Technology Overload

Well it's been a while. I'm trying to blog with a regular pattern but I have been a little busy lately. My most recent adventure was a trip up the Minnesota to visit my Aunt and cousins, and to see the NKOTBSB concert. Sweet. Amazing. They are all so sexy and I was never a New Kids on the Block fan. I've always been a Backstreet Boys girl and I don't care how embarrassing it may be. Either way, this is not the point of this latest blog.

As the title suggests, I'm suffering from a technology overload and it's just going to get worse. I know some of it is my own fault, but I'm also trying to keep up with the world. Especially with my new found interest in Event Planning and Public Relations, I should be up on every social networking site. It's is freaking exhausting. It's more than just social too. There's all sorts of ways to keep in touch. This is a (probably incomplete) list of accounts that I have to stay up to speed with the rest of the world. Here we go:

Facebook
Twitter
Gmail
Augustana Gmail
YouTube
Blogspot
Text Messages
Skype
iChat (coming soon)
Google+ (coming soon)

I try to stay up-to-date on all of these but it's rough. I just recently deleted my two other email accounts on ATT and AOL. Sorry guys, Google is kicking your ass. I tried to consolidate everything because supposedly you can do that with certain Google accounts but it just does not want to cooperate for me. Maybe I'm dumb?

With the latest arrival of Google+, I can't help but think of another stupid site to make everyone all crazy and stalker-esque. On the other hand, once it wrangles in enough users I'm going to ditch Facebook. That site continually changes all the time and hopefully Google+ jumped in at the right spot, because everyone is sick and tired of Facebook. Even more people are starting to prefer Twitter over Facebook and I am starting to agree with them.

This is my prediction for the future of social networking: With the current overload that people have been feeling, only the strongest are going to succeed. Twitter will be fine. Google+ is probably going to rock. Facebook is probably going to fail. Skype needs to step up its game because if Google+ chat is as great as it appears to be in the demo, it's not going to last much longer. All of the blogging sites aren't a big enough deal (as far as I know) to really have an all-out battle, probably because they seem to all coexist rather nicely. I can follow all sorts of blogs via blogspot so that's nice.

So the end. That was boring. Have a great day.

Stop Harassing the Tom's Shoes guy (Blake Mycoskie)

So this whole thing was just brought to my attention literally ten minutes ago. I was just wasting my life away on facebook, because I don't want to do a damn thing today, and came across this apology from Blake Mycoskie, the creator of Tom's Shoes. Why, you may ask, is this generous man apologizing? Because he recently spoke at a Focus on the Family event and apparently they are an intolerant group of people that are incredibly anti-gay and against giving them rights, protection, or anything of that nature.

I read this apology and then I read the comments underneath. Check out the blog post first and then keep reading here! http://www.startsomethingthatmatters.com/2011/07/a-sincere-apology/

Here's my defense for poor Blake: Google Focus on the Family. On my computer the first thing that pops up on Google is their actual website. Click on the website, and it looks harmless; family oriented good clean fun. Nothing on that site would lead you to believe that they hate gays and don't tolerate much out of the realm of conservative Christianity. If you scroll down, which originally I didn't, you find one site about how Focus on the Family is the devil. For anyone not looking for terrible things about Focus on the Family, that could very well be written off as a crazy person because on the first page it is pretty much all positive articles that have been (probably) written as filler to push back all of the negative things that are written.

Two things to note: 1) Mycoskie is trying to run a rapidly growing company that is already HUGE, the last thing he's going to do is Google Focus on the Family. If anything, he's going to check out their website, read what they claim to be about, and go speak. 2) There is a very good chance someone just told him about the opportunity, checked out the website for him, and then sent Blake to do his thing. That's what CEOs and people of that nature do.

Honestly people who are going off need to chill out. STOP. The poor man made a mistake that many, many people of his age, disposition, and a busy schedule would have done.

The end. There is my defense for the CEO of the company that did not give me an awesome summer internship. Not bitter at all. Nope.

Tattoo Number TWO

I have another tattoo. It's pretty sweet.

Please disregard my messy house and random stray hairs the ponytail missed. I promise I don't have a trail of hair growing down my back.

For anyone wondering what this whole thing means, I will tell you. Before I finish the explanation, anyone reading should look up what the Pisces and Leo astrology signs look like. The very super basic ones, because obviously I don't have fish or lions in this tattoo. Basically type Pisces into google images, and then Leo into google images. Tada! Alright now I will explain.

First of all I must give credit to Matt (here's the link to a million pictures of tattoos all done by him: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tattoosbymatt ) who works out at Private Ink in Libertyville, IL. This is my second tattoo he has done and I have been ecstatic with both of them. Now I will really explain the tattoo.

Back to the story: I really wanted to get something to commemorate my grandmother (Nana) but I kept sucking at coming up with good ideas. Finally I realized that (DUH) I love astrology and even though it's kind of silly I check my horoscope everyday. I was talking to my mom and she said that Nana was also very proud of being a Leo, so *lightbulb moment* I decided I wanted a tattoo that combined the two. Matt was the one who really designed the tattoo and made it absolutely wonderful. :)

SAVE Q101

REALLY. IS THIS REALLY HAPPENING? I might be prematurely freaking out but this better not happen. Q101.1 is the only really good rock station in Chicagoland. I mean 95.1 is ok, but it's nothing compared to Q101. This is really not ok. I don't have much to add to the argument that people haven't already said, so I'm just going to post a link so people can read up on this. It seems pretty legitimate which is why I am freaking out a bit. http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=news/local&id=8203465

Also, there are petitions to sign so get on that. This guy is Randy Michaels. He's the one who is trying to take away Q101.1. Rude.

Douche Tags

I must say I'm a little peeved at the tattoo nation. Creating names that discourage women from getting tattoos where they want is just plain annoying, so I'm going to do the same for men because I'm really mature.

Everyone knows the coveted tramp stamp is a tattoo on the lower back, usually of a women. Personally I see nothing wrong with this location because it is flat, usually won't stretch if you have a kid or something, and has the potential to look really cute. The new name for the side tattoos has a personal sting to it though. For those of you who do not know, tattoos on the side along the rib cage are starting to be known as skank flanks. Last summer, when I got my tattoo, this term was either not yet coined, or hadn't caught on. I mean I'm not going to get mine removed or anything crazy and I still absolutely love it, but REALLY. Was that necessary? Current mood: annoyed.

My title, as you guys might guess, is my name for a select male tattoo. I'm going to make a generalization right now: Tribal tattoos are for douche bags. See my friends to the right here? Mini douche bags in training. I have no idea who they are because I just used google images and searched "douche bag." 

From now on when I see a tribal tattoo, I am going to call it a douche TAG. I thought of this and then realized I should probably google it to make sure I'm not going to look like a big idiot. All I found were a few urban dictionary posts calling anything that defined a douche bag as a douche tag. For example: blue tooth, bling, overall douche-y attitude, flashy clothes, tight-fit shirts, you get it. None of them actually define meaningless tribal tattoos are the douche tag so that is what I'm doing. RIGHT NOW AT THIS VERY MOMENT I PROCLAIM ALL SENSELESS TRIBAL TATTOOS AS DOUCHE TAGS. Got a problem? Take it up with my skank flank. 

-Ashlee

This is different.

I've never had a blog before. The closest I've ever become to blogging are those little notes on facebook when I answered about 47 thousand questions and tagged people who could not have cared less. And xanga. Honestly, I always associated blogs with the hipster kind who, quite frankly, annoy the shit out of me. Actually that's not completely true. I really don't feel like explaining my feelings on hipsters again because that is beside the point of this post. Check out my... vlog (?) about hipsters: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNnLsr81iog&feature=channel_video_title

Back on track. The reason I titled this very first blog "This is different" is because I never ever intended on starting a blog, but then I started looking at possible "cool jobs" and many of them require a blog already in the works. This rather obvious discovery birthed my very first blog, I want a cool job. Make sense?

Oh and also, I think Jenna Marbles (Mourey) is the shit and I'm going to try to limit how creepy I get, but I wish we were best friends. Creepy time = over. I'm an English and Communications major, so hopefully this blog doesn't embarrass myself or Augustana College.

-Ashlee