daily ramblings, plus a rant about ads

[same_sky]

I have been pestering my poor husband for half an hour now. Neither of us were doing anything in particular.. until he announced that he was going to go downstairs to work on his mandolin. "BUT DON'T YOU LOVE ME?" I wailed, and proceeded to follow him around talking to him and asking him questions and hugging him. He has been very patient with me. I kept saying things like "You can go downstairs! I'll be okay! Hey, do you know..." This finally ended with me pulling him away from the basement door, where he was holding the tool he was taking down with him, to come in here and disconnect my speakers because they are RUNTING MY LIFE. My monitor has really crappy emergency sound, hence the speakers, but the speakers cannot handle cell phones. It drives me crazy. So, when I'm not actively needing sound, I end up turning it off and then I'll try to do something requiring sound and.. well, it's annoying. Anyway. Suddenly, it was Imperative that the speakers be removed from my presence. Also, he set up our spare, previously to-be media server, computer downstairs but he has no speakers for it.. which is unfortunate since he wanted it largely for a mp3 server.. so I kindly and graciously volunteered mine, totally out of the goodness of my heart and not AT ALL for any self-serving reasons. I know, I know. Anyway, he took away the offending Speakers of Annoyance, and is now finally downstairs, playing with frets or something. I bet he didn't expect me to continue talking to him through the vent when he ran away downstairs, did he? *cackle*

(Don't feel too sorry for him--he is now angling for me to take over his speakers instead of buying a new set for myself because he wants new ones.)

What's with people being so angry at Livejournal for the new ad-supported membership level? Does it really offend someone's sensibilities that much that a free service would allow ads to be displayed at the request of users? I really don't get this whole thing. See, you watch television. Television has ads. Not just that, but television has ads that it is really hard to not watch because it interrupts your show! Obnoxious ads that take up a third of your viewing time! And yet, it would be ludicrous for someone to call NBC to say, "Dudes! You have ADS! YOU HAVE SOLD OUT! I HATE YOU!" Because.. umm. That's what being a company means--the pursuit of profit. Also, there are millions of sites out there that have ads. I would wager a guess that most people don't throw a hissy fit over them, even if they don't like seeing them. Almost all of the stand-alone type of blogs have ads. Some of them support their whole family, some of them are support only charities, and everything in between. The only difference here is who the money goes to.

I personally think it's great that people can make a little money on their blogs, and perhaps the reason I think that is that I am someone who actually PAYS HOSTING BILLS every month. I host three sites on a charity basis (Mosaic Minds is one of them) and some more for personal reasons (seriously, I gotta stop buying domains.. it's like crack.) I spend actual real money on this and yes, I write it off as entertainment because I enjoy it. But, maybe it makes it easier for me to see how people might not want to operate at a loss.

That was really not where I meant to go with this post. I was going to post pictures from the kite festival we went to today, where I made approximately ten gazillion paper hearts. It was a fantastic day, weather-wise. The festival was cute, but it is Way Too Much Social for someone like me. Did you know that everyone is of Scandinavian descent? Because they are. If you ask them. Anyway, we took down names and contact info for a lot of people and so that maybe we'll get some new members eventually. Also, I bought the domain name for the website tonight--which I will gladly share once there is something there. Are any of you married-to-Swedes people living in the US involved in a similar society? Just curious. Ours is (mostly) fun, although in some website research that I did recently, I discovered one club that is begging for donations so hard that they were giving instructions on how to cash in your life insurance policy and submit the income from your rental properties. That kind of scared me, no matter what kind of "cause" you are raising money for.

Comments

[e11en.livejournal.com]

I used to be a member of the American Swedish Historical Museum but as it's down in Philadelphia, I usually only made it down for Luciafest. The Swedes in our area tend to be kind of hidden. We know there are a bunch but no one seems interested in sticking their necks out to say hej.