Comotized.Com

Puffin died in her sleep a few weeks ago (she was 3+ years old) so I decided to use the gift card my mo’s got me for Christmas to get a new one.

Not a russian dwarf hamster like puffin, as my goal wasn’t to replace her but more to ease my mind from staring at her empty cage. So I chose a chinese dwarf hamster whom I named MingMei.

Sadly MingMei didn’t work out. No matter how long and how hard I tried I just couldn’t get her to warm up and be comfortable with me.

If you so much as glanced wrong in her direction she’d freak out and I felt that I was causing her more stress than she needed so I returned her to the store after interrogating the personnel about what would happen to her once I officially returned her.

After a long conversation of her well being I was finally comfortable enough to let her go. I just had to know for sure that she’d be okay.

She’s now with a group of her peers and seems much calmer and happier so I’m happy for her and hope she finds a master she’s more comfortable with, we just weren’t a match.

I used the money from her return to get a more suitable hamster, non-chinese this time. It’s quite apparent that them and I don’t mix very well. So I chose a roborovskii dwarf hamster to be my faithful pet.

Robos are the smallest in the dwarf family, only reaching 2 to 2 1/2 inches in length but their mannerisms and attitudes are most similar to that of the russian which is what puffin was.

So far she’s acting as expected, super curious, cautious but not skittish or scared.

Right now I’m at the stage where I place my hand in her cage and talk softly to her for 20 to 30 minutes a day to let her learn my voice and scent.

On the third day I’ll move to petting her gently on the head and offering her treats from my hand then on day 9 we’ll start picking her up and holding her for about 5 minutes at a time with the reward being time to play in her kritter crawler.

I’ll miss MingMei and I’m deeply saddened that I had to return her. If the situation wasn’t causing her stress i would have kept her but it was vastly apparent that my mere presence scared her to pieces. If she’s happy then I’m okay so I’ll just have to leave it at that for now. My returning her was the best thing I could do for her.

New Robo Hami Photograph

This is just a quick post to give props to Neil Simon, the author of the wonderful DandyID Services WordPress plugin that you can catch a glimpse of in my sidebar in the “message center’ section.

I was having issues with the plugin widget tearing apart my bottom sidebars and couldn’t figure out the proper php snippet to pull it into my normal sidebar.

Normally when a plugin doesn’t work or breaks something in this manner I chuck it because it’s been my experience in the past that plugin authors ignore their users email questions, but I liked this plugin and wanted to use it on comotized, so I took a chance.

Low and behold good ole’ Neil responded, a response I wasn’t used to so I was utterly ecstatic.

After passing emails back and forth he finally got the plugin working for me. Not a huge gesture in some books but due to my past experiences it’s a big one for me.

If you run a WordPress blog and are a member of multiple social sites like last.fm, plurk, twitter, flickr, myspace and the like you should definitely check this plugin out. It works wonderfully and the author kicks ass, what’s not to like?

Again, kudos to Neil Simon and many thanks to him for working with me. I appreciate it a great deal!

Edit: the php snippet for the DandyID Services plugin is below:


< ?php dandyIDServices_buildTable(); ?>


After months upon months of waiting for our beloved whuddleworld to return to what we were told was a permanent demise (we still had hopes) whuddleworld has finally returned to us.

Massive amounts of pre-existing members along with new users intrigued by their already membered friends ran in hoards to log in and create new accounts hoping the site would have some new and interesting things to see or at least work as well as we were used to.

But what we logged in to find was a site riddled with bugs, parts of the site that had been working prior to the fall were removed, there were no wafers, no polls and no daily trivia. Hell we couldn’t even shop or get to local places on the site and the only excuse we were given is ‘pardon our dust’.

Apparently the new management decided to open before running through and checking everything over and even after checking everything over there are still no wafers, no new items, no new locations and now we’re presented with an annoying flash banner before we can even enter the site.

Are we disappointed? Yes. Do we have the right to be? Yes. If we sat back thinking our beloved site was dead and still rushed forward to log in after such a long period of time don’t you think we should at least be able to log in to a place that’s as good as the place we were forced to leave?

The site was in full working order when the management team closed it’s doors. There are no excuses for all the bugs and missing parts. Being a new owner does not excuse stupidity for fucking things up.

I mean have you, or haven’t you, heard of the term ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’? If you haven’t then I guess you were born in a box and raised there because you royally fucked up in this area.

I know a lot of members are content and happy just with the site coming back to life but a lot more of us are pissed off and disappointed and we have every right to be. They were handed a fully working site with loving, faithful members on a gold plated platter and this is how they treat it.

It wasn’t worth the wait.

The freebies section is now completely back up.

I’ve rearranged it and changed the style from my old freebie page.

All freebies are now located directly on the freebie page, which is broken into two pages.

No more clicking to visit individual pages of content. Looks nicer, fuller and is much easier to use not to mention far less time consuming.

Enjoy!