Squidoo Talk

Superhero Contest Runner Up

I know this is a bit late, but my family’s been having a tough week (a family member passed away) so I’ve been hanging out with and supporting them for most of this week. On July 14 I received an email from Anne Reidy, who is the Nonprofit Organizer for Squidoo. She informed me that one of my recently-made Superhero lenses, about Ben Carson, was chosen as one of five runners up for the Squidoo Superhero Charity Project.

Originally, they picked five great Superhero lenses and donated $500 to charity for each one, but I guess that they decided it’d be fun to pick some runners up. The email I got from Anne said:

We’re big softies. We couldn’t pick just five:
http://blogs.squidoo.com/lensoftheday/
Happy to say that Ben Carson makes the list!

Please let me know where you would like the $100 donation to go. And please send me your snail mail address as we have a special surprise for you!

Thanks and congrats!

Anne

Wow! I was floored when I read this. I never thought I’d win, and I didn’t really build the Superhero lenses hoping that I’d win. I just did it for fun and to kind of give back a little of what I’ve been given. I was even more surprised when I saw that I’d be getting a super special awesome surprise in the mail. I’ll keep on the lookout and let you know what I get when I get it. In case anyone wants to know, I had the $100 donation sent to Save the Children.

Also, while looking at that Lens of the Day blog post, I noticed that three of the Superhero runners-up are regular chatters in the Captain Squid Chat Room. I thought that was pretty neat! If you haven’t done so yet, you’d better swing by sometime and say hello. We’ve got a great community there with some amazing people and lots of innovation and thinking going on!

What’s with the Name?

The other day someone asked me how I came up with the name Squidüber for this blog. Seems kind of strange, doesn’t it? Actually, the name would only really make sense if you’re into computer gaming and are part of the video game culture. The word über is derived from the German language, and technically means something similar to “super” or “hyper”. Those of my generation use it as a synonym for “super” or “powerful”.

So, basically, the term Squidüber in my own invented language means “super squid” or something like that. It’s pronounced “SquidOOber,” and in a way it sounds similar to “Squidoo”, so that’s why I chose it. I also wanted to combine one of my favorite things ever (Squidoo) with a favorite pastime (gaming), and thus, Squidüber was born.

Additionally, I wanted to coin up my own Squidoo phrase, since the folks over at Squidoo HQ seem to like creating new terms (SquidFlix, SquidWho, SquidVids) and I just couldn’t resist following suit.

And that’s that!

Saturday Squidoo Burp

For almost all day today Squidoo was down. All of my Squidoo lenses were unreachable, as well as the Squidoo homepage. When I tried to sign on this morning I couldn’t, so I assumed they were doing some unplanned maintenance or something. I headed on over to SquidU to see if there were any forum announcements about this, and I came across this thread where I noticed that there were a lot of other people having the same problem, so I concluded that the issue wasn’t on my end of the line.

Eventually, the Squidoo Staff responded and said that they had a database glitch, and they got lenses up and running but now traffic stats are broke.

Great. All of my lenses have no traffic stats now. HQ said they were working on fixing the issue, but who knows when it’ll be fixed. Since my lenses were down for half of the day, I probably missed out on earning some $$$, and I don’t know what will happen. Things will be resolved I’m sure, but it gets a little nerve wracking to see something happen to my hard work. I can only imagine what the feeling would be for someone like The Captain who have hundreds of lenses and most likely depend on Squidoo for a good chunk of their online income.

And, I know that I have no room to talk when it comes to breaking stuff. I’ve had my fair share of troubles with SquidTop and I understand what it’s like to manage a lot of people by myself. Since Squidoo’s staff is very small, I can relate to them and what they deal with. I guess this is a lesson that we shouldn’t keep all of our eggs in one basket, and that includes Squidoo. Things like this happen and it’s good to have backup sources of income in case one of them fails or is interrupted.

Anyways, I hope this gets fixed soon and that nothing was permanently damaged.

A Month of Birthdays

The end of June and all of July are pretty busy for me, with every single person in my family having their birthday. It’s just one birthday after another–there’s at least one or two birthdays each week. Thankfully, this is the only time of year I have to go to birthday dinners or something like that, but having them all in one month is exhausting.

Anyways, with all of this action (and other stuff) I haven’t had much time to do things I really like, such as blogging and lensbuilding. I only got two Superhero lenses done by the deadline, so I guess there will be no fun charity contest for me. Oh well, I’ll make one every now and then just for fun and to “give back” a little bit.

Enough of my rambling. Just wanted to update on my status, and I’ll post something of use pretty soon.

Superhero Lens Number 2 Done

It’s a race against the clock!

I just finished on my second lens for the Squidoo Superhero Project for Charity. As of this writing, I have 4 days, 13 hours, and 41 minutes left to create three more lenses for the Superhero Project. Think I can make it? I hope so!

My second lens for the project is about Dr. Ben Carson, who is a gifted neurosurgeon who has saved the lives of thousands of people, and become a great role model for millions (including me). In 1987 he performed a medical procedure to separate siamese twins who were joined at the back of the head–the first time such a procedure was successful. Really neat stuff. Since I’m a nursing student, his life story is especially fascinating to me.

That’s Superhero Lens #2 down now, and just three more to go.