Q8 Cafe in Texas
Little Diamond, leaving El Paso, TX, posts a photo of the Q8 Cafe in El Paso.
Missing Letters
I am having so much fun. I have a house guest, an old friend, and we are goofing off all over town, having a great time.
She needed to write an e-mail to her husband, though, as as she sat down to write on my computer, she said “Intlxpatr, half the letters are worn off your keyboard! How do you know what to type?”
She is right. I have worn off some significant letters on my keyboard. I send an e-mail or two, and blog now and then ( 😛 ) so I am missing the w, e, i, o, a, s, d, f, g, k, l, c, v, b, n, m. Most of the time I am OK, as I am word processing, and can type really fast without looking, and I can edit before I publish. But when giving passwords, it is a bummer not being sure what I am putting in, and maybe 30% of the time, I get it wrong the first time.
I am using an Apple iBook about three years old. Naturally, there is a part of me that thinks I should buy a new computer (!) but the truth is, I don’t need a new computer, this one does all the things I need to do. It sure would be nice to get some keys that I could see, though. Is that possible here in Kuwait, to get new white letters for my white iBook?
Backing Against Hacking
This morning, a wonderfully quiet Friday morning in Kuwait*, I spent my time backing up all the entries in this blog. A fellow blogger, Fonzy went online to find his entire blog blank. Some mean-spirited hacker had gone in and wiped it out. Maybe those incapable of creating, destroy. I can’t imagine the nastiness it takes to wreck and destroy, to harm the innocent. I don’t want to try to wrap my mind around it, but I will take the warning.
Fortunately for the Fonz, he had back-up. Unfortunately for me, in spite of all my good intentions, I haven’t backed up in a long time. Months. So this morning I thanked God nothing had happened to my blog, and I backed it up.
It turned out to be kind of fun. I’d already forgotten some of the things I blogged about. Life moves on, and at such a rapid pace! And whew, now I am finished, at least for the time being. Thanks Fonz, for the reminder to back yourself up.
*For my non-Kuwait/non Middle Eastern readers, Friday morning is like Sunday morning in the western world. Relatively quiet, most people sleeping, not a lot of cars on the road – a day of rest.
The Mysteries of Blogging
Every blogger will tell you – you can’t anticipate what your audience will love. There are pieces I labor over – mostly the travel pieces – and I get some comments, and the hits are steady over time, but nothing spectacular.
And then I will just jot off something in a hurry, and it will get hit after hit. When WordPress first came out with it’s snap-to feature, I wrote just a short blurb, and it gets several hits a day, even almost a month later.
But yesterday, all of a sudden, I started getting hits on Unexpected Pleasures a very abbreviated book report I wrote back in January on a book about belly dancing. If it were just one or two or three or four, I would have just thought it were a fluke, but it was 17, then 26, and finally 31 – in one day!
Most of the hits were coming from one referrer, and when I tried to check the referrer, it had some posts that were not public, so if she has mentioned my review, it is not visible to me. I wrote to Little Diamond who had reviewed the book, and she said she, too, had received a huge number of hits yesterday on that one obscure review.
It is a total mystery. No comments, just people peeking in. I don’t know what they are looking for. I don’t know why that one entry interests them. It is a blogging mystery.
Trek and Date Time Stamp
It was me but it wasn’t me. I’ve been gone, out on a short trek, the kind of trek where a computer would be laughable, in terms of time, in terms of connection. And it forced me to try something new . . .
Word Press has a Date Time Stamp feature. Instead of pressing “publish” when you finish an entry, you go down to “post timestamp” and you click in the Edit Timestamp box, then you choose the date and time you want the article published.
It’s not that I don’t trust technology, but I don’t always trust my grasp of how it works, so I tested it before I left and to my astonishment, it worked like a charm. It’s hard to believe something so cool could also be so easy, so straight forward.
So I have tagged it, in addition to other tags, with “lies” because it kinda IS a lie – it implies I am somewhere when I am really somewhere else. And the good news is – it really works!
Visit to Skyscraper City
As I was preparing to move to Kuwait, and searching the blogs and internet for any information I would find on living conditions, I came across this quirky website called Skyscraper City which has forums on buildings and developments going up all over the world.
My favorite area, of course, is the forum devoted to the Middle East and Africa within which I love to visit Kuwait and Qatar.
Here you find all the latest news, information and GOSSIP about what’s going up, who has applied for permits, and why projects have stalled. It is one of those gems of the internet.
If you want to post, or reply, you have to join the City. There is a Sky Diwaniyya in the Kuwait section that is always entertaining reading.
Palm Island Resort, UAE from Skyscraper City Forum
Kitchen Souk?
A reader wrote asking about where to find a cast iron skillet in Kuwait. I brought mine with me (if you use a cast iron skillet, you’ll understand*) so I haven’t been paying any attention to cast iron skillet availability here. I’m pretty sure I haven’t seen any in the local co-ops, and I can’t remember seeing any cast iron pans in the Sultan Center. City Center?
Is there a Kitchen souk in Kuwait, a place with lots and lots of pots and pans?
(A cast iron skillet is heavy metal, and a shiny grey when you buy it. You season it by rubbing it with oil and putting it in an oven on low heat for hours, even overnight. You never wash the skillet with soap, only with water and scouring pads, so you don’t lose the seasoned coating. When you have a well-seasoned pan, you carry it with you so you don’t have to start the process over! You can see a photo of my skillet at Cornbread and Chili)
“I’m A Third Culture Kid, Are You?”
Most of those who read my blog are not Kuwaiti, and it is for you that I am writing this post. So many of you who read me are also “Third Culture Kids.” My blogging friend Amer just wrote a post by the above title, and whoa! The responses will blow you away! Please go to I am a Third Culture Kid, Are You? and check in with your story – where you came from and where you are today.
And how being a third culture kid has affected your life. This is one of the best blog entries I have read.
The book from which the term Third Culture Kids comes from is mentioned in an earlier blog entry of mine, Chicken Nuggets and Big Macs and is by David C. Pollock and Ruth E. Van Reken. You can find it at Amazon.com. If you are a third culture kid, you might want to buy two or three – you will keep giving them away. The book is that good.
In the Headlights: Added to the Blogroll
I don’t remember how I came across this blog, at some time in December, but I remember laughing my head off. After two months, I find that she still delights me every time I visit. Today at In the Headlights (a reference to a common English phrase “deer in the headlights” meaning that wild-eyed-I -don’t-know-what-to-do-next-so-I’ll-just-stand-here-frozen look) Riannan shares an e-mail from a friend with curmudgeonly rules for 2007, and earlier on the page, shares a site where you can have mittens, etc. knit out of your pet’s lost hair! Dying laughing.
(And no, she is not a relative of mine. I don’t know her! I just like her blog!)
This woman comes across some of the most amazing things. She, like me, is all over the map – salsa dancing, books, great recipes (the latest was Oven Baked Sesame Scallops, oh yum!), stories about friends, some of the funniest signs I have ever seen, and screwball ideas. She can give your day a lift.
Check Every Comment
One of the things I like best about WordPress is the scum and filth they keep from ever appearing on my blog. But the scammers out there get better and better.
Check every comment. Check where it is coming from. Check closely – some at first appear to be blogs, but they are really all about marketing / selling. They are getting clever – the comment appears to be pertinent, or flattering (example: great blog and great content!) but if their blog is really just a sales tool, you can (in WordPress) go into EDIT on the comment, and eliminate the url entry, and then you have this sweet comment but there is NO connection with this person’s so-called blog.
Here’s what to look for. A blog may look like a medical information blog, for example, but just underneath the entry (which is copied from someone else’s blog!) you will find a list of 10+ url sites that have little or nothing to do with medical information. Like “click here for a bargain on leather luggage” and more irrelevant entries.
Be aware!
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