Thursday, October 30th, 2008
I really do like Entrecard. I really do. However, some of the missteps that have occurred over are just crazy. One of the ongoing missteps is their moderators on their forums. This was an issue a while back before. New forums popped up due to the censorship that a lot of the members were feeling on the Entrecard forums. Seriously, that was how bad it got.
Now, I thought that was over and done with. We were told that wouldn’t happen anymore and blah blah blah. Well, I learned firsthand myself how much crap that was (I’m a little irritated . . . can you tell?) Now, I have moderated before (I was moderator at the Izea forums over a year, so I know what a pain it can be. However, we were never ever ever allowed to delete anything unless it was spam.) Now, the thread in question is this one: http://entrecard.com/forums/7/15804/#p=21. Now, they posted a question and people started responding. I happened to be one of them. And my response got deleted since he (the moderator who started the question) didn’t like the answer. He also removed the reference to another forum called Firestorm. I’m sorry, you can’t ask a question on a public forum and then start deleting the answers you don’t like. Sorry, that is crap. The part that I especially love is that other forums are listed there. His reasoning? Firestorm and Forum Finder (which is the one I listed) are too close to what Entrecard’s forum does (huh?). I wouldn’t be half as ticked if he didn’t leave other forums up there that do the same darn thing. I don’t understand the double standard. I am not one to kiss ass which is probably why my comment is gone (I’ve left two more comments questioning why — we’ll see how long those last).
Now, I don’t own either forum that got taken off the list. I get no benefit for writing this post, besides releasing some of my anger. I just am sick and tired of Entrecard’s double standard when it comes to their forums. Obviously, the only way to get your posts to say is to kiss up or keep your opinions to yourself (which I would think is counterproductive on a forum).
Let me know your thoughts.
Tags: anger, Anything, benefit, blah, Censoring, comment, crap, darn, Entrecard, Finder, Firestorm, forum, Forums, huh, issue, izea, list, lot, moderator, pain, part, post, questin, reasoning, reference, response, Seriously, spam, standard, thing, thread, while
Posted in General | 23 Comments »
Thursday, September 25th, 2008
I got an email asking for Craig Ferguson’s response to the Letterman/McCain thing and McCain suspending his campaign. Craig also brings up some really good points. For example, we didn’t suspend the campaign or the election process for Pearl Harbor, 9/11, or the Nazis. Why should be now? Here is the video:
Any thoughts?
Tags: campaign, Craig, Craig Furguson, election, email, example, John McCain, Letterman, Pearl Harbor, process, response, thing, video
Posted in General | 10 Comments »
Friday, September 19th, 2008
If you follow me on twitter, you will know what this post is going to be about. If you don’t, I’ll do a quick explanation of what’s going on.
I live in the Ridgeland School District 122. We have had a school referendum fail twice. After the last time it failed, my school district cut all of the music and art programs and supposedly the after school programs too. After the last referendum failed, I had posted about it on my blog and had quite a response from both sides of the referendum. However, here I sit, and Madison will go to kindergarten next year, and we have to decide where she is going to go.
I always said my kids would go to public school. I went to public school and I turned out fine. LOL However, my class size was never higher than 25 kids and that was in high school too. Since I have no experience with private school, I am reaching out to my readers to give me their opinion.
Here’s what I know for sure — there is no art class and no music class. Instead it is being “facilitated in the classrooms” — whatever that means. I had a huge concern regarding this “everyday math” I have been hearing about. However, my public school is not teaching that. Her class size would be 22 – 30 kids with only one teacher. In private school, she would have gym, music, art, and computer once a week. Her class size would be around 15 – 19 kids with one teacher and a teachers aide.
Oh and let me add, the referendum is again destined to fail. The administration gave them 10% raises over the summer!
If you were in my shoes, what would you do? Public or private?
Edited to add: Homeschooling is not an option. Madison does way better learning when it isn’t me. I can’t believe the amount of things she learned in preschool already.
Edited again 9/23: The school principal will no longer answer my questions. All my questions now have to go through the main district office. According to the District 122 Ridgeland office, there is no music or art at all. No classes will go over thirty. However, they will not create another class unless there are 60 kids between 2 classes (I hope that makes sense), so it could happen that both classes could be 29 kids, and they would not make a new class. They had no idea what the district was going to do if the referendum fails a third time. In the past, it was threatened that one of the grade schools was to be closed and/or they would go to grade school centers. When I asked about that, I was told that was up to the school board.
Also, the raise I talked about was given to the superintendent and the assistant superintendents.
Also the district was asked to put their finances online. 26 other local districts have. Mine has refused and has publically stated that in a local newspaper.
Tags: administration, art, blog, computer, concern, District, experience, explanation, fine, kindergarten, lol, madison, math, music, opinion, post, Private, Public, referendum, response, Ridgeland, school, size, summer, teacher, time, Twitter, week, year
Posted in General | 72 Comments »
Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008
Many of you know that I have been having major hosting issues as of late. From July till now, my sites have gone down daily, and Bluehost’s support has been less than helpful. I have used them for almost two years, so it was truly sad for me to have to even think about leaving. I have never had the problems I was having. If you read my blog, you will notice long absences (when I couldn’t even post due to not being able to even get to the backend of my blogs!), and I wrote about a lot of my issues. My final straw was when support finally told me to delete my old posts and put them on a static page. Well, that kind of defeats the whole purpose of a blog. I think I just outgrew them. I do have to say that to cancel Bluehost was super easy, super fast, and they were super nice.
I had asked around quite a bit about what other hosts were out there that people liked. One I heard a lot of good things from was Hostgator. Before I made my decision, I even online chatted with some of their sales people. The other thing that impressed me was that they are green. I personally believe that every little bit helps and that if I can help the environment with my hosting, why not. Granted, Hostgator isn’t running their own windmills in downtown Houston. Instead, they have bought RECs for 130% of the electricity used to power and cool its shared and reseller servers. What’s a REC?
Renewable Energy Credits (RECs) are tradeable credits representing all the environmental benefits of 1 megawatt hour of renewable energy. So when HostGator purchases 4,009 Texas wind RECs, it’s basically paying a Texas windfarm to generate renewable energy on HostGator’s behalf. HostGator doesn’t own the windfarm, but for every REC purchased by HostGator, that windfarm generates 1 megawatt of Texas wind power and puts it into the grid. When HostGator draws power from the grid, it can then claim credit for that wind power generated on its behalf.
Another thing I really like is that if there is a problem with one of your sites, they don’t pull them all down. That was a big grievance of mine before. They will also transfer your domains and your files to them for free! That was what really got me to come over to them. They saved me hours of time of having to move my sites! Every step of the way, I got an email letting me know what they were up to. The only thing you end up having to do is check to make sure that your site looks good and to change your DNS settings. It doesn’t get easier than that!
Any issues I have had so far have been dealt with quickly. When I didn’t get my welcome email (due to my own typo), they responded to my ticket in 15 minutes. I ended up sending in a ticket due to a WP hiccup last night (which I think was my fault too – lol) and had a response in about 2 hours. I love that kind of customer service! They have been nothing but nice and helpful. The thing I love the best is that I went from throwing errors on all my blogs to not throwing any. I am not sure how that happens, but I’ll take it!
If you are in need of new hosting, I highly recommend checking out Hostgator. They are very competitive in pricing, and they are everything I wanted in a host.
Tags: backend, behalf, bit, blog, Bluehost, check, credit, Credits, decision, DNS, doesn, downtown, electricity, email, energy, environment, fault, Granted, grid, grievance, hiccup, Hostgator, hour, Houston, July, kind, lol, lot, megawatt, mine, night, online, page, power, problem, purpose, REC, RECs, Renewable, response, step, straw, support, Texas, thing, ticket, time, typo, way, wind, windfarm
Posted in General | 27 Comments »
Entrecard Forums Censoring Again
Thursday, October 30th, 2008I really do like Entrecard. I really do. However, some of the missteps that have occurred over are just crazy. One of the ongoing missteps is their moderators on their forums. This was an issue a while back before. New forums popped up due to the censorship that a lot of the members were feeling on the Entrecard forums. Seriously, that was how bad it got.
Now, I thought that was over and done with. We were told that wouldn’t happen anymore and blah blah blah. Well, I learned firsthand myself how much crap that was (I’m a little irritated . . . can you tell?) Now, I have moderated before (I was moderator at the Izea forums over a year, so I know what a pain it can be. However, we were never ever ever allowed to delete anything unless it was spam.) Now, the thread in question is this one: http://entrecard.com/forums/7/15804/#p=21. Now, they posted a question and people started responding. I happened to be one of them. And my response got deleted since he (the moderator who started the question) didn’t like the answer. He also removed the reference to another forum called Firestorm. I’m sorry, you can’t ask a question on a public forum and then start deleting the answers you don’t like. Sorry, that is crap. The part that I especially love is that other forums are listed there. His reasoning? Firestorm and Forum Finder (which is the one I listed) are too close to what Entrecard’s forum does (huh?). I wouldn’t be half as ticked if he didn’t leave other forums up there that do the same darn thing. I don’t understand the double standard. I am not one to kiss ass which is probably why my comment is gone (I’ve left two more comments questioning why — we’ll see how long those last).
Now, I don’t own either forum that got taken off the list. I get no benefit for writing this post, besides releasing some of my anger. I just am sick and tired of Entrecard’s double standard when it comes to their forums. Obviously, the only way to get your posts to say is to kiss up or keep your opinions to yourself (which I would think is counterproductive on a forum).
Let me know your thoughts.
Tags: anger, Anything, benefit, blah, Censoring, comment, crap, darn, Entrecard, Finder, Firestorm, forum, Forums, huh, issue, izea, list, lot, moderator, pain, part, post, questin, reasoning, reference, response, Seriously, spam, standard, thing, thread, while
Posted in General | 23 Comments »