Temerity Jane

Someone needs your help, Internet.

**UPDATED AT THE BOTTOM**

Ok, so, yesterday I said I needed your help with something. I never found a spare moment at work to post about it, I was too busy instructing the toaster breaker to read the entire toaster manual before he toasted anything. And offering to supervisr his first toasting adventure.

THEN I went to babysit, and Noah was, as always, hilaaaarious. I don’t really know how to explain Noah. He’s just flat out entertaining. And my maturity level may dip from time to time, but I’m generally not on par with the toddler set. This is not a normal toddler, people. He has … comedic timing and stuff. He laughs and smiles ALL the time. Though lately he has a little bit been playing the “selectively deaf” card, especially when it comes time to put his pajamas on after I take him out of the bath, it’s even hard not to laugh then, because I know I shouldn’t, because I’m pretty sure tearing off down the hall naked is generally frowned up.

Something that’s really amazing about Noah lately is that back when I first met him, he didn’t say too many words. I have a video of him on my phone from just about a year ago now. Him in his highchair, me in front of him, and I would say “Can you say… cat?” and he says “meeowww,” and we go through a couple of animals like that. Then I ask him to say our names, and he says “Wee wah” for himself, and a sound for my name, from back when he couldn’t say my name and before it had morphed into “Cookie.”

We used to watch the videos on my phone all the time because it was an easy way to make him smile and laugh, back before he was communicating as well verbally, but now that he’s talking non-stop, a mile a minute, it’s much more easy for me to interact with him in more ways than just “let’s watch this video for the 800th time!,” so we haven’t watched any of the videos on my phone in months (the animal one, one of him stuck in my giant hoodie, one of him counting to 13, one of him climbing on me like furniture).

He’s completely different now, since it’s been a year – he pronounces both of our names, he does WAY more animals – his monkey sound is dead on, and you should see what he does when you ask him to do a mouse sound – but the last two times I was there, he’s been doing something interesting. He comes up in front of me and says “Can you say… Cat? Meeeow. Can you say… lion? Rooaaar!” and he goes through all the animals in that video – the one he hasn’t seen in months. And then he goes through our names. And not only does he say “Wee wah” and the sound he used to make for my name, he makes the same handgestures, too.

Hasn’t seen the video in MONTHS, and is now repeating it back to me, verbatim. With mispronunciations for words he now says clearly, hand gestures and everything.

Kids are freaking IMPRESSIVE.

So yeah, I was coming home from babysitting last night, coming up on 11pm, and… I hit a traffic jam. Completely ridiculous and unexpected. As I moved farther along, I could see that it was because of an accident but… it didn’t make sense. On MY side of the highway, traffic was backed way up. The OTHER direction of the highway seemed to be completely closed – no one driving on it. I moved a little farther up, and on my side, there was a white car, by itself, crashed head on into the middle cement divider, with its butt end out in the lane, so no one was going through that lane. There was a man just leaning on the divider near the car, no one else or police around. FARTHER down the road, I mean a good 5 minutes (in slow slow traffic), there was a TON of glass in the road, and a black car, crashed the same way, with a couple of people around it. Now, that’s on MY side of the highway. The OTHER side, going in the other direction, was completely empty except for police cars and firetrucks and ambulances. So I saw two crashed cars, no where near each other, and tons of flashy light vehicles on the OTHER side. I couldn’t really piece together what happened there.

So I got home late, then I spent way too late on the phone as well, so THAT is why I didn’t ask for your help yesterday, Internet.

So, I will now.

This is really, really important. And I have to tell you that I and the HMFIC will really, really appreciate your help on this.

There’s a survey that goes out to organizations every year asking about the kind of software they use in running their website. The survey is put out by a “big deal” non-profit type company, and as we work with non-profits and provide them with this type of software, these kinds of evaluation type surveys are a big deal. When the survey time comes around, an email goes out from the HMFIC to our clients letting them know that the survey is there and that we’d appreciate it if they’d filled it out about our software, as they’re using it. They get a chance to grade the software they’re using, we don’t ask people to fill it out and praise us, but we DO ask them to fill it out honestly, because with all the big players out in this field, it’s important that we’re seen, and that it’s known that people use our stuff.

Well, INTERNET, they left us OFF the survey this year. And this is not cool. It is extremely uncool. The people this survey goes out to are busy people, and if they even find the time to fill in the survey ( we offer our clients an incentive for filling it out, but you know you never get near 100% response to these things), they might give up upon finding out they can’t just click a little button to indicate that they use our software. The HMFIC has inquired as to why we were left off, but has received no response so far and lo, the masses are not pleased.

So, Internet, it’s been requested of me to ask for your help in sending a little message. I would like it if you could take 5 to 7 minutes to fill out this survey. Will the questions apply to you? Probably not. But we got left off, and in this kind of business, you know, you need to have your name out there. I don’t really know how to express the importance, but it’s a Very Big Deal to us, and we really, REALLY would appreciate your help.

I know that when people call for “just 5 minutes of my time” to fill out a survey, I admit, I don’t usually do it. I’m kind of a butthead like that. That’s why I’m offering YOU guys an incentive. It really will only take a couple of minutes, and your answers do not matter to us except for one. When you get to the part that asks you what software you use, there’s a box at the bottom of the long and SEEMINGLY COMPREHENSIVE list for “Other,” and we would like you to choose that and write in “OnDeposit by Antharia.” At no time will you be required to enter your email or any personally identifying information.

Is this the “correct” thing to do? Well… probably not. But like I said, this is a competitive business, they’re sending this survey out to OUR clients, with the names of all of our competitors ALL over it, and the results will be sent out to those requesting them. Our name HAS to be on there, we have a spot in the non-profit technology world, and we want to hold on to it.

So, Internet, I hope I haven’t ever asked you for TOO many favors, and I hope I can burn up my one “do me a solid” request from you guys right now.

1. Here is the survey link.

2. The first 20 people to fill it out will receive a small gift of appreciation. Because we really and truly WILL appreciate this. Your gift will be shaped like a fish and will include a hand written note of appreciation and awesomeness from me. Yes, it’s just a token thing, but we do what we can.

3. To claim your gift, simply take a screenshot of the last screen (it is a screen asking you to enter your email if you’d like to receive the results report. It is not required to fill out) and send it to me.

4. And I’ve been thinking, about how yesterday I said I would do… something… if we reached a certain number of responses. Well, I’ve come up with something. Posting has been sparse around here lately, and I know it has sucked. If we get 50 people to respond, I will pick a day and blog every hour, on the hour, for 24 straight hours. If it goes some amount above 50, well, I’ll do it with BlogTV turned on as well.

I think that the fact that I’ve been so brain-locked and am offering to make 24 decent posts, which is more than I’ve managed in the last 3 months combined, should express to you how big of a deal this is to us.

Last notes:

1. No video today, weird, huh? Well, it’s because I have plans for a Doom-focused 5 things, and I need to wait until we’re both ready. Hopefully later today, but definitely this weekend.

2. I am suddenly quite looking forward to going to Arizona, and I’m going to attempt to take my flip camera with me. You know, in case Arizona somehow turns out to be rad.

3. This is my desk.

UPDATE: Holy CRAP, you guys are AWESOME. If I had known we’d get this kind of response, I would have set the bar WAY higher for the 24 hours of posting thing.

We’ve already received the first 20 responses, so thank you to all those people, and you should have gotten a thank you email from me that you can send a response to to claim your little prize. However, don’t forget that even though the fish prizes are gone, I’ve still offered incentive for 50 responses and above. Keep sending me those emails!

THANK YOU!