Ask Kalena

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Hi gang

Just wanted to let you know that due to a relocation overseas, I am taking a break from posting on this blog. We are moving back to our beloved Banks Peninsula near Christchurch, New Zealand and I am up to my ears in boxes right now.

Thanks for your patience and look out for my next post in about 2 weeks.

Popularity: 41%

I finally get it. I’ve seen the light and I’ve become a born-again social media whore!

I was starting to despair that I’d never see much benefit from social media, despite my consistent participation within the Sphinn community and my few attempts at Digg and Del.icio.us. But this morning changed all that. You see, this morning, somebody found my blog post Dumbass of the Week: the Call Center Cow and decided to Stumble It.

I’m not sure what they call it on StumbleUpon when a post goes hot or becomes popular, but it must have made front page or something because this blog went from 480 visitors yesterday to 25,321 today - I kid you not! That’s three times my traffic for the whole of December in a SINGLE DAY. 24,480 of those visits were from StumbleUpon. Even my feed subscriber list increased by 120 - the most new subscribers I’ve ever had in a single day.

The resulting traffic exceeded my server’s bandwidth limit and shut down my site, but luckily I noticed within a few minutes and managed to double my bandwidth allowance to cope with the gridlock. I still don’t know who stumbled my post but THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU! My faith in social media has been restored and I’ve been given fresh incentive for blogging.

Praise the lord blog and pass the keyboard!

Popularity: 46%

So it’s 10am at work and I am trying to wade through my mountain of tasks in the few hours I’ve got before I need to pick up my son from daycare. The phone rings. The conversation goes like this:

Me: “Hello, Kalena speaking”

Call Center Cow: “Is this Kalena?“

Me: “Yes, who is this?”

Call Center Cow: “Hi Kalena, how ARE you?”

Me: “Fine thanks, who is this?”

Call Center Cow: “Do you have a few minutes?”

Me: “Who IS this?”

Call Center Cow: “My name is [whatever - didn’t catch it and it was probably made up anyway]. I’m calling from New York Commodities”

Me: [I hang up the phone]

30 second pause and then the phone rings again

Me: “Hello, Kalena speaking”

Call Center Cow: “Kalena, why did you just hang up on me?”

Me: “Didn’t you say you were calling from New York Commodities?”

Call Center Cow: “Yes, but I just wanted…”

Me: “Are you trying to sell me stocks?”

Call Center Cow: “No, actually options are different to stocks”

By now, I’ve got a serious case of phone rage.

Me: “Just a minute…”

At this point, I place the receiver on top of my PC speaker and turn the volume waaay up. It happens to be playing the world’s most annoying song, The Reflex by Duran Duran. (I knew those 80’s CDs would come in handy some day).

When I checked 5 minutes later, Call Center Cow had hung up. What a shame.

Popularity: 97%

Hi everyone!

I just wanted to wish you all a belated Merry Christmas and happy holidays. You might have noticed I took some time off from the blog over Christmas. I decided to spend some time with family for a change instead of with my laptop, for which my family was extremely grateful.

Apart from having the stress and responsibility for cooking the turkey this year, I had a relaxing break and I’m only now easing myself back into work. Whatever you did, wherever you went dear readers, I hope your holiday was thoroughly enjoyable as well.

I can’t quite believe New Year’s Eve is almost upon us, but here’s cheers to a shiny New Year. May it bring you everything you hope for and more. As for me, I just hope that 2008 is a LOT less stressful than 2007 was. My family and I are moving back to our beloved New Zealand and we can’t wait.

Happy New Year!

Popularity: 29%

As you can see, I’ve moved the blog to a new WordPress template and it’s own domain. What do you think?

I bought both askkalena.com and ask-kalena.com and even though the first one is the most obvious, I decided to use the latter as it’s easier to read as a URL. I made sure to park the other domain to this one so I get the traffic from people typing in the more obvious URL. I spent a long time searching the WordPress cellars for a template I liked and then I had to bribe the author to turn it from a 2 column into a 3 column, but I’m really happy with the result.

I thought it was going to be a nightmare moving from Blogger FTP hosted to WordPress but it turned out pretty simple in the end because I decided to keep my archives in place at the old domain and merely redirect the main blog page. If you ever want to scan the archives of the old blog, you’ll find links to them on the bottom left of the nav menu. Archives prior to January 07 are available from any of the old archive pages.

So I’ve been absolutely blown away by how feature-rich WordPress is and by all the incredible plug-ins designed for WP by clever developers. I can’t believe I waited this long before migrating from Blogger to WordPress.

I’d love to hear your feedback on the new blog design, so please leave your comments. If you’re new here, please subscribe using my shiny new red RSS button on the left. Make yourselves at home!

Popularity: 23%