Ima Superfood!

This made me LOL.

You're Welcome, Burton Cummings!

Thank YOU for Tweeting, Sir!

More Mamie!

Ah LOVES me some Mamie!!!

She is a social-media marvel!

She tweets, too!

Katerz = Celeb Magnet

Y'all know how I love it when the celebs tolerate my lame ass on social networking. It causes me to SQUEEEEE, and, on occasion, *plotz*. What can I say?! I'm accustomed to hangin' with the dead celebs, not the alive ones.

My latest acquisitions are: 1) the always delightful Kevin Murphy, of MST3K and Rifftrax fame, who I Facebook-stalked after months of Twit-stalking; and 2) Uncle Joe Benson, long-time L.A. radio staple, who I found on Twitter!

Thanks, guys! Y'all are a delight.

MAMIE. VAN. DOREN.

'Nuff said.

Visit Ms. VanDoren's website here, or follow her on Twitter!

#hashtaggery #ohnomyspleen

So, as some of you may know, I like to hang out on Twitter. There, I have met alot of awesome peeps, many of whom are non-stop laugh-riots. They enjoy engaging in what has come to be known as #hashtaggery. This is when a label is created, either specifically for fun or organically, and everyone jumps on the bandwagon trying to come up with a word or phrase that fits the hashtag. A good article on this phenom can be found here.

So anyhoo, yesterday my young'un was with me at the office, and he was drawing pictures. One of them was quite hysterical (see below), so I posted it as a Twitpic. Everyone was just tickled by it, but my peep @introvertedwife was downright INSPIRED. She immediately started engaging in #ohnomyspleen #hashtaggery! Much zaniness ensued. Many people found themselves weeping and ::falling off chair laughing::.

The Boy was absolutely THRILLED to be involved in the inception of a Social Media phenom! I like to think it's the librarian in him, since hashtagging is really just cataloging for New Media. ;-) I was thrilled to have him so entertained, and to have him really get a sense of what Twitter is all about (i.e., community and instantaneous information sharing).

The original drawing can be viewed below, along with a sampling of the ensuing #hashtaggery.

Good times!

It's a Twitter Milestone!

I reached a Twitter milestone today with my 10,000th tweet.

WTF?! How can that BE?! What on EARTH am I talking about on there, anyway?! I have no freakin' idea! But AH LOVES IT. And AH LOVES MAH TWIT PEEPS!

@kennyloggins !!!

People who've known me for a long time know that I AM A KENNY LOGGINS NUT. Do not be mocking the Ken-man in my presence. (This means YOU, Cole Stratton, Footloose riffer! HA!) I dragged my poor Kenny-indifferent husband to only one concert before I started just going to them by myself! I went to 4, before having my young'un and gaining... time constraints. ;-) But I had much fun at those shows. I would get a glass of wine, sit in my aisle seat near the stage, and let the waves of Ken waft over me. (Then I would leave and go to the loo during his bizarrely long rendition of Celebrate Me Home. Srsly! He just sings "celebrate, celebrate, celebrate me home" over and over like eleventy-million times! LOL)

ANYhoo, I was completely delighted when Kenny's tweet helper Michael decided I was worth a follow. (Kenny does tweet, but I'm pretty sure it was Michael who made the call to follow me.) Altho I do continue to be mystified as to why anyone follows me at all! ::shrugs::

Why does ANYONE follow me on Twitter?

I wonder when I will stop being, like AMAZED, and HONORED, when people follow me or list me on Twitter. I want to cry when people give me a #FollowFriday.

Silly, I know.

::sigh:: I quite adore my Twitter peeps.

@ATTSusan, FTW!!!

Well, this is a first for me... A blog post about a customer service experience. Perhaps even MORE shocking? It was a POSITIVE customer service experience! Here's how it all went down...


We've had DSL at our house for many years from AT&T. It's really been great during that time -- hardly went down at all. But during the recent uncharacteristic rains in SoCal, our DSL went on the fritz, as did our landline. The DSL was completely down for about a day and a half, then it was working only intermittently in the days after the rain stopped. The same was true for our landline.


This was EXTREMELY distressing to us, a family that relies greatly on the internet for most things -- communication, bill paying, photo storage, Christmas-card creation and ordering, Christmas shopping, etc. Complicating things was the fact that we were scheduled to get AT&T U-verse the following week. An AT&T guy came to look at our phone lines on the Sunday before the U-verse install, found nothing wrong, and left. (Thanks, Pal.) After he left, my husband checked our connection and found that it was STILL messed up. So, it was no surprise when the U-verse installer came and said we had too poor a connection, and he would have to have the phone line guys come out and see what they could do before U-verse could be installed. (Meanwhile, my husband had taken time off work for this; he went back to work to await word about the phone lines.)

I happened to be in and out that day, as it was one of my furlough days from work. I saw the 2 AT&T trucks out front working on the telephone lines. Around 3 pm (the install was scheduled for 11), the U-verse guy returned and said he could now do the install. (Why the guy on Sunday thought our connection was fine, we dunno.) I called my husband at work and had him return to the house.

The U-verse install was complete shortly after 6 pm. Everything seemed great. Then, around 10 pm, EVERYTHING WENT DOWN AGAIN. Only this time, not only did the computer and the land line go down, the TV went down too. AAAACK! We were about ready to PLOTZ. We went to bed very unhappy people that night. We got up in the morning, checked the connection, found it was still absent, and the husband put in a call with AT&T to send a guy out to look at it. Only since the husband could not miss any more work over this, the service call would have to wait until 4 pm, THE NEXT DAY. A very upsetting situation, indeed.

So off to work I go. I hop on my social networking sites, Facebook & Twitter, and start KVETCHING. I'm telling everyone my story (as I had been during our entire stretch of up & down time, only now there's the added wrinkle of U-verse).

Almost immediately on Twitter, I get tweeted at by a gal called @ATTSusan. She tweets that she's sorry we're having trouble, and asks if there's anything she can do. HUH?! You mean to tell me this gal's job is to scan Twitter for people complaining about AT&T, and contact them?! Wow! Pretty impressive. But dealing with the problem was not really MY bailywick, it was my husband's. So I told her this, and said thanks, but the husband was handling it. She said, "Okay, just let me know if I can help." Wow! I was really impressed.

Then, I remembered that I WAS having an ongoing problem with my CELLphone, which is thru AT&T Wireless. So, I asked @ATTSusan, do you happen to know anyone who can help me with my cellphone? Sure, she says. I can do that, too. Again, WOW! So now I'm REALLY beside myself, cuz this cellphone thing for me has been worse than the DSL/U-verse problem. For MONTHS, I KNOW I've been overpaying for our cellphones. Often over $150/month for my phone and Bri's phone. But Bri doesn't use his and I barely use mine, except for sending text messages and e-mailing pictures to myself. I had contacted AT&T customer service over this several months ago, but the person I got that time said that he saw nothing wrong with our billing. (Thanks, Pal.) I knew then that I would have to find time to CALL THEM -- and MAN, do I HATE calling people/places. As evidenced by how long I put it off...

So, @ATTSusan looks into my problem, finds that I have indeed been overcharged for many months, and promptly CREDITS OUR ACCOUNT FOR $650 FREAKING DOLLARS. WHAT?!?! Are you freaking KIDDING ME?!

Just like that, bada-bing bada-boom, @ATTSusan solves one of the biggest problems hanging over my head. Plus, she frees up enough money for this furloughed state-of-CA employee to get a new iPhone. w00t!!!

Oh yeah -- and the computer/TV connection fixed itself, so all is well there, too.

Thanks again, Susan! YOU RULE!!! People in customer service should aspire to be HALF as good as you are. I can't thank you enough.

Welcome, International Blog Visitors!

Y'all know how tickled I get over my various blog visitors. (ALMOST as excited as I get when celebs tweet at me!) Most people don't comment, so the only way I know who's visiting is via a Feedjit traffic map I periodically check. It shows who's visiting, from where, and what they're lookin' at. I'm always amazed how many people are looking at one of my tattoo posts! They are among the most popular. Also popular is my post on celebrity graving, and my Steelers Wheel post!

I assume the popularity of my Matt-related posts goes without saying. Without Matt, I wouldn't even HAVE a blog!

This Week's Celebrity Twit-peeps!

So, as y'all know, I'm a bit of a celeb-magnet on Twitter. A couple weeks ago, Bill Corbett, star of stage & screen, tweeted at me. Then, The Lost Skeleton started following me, as did His Creator, the multi-talented Larry Blamire.

This week, more celebs. First, I had a big rap session (okay, it was like 2 tweets) with long-time L.A. Times music critic Robert Hilburn, in which he broke my heart by telling me that Alan Parsons is unlikely to make it into the Rock Hall of Fame. Then, the pièce de résistance: a direct message (DM, in twitter-speak) from the beautiful & talented Mr. Crosby Loggins. Due to the way my DMs are set up, I first saw this tweet on my cellfone, enabling me to pretend that Crosby could resist my charms no longer and had txt'd my fone. Hahhahahahhhaha. Fun stuff.



I'm quite sure that one day soon, there will be far too many people on Twitter for fun stuff like this to occur, so I'm getting a kick out of it now, while I can.

Thank you, Mr. Hilburn! Thanks, Crosby! Fellas like you make Twitter more fun for a mild-mannered library worker such as myself.

Cheap Twit Date, Cont'd.

I dunno if I can take much more of this.

Now, the great LOST_SKELETON, the star of several major motion pictures, is not only FOLLOWING me on Twitter, but He is recommending me as a #followfriday.

I am also now being followed by the lovely RiffTrax spouse and Minnesotan Virginia Corbett, and the delightful blogger Cole Stratton.

I hope I am able to suitably entertain (or, simply, not annoy) these new Tweeps!

Cheap Twit Date

I've been tweeted at this week by a couple of people whose creative work I happen to adore, and this has apparently turned me into a giddy school girl. I kid you not. I. AM. PLOTZING.! I've gone all Marcia Brady during the Desi Arnaz Jr. episode!

Earlier this week, Bill Corbett tweeted at me. Now, Larry Blamire.

I dunno how much more of this my heart can take, People.

Tip tip tip tip tip tip tip!

Now, I sleep.

Twitter

It's taken awhile, but I have really come to love Twitter.

Not only can I rap with my peeps there, but I can watch amusing convos unfold betwixt people like Mike Nelson, Bill Corbett, and Kevin Murphy; Rainn Wilson and Mindy Kaling; and Grant Imahara and Adam Savage. Oh, and Mrs. Yankovic posts twitpix of the family activities. And Al's shoes.