The perils of Gmail.

You know how Gmail anticipates the email address when you start to type it? Like, you'll type in "b" for "babysitter" and it'll pull up "big-name author you emailed last year?"

You see where this is going?

Yes, I did it. I invited a famous author to babysit for Bean next week.

Fortunately, she has a sense of humor and responded kindly to let me know that I'd probably emailed the wrong person. (She was also kind enough to let me know that she wasn't available, which not all babysitters do.)

I'd love to know the most embarrassing thing you've ever done on email...

The rush of the 21st century.

There have been moments over the last few years when I've finally made some particular technological jump, and each time, I've felt the same ecstasy: "Ah, I've finally joined the 21st century!" I felt that way when I bought Mr. Plain(s)feminist a CD player back in 2000. I felt that way when I, somewhat reluctantly, bought a DVD player in around 2003. I felt that way when I ditched my analog cell phone and bought a digital one in 2005, and when I finally bought an MP3 player in the same year.

Mr. Plain(s)feminist recently bought me a flash drive so that I could work on a borrowed laptop last week while I was on a writing retreat. He also pointed out that it was high time that I back up my files - which I hadn't done since, oh, say, 2003, when I was writing my dissertation. And even then, I'm pretty sure I wasn't backing up anything except for my dissertation files.

Now, I know that this is not a good thing. I know that everyone should back up their files, often. Here's the thing: when I last backed up my files, 'way back in 2003, I was still using disks.

No, not cds. DISKETTES.

You youngsters may not remember diskettes, but it is impossible to get very much information on them. Thus, backing up one's files meant a little pile of diskettes, each with a portion of a particular file on it. And, it took a very long time.

So imagine my surprise when, this afternoon, I finally bit the bullet, sat down in front of the computer, and backed up all of my work on my flash drive, and then backed it up a second time on ONE (1) CD. In like, ten minutes. And then I backed up my photos on another CD. I felt so giddy at the ease and speed of the process that I then began going through all of my old diskettes, erasing them one by one - because, surely, there are a couple of others out there who still have computers that can read them - and tossing them into the trash.

So, today, yet again, I have that wonderful feeling of being one with technology: I have backed up my files, and I have done it without using diskettes.

Thank you very much, and goodnight.

The new Technorati sucks.

It just does. I used to be able to look up my blog ranking easily - it would give me a number (the number of websites that link) and a rankings (the number of blogs more popular than mine, essentially). And Technorati used to update my ranking quite regularly.

Now - I have a number of new sites linking to me over the past couple of weeks, but none of them are showing up on my Technorati searches. And when I search from the main page, I have to run two searches - first a search that results in "There is nothing in the known universe about plainsfeminist," and then I have to click on "blogs" on that page in order to find any links to my blog.

Technorati has helpfully set up a blogsearch-only page at s.technorati.com, but it doesn't give the ranking, nor does it allow you to order the results by "freshness" (recent links), which the old Technorati used to do.

Essentially, what they've done is to make Technorati faster so that people could search everything, all over the web. I guess that's great, if that's what you need Technorati for, but why fix the blog search and ranking when it ain't broke?

SO not impressed.