Happy New Year (2016) and Workplace Engagement
Feb 20 2016

Wow, it took me until February 20 to actually write a New Years post. Happy 2016!

After joining a WordPress hosting company, I thought I might have a bit more time to blog, but getting ramped up takes time.  So far so good and so far very busy!  There are lots of things going on at work and in my life, but most of you probably wouldn’t be too interested in hearing all about that stuff, so here are some fun & interesting articles that people have sent me or I’ve randomly discovered:

Ten signs you work in a fear-based workplace – Bloomberg Businessweek

AN ANTIDOTE FOR DISENGAGEMENT: BEING APPRECIATIVE FOR YOUR JOB – Appreciation at Work blog

Happiness Hack: This One Ritual Made Me Much Happier

Several managers where I work just completed some Arbinger leadership training, and I really enjoyed it!  Our senior execs will be going through the training in the next couple of weeks as well, so I’m looking forward to having a common language to share as we help grow the business to the next level.

Below are links on Amazon to two books that are published by the Arbinger Institute.  I read the first one a few years ago and am in the middle of the second one. They are written in story/fable format which I very much prefer when reading business books because it makes it much easier to read and seem less “preachy.”

Leadership and Self-Deception: Getting Out of the Box

The Anatomy of Peace: Resolving the Heart of Conflict

WP Engine is Now Hosting entrepreMusings – My Blog :-)
Oct 28 2015

Those of you who subscribe to my blog by email may have noticed that an email was sent with the five most recent blog posts I wrote.  It was apparently a byproduct from migrating my blog from one host (GoDaddy) to another (WP Engine).  I recently joined WP Engine so I have the opportunity to take advantage of hosting my WordPress blog on a hugely better platform for WordPress sites!

We have a really easy-to-use migration tool/plugin, so moving my now over eight (yes, 8!) year old blog over to the WP Engine hosting platform was simple.  Maybe now I will finally be able to write more often about business, parenting, life, and music (hopeful emoji).  I may even change the name of my blog to one that is easier to pronounce once I think of a better alternative. 😀  Suggestions are welcome!

I’m excited to be working at WP Engine.  The company is well beyond the start-up phase but still very entrepreneurial at heart.  So far it seems to have a wonderfully collaborative, energetic, hard working, caring, and get-things-done culture…which is my kind of vibe!

Happy Super Bowl Sunday & Groundhog Day!
Feb 2 2014

I’m not a big football or groundhog watcher, but this year the days have collided.  I don’t plan to watch any groundhogs, but I do plan to see part of the Super Bowl.  Because my son loves sports, we will be going to a friend’s place to the watch the game so he can be with others who like to watch football.   Ah, the things us mothers do for our kids that we don’t have the patience to do for other sports fanatics in our lives. 🙂

I’m hoping with the recent WordPress update, there won’t be spam links in my email feed, but it’s a crap shoot.  I haven’t been able to figure out the reason after asking several people and doing some research.  I think it’s beyond my technical expertise to figure out a fix in the near term.  I’ve managed to post about once per month mostly because I haven’t permanently fixed the spam issue and secondly because I’m still working on interesting topics to post about.  Here are some good reads:

Groundhog day and the Super Bowl – Seth Godin

The kids who need the most love will ask for it in the most unloving ways. – Katie Malinski

How to draw an owl – Seth Godin

The 14 Habits of Highly Miserable People – AlterNet.org

The Six Things That Make Stories Go Viral Will Amaze, and Maybe Infuriate, You – NewYorker.com

 Overcome the Eight Barriers to Confidence – HBR.org

…different people differently – Seth Godin

Life is not an adventure until it starts scaring you shitless. – Gapingvoid

Learn How To Build Your Own Website Using WordPress – Austin, Texas
Feb 9 2012

Benjy Portnoy, founder of Austin-based media company, Mouthpiece Media, is producing a 2-hour, all-inclusive class for small business owners on how to build and maintain their own website. 

The seminar has the business owner in mind who knows they need a great website, but don’t want to bother with confusing coding or anything difficult to update.  Instead the class will focus on how to build and maintain a site in WordPress, a simple-yet-powerful and scalable system that anyone can use to create a beautiful website in no time.

The course will cover every aspect of building a basic website, including:

• Picking and registering a web address
• Choosing the right “hosting company” to put the files
• How to install WordPress in 5 minutes or less
• A custom tour of the WordPress dashboard
• How to create posts, pages, and even upload photos and videos
• How to change the entire look of your site in a single click
• Basics on how to get your site ranked in Google
• Lots more

Date: Tuesday, February 21, 2012, 1:30 pm-3:30 pm
Place: Wyndham Garden Austin & Woodward Conference Center
Price: $37
Only 20 spots available
More info: www.mouthpiece-media.com/wpclass

In The Blink Of An Eye, It Is Over
Dec 31 2008

And so 2008 comes to an end and the old saying ‘time flies’ is yet again reaffirmed.  It seems to go faster with each passing year, especially with little kids jumping all over you, sucking your energy dry underfoot.  Each year is a smaller fraction of our total lives.  To our kids each day seems like an eternity full of laughter, playing, occasional tantrums, asking their parents for candy, and fun!  And to us grown ups, the movie of our lives keeps going faster…slipping through our fingers….with fond and sometimes hard memories behind us and interesting times ahead. 

So I’d like to thank all of you dear readers for joining me on my entrepreneurial parenting and business journeys.  I haven’t spent much time trying to monetize my blog, and I don’t make much money from it.  So your blog comments, your emails, your conversations, and your tweets mean so much to me!  Most of us bloggers don’t blog for money, we blog to share ideas and to create conversations whether on or off the blog that might not have happened before. 

My favorite form of compensation comes from those of you who comment directly on a particular blog post.  The way to a blogger’s heart, after all, is through comments left on her blog. 😀

But, I also very much enjoy the comments from those who recieve the free blog updates via email who simply hit ‘reply’ and let me know their thoughts.  I get many replies on twitter, and I wish someone would figure out how to integrate tweet replies directly into the blog comments, but that hasn’t happened yet (as far as I know).  

And then there are those of you who I talk to on the phone or see in the business community who mention they read my blog and mention a particular post.  I’m often taken by surprise by who reads my blog and what their interpretations are of my posts.   The people who know me well usually know how to read in between the lines, and I keep it fairly tame because my mother and my favorite aunt read my blog!  I wouldn’t want to shock them too much.

Special thanks goes to my husband, Erin, (who I honestly don’t think really reads most of my blog posts or he might feel more compelled to comment on some of my snarkier ones) for making sure this blog works smoothly.  He upgrades the blog when a new version comes out, he installs the latest/greatest WordPress plugins that help make this blog as effective as it can be, and helps troubleshoot any random technical glitches that occur.  He is our resident rocket scientist, and I have yet to see a technical problem that he can’t figure out. 

THANK YOU AGAIN DEAR READERS for enriching my life!  Have a HAPPY, PROSPEROUS, and JOY-FILLED NEW YEAR!

What’s In A Name? A Blog Name That Is…
Sep 25 2007

What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet

But the same doesn’t go for blog names!  (Sorry Shakespeare) My new blog design is finally ready to announce to the world.  It was tough picking a new name and design.  I wanted to capture who I am (a South Asian, high-tech woman entrepreneur) and what I’m trying to do (i.e., shift the definition of entrepreneurship to one that I outline on my About page) while at the same time including the biggest parts of my life as mother, wife, daughter, sister, cousin, neice, aunt, and friend.  So I set out to come up with a name and design that I thought would allow me write about all of these things.  

Last week I attended a meeting where Gail Evans, former VP at CNN and author of Play Like A Man, Win Like A Woman, spoke (more about that later), and she said she can’t understand why people always talk about work/life balance.  She said we have one life and our work and our personal stuff are all part of that life so why make it sound as if work and life are opposing factors?  My work is part of my life and my family/kids/friends are part of my life.  So when the name entrepreMusings was quietly said during a discussion on the topic by our brilliant volunteer, college student Marketing Intern who we pay with the un-spendable but highly leveragable currency of experience, it just seemed to fit. 🙂

Prior to that eureka moment, we threw around: 

• entrepreMuse – which I refer to myself on this blog, but we didn’t feel it was the right name for the blog
• entrepreMusing – didn’t sound quite right until the s was added to the end.
• Entrepreneuse (a female entrepreneur)– I  almost went with that one but several friends said it sounded like entrepre ‘noose’ to which I replied well being an entrepreneur does sometimes feel like you have a noose around your neck! Plus there were some others around using the term (e.g., Entrepreneuse Live)
• A bunch of others that were in jest and not appropriate to note on the blog.  Name creation is a crazy, unscientific process…at least in this house.

As I mentioned in my How to Create a New Website post, I found Swank Web Style and Karen (who blogs at Vodkarella) from a link on Mocha Momma’s site.  I picked the image at iStockphoto of the woman babbling on the phone, and Karen modified it to something that I liked.  The woman had some blush on that made her look like she had a skin disease and some other features that I requested to be changed.  After some back and forth (and my design fits, last second changes, and design seizures), late nights and both of us having to deal with sick kids and her having to deal not only with sick kids but also a sick dog, a broken toe, and moving houses it was finished and it was COOL! 

She then turned the original design over to Vicki (who did our new corporate site) and Vicki did everything in her power to make it work! After this new theme design process, I have a huge amount of appreciation and respect for those designers who create free WordPress themes.   (Check out Randa’s cool new Pink for October Free WordPress Theme.)  The browser compatibility issues, the widget alignment issues, the blog stats integration issues all surfaced when you least expected them, but Vicki patiently, meticulously, and kindly addressed them all!  

Now I can (hopefully) blog all of the post ideas that have been swimming around in my head, and oh yeah actually get some other work done such as selling, marketing, public relations, calling people, setting up partnerships, etc. 🙂

I hope all of you all like the new direction.  Please help me change the world view of entrepreneurship and parenthood by entrepreMusing with me one blog post and one comment at a time!

Pardon The Dust…
Sep 7 2007

I am currently working with a fab designer to create a custom blog design.  The re-design should go live by middle of next week.  I know you are all going to miss the standard, plain wordpress template I’ve been using!  {insert sarcasm here}  I am also changing the name of the blog and making it indicative of the fact that I’m the one that is doing the blogging…not Babble Soft…even though I’m the founder. 🙂 

From what I’ve been reading at The Viral Garden, business bloggers really should not be blogging that much about their business anyway as people can only handle so many posts about how glorious it is.  [They can just go to your company’s Press page to figure that out.] Duh!  Took me a few weeks to get that, but now I understand.  I will still of course have links to my current ventures and post about Babble Soft stuff (e.g., baby tips) from time to time because that is part of my life.  

As people all over the world discover my blog, I hope they will get to know me and get a better understanding of why I started Babble Soft: to help new parents (and hopefully make a little money along the way).   Maybe they will want to share our stories with the expecting and new parents, business people, and/or entrepreneurs in their lives.

I will be posting less frequently until we figure out how to migrate the domain name and not lose all of our permalinks and linkbacks.  We could leave it www.babblesoft.com/blog but I think after some time that will get confusing.   I’ve been meaning to ask Mack at The Viral garden why his blog URL is http://moblogsmoproblems.blogspot.com/ but his blog name is different.  It still routes to his blog so I’m wondering if it’s just too hard to make the change???   I’ve been actively blogging for about 4 months now and have started to increase my rank on Technorati…I wonder if those link backs will all disappear.  Maybe someone out there will know the answer.

I hope y’all (as we say here in Texas) will like our new name and design!  I always take comfort in knowing I have the right to change my mind…but that would mean a ton of work to rebrand and change the URL which sounds like a good reason not to change my mind.  So I guess the new blog name will just have to stay entrepreMusings for the rest of my life.  😀

Have a great weekend everyone!

Subscribe to Comments Issue Fixed – Sort of
Sep 1 2007

We have been struggling with some WordPress and WordPress Plugin issues for some time now (see here, here, here, and here) and we think we have finally come to some sort of manageable work around for the one that has taken the most time to figure out: Subscribe to Comments.  Since Randa at Randa Clay Design first told me where to get the plugin when I asked the question on an eMoms at Home post, we have been trying to figure out how to make it work.  The first step was to move to a self hosted blog, which we did.  Then all of a sudden I wasn’t getting email notifications when someone was posting on the blog.  We just figured that out recently.  I was desperate for answers and we scoured the web and put a question on the WordPress.org Support Forums that never got answered and we later discovered was deleted.

I happened to attend an Austin Socia Media Club meeting where the infamous William Hurley spoke on open source software.  Honestly, I didn’t know who he was or if he was famous or infamous before I attended…but apparently he’s quite famous.  I liked his presentation style.  He asked us if we knew what he was there to talk about and only about 3 people raised their hands.  I did not raise my hand because I don’t know much about OSS.  Instead of being offended, he seemed relieved because it made his create on-the-fly Powerpoint presentation even easier to give. 

He asked us to raise our hands and throw out our questions which he then put on separate slides in order to address them one by one…which was refreshing.  I, of course, asked him about WordPress and he affirmed our observation that generally you never get a satisfactory answer from the forums.  He said one time at band camp he left what he thought was a reasonable question on a forum and got a response that said something like ‘you moron, you suck, you don’t know anything, you shouldn’t be allowed to own a computer.’  He replied trying to clarify his question and he was promptly denied access to the forum from there on out.  This story makes me feel better about my often probably dumb questions.  Another person asked him ‘why are OSS developers such Haters’ and he basically said that many of them a) don’t have any social skills or b) believe everyone should have the same god-like knowledge they do.

William (who goes by whurley) works at BMC and blogs at opensville was nice enough to offer to send our issue on to the WordPress guys he knows.  Fortunately I think we figured it out before he had a chance to forward the email on to them because otherwise we would have had a lot of HATE coming our way!

OK, so enough with the background, here’s how we got the Subscribe to Comments Plugin to work.  My genius husband, Erin, poked around the code in the subscribe-to-comments.php file.   He commented out a piece of the code and replaced it with new code as he noticed that the errors were coming from our email server.  Note that we are running WordPress 2.2.2 on a Windows Server 2003R2 computer with IIS 6.0 and PHP5. The code now reads as follows. 

For the non-technical folks: when you put “//” in front of a line it becomes a ‘comment’ and not active code.  This way if you ever come back to the code you have some idea of what changes were made or what functionality you were trying to achieve.  Erin probably documents better than 90% of the coders out there mostly because he doesn’t code that often. 🙂

So now you’d think our blogging prayers were answered.  But wait, the next day I go to Edit and/or Create a post and I am only able to see the Code view.  Since I’m not a coder, it’s imperative I have a working Visual view to create or edit my posts.  After asking me several times if I did something or someone else did something, Erin stated a few times that maybe someone hacked our site.  Of course, I then get anxious and wonder who would want to hack our site and how could they do that (i.e., pelted him with questions).  He then gets annoyed with me when I say maybe it has something to do with the Subscribe To Comments fix we did.  He loudly tells me there’s no way what we did could affect posting and I said ‘why not?’  He said because it’s two different sets of code and starts his ‘don’t you know anything’ tone of voice.  I then quietly deactivate the Plugin and all of a sudden I am able to see the Visual view.  Oh it was a very sweet feeling when I told him I could now do my posts like I usually do.  It most likely did not have anything to do with his code changes but with the Plugin itself, but nonetheless I had to smirk a little.

So I hope our pain will result in someone else’s gain if they happen to be experiencing the same issue.  So now, I have to deactivate the plugin when I work on a post and reactivate it when I’m done!  So that’s why I said in the title that it’s fixed – sort of. 🙂

Happy Labor Day everyone.  If you are wondering why I’m blogging so late on a Saturday night it’s because Erin went to the first UT Longhorn football game of the season.  The kids went down by 8:30 p.m. (after much negotiation with my son) so I said to myself now is a great time to blog.  He just emailed me from his Crackberry to tell me they won but not by the number of points they were supposed to.  So now he’s worried how they will perform in their next game against a team that is supposedly better than the team they played today.  Hook ‘Em!

Babble Soft’s Blog has moved to a self-hosted WordPress blog
Jul 15 2007

I have so enjoyed using our wordpress.com blog platform that we just moved to a self-hosted WordPress blog on our Rackspace server for even more flexibility.  A HUGE thanks to Wendy Piersall at eMomsatHome for her WordPress QuickStart Guide – WordPress Hosting and Installation and her WordPress QuickStart Guide – What Plugins should I use? posts.  I’m now working my way through her 32 Internet and Marketing and Homebased How-To’s post and the post by Tech Wise Guy on 7 Steps for conversion from wordpress.com to a self hosted wordpress was invaluable!

The biggest thanks go to my husband, Erin, for doing most of the heavy lifting and intalling the platform and plugins on our server! 🙂

We are still working on some Feedburner (i.e., RSS feed and email subscription management) set-up/transfer issues but they seem really helpful and we should be able to resolve those issues soon.

Aruni