The last 24 hours have been quite trying in the life of Adria.  First my rat dies yesterday afternoon, then I get my period, my blog goes down around midnight and then today MyCoopRocks makes an early announcement of the contest winners…and I’m not one of them.

Now, dealing with grief, physical discomfort, frustration and disbelief is usually a process that most folks experience during a long and drawn out situation, not in the middle of the week!

Loss of a Pet

Justice my rat died (He’s the Orange one).  I had him for 2 years.  I adopted him from the Humane Society of Minneapolis.  I still have his little friend Common but Justice was the cute and cuddly one who would sit in my lap for an hour.  Rats do something similar to cats when they are happy.  It’s called “bruxing”.  They sorta grind their teeth around and their eyes will jiggle.  That means they are really, really happy.  Anyway, Justice used to do that.

Menstrual Wha?

Yeah, cramps!  They suck!  So much that I made a video on YouTube a few weeks back and women are watching it and leaving comments which I think is awesome as this is one of my efforts to be more transparent by sharing non “techie” stuff about myself.  I want to connect with people on things we all deal with, all struggle with.  I am not alway the fixer…sometimes I need fixing.

[youtube width="620" height="420"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGcwFok0_g0[/youtube]

500 Error: Your WordPress Blog is Angry at You

Then, like how the carpenter has a leaky roof, my blog (yes the one your are reading) decides that it is angry and must explode.  I tried to coax it along, asking the database to please wait until the weekend, promising I would migrate it to the new server space at Rochenhost but no….It seized up.  Now I do take responsibility here that I did an in place upgrade to WordPress WPMU 2.7.1 but I was following Richard’s instructions and his first set about configuring WPMU were really good! 

I have been with the same hosting company since 2005.  Now, using software is just like dating in many ways…the longer you are “with” the software or hosting provider, the more attached you feel to them.  In spite of problems around:

• Support (emotional)
• Performance (ladies?)
• Cost (financial stability)
• Communication (Is he hearing you?)
• Cost (lower cost for same or better level of performance..see above)
• Competition (Is this really the best deal in town?)

most people will stay with their partner hosting company.  Well, I realized mine was not paying attention to my needs.  I gave them many chances to improve.  I even spent more money with them…hoping they’d notice me.  I left them nice comments in their tesimonials forum…no change.  I even suspected they were cheating on me not giving me actual answers they knew but were just copy/pasting from a knowledgebase.  Finally, I began looking around and found someone a hosting company that fits my needs.

Did my hosting company go south?  Did our needs/offerings change over time to create the rift?  I know I tried to resolve things and am moving on.

I’ve been testing out Rochenhost for 3 months now.  Not only are they the offical host of all of Joomla.org, they also sponsored Joomla Day Las Vegas, get the big “joke” on green hosting, say all many of their folks are Red Hat certified, have been quick and mostly accurate in their initial responses so I’m satisfied and have started moving my sites over there. 

Now you may be saying, “Adria, don’t you hate Joomla though?  Why would you host with a company that is tuned for Joomla? ”.  The answer is that Joomla, WordPress and many Content Management Systems (CMS) have similar requirements for hosting in reference to Apache, PHP, MySQL, hardware and bandwidth.

You Lost The Contest But Not The Game

So I was pretty pumped about entering the MyCoopRocks contest a few weeks back.  I was sure the judges were going to pick my entry because it had:

• Substance; My list of 10 reasons
• Production value; Chuck Olsen‘s amazing editing and production
• Me of course!

[blip.tv ?posts_id=2017411&dest=-1 width="620" height="420"]

But it seems the judges had other ideas.  I was awaiting Friday May 8th when they would make the announcement on who won but they made it around dinner time Thursday.  Seeing the email, my heart skipped a beat!  Had I won a macbook!  What would the website look like?  What would I tell people on Twitter?

Uhm…yah…No need because I didn’t win!

The good thing I take away from this is that I have masted the skill of networking. 

• I feel comfortable enough in my own skin try something new
• The ability to evaluate my skill set and be realistic about it
• The insight to consider who I know and think about how I can utilize my network
• Tthe courage to ask for help and when receiving it, make the most of it
• The motivation to follow through and thank others for their help

Now, just 4 years ago, I was terrified of speaking in front of people.  Just 1 year ago, I had no experience in front of a camera.  6 months ago I was not doing my daily lifestream at AskAdria.com and 1 month ago I had never met some guy with a camera on site to shoot footage for a contest.

One of my entrepreneurial heroes is R. H. Macy.  He founded the Macy’s Department store but not before he went broke out west selling shovels to miners digging for gold.  He also sold real estate in Wisconsin.  The first shop he opened up in New York City was not a big, spacious retail store…it was more like the with of fruit stand and he sold ladies gloves and hair pins.  From the humble beginning and initial failures, he amassed a fortune and created a memorable landmark/memory/slice of life for many people.

In modern society, it’s seen as shameful to try and fail so most people don’t try at all.  Jeff of CodingHorror.com talks about failing often as a measure of success in programming.  Who cares how many “sites you launched” if they all required the same skill set from you making you no more than a fast paced gerbil on the Internet superhighway’s assembly line?

Fear of failure is so teriffying to people they spend their whole lives taking safe bets.  Many of these same people then grumble when “risk takers” achive amazing things.  Point is, everyone should take risks…intelligent risks where the payoff has been evaluated and it’s something you’re interested in. 

It looks like fear of failure is actually part of perfectionism (so says Wikipedia)

Perfectionism can drive people to accomplishments and provide the motivation to persevere in the face of discouragement and obstacles.  The meticulous attention to detail, necessary for scientific investigation, the commitment which pushes composers to keep working until the music realises the glorious sounds playing in the imagination, and the persistence which keeps great artists at their easels until their creation matches their conception all result from perfectionism”.

In the workplace, perfectionism is often marked by low productivity as individuals lose time and energy on small irrelevant details of larger projects or mundane daily activities. This can lead to depression, alienated colleagues, and a greater risk of accidents.

Five characteristics of perfectionists: procrastination, fear of failure, the all-or-nothing mindset, paralysed perfectionism, and workaholism.

I liked my co-op a lot.  I felt invested enough I could come up with 10 reasons why they were awesome.  After I made my own video, I realized it wasn’t going to win any awards.  I felt I had a strong set of reasons so I set out to find someone who could help me deliver my message in a good format.  Even though I didn’t win, I now have a much better understanding, start to finish, of how to get a video recorded and what the production results can look like! 

So, this last 24 hours might have sucked but I learned a lot.  I’m off to eat my bowl of ice cream now!