Average Jane

Average Jane Is Giving Away A Logitech Mouse

***This giveaway is now closed.***

A couple of years ago at the BlogHer Conference I managed to get an invitation to a Clever Girls Collective tech brunch. Among the wonderful sponsor products in the gift bags there was a beautiful Logitech wireless mouse that I've been using ever since.

The company recently contacted me about their new Logitech® Eye Candy Color Collection. I had the option of getting a new mouse from them but because I'm still perfectly happy with the one I already have, I decided to give one away instead.

My giveaway will be the winner's choice of design from the M325 series. 

As I said, I've been really happy with the one I have and these look like they're a similar shape. The battery life is excellent and they're otherwise very reliable. I use mine for my desktop computer at home and I appreciate it even more now that I'm in two-finger scrolling hell with my work laptop.

If you'd like to win one, simply leave a comment and tell me why you could use a new mouse.

I'll give you an extra entry if you tweet: I entered to win a Logitech mouse from @average_jane http://bit.ly/13QRmFK (limit one extra entry per person).

All comments must be posted by Monday, June 24, 2013 at noon CDT. Winner will be chosen by random drawing. Make sure I have your email address so I can contact you if you win.

Good luck!

* * * Update * * *

Congratulations to drawing winner Lisa Rand! She wanted to win to give her sister a nice, new mouse. Seems like karma was on her side!

Average Jane Wants To Help

My husband lets Trillian and Dr. Jones visit the studio for "field trips" away from the main part of the house. That's all well and good, except that Trillian gets a little overly enthusiastic about saying "hi" when I'm at my desk, which has resulted in at least once instance of a file on my desktop being renamed something along the lines of: s;lkjdffd;ljk.

However, it turns out there's a company that has it all thought out when it comes to computer backup needs, including cat-related ones.

SurDoc offers cloud storage for file protection, online access and sharing. They've given me a free 30GB account in exchange for writing this post and you can get one as well using the code CATPROOF. (Obviously you're welcome to get an account to use even if you're in no danger of cat-initiated data loss.)

They do automatic backups for PCs, and Mac users can do easy manual backups of vital information.

I don't know about you, but I'm pretty terrible about backups in general, even though I've been a computer user for decades and should know better.

Think about all of the cat photos I'd lose if something happened!

Average Jane Protests SOPA and PIPA

For more information, visit SOPAStrike.com.

Here's the most detailed post I've seen explaining why this legislation is so bad.

Average Jane Digitally Cleans House

The timing may seem a little odd in a month when I'm posting daily on this blog, but yesterday I deleted my other blog.

Kansas City Kitty came about when Average Jane was still largely pseudonymous—I'm going to guess it was around 2005. I wanted a place to talk about things happening in Kansas City, so I started the second blog and recruited my local friends Cagey, Rita and Goofy Girl as co-contributors.

We posted mostly about places to eat and things to do in the area. When I pulled the plug yesterday, I don't think anyone had posted in at least six months and I completely understand why. The blog had long since outlived its original purpose and usefulness. My main blog has included my real name and city for years and I really don't need to shunt local content off to a separate place.

Next on my agenda is deleting all of my disused MySpace accounts. According to the password list I looked up from my browser preferences, I have about eight of them (mostly old bands, but there's one personal one and one associated with Kansas City Kitty). I've been going through them one by one and asking to close the accounts, but I don't think that's actually happening. The last message always says there will be a confirmation email with a link that has to be clicked to complete the deletion, but I haven't gotten a single email yet.

I did go ahead and close the Gmail account associated with Kansas City Kitty. That was satisfying because there are several people who seem to believe that it's their email address. I was constantly getting messages about kids' soccer leagues, QVC purchases, church activities, etc. It was rather annoying.

Big thanks to Tish Grier for giving me the idea to start clearing out my digital clutter.

Have you done anything similar?

Average Jane Reads

One of the main reasons I wanted an iPad was so I could get the Kindle app. I'd read several books on my sister's actual Kindle, but I wasn't a big fan of the interface. I couldn't get used to pressing the buttons to turn the pages and I didn't like that the device relied on outside illumination.

The Kindle app on the iPad feels much more intuitive to me: to turn the page, you swipe your finger from right to left. Because I'm used to reading a glowing screen when I'm online, I don't have any problems reading books that way as well.

In some ways, downloadable literature is a little too convenient. On September 13th, A Librarian mentioned on Facebook that Soulless by Gail Carriger was the Amazon deal of the day for only $1.99. I downloaded it immediately and started reading it as soon as I got home from work that evening.

A mere 10 days later, I have made my way through the entire series and just finished reading the fourth book, Heartless, this morning while I waited for the hardwood floor guy to nail down our new shoe molding. (Incidentally, I've had this song stuck in my head ever since I borrowed the paperback from A Librarian yesterday).

It's a fun series set in a version of Victorian England that includes vampires, werewolves and a good-sized helping of steampunk. It's also quite funny. I enjoyed them a great deal and burned through the existing books in the series so quickly that I'm chafing a bit at the thought that I'll have to wait until next spring to see what happens next.

By the way, since the first book isn't on sale anymore, if you want to read the series I'd recommend buying the first three books as a bundle for $19.99, which will save you money. And just so you know, the Amazon links are merely for your convenience--I have never bothered to set myself up as an affiliate, so I have nothing to gain if you click through and buy something.

Now that my busy summer is over, I'm looking forward to jumping back into my many and varied book clubs. The Kindle app will make it much more convenient to get my hands on the books and get them read in plenty of time.

I just need to keep an eye on how much I'm spending with Amazon. When you combine one-click Kindle purchases with the frequent streaming video purchases that facilitate most of our cable TV show viewing, it can really add up.

Average Jane's Favorite Apps

I saw a post the other day where someone listed the web and smart phone applications they like the most, so I figured I'd do the same. I'm certainly not saying any of these things are the best--they're just what I like to use.

My browser of choice is Firefox. I know Yvonne just tried it and hated it, but I've been using it for years and I'm very comfortable with the tabbed browsing. I don't use any of the add-ons, but I have tweaked it a bit to go faster.

For e-mail I use Gmail. I actually have a bunch of different Gmail accounts and I funnel them all into my main account. At first it was a little challenging to get used to the lack of folder storage, but once I got the hang of doing searches of my archives, I loved it.

My favorite Twitter app is Hootsuite. It's easy to use, there's nothing to download, you can monitor multiple Twitter accounts with it, and I like being able to have lots of search columns to track hashtags, etc.

For my feed reader, I used Bloglines until their downtime issues got to be too egregious. Now I use Google Reader and absolutely love it. The social aspects of it are great. My favorite aspects of it are sharing things I've found and reading other people's shared items. It's also really handy that you can "star" things to keep them stored for later.

When it comes to games, I have two favorites in Facebook and one iPhone obsession. On Facebook I play Bejeweled Blitz and Lexulous. Cagey got me hooked on Angry Birds, so that's what I mostly play on my phone. It's a fun and sometime frustrating way to kill time.

The photo in this post is from the Magic Artist app on my iPhone. I play with it from time to time. I also have ShakeItPhoto, which comes out looking like a Polaroid (and you shake your phone to "develop" it). I've avoided Hipstamatic like the plague because I was already tired of seeing its photo style before I even got an iPhone.

I recently downloaded the Poynt app, which is useful for finding nearby restaurants and also the cheapest gas in your area. It has movie and business search capabilities as well, but I haven't used those yet.

The final app that I use quite a bit is the one for IMDB. You never know when you might want to find out how old or how tall an actor is.

What are the apps you use every day?

Average Jane Unplugs (Temporarily)

I have a four-day weekend starting this Friday and I've decided that the best and only way to accomplish everything I need to accomplish in those days is to disconnect from the 'net.

Am I an Internet addict? Yes. Most definitely. Checking in online is the first thing I do in the morning and the last thing I do before I go to bed. My job keeps me online all day and my own compulsions keep me online most of the rest of the time.

Thus, I'm unplugging this weekend. It will keep me free of distraction while I clean out my office and dressing room. It will allow me to finally get around to scrubbing and re-sealing the kitchen and bathroom floors. It will mean that I don't have to worry about shutting down my computer when I turn off the power to wire up the new bedroom ceiling fan (which I have been meaning to install for a long time).

I won't be running off to check everyone's Facebook updates when I should be cleaning and re-caulking the shower. My Google Reader feeds won't get in the way of my weeding the garden or sorting and disposing of many months' worth of junk mail. 

Best of all, I can give my husband my undivided attention while we're hanging out all weekend. No tweeting at the dinner table. No saying "just let me run upstairs" before we start a movie. Just two people having conversations and being in the moment.

I'm sure the cats will appreciate the extra attention as well.

So what do you have planned this weekend?

Photo is a Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike image shared by Flickr user trekkyandy.

Average Jane LOLs

I have been waiting for someone in my real Facebook universe to produce something worthy of Failbook and today was the big day.

Witness the exchange below, with names and avatars removed to protect both the deliberately joking (the post originator and commenter #1, who happens to be me) and the completely clueless (commenter #2, who obviously didn't read my comment). Click to embiggen, if you can't read it.

 

For a little bit of background, this refers to the results of an actual mayoral race in a nearby suburb, although obviously the new mayor is not the long-dead former Ozzy guitarist.

But, yeah! We need more musicians to lead the way...rock on!

Average Jane vs. the Term Paper Sp@mmers

Lately my blog (among others) has become a magnet for an obnoxious group of sites that apparently sell plagiarized (plagiarizable?) term papers to students. They have actual humans, whom I envision working in a high-tech, third-world sweatshop, manually leaving comments and plugging in the correct CAPTCHA responses so that the links to their sites might get some search engine juice.

I have my blog set up so that each comment is e-mailed to me, so I can delete the sp@m comments and block the IP addresses immediately. However, because they're always on old posts, I imagine many bloggers may not notice them.

It's also occurred to me that because many of the comments reference the content of the post, part of the already unethical service these sites offer might include scraping blog feeds and selling the content as essays. I don't know of any way to check whether or not that's happened to my blog, but I certainly hope not.

As someone who was a huge procrastinator in college but still managed to write a ridiculous number of essays and reports all by herself, I find it appalling that any student would buy papers. It's especially stupid because it's so easy for a professor to find out, as whatladder reported recently. Lazy, unethical and thoughtless: there's the bottom of the next generation's barrel for you.

That's my latest rant. I promise I'll write about something more fun and positive next time.

Average Jane Likes Web Comics

Lately I've frequently been meme'd into making lists of blogs I like, but I always end up leaving out anything that isn't strictly a personal blog.

One of my favorite outside categories is online comic strips. Here are my current favorites:

• Basic Instructions
• XKCD
• Cat and Girl
• Diesel Sweeties

Do you know of any more I should be following?