Frequently Asked Questions

I wish there were a more interesting story behind the name of this website, and I’ve tried for days to come up with something hipper than the truth, but the unhip truth is that the word DOOCE is a result of my horrible typing and spelling skills. I lived and worked in LA for four years, and people in LA like to say the word dude in casual conversation, in business meetings, and from the pulpit. Everyone in LA dudes. When I worked in an office and instant messaged coworkers, we were always typing “dude, no way” and “awesome, dude!” and then it sort of became “right on, doode” and “oh my god, doooooooode.” But I could never type it right. I was always typing “duce” and “dooce” and half of a thirty minute IM conversation was dominated by me correcting the misspelling, like, “oops, i meant dooce” and even in the corrections I couldn’t type it right. So they all started calling me Dooce. The Dooce. Her Dooceness. Wrapped up like a Dooce!

Dooce is pronounced like DEUCE, not like douche or like doo-chay or dookie. Please don’t call me dookie, because seriously, given my personal bowel history, that would be entirely inaccurate.

I used to use a Nikon Coolpix 990 to take all of my photographs. It’s a few years old, and it’s something I inherited when I married my husband. When you get married you should make sure that the person you’re about to swear your life to comes with great gear. In addition to the camera I inherited a really big flat screen TV, some lamps, a big area rug, and the most understanding heart that ever beat inside a human being. The TV is really nice, yes, but that heart is like, totally awesome.

Now I use a Nikon D70. Why we bought the D70, I really have no idea. All I know is we drove down to the camera store and got to play with some cameras, and the sales guy started talking some weird Geek language with my husband, using words that sounded familiar but had no meaning to me whatsoever, and we walked out with the D70. My only requirement was that it take kick ass photos WHEN I ASKED IT TO, not three or four seconds after I pressed the button. That was the biggest drawback to the old camera, the Nikon Coolpix 990. It had to think about whether or not it actually wanted to take a picture, and by the time it decided that it would begrudgingly oblige, Leta had stopped smiling or the dog was no longer in a mid-air chase with a squirrel.

So I asked Jon why we bought the D70 and not something else and he said, “The D70 comes with a better lens, and it comes with more options,” or something like that, but I sort of stopped paying attention after he said “lens” because he is so cute when he talks Geek and it makes my heart beat really fast and my brain can’t get oxygen fast enough and I black out. Geeks are hot.

SuperMutt. We were standing in the lobby of the SPCA in Pasadena, CA, when someone brought him in on their shoulder. Sometimes he looks like a Jack Russell Terrier, sometimes a Lab, sometimes a Chihuahua, sometimes a Basenji. He is everything swirled into one. Our dog trainer in LA says that he has so many breeds in him that he has become The Generic Dog, which sounds kind of bad, but if you think about it, is kind of wonderful. He is Chinese and German and American and African and Nordic and Latin; he is everything.

When my daughter was born I decided to turn off hot-linking so that no one could link directly to my photos and eat up my bandwidth. When I turned off hot-linking all sorts of problems occurred, and if you’re behind a firewall or you’ve got anti-virus software installed on your computer, you might not be able to see any of the photos or graphics on my website.

So, if you’re behind a firewall, I don’t know how to help you. If you’ve got anti-virus software installed, turn it off momentarily and you should be able to see my photos. Try visiting dooce.com/index.html.

Because you’re being a pussy and not downloading a better browser. You should download this better browser, or this better browser.

When you call Child Welfare, PLEASE get the story straight. Not only do I leave her alone with paper towels, I set her in the middle of a flea-infested floor and surround her with sharp objects and porn. Then I turn on a wood-burning stove in the corner of the room and seal all the windows. Before I leave the room and lock the door, I stick a bottle full of vodka in her mouth, you know, to muffle the screaming.

I use Photoshop CS, BBEdit 6.x, Movable Type 3.0, and a wizard named Jon Armstrong. Jon coded most of my CSS. I did a teeny, itty bitty little bit of the CSS and all of the design. This website would not be possible without Jon’s expertise. And his cuteness.

I work on an Apple iBook that is two and half years old. She is my baby, my link to the outside world. I call her Martini. You can read about the day that I bought her here. We have a wireless network in the home so I can update the website from bed or from the toilet if circumstances require it.

This site is set up as one blog in Movable Type, and all the posts are divided up into various categories. Even the daily photo is its own category. I use the following MT plug-ins to make the content do what it does:

Supplemental Category (catx)
Entry List
FilterCategories
XSearch
PreviousNext Category
Regex
SmartyPants
Textile

You can read about how Jon set up this site in Movable Type here.

The content on this website is primarliy comprised of two kinds of content: Daily posts, which are longer and more story-like, and The Smaller Posts, which are made up of the following categories:

Thinking
Feeling Guilty
How to Annoy Me
How to Charm Me
Reading
Listening
Enjoying
Nubbins

Daily posts are further categorized into other categories, but they will always be categorized under Daily. The “previous” and “next” buttons at the top of any Daily entry take you to the entry in the Daily category that was written before or after the entry you are on. This means that you can’t really navigate within a sub-category without going back to the category listing page. This was a limitation that we ran into with Movable Type.

This website began in February 2001 with a post about carnation milk being the best in the land. Since the beginning this website has been redesigned four times. Here are snapshots of the old designs:

A company called Liquidweb hosts this site. I have been very happy with their service. They have pretty reasonable hosting packages, and have been very responsive to my technical problems and neediness. A big shout out goes to Mike N. at Liquidweb. Thanks for being so nice!

You can read about how to produce the “Dooce Effect” here. I should point out, though, that this photographic effect should not be named after me but after my husband. I call it the “DJ BLurb Effect” because he’s the one who taught me how to do it. He is also very cute.

Jon and I have known each other or at least known about each other for almost nine years. We have lived together for over three years, and we eloped at Yosemite National Park just a little over two years ago. You can see our wedding photos here. You can read about how we met here and here.

My husband was born and raised here, and most of his family lives here. Some of my family lives here including my mother who gives us free Avon shampoo. We moved here from Los Angeles, a place where only drug dealers and really bad, over-paid actors can afford to buy a house. Utah has an insanely affordable housing market and the world’s best snow. We like to snowboard and bike and hike and camp outside with coyotes and desert insects. We don’t mind the Mormons. They are good people, and because of them Utah is a great place to raise kids. Everything in Utah caters to children, and there are changing tables in the bathrooms at the movies, the grocery story, and THE POST OFFICE. Gotta change that poopy diaper when you’re buying stamps!

No.