As a Bzz agent, since 2006, I get introduced to lots of new website, products and programs. It’s really pretty cool. One of the most recent places I was introduced to was Smarterer.com. It a place where I can participate in fun quizzes about places I frequent online – twitter, facebook, wordpress, etc, and see how much I know about them and then compare my knowledge score with others who’ve taken the quiz.

They have some cool achievements and badges you collect and display, like the one here.

There are tons of quizzes you can test your knowledge with and you can even add to them and share them on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. It’s totally free and easy to use. If you like to treat yourself to a fun, challenge once in a while, why not check it out.. better yet, ask your friends to join you and compare your scores. See if you are the Smarterer one!

If you are considering a pet for your home, I hope you consider visiting your local animal shelter and saving one of the needy pets there. If you are not sure where your nearest animal shelter is, you can use this site to search for one. Dogs make wonderful companions and in some cases, can provide some additional protection. Dogs and Cats at the local shelters have been dropped off or left behind and really deserve another chance at a loving home. We made the best decision when we picked up Copper and brought him home.

It’s important to note that before you adopt a new pet, to make sure that you will be able to spend time with them, training them and not just leaving them alone all the time. Also, make sure you have time to take them on walks or to the park for exercise, especially if you do not have a large backyard for them to run freely in. Copper loves running through our backyard every chance he gets. He also enjoys playing catch. we go through so many soccer balls, it’s funny! We also take him on walks through our neighborhood. He always gets all excited when he hears the word “walk”.

We love our Copper dog!

My son was displaying his art recently at an event in at Sevilla nightclub in our downtown area. The event was showcasing many local artists, musicians and performers. It was a fun, busy place and we were happy to be there supporting our son.

My daughter, myself and a couple of our friends took a day trip to Los Angeles for the Ultimate Women’s Expo at the convention center over there. It was a mega shopping event with tons of new, unique women’s products and samples. We had a fun time there but all agreed that the food was too expensive.

Photos from a regular walking route I take through my neighborhood. I really like my neighborhood. It’s pretty, friendly and cozy. I was also testing out my new phone’s camera. I decided it takes pretty decent photos.

Today, my typical photo for my typical Monday – 9/13/11

The house is quiet, lots of morning calls have been made, my laptop geared up with emails, study plans, and lesson planning materials. Today, hibiscus tea (and plenty of it) are part of the plan too.

I may not be going anywhere outside my home, but I still have a lot of road ahead of me. I make a plan to accomplish every last bit of my To-Do-List and accomplish it completely my way. That’s my plan for a successful Monday.  (And it was one!)

Today, this poem seemed fitting and a nice time to share.

You Can Be Whatever
You Want To Be!

There is inside you
all of the potential
to be whatever you want to be,
all of the energy
to do whatever you want to do.

Imagine yourself as you would like to be,
doing what you want to do,
and each day, take one step
towards your dream.

And though at times it may seem too
difficult to continue,
hold on to your dream.

One morning you will awake to find
that you are the person you dreamed of,
doing what you wanted to do,
simply because you had the courage
to believe in your potential
and to hold on to your dream.

~ Donna Levine ~

I was very excited to get the new diggs published on Karlyns.com. This site went through a major overhaul as it was tweaked from blog to design portfolio and design sales. Visitors can look through my display of work over the past several years and then click on purchase to hire me for custom graphic design. I’m quite happy with the final layout. Thank you Elegant Themes :)

Where did all the posts go? I exported a bunch of posts here to fromkarlyn.com, but I did not keep them all. This gave me a good opportunity to go through and clean out some old, outdated stuff. Will you check it out? http://www.karlyns.com/ – It’s new portfolio design style is meant to be browsed, so give it a whirl. And thanks!

Time. Where does it go.. right?

Time is talented and sometimes even tricky.

I know it flies. I’ve seen 30 minutes literally fly by! You probably have too.

I know it  can disappear too.

The other day, I glanced at the clock while I worked on a fun new design. The clock displayed 1:00. I added a few more details to the design, changed a couple of colors and browsed through a large list of beautiful fonts looking for the perfect one. When I checked the clock again, it showed off it’s disappearing talent as it proudly displayed 4:20. “What the…?!”

I know time can play games too. No joke.

I was at a meeting last week, tuned-in and patiently listening to the scheduled 90-minute-speech. I knew it was 10:10. because I had just peeked at my cell phone, while setting it to vibrate. I quickly went back into listening and learning mode and over the next hour or so, jotted down a few quality notes. I must have lost track of time because I realized my mind had drifted some, my attention was elsewhere and I had a very strong impulse to check my phone to see if it was nearing the speaker was wrapping it up soon. The clock read 10:25. “Oh, come on!”

I wonder if my calendar is trying to join in on the games too. My calendar has already had a pretty good relationship with time over the years, but lately, I’ve noticed it’s moving along at a faster pace. No kidding!

When I was a kid, I would circle the dates on Calendar that meant something fun was happening. The next weeks or days that followed proceeded at a snails pace, of which I became used to, never questioning Calendar’s ability to move ahead as planned and never complaining (to it’s face) about it’s obvious slowness. However, as an adult, I’ve seen quite the opposite happen with Calendar. Sometimes I look back on a week or a month period and feel as though I missed some of it. Wait, Calendar moved ahead way too quick! Perhaps some scheming with time? It doesn’t seem to be with just me either. I’ve heard some of my friends mention weeks, months and even years passing before their eyes!

I don’t hold a grudge with Calendar. I do think that sometimes it could slow itself down just a bit, but it has it’s own course and I have no apparently control over it. The only thing I can do is play with time to the best of my ability. Time my be smart, but have a trick or two up my sleeve as well.

My plan is to make all time, each and every day, high quality time.

It will take some organization on my part, but If I can do this, and keep it going, I believe I’ll be pleased with my efforts and a lot less concerned about Time and Calendar’s efforts.

What do you think?

My first name – Karlyn – is uncommon, so I get away with adding it as an alert, and I am not bombarded with too many alerts sent to my inbox. However, the number of alerts has increased in the last year, for sure. I’m seeing more people with the name Karlyn pop up all over the Wide World Web, and a couple of businesses named Karlyn also. I received an alert just this morning that Karlyn has joined LinkedIn. I removed my own my LinkedIn account a couple of years ago because I never used it, so I knew this alert was not about me. Therefore, I checked out the link and was brought to a page of ALL the Karlyns on LinkedIn (http://us.linkedin.com/pub/dir/Karlyn/+). It is always a little surreal to see so many people with “my” Karlyn name. On this particular list, they are all females with careers mostly in design, marketing, law and public relations. Interesting…

You have probably searched for your own name on Google.com by now. I do this every so often, to see where my name lands in the rankings of other Karlyns. Because of the uniqueness of my first name, and the fact that I have two domains that use my first name (fromkarlyn.com and karlyns.com), my name domains pop up in the top ten listing of Google’s first page. This is very good in terms of rankings and exposure. It looks like (as of today), a company named Karlyn Ind. beat me out of the #1 and #2 spots. I hold the #2 with my FromKarlyn.com and the #5 position with my Karlyns.com. A different Karlyn co. holds the #4 spot. Also in this top 10 listing on Google is a Karlyn-related comment I made on a baby names site about the name Karlyn, and around the #8 spot is a link to my twitter page, where my user-name is – you guessed it – Karlyn.

Another way I search for Karlyn sometimes – and you may want to try this occasionally too – is by using Google’s Realtime search tool (http://www.google.com/realtime/). Realtime Search lets you see up-to-the-second social updates, news articles, and blog posts about your search word. When I add the keyword Karlyn to this search tool, the first thing I see if the Foursquare and Twitter update I posted just a moment ago. Yes, this search tool is that fast! I also see, on this one-page list of results, some other social updates, and comments from people either named Karlyn or just used the word in their response. This Realtime search will bring up all mentions of the term and I simply need to refresh the page to see the latest. Sixty seconds later, I refresh this page and my Twitter update has dropped a few spots down the list as two more Karlyn updates (from others) have taken its place. This Realtime search page also displays a handy little time-line visual on the ride sidebar that shows high volume uses of your term. You can click on the time-line to go directly to that time and day and see the specific results. Pretty cool!

I am using my name as an example here, but these searching tools are useful for any term or keyword that interests you, from a name to a hot news topic… Try it out.

I love my name and am indeed celebrating it. I hope you are celebrating yours too!

Since 2004, I have been meeting (virtually) many other people with the name Karlyn and have been introducing them through my “Calling All Karlyns” page. It’s so much fun meeting other people with my same unique name. They come from all over the world, most are female and have all sorts of careers. It’s been really interesting to me, to learn how they got their Karlyn name. I have found, through the years, that a lot of my fellow karlyns got their name as a derivative of a similar name – like Karl or Carlin. I have an aunt named Carolyn, but my mother told me she saw the unique spelling of the name Karlyn in a newspaper one day and knew it was the name for me.

Where did you get your name from (besides your parents)?
Have you ever researched the background or meaning of your name?
Check out behindthename.com for help with that.

I’ve seen a couple of different “meanings” for the name Karlyn. From Man to Womanly, Little to Beautiful. I’m sure the reason for these varieties is simply based on whatever original name derivative that particular article chose to follow.. I don’t put a whole lot of stock into name meanings anyway. It’s just fun to look them up some times. Some names, as you know, go way way back. How far back does your name go?

So, take a moment to celebrate your name! Design art of your name at Wordle.net and add it to the Wordle gallery like I did. And though it’s fun to look up name meanings and history of names online, remember…

What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet..

..by William Shakespeare from his play Romeo and Juliet, meant to say that the names do not matter.. it’s what you are that matters.

In my opinion, no matter what type of test is created, it’s providing just a glimpse of a small portion of what it is that makes up that individual. We are complex, creative, ever-evolving creatures and taking a random test for some random result that then labels or categorizes us, serves no benefit that I can see.

I don’t judge others and prefer not to be judged as well. In a perfect world, the only ones who would measure us, our knowledge, skills, personality, health, wealth – whatever – is ourselves. I take it upon myself to be the best person I can be, to continue striving to be more, to learn more. I prefer not to be assigned a number or a label. There’s no way anyone could possibly know me well enough to tell me who I am and where I stand as a human being.

If you would like to read the original article, you can find it at Reading as Art & Science.

Yes, I’ve tried it.

However, maybe folks think “Karlyn” is hard to pronounce, so they don’t just attempt to spell it phonetically? Do I have a difficult name? *shrug*

It’s only six letters though. Seriously. Are these typos? Why so much misspelling?