About me

So, a little about me. Um. Ok, here we go — I’m Steph. I’m a 30-something stay-at-home mom, wannabe shutterbug and blogger extraordinaire…at least in my own mind.

I’m married (to Bill) and have three kids: Matt, Lenna and Tricia. We’ve got 2 cats (Lou and KitCat) and 1 dog (Liberty). My husband says no more pets. I say we need a bird and some fish. So, we’ll see.

We live in a lovely little community. Well, most people think it’s lovely. Being the absolute freak that I am, I call it Stepford, and I regularly discuss some of the goings-on ’round here. (Mention Mens’ Night Out, and my head is apt to explode.)

Mostly that’s just jealousy that I most definitely am not the kind of wife and mom who raises three kids, cleans the house, participates in PTO, knits fabulous sweaters, cooks five course meals and more, all while looking absolutely perfect. I’m more the kind of wife and mom who marks her calendar when she manages to comb her hair on any given day.

Anyway, I’ve just started goofing around with my camera and Adobe Photoshop CS3 a little, and so far, I’m loving it. Whether or not I’m any good at it, I’ll let you judge for yourself.

I’m addicted to…media. Books, TV, music, movies…I’m a junkie. I love it all.

My basic stance in life is “Do your thing, and let me do mine.” Don’t get me wrong — I have strong opinions on a lot of topics, but that’s mostly just for the sake of argument. When it comes down to real-life, though, I’m one of those folks who lives and lets live.

Yeah. I’m all done talking about myself now. Wait. One more thing — Liam and Ralph, as much as I love dark, moody, British men, especially those who perform in Academy Award winning movies, I simply cannot be with either of you as I’m already married. Now go nurse your broken hearts somewhere else.

The Geek Stuff

First, I love WordPress. It is, in my never-humble opinion, one of the best blogging platforms around. There are layouts for days and days and days all just waiting for me to find and tweak. And the plug-ins. Hooooo boy. There are some doozies out there. Nearly anything you want to do with WordPress can be done via one plug-in or another. Here’s my list (along with descriptions and links so you can get ‘em, too, if you want):

Akismet: This is a plug-in that catches spam before it hits your comments. As of 1/14/2008, Akismet’s caught 1028 spam comments for me, and I can’t praise it enough. It keeps the bad stuff out without me having to do a single dang thing. (I do check periodically to make sure legitimate comments aren’t being marked, and so far, so good.)

All in one SEO Pack: This plug-in optimizes your blog for search engines. (Um, like that wasn’t clear from the name? Der, Steph.)

Broken Link Checker: This does pretty much exactly what it says - it checks your blog for broken links. Since I’m obsessive-compulsive and lazy, I love it.

Comment Timeout: Aside from reducing spam like whoa, this plug-in is helpful to those of you who subscribe to comments but don’t want to be hearing about how awesome a WwT was 23 days afterward.

Dofollow: It’s a movement, people! Share your linky-love, and let your commenters improve their PageRanks just by doing what they already do — commenting on your blog.

Favicon Manager: Because really, branding your blog shouldn’t end at the address bar, and if you’ve ever tried to install a favicon yourself, you know it can be a pain. This plug-in ends makes it easy-peasy.

FeedBurner FeedSmith: This sucker finds all the ways to access your feeds and redirects ‘em to your Feedburner feed so you can track every last one of your subscribers. Pretty handy, huh?

Google XML Sitemaps: Because you need to talk to Google, if you want to have Google talk about you.

Similar Posts: This lets your readers find other relevant posts without having to do a single thing. Pretty handy, huh?

Simple Tags: For anyone who’s ever had plugins and plug-ins as tags just because you forgot which one you used last time, you’ll see why this is a thing of beauty with no explanation required from me.

Subscribe to Comments: This is what makes those e-mail notifications you get when you comment happen. This is definitely a plug-in I think is must-have. Who wants to keep checking back for comments?

TinyMCEComments: This is the plug-in that puts the little editor in the comments section so you (and I) don’t have to remember code.

Upcoming Events: Thanks to this plug-in, I can stick something on my Google calendar and have it show up on my blog. You’ll never forget my birthday again.

WordPress.com Stats: You’ll have to have an API key, but you’ve already got that because you installed Akismet, right? RIGHT? This tracks your blog’s stats and gives you the information you want most - what’s being read and how often.

WPContactForm: This handy, dandy little plug-in made creating a contact page completely painless.

WP-Polls: This is the handy gadget that lets me make polls without wanting to cry like a little girl who just lost her favorite Barbie.

WP YouTube: Ah, how did I post so many WwT without this plug-in? I don’t know, and I don’t care to go back to that. This plug-in makes YouTube videos more custom to your blog. (In other words, no more of the WwT breaking my layout! WOO!)