AliBlog

Ali's daily twiter digest

• 11:03 Trying and trying to get next issue of magazine down to 40 pages. Can't do it. Too much content. #

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Ali's daily twiter digest

• 12:08 Life is too short not to eat cookie dough from the bowl. #

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Ali's daily twiter digest

• 10:38 are we allowed to eat tomatoes yet? #

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Ali's daily twiter digest

• 07:55 Just received 1,000-word pitch on Whooping Cranes. Um. We're a tech pub. #
• 09:44 Chatting with external folks who liked our employee video contest & want to do one at their co. Great conversation & knowledge-sharing opp. #
• 15:31 Who can't relate to the next big thing at Geek and Poke: tinyurl.com/6gceby #
• 17:03 Traffic jam in driveway. UPS truck, lumber delivery and builder all arrived at same time. Plus, my parents are on their way for dinner. #

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Ali's daily twiter digest

• 08:54 Brainstorm today on ideas for promoting analytics products. I'm into alternative story forms again. I love ASFs but they're hard to pitch. #
• 10:06 I just mis-spelled Ivy League as Ivy Lague. It's clear I attended state schools. #
• 12:23 Proofs of magazine back from printer. Finding errors already. How did I miss these things at last galley? #
• 12:47 Within a few years, we've gone from calling the same basic thing: ASP to SaaS to on demand to cloud computing. What will it be next? #

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Ali's daily twiter digest

• 08:08 Often, a well-written, well-placed sidebar is more likely to be read than a full article. Hard to get people to see that when they want ink. #
• 14:08 Did you know there's a type of atypical migraine that just causes vertigo - but no headache? I'm a bit confused on this point. #
• 20:08 Is today photo changing day? Notice says 7 of my friends changed their profile pics on Facebook. #

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Ali's daily twiter digest

• 11:41 Set up my webex meeting & shared desktop for first time. Easier than I thought it would be. #
• 11:42 What are your thresholds for hyphens in print? Do you notice when there are too many? Do they slow you down? #

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Ali's daily twiter digest

• 08:03 Going through some of our exec presentations. Realizing that I could write entire articles based on single slides. Gold-mine of info here. #
• 08:11 Finally figured out how to use Feedburner for my blog. I went from 3 to 157 subscribers after I forced the feed. #
• 08:12 I know, 157 is nothing to brag about - but I'm thinking I at least have a realistic baseline now. #
• 08:26 Maybe I should ask. Are your feedburner #s for this weekend accurate? I'm not looking at bloated stats, am I? #
• 13:01 What's on your shopping list? www.alacartthebook.com/ List-inspired performane art turned into a book in the style of Tracey Ullman. #

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Ali's daily twiter digest

• 23:31 Finally ordering photos from Baby Z's infant photo shoot. Also, ordering a bunch of prints from flickr. In mood for scrapbooking. #
• 07:50 IM'ing with my 14-yr-old nephew on yahoo. He stayed with us for the last week but last night. #
• 11:38 Baby Z is not excited about the carrots I mashed for her - but she'll tolerate them if I mix in some apple sauce. #
• 11:42 Both Grandmas returned from separate vacations yesterday. Nanny just left with 5-yr-old and 2-yr-old in tow. #
• 11:49 Banner on house of recently deceased vacation-home neighbor: "I'm fine, Goddammit!" They say it's what he kept saying when he got sick. #
• 12:31 Oh. When I say "Nanny," I mean Grandma Nanny. We don't actually have a Nanny. Oh, how I wish ... #
• 12:42 Also, 'vacation home' is a cottage on Lake Michigan that was my G'mas. The WHOLE family - dozens of us - share it. #
• 13:20 Woah. Lightning just cracked RIGHT on top of us. Immediately rushed outside to make sire Jerm wasn't struck. Don't worry. He's safe. #
• 13:36 Just found $7 and a favorite T I hadn't seen in weeks in the dryer. Score! #
• 14:29 Sometimes I forget about the sling. Then we have a fussy day and remembering it is like discovering world peace. #
• 14:57 Baby Z loves Waylon. Makes her daddy proud. #
• 16:19 Just watched end of Johny Cash special on PBS. Anyone ever seen The Row? #

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Ali's daily twiter digest

• 23:01 Busting up over this comment on my blog: I just asked Stan if he knew what twitering was and he said, "You mean like twitering your thumbs?" #
• 08:50 Writing my social media manifesto. Returning to the old standards for inspiration: Cluetrain, Naked Conversations, Wikinomics, etc. #
• 14:57 Muse has struck. Bombarding co-workers with bigish ideas again. Somebody should really limit my caffeine intake. #
• 16:08 Is there a stat/study on the # of times an avg person visits a blog before they engage? (something dfn't than that 1:100 participation #) #

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Ali's daily twiter digest

• 08:54 Was just asked to remove an internal blog post that links to a great discussion on an external industry blog. Refused. Waiting for fallout. #
• 15:26 @MackCollier Some smart responses too. More than 100 within an hour! #
• 17:34 @BeauShaw ooooh. heading there now. #
• 18:06 Making plans to GET OUT OF THE HOUSE for lunch tomorrow. #
• 20:43 @infoholic Can you explain VMWare in 140 characters or less? I'm still trying to grasp the concept. #

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Ali's daily twiter digest

• 21:24 Watching AFI's 10 top 10. Thinking there are a lot of good movies I've never seen. #
• 21:27 @ckeithley A lot of them probably think they do understand it ... but don't. #
• 21:27 @ckeithley A lot of them probably think they do understand it ... but don't. #
• 21:48 @ckeithley Oh yes, the magic toolkit. That's a good way to describe it. #
• 22:09 @MackCollier No. Same as blogging. I subscribe to lots of bloggers who I'm sure don't read/follow my blogs. #
• 08:54 @GoonSquadSarah Your death metal image died in ... oh, I don't know ... 2004 or so. #
• 08:57 What's your trick for version control? How do you make sure you don't miss incorporating edits from 10 different reviewers? #
• 09:10 @GoonSquadSarah They're the most rock n roll kids I know. Hey, check out Thaddeus Rex. He rocked out our library last week. Robey loved it. #
• 09:28 Should you change your company name?tinyurl.com/6hx6sj #
• 09:48 Why I still long for Athens. Not enough Bohemia here. tinyurl.com/5roocg #
• 13:45 @AngelaLipscomb Better yet. You have FRIENDS ( @pgreenbe ) with CRM columns :) ! #
• 14:22 @AngelaLipscomb What a mess! Can you get the actual hotel chain involved to help? Though, you shouldn't have to. #

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First sounds

When Zanna is hungry and pleading to nurse, she says, hnnn, hnnn, hnnn - not ma, ma, ma - yet every word of this passage from Amy Tan's The Bonesetter's Daughter rings true to me:

If there was a language, it was an ancient one that likely existed only in that time ...What does a person need to say? What man, woman, or child does he need to say it to? What do you think was the very first sound to become a word, a meaning? ...

I imagined two people without words, unable to speak to each other. I imagined the need: The color of the sky that meant "Storm." The smell of the fire that meant "Flee." The sound of a tiger about to pounce. Who would worry about such things?

And then I realized what the first word must have been: ma, the sound of a baby smacking its lips in search of her mother's breast. For a long time, that was the only word the baby needed. Ma, ma, ma. Then the mother decided that was her name and she began to speak, too. She taught the baby to be careful: sky, fire, tiger. A mother is always the beginning. She is how things begin.

Zanna turned 6 months old last week, and we almost missed it. We did miss it, to tell you the truth. I didn't realize until a day later that half a year had gone by with her tiny nose, long legs and quick temper filling our life. It goes so fast with your third child. When Robey was an infant, I anticipated every milestone with such wonder. I couldn't wait to feed him his first bite of cereal and start introducing foods at every meal. I'm not sure what I was thinking, but for some reason introducing solids and spooning mush into his mouth seemed easier than nursing.

With Zanna, I just want to nurse. Nothing seems simpler than breast feeding right now. Nothing is rushing me to fill her diet with mashed fruit and whole grains and strained peas. We're giving her a little bit here and a little bit there of each of those things, and she loves every bite - but she also loves nursing herself to sleep and waking up with the food source she's craved since birth. As for me, I love the sound of her hnnn, hnnn, hnnns and the primal ability to satisfy her eager desire to eat.

Moe's ABCs

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Some items that were stored on the computer that now appears to be dead

• Two unfinished business plans.
• Five years worth of Microsoft Money files.
• About 700 CDs worth of music.
• Seven years worth of family photos, completely unorganized.
• Two years worth of random, unlabled video.
• An incomplete list of booksI've read since junior high.
• A dozen freelance writing assignments.
• Hundreds of old-fashioned bookmarks and links stored before the days of del.icio.us.
• An interactive family history chronicling the lives of my four grandparents.
• Thousands of pretentious words written for Grad school writing assignments.