob Goodlatte on 5/11/09

Since we launched Facebook Chat, many of you have asked for ways to organize your connections and to control which friends see you online. Maybe you want to be online with your best friends but offline with your work colleagues. You can now do that by using Friend Lists to filter your connections in Chat.

Friend Lists let you group friends to more easily share with and view information from specific sets of people. You already can use them to filter your home page, send Inbox messages and manage privacy settings.

From the bottom right corner of your browser, go online with Chat and choose which lists you'd like to include in the Chat pane. You can use your existing lists or create new lists directly from Chat.

Creating Lists
To create a new list, simply select the "Friend Lists" menu on the Chat pane, enter a new list name, and drag the names of people you want to include into the list. You can exclude lists from Chat by unchecking them in the "Friend Lists" menu. If you don't want your friends grouped in Chat at all, you can simply uncheck all the Friend Lists, and you'll then see your friends listed alphabetically.



If some of your friends aren't in a Friend List yet, they'll be included under "Other Friends."

Going Offline
Alongside each list, you'll notice a green switch; when you turn off the switch, you'll be logging off of Chat for that list. Friends in lists that are switched off will not be able to see that you are online or chat with you, nor will you be able to see whether they are online.



Friend Lists are useful in organizing and filtering your experience on Facebook, especially as you have more friends from different parts of your life. To learn about other ways to use them on the site, watch this recent video tutorial.


Rob, a designer at Facebook, will see you online...or maybe not.

Poor Mattie

I feel I owe an explanation about my FB status update last night... Here's what it said, "Tracy feels guilty. I accidentally locked Mattie in the closet all day because I thought he was outside (I didn't think he was in the coat closet!!!)."

So, here is the back story. Mike and I were in a rush to leave for work yesterday morning (I had done something to hold us up, as usual -- this always happens). I looked all over the house for Mattie so I could put him up in his room. I looked all around: in the bedroom closet, on the couches, behind the couches, between the pillows on the bed - you name it. I did a last minute check in the coat closet, feeling around for him in the dark, because he tugs the door open sometimes and goes in there. I swear, he wasn't there!!!

I went outside with his food bowl and called his name several times. We finally had to go, so I just assumed he was outside. I sat at work all day thinking of work things then rode home from work with Mike talking about other things. I didn't remember that Mattie was missing until we pulled in the driveway. We went into the house, I called him twice, then bundled up and went outside. I called his name in the driveway, in the yard, in the neighbor's yard... I walked down the side of the street, calling and looking on each side of the road; then I repeated the whole thing while walking up the other direction. No sign of him.

Then, Mike was calling me! "Tracy! Tracy!" I walked back to the driveway to see Mike holding Mattie. Mike said, "Just wait until I tell you what happened." Back in the house he explained that he heard a meow after I went outside. He went outside and walked around the back of the house looking for Mattie. A light bulb went off in his head when he glanced at the coat closet door through the window. In the mud room he heard a meow. When he opened the coat closet door he found Mattie sitting by the door on a big plastic container of cat food.

Obviously I did not do a good job feeling around for Mattie before we left. I closed the closet door -- just in case he was in the house -- and trapped our poor feline friend inside. The little guy was stuck in the cramped, dark, overstuffed closet without water. He had plenty of food: there was a big plastic container with food that should be thrown out along with a half full bag and two brand new bags of his favorite kibble. The only thing was that all that food was sealed up.

Ooops.

After Mike explained the extent of my cruelty while Mattie clung to me purring, I felt I needed to try to make up for my oversight. We started with treats. Mattie got 5, like he always does. Then he looked in the cabinet where I keep his canned food and I took the hint that canned food was another good step. He got a full can all at once (usually he gets 1/2).

Fortunately for me, Mattie is the sweetest, most loving and forgiving cat we've had. He just wanted to be held and sleep on the couch for the rest of the night.

You can bet your bottom dollar I kept my eye on him this morning and he is safely tucked in his room today!

Smiles

Testing 1-2-3

Miss Fiona is having a bit of a stay in the hospital. Possibly through tomorrow, maybe longer. She had an episode in the car on Saturday that began with an upset stomach and escalated minutes later when she lost consciousness, all color, and her lips turned blue. Pat and Deirdre were unable to awaken her and fortunately an ambulance from the nearby fire station arrived quickly. The paramedics brought her around with oxygen and transported her to the hospital. She is at St. Mary's Hospital in West Palm Beach undergoing a bevy of tests, including a MRI and EEG, which I think are scheduled for today.

Being the little princess she is, Fiona is in high spirits and seems to be viewing the experience as an adventure. I'm sure this is due in large part to her very positive and supportive Mommy and Nana. Connor misses his sister a bunch but is visiting the hospital every day and spending some nice one-on-one time with Nana at night.

Hopefully the tests reveal what caused Fiona to pass out. She is certainly being well cared for in the hospital. Thanks to all who got an inkling of this on Facebook and have already sent well wishes. I'll do my best to pass updates along here.

As an aside (related to the hospital), my co-worker is still in the hospital undergoing dialysis and treatment for a septic staph infection. Hopefully he will be out soon, but there is no timeline as of today.

Smiles

Hilarious -- YouTube video FaceBook in Reality

A coworker of mine posted this on FB (embedded video below), and I had to share. It is so funny, and sadly, scarily, true!!! Enjoy!

Randomness

I have not written much this week. I'm not sure why, I guess I didn't think i had anything to say.

This morning I was contemplating what my post would be, and go figure! I have tons of random thoughts!


Facebook

I am so excited that so many of our friends and family are Facebook now!!! It is so fun to be able to catch up with people in the "virtual" world, and easier in some ways than e-mail. Welcome to you all! Only two people that regularly follow this blog haven't joined (you know who you are, though you don't know who each other is)... You're missing out!!!

We started and are co-administrators of the TNS Group , too. There are currently 88 members. Once membership reaches 100, Mike and I are giving away a guidebook to a randomly selected member. We're so close! Don't be afraid to join groups! You can easily protect your privacy by:

1. Choose Groups from the right sidebar of your FB page or the bottom of the page




2. Hold your mouse over Settings (but do not click), then choose Group Settings




3. Choose the radio button "Never publish any stories from Groups" on the Wall tab

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4. Click the Profile tab and choose which (if any) Friends List can see your Groups




5. Click Okay when finished.

Easy!

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iPhone Stuff

NuevaSync

I know that not everyone has an iPhone, but if you do and you use Gmail calendars, NuevaSync is a must-have. It allows you to sync your Google Calendars to your iPhone using push technology (read it syncs automatically rather than manually). I even have my work calendar linked in.






The service is free, and no iPhone app involved. Just go the the website to sign up and set up your device.

Thanks for the heads-up, John!!!

Facebook App

I love the free Facebook app. I can access my account from anywhere and the format is clean and easy to navigate. It does not have all the features of the web version, but it is very fast.




Screenshots

One of the super cool things I learned how to do today was to take screenshots of my phone. It is as easy as pressing the Home button, then the Lock button and releasing both. The shot is taken as a PNG and stored to your camera roll. I used this functionality for all of the photos in today's blog. Awesome!!!

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Weekend Plans

We've been a bit discombobulated this winter. The house is a mess, we're not keeping up on chores, we haven't even been skiing. So, we'll address one of those deficiencies by hitting the slopes tomorrow. I hope to get some photos so I can share them next week.

Have a wonderful happy Friday and weekend!

Facebook and Privacy: Learn How to Adjust Your Settings

I recently posted about Facebook and how fun it is. Since then, many of you have signed up and are getting a feel for what social networking has to offer. The more I play with FB myself, the more I want to know. A primary concern I have dealt with is privacy. How can I control who sees what?

I did some research last week or the week before and thought it would pertinent to share it here.


Friends Lists
This is really good and will facilitate easy management of your friends. I have several lists: Family, Friends, Caution (and others). The benefit of having a friends list is that not only can you do mass messaging to say, your family group, but you can also set permissions based on a list. If you have added a someone as a friend but don't want to give them full access to you on FB you can add them to a flagged list (like my Caution) as well as other applicable lists.

1. First, if you click "Friends" in the blue bar.
2. Click Create List.
3. Enter a name.
4. Start adding people to the list by typing their names or choosing multiple people.

Privacy Settings
Once you have established lists, you can adjust your privacy settings.

1. Go to the blue Facebook bar at the top and hover (hold you mouse over but don't click) over Settings, then click on Privacy Settings. This will list lots of settings you can change.
2. Click on Profile.

The profile privacy settings let you determine who sees what. For example, if you take a look at each of the subheadings, you can adjust if just your friends, or your network, or whatever, sees which part of your profile. As you explore, notice that for any setting you can also block a list of friends. So, you may want to block access to your "Caution" list from seeing your friends list, photos tagged of you, whatever... Be sure to save the changes (bottom of the page with all the options) as you go along.

As you make changes to your privacy settings, you can see how other people will view your pages (wall, etc..) by typing in their name near the top next to "See how a friends sees your profile". You can see how different lists of friends see you on FB.

News Feed and Wall Settings
Another thing to change are the News Feed and Wall settings (back up in Settings-Privacy Settings). You can also block people or restrict to certain lists here. I think that may be less important overall.

Group Settings
If you are a member of a group you can change settings in those areas, too.
1. Just navigate to the group, then at the top, hover over Settings.
2. Choose Groups Settings in the drop-down now.

You can restrict if group stories are published to your wall, what friends list can actually see them, and what lists are blocked.

Photo Privacy
Finally, you can edit who sees your photos.
1. Go to Profile.
2. Click on the Photos tab.
3. Then click on Album Privacy on that page.



Other Fun Stuff

Facebook released a new feature that can remind you of upcoming birthdays via an email notification. If you opt in, you will receive an email on the weekend summarizing the upcoming birthdays of your friends for the next week. Here is how to enable it:
1. Hover over Settings and choose Account Settings.
2. Click the Notifications heading.
3. Under the "Facebook" section, click "Show More".
4. Turn on "Has a birthday coming up".



I hope this helps! Have a fun, safe, time on Facebook!

Not on Facebook?

Back in October 2007 there was a nationwide news article about the growing popularity of Facebook. Of course we had heard of it but we were not signed up at the time. We decided if social networking was a growing movement we should get onboard. We signed up on October 26, 2007. Our interest in and activity on Facebook has waxed and waned. Currently we're on an upswing. We've been spending a lot of time catching up with friends and sharing what is going on in our lives.

But, there are still a good number of people (even of those who read this blog from time to time) that are not signed up on Facebook yet. Given that fact, I thought it would be fun to share some info about the social networking site.

Facebook was established in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg, a Harvard University student. Initially membership was restricted to Harvard students, then students from other Ivy League schools, then any college student, then high school students, and finally to anyone over 13. According to statistics on Facebook , the site had more than 140 million 150 million active users today . That is a little less than half the estimated US population. At least 38 languages are supported.

The company has grown from a few students to 700 employees, headquartered in Palo Alto, California and Dublin, Ireland. It makes revenue from banner ads, apparently quite successfully. Annual revenue in 2008 was  estimated at $300 million (with a 2007 estimated net income of $47 million).

Now that you know the cut and dried numbers and history, I want to tell you about the fun and cool parts of Facebook. First, only registered users can get into the site. You can't just pop in and take a look around just to see what's going on. I like that.

You have the opportunity to enter a lot of background information when you set up your account -- education, employment, interests -- that all aid in the social networking down the line. You can find people you know on Facebook using that background information. For example, I can click on my high school name (which includes my graduation date) and see the 230+ people in my graduating class that are on Facebook. I may or may not see their profile picture, but I cannot see their profile, pictures, or other personal information until I send them a friend request. Once they confirm my friend request, I can see their wall (updates to their status, photos, groups, etc...) and send them personal messages. It is a great way to catch up with people who you've lost touch with.

You can also have Facebook scan your email contacts (for a variety of mail clients, on a one-time basis) for email addresses that Facebook accounts. I did it during setup and have done it several times subsequently since people join the site every day. After the scan you are presented with a list of registered members and can selectively decide who to send friend requests to.

Another way to connect with people you know is to look at your friends' friends. If you find someone in common, you can send a friend request and connect. Finally, there is a search tool you can use to search for anyone by name.

That is just the tip of the social networking iceberg. You can post personal photos (I recommend carefully checking your privacy settings each and every time to limit who sees them -- only friends can see mine) and tag your Facebook friends in them. When you post a photo or tag a friend in a photo, all your friends will get notifications on their wall (a virtual graffiti-type wall that keeps you abreast of other people's happenings). Other people can also tag your face in their photos and you'll get notified. What a cool way to keep in touch!

You can join groups of people with common interests -- skiing, canoeing, reading, whatever -- and make new friends, too. The possibilities are endless.

Facebook offers applications that they offer and that third parties offer. There are thousands to choose from (with a rate of 100+ being added a day) and share with your friends. I throw snowballs, share endangered fish, send flowers -- all for free. A fun and nice way to stay in touch. You can also get apps that charge for things, which is a boon to their revenue string.

Getting comfortable with the website and efficiently navigating through all the options can take some time. But it is fun and rewarding. The way I see it, if I can connect with one or two people I've lost touch with, I come out a winner.

Have a happy day!