disalarming

As promised, I’m back! It’s finally January 1, 2010, which means that it’s time to show off a newly revamped breakthesky.net! But before I get into the nitty gritty details of what’s new around here, I want to delve into the exciting stuff: I’m holding a Twitter contest to celebrate my blog’s relaunch!

Longtime readers of my blog know I like to dabble in crafting whenever I have the time to do so. In the last month or so that I’ve been away, I’ve whipped up three knitted cupcakes with removable cake cases to give away to three lucky participants of my Twitter contest! Please hover over the images to read the cupcake description.

Each cupcake has its own Twitter #hashtag, depending on the color of the cupcake case:

RT @eternitycrash: Blog Relaunch Event! http://breakthesky.net #breaktheskypink

RT @eternitycrash: Blog Relaunch Event! http://breakthesky.net #breaktheskyyellow

RT @eternitycrash: Blog Relaunch Event! http://breakthesky.net #breaktheskyblue

Participants will pick one of the above #hashtags to retweet, depending on which cupcake they like best. This ensures that there will be three different winners for each cupcake, as it wouldn’t be fair if one person won them all! Each message only needs to be tweeted once, as multiple retweets will not increase chances of winning.

A Twitter account is required to participate in this relaunch giveaway. The contest starts now and will end on January 3, 2010, at 12pm CST. Once the 48 hours are up, I will be randomly selecting the winning tweets and will announce them on my Twitter account. I will then be in touch with the winners (either through email or Twitter DMs) to arrange how I can send them the cupcakes so they can receive their prize.

Good luck, and get tweeting!

(Many thanks to Melissa and her article 5 Helpful Tips for a Rockin’ Twitter Contest.)

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

I’ve never actually come out and stated what my usernames are for various social networking sites, so I thought I would list the prominent ones all in one go. My LiveJournal account has friends only entries and crossposted entries from my blog, my Dreamwidth account will be sporadically updated with friends only entries once I get around to customizing my account, and my Twitter account is protected to avoid spambots.

Feel free to add/friend me at any of these social networking sites if you like!

• LiveJournal: eternitycrash
• Dreamwidth: disalarming
• Twitter: eternitycrash
• Last.fm: eternitycrash
• Etsy: disalarming

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

I have friends from all over the world as a result of moving around different countries growing up. While I have lost touch with many of them, I manage to talk to most of them on a semi-regular basis thanks to various social networking sites, email, and other technologies. Still, it’s hard not to be with all the people I want to be with, but being able to keep in touch has helped a lot.

When I moved from Delaware, USA, to Perth, Australia, I was eleven, and the latest technological development was email. Not everyone I knew had email, and even less knew how to use it¹. Needless to say, I lost touch with all of my friends from Delaware. It’s only been in the last few months that I’ve started reconnecting with them, mostly via Facebook. Most of my friends from high school in both Perth and Chicago use Facebook now (some are using Twitter as well), so that has been immensely helpful in keeping in touch with all my friends.

Facebook and email are what I usually use to keep in touch with my friends that live overseas. For my friends that live in the US, not only do I use Facebook and email, but I also make phone calls a lot as well as send texts. I am the champion of long phone calls, as Roanne can attest to, and I think that a phone call is the next best thing if you can’t see someone in person for a face-to-face conversation. And even though I’m not a fan of texting, if there’s a special circumstance with a particular individual, I’ll break all of my texting rules and happily text away to keep in touch².

Honestly, I don’t know what I would do without all of the various methods of keeping in touch that are available these days. As much as I love to travel, I still like maintaining a connection to all the places I’ve visited and all the people I’ve met, especially those that have had a big impact on my life. Even though I may get a little slack about keeping in touch from time to time, I strive to maintain contact with all of those that are important to me, regardless of distance. After all, since there are so many options of how to keep in touch nowadays, there’s almost no excuse not to!

1. Remember, my friends and I were eleven. And while eleven year olds are coding and such now, that wasn’t the case when I was that age! [↩]
2. I don’t go as far as send texts when I am in the middle of a conversation with someone else, though. I still think that’s ridiculously rude. [↩]

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.