Inside the Mind of Suz

Yay.

Why is it that just when everything is going well, Time Warner has to go and mess things up?

Just a few months ago, I was without the CW Network because Time Warner didn’t want to meet and hammer out a new contract to carry LIN TV’s signal. Well, at least that’s how I understood what happened.

Well, now Time Warner has picked a fight with someone else; the big kid on the block. TW done gone and pissed off Viacom! Viacom owns networks like MTV, VH1, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, and a bunch of other networks.

Once again, Time Warner has failed in the negotiation room, at an impasse with Viacom over renewal terms. As a result, Viacom is set to pull its 19 channels Wednesday. Wednesday? Yea, that would be today!

Now, I always blame things on Time Warner because it’s a force of habit. They screwed up with the whole Big Ten Network deal, and I blame them for the CW situation.

However, after reading more about this particular situation with Viacom, I’m not so sure this is Time Warner’s fault. The LA Times also has a good piece up.

Viacom proposed a $.25ish increase, Time Warner said no. Now I know a lot of people are going to be like “it’s just 25 cents, what’s the big deal”, but maybe it’s the principle of the matter. Maybe TW doesn’t want to cave to anyone’s demands. Time Warner says their refusal of Viacom’s price increase was so they could fight for us, their customers. They felt the increase was too much given the economy, industry and its declining viewership numbers.

I don’t know if I believe that so much, as it’s never about us; it’s about their bottom line. Somewhere in those proposed terms must have been something about them receiving less money, or else they wouldn’t care so much. ‘Nawmean?

Anyway, I don’t care what they do, but I’m gonna need these two sides to come to terms ASAP! MTV, Nickelodeon (Nick @ Nite), and Comedy Central are channels I watch religiously. And I will be one pissed off black woman if they take my shit away!

ARGH!

Doesn’t that sound dirty? Well, it’s not, so get your heads out of the gutter!

I recently started Twittering for some of my websites, then thought, “why not a personal account too”? So, I’m starting to get into it. It’s like Facebook status messages, except better. It’s also a great research tool if you’re looking for answers to problems or even the latest news; as it’s starting to break on Twitter before the more traditional news media picks it up.

I’m using the iPhone app Tweetie for my multiple Twitter account needs. So, if you’re on Twitter and would like another person to follow, check me out!

When I’m able to run again, I’ll probably have more updates on podcasts and running on there than I will here since Twitter is about short messages AKA “microblogging”.

So, I’m a month and a half late on this, but better late than never, right?

Anyway, Candace Parker and her man, NBA baller Shelden Williams, eloped last month and got married!

They cited their busy schedules as the reason for the elopement, even though they wanted the “big, traditional” wedding.

Congrats and best wishes to them! They’re a cute couple and it must be very nice that their respective teams are in California.

Check out the vid below where Candace confirms the marriage:

Additionally, the Associated Press named Candace their Female Athlete of the Year. So a big congrats goes out to her for that as well. What a year for the female CP3!

I hope my mother doesn’t see this post, because it will give some validity to one common theme she’s been saying to me for years. I have too many shoes; or so she says. I think I have a lot of shoes, but a girl can never have “too many”, am I right, ladies?

Anyway, I picked out my Christmas outfit and a pair of skinny jeans from Express. I’ve always though that little ankle boots look great with skinny jeans and I remembered that I had a cute pair from Naturalizer that I think my mom bought me for my birthday last year. Because I don’t wear them often, I dug them out of the closet to complete the outfit. And they looked great!

I’ve got quite a few pairs of skinny jeans and cords, so I’ll have to remember to bust out these booties whenever possible. I have to be better about spreading the wealth with my shoe choices. I have quite a collection and it would be fun to show it off!

I also need to start thinking about a New Year’s Eve dress…

It’s the holidays, so I’d like to help put a smile on everyone’s face!

Behold the “Frog in a Blender” interactive game from Joe Cartoon. When I was in college my friends and I died over this. No, seriously. We incorporated some of the frog’s lines into every day conversation. It may not be that funny to you, but hopefully you get a chuckle!

Hey look! I’m spinnin’! I’m spinnin’!

This is just a test post.

I just got an iPhone and installed the official WordPress app. It makes it super easy to post from one’s iPhone. So far I’m liking it so I’m sure I’ll be using it more often!

I’ve already talked about my love for Peyton Manning and his hilarious MasterCard spot. How can you not like Peyton? Don’t answer that! I don’t want to hear any “well, he doesn’t play for my team” lame-o excuses.

Anyway, I have a new fave commercial and it stars my favorite NBA baller, King James of the Cleveland Cavaliers.

Behold LeBron’s “Chalk” commercial to promote his Nike Zoom LeBron VI Shoe. And keep your eyes open as Weezy F. makes a cameo. The song is “Candyman” by Cornershop. [Download, Buy Album] Catchy, is it not?

Love it. Very well done, Nike!

P.S. Nike, please stop making those atrocious gold Swingman Jersey jerseys. They hurt my eyes. kthx

These are mostly for me, for reference, so if you’re tired of seeing them, SUCKS TO BE YOU! Just kidding. Blogging is a big part of my life and online livelihood. It’s important that I know things work before I upgrade.

Anywho, the rest of the WordPress plugins that I listed in my previous post work! I tried them out and had no issues! So it looks like I might be ready to upgrade all of my WP installations.

I’m going to go through all my blogs, one more time, to see if there are any that I missed that still need to be tested! But so far, my holy grail plugins seem to be functional!

The newest to past the test are:

Quizzin’ – an easy WP quiz plugin. Successful on WP 2.7

Statcounter plugin; I installed it on Fergie Fan and it immediately picked up incoming traffic.

WordPress.com Stats; it already worked on a different blog of mine, but after seeing other users have issues, I thought I’d give it another go, just in case! It works on a brand new blog. Thank God, because I use this plugin a lot!

AdSense Manager; I only use this on a few blogs, but I know how to insert code into theme files, so it wouldn’t be a total loss. However, it works, so no worries.

Fun With Theme Widgets; I hadn’t used this before, but I knew I wanted to. I tried it out on a blog and it works. The only thing you have to remember is that you have to move your newly created widget files to whichever theme you decide to use in the future. It’s really neat and easy!

I did Level 3 of Jillian Michaels’ 30 Day Shred for the first time yesterday. And man, what a killer!

If there were a word to describe that workout it would be plyo. All the jump moves made this workout super tough. Not to mention all the exercises from the plank position. Those are hard! You don’t do as many weight exercises because you’re holding your own body weight up.

Of course it didn’t help that the floor I was working out on was kinda slippery (not the wet kind of slippery). Makes it really hard to sustain that plank position!

When I finished I was out of breath, but not more so than Level 2. I hadn’t watched the workout ahead of time — like I usually do — so I didn’t know what was coming. As a result, I missed some of the reps watching Jillian, Natalie, and Anita. I did have to modify a couple of the exercises. I have no issue with that because it gives me something to work towards. By my birthday, I will have done Level 3 almost 10 times.

Although, I will say that after I “finish”, I’m going to be keeping this DVD in my rotation. I can see myself doing this workout a lot. And hopefully I can find another workout featuring intense intervals that I can add to my library! If anyone has any suggestions, let me hear ‘em! I’ve got 3+ months until I can run again!

It’s been a few days and I’m still in the midst of plugin testing for the new WordPress 2.7. So far, most of my plugins are working. From reading blogger and developer updates, it seems that the only plugins that will have conflicts in 2.7 are ones that deal with the admin interface or comments. For example, if you use a dropdown menu plugin, it will just funk up your installation. Deactivate it and move on. Also, if you upgrade using the awesome WordPress Automatic Upgrade Plugin, that will be the last time you use it. The new WP has a built in upgrader and the WPAU is no longer being developed.

Also, the 2.7 Plugin Compatibility list continues to be updated; cutting down on my work.

Here are some more plugins that I use that work:
Popupper – you have to use the Visual Editor to get it to work. That was the case in 2.6.5 as well, so no change there.
Twitter Tools
WassUp
NextGEN Smooth Gallery
ShareThis, although I’m not married to it. Lately, I’m liking Sociable and SocioFluid better. Note, only the widget version of SocioFluid works with WP.
WP-PageNavi has a special version for 2.7 only.
SEO Automatic Links, could be a replacement for alinks, which I need to try.

Plugins that I still need to try include:
Official StatCounter Plugin
Fun with Theme Widgets
WordPress.com Stats, some are reporting issues since upgrade, but it’s working on one of my blogs, so I feel like it’s good to go. Will do more testing though as I rely heavily on this plugin.
Quizzin, a fun little plugin I’d like to keep using.
AdSense Manager

ETA: Tried a couple more plugins and pleased to report that the following do work on 2.7
Insert Video plugin – I used this replace the broken generic video code from Viper’s Video Quicktags
Post-Plugin Library which is used to power the Similar Posts plugin.
Random Quotes. Love this! Much better than any other quotes plugin I’ve seen and tried.

Still got a few more to try, but so far, so good!