2 posts tagged “me”

My full name is Andrea Schwandt-Arbogast. I have been adamant about keeping my maiden name (Schwandt) as part of my name-- I just really don't like the idea of losing part of my identity. But after 8 years of this name, it is getting old.

Every single time I have to spell out my name for the pharmacist or the DMV or whatever, I have to listen to some stupid comment about how long it is. People don't even try to pronounce it, either. They just look at it and panic. It is too long to fit in most forms, online or otherwise, and the hyphen throws most systems for a loop. I always have to guess how they have dealt with that crazy hyphen when I try to sign back into online services. My pharamcist knows me as Andrea Schwandt Arbogu. That just makes me shudder.

So I have found myself slowly dropping the "Schwandt" whenever I can. I feel better about it than I thought I would. I'm still not happy about it, but I have found my peace with it. This is really a huge step for me, a kind of admitting that I have a different life than I did when I had the other name.

I have been experimenting with Vox for a while, and I have to say that I'm impressed. The interface is exceptional-- it is incredibly easy to add photos, books, and videos to the blog or to individual posts. The themes are fun, and I must admit that it's nice for once to not have to design my own. The markup is pretty good-- it doesn't quite validate, but it is using CSS for layout and somewhat semantic classes & ids.

The best thing, though, is the privacy controls. I love the idea of being able to control who sees certain posts. There are things I want to write about that are too personal for the whole world to know about-- having only my family see these would be great. There are also some inside jokes that won't make sense to anyone but my friends-- turning the post off for anyone but them makes a lot of sense. I could use a couple more levels of permissions, but I like the way things are working.

I am toying with the idea of moving all the personal stuff from Interllectual to here. I have been wanting to have more room for things like books and photos, which the other site doesn't deal with very efficiently. Books are the big one here-- I read constantly and would love to be able to display what I'm currenly reading and have conversations about it. Vox makes this incredibly easy.

I don't knw how I'll like the social network aspect of Vox-- I'm not very social and haven't really gotten in to any other networks.  But I can't stop myself from wanting to write about stuff going on in my life , and more and more it seems that it may be a good idea to separate that from my professional writing. I have been thinking about where my career is going for the past several months, and where I want it to go. Retooling Interllectual may be part of my plan for getting there. We'll see.