Happy Easter!
Whew! Five consecutive days of in-depth posting have left me unbearably fatigued. I think I'll take some time off!
Hope you and yours have a blessed Easter weekend. Catch you next week.
Taking a Break
This is Moving Week for our household, and while blogging is generally therapeutic for me, I think the time might be better spent setting up shop in the new digs. So, the Gazette will lie fallow for a few days.
Congratulations!
To whomever visited the Gazette via IP address 9.41.80.# (in Mesquite, Texas) at 3:15:43 p.m. via a Google search.
You were our 500,000th visitor!
Huzzah!
Hey, Utterz...how about a voice-activated keypad?
Note: This is another test of the Utterz moblogging service. The quality isn't great, because I'm using a Bluetooth headset to dictate the post one of the reasons for the test.
Advice for Beginning Bloggers
LinkVendor offers a free service that most bloggers are likely to find interesting. It's a back-link list generator, meaning that it will compile a list of the websites that are linking to your site. Now, I realize that there are many similar services, but this one is different from most in that it includes more than just clickable links. It also shows those sites that are stealing your bandwidth.
If that sounds harsh, let me explain. Some people have a habit of using images on their sites without actually loading those images onto their web servers. Instead, they link to the images where they currently reside. This means that whenever you visit their site and view that image, the bandwidth associated with the image is actually coming from the image's host server and not the site you're visiting.
This is bad manners at best, and harmful at worst. Depending on the popularity of the "borrowing" site, the owner of the site housing the "borrowed" image could actually incur additional out-of-pocket expense due to increased bandwidth.
I point this out because when I ran the LinkVendor report for the Gazette, I found about half a dozen sites that were doing exactly what I describe above. In some cases, the offense was somewhat mitigated by the fact that the "borrower" included a text link and/or attribution of the image to the Gazette, but in a couple of cases, they just slapped links to my images on their sites, making it look as if they owned them. And one of the offenders was a revenue-generating blog. (It's only fair to note that when I pointed out how little I appreciated what they were doing, they immediately removed the image. I think that falls into the category of "it's better to ask forgiveness than permission.")
If you're a new blogger or even an experienced one who never thought about this practice please don't take shortcuts and link to images residing on servers you don't control. (We haven't even touched on the associated copyright issues.)
If you want to use an image that appears on the Gazette on your personal blog, just ask me. 99.9% of the time I'll gladly grant that permission, and I'll bet that most bloggers will do the same.
To do otherwise is bad manners, if not downright theft.
Happy New Year!
The Gazette will be dormant for the rest of the year, giving our hard-working pixels a time of much-needed rest and reflection.
I want to thank each of you who took the time during 2007 to stop by here, and especially those who left comments. I know you have better things to do with your time, and I hope you found a brief respite from the trials and tribulations of the real world during your visit(s).
I also hope that each of you find 2008 to be a year of wonderful surprises, and that this time next year you'll be able to look back and say, "gee, I really hate to see this one end!"
Happy New Year, amigos, and may God bless you and yours with the desires of your hearts!
"I have a style?"
Charles Hill writes over at dustbury.com of his fondness for the work of H. Allen Smith (former resident of Alpine, Texas, and one of MLB's favorites authors, as well), to the point where Charles chose to model his writing style after Smith's. (Not being a Smith aficionado I cannot assess Charles's success in emulating that style, although if Smith was half as good as Charles, then he did pretty well for himself.)
That got me to thinking about my own writing style. If I wanted to be strictly accurate (not a blogger's best strategy, by the way), I'd have to say that if you took the worst of George Will (long sentences without the benefit of pithy insight) and married it (o, unholy union!) with the ugliest of Hunter S. Thompson (skewed reality without the gonzo sensibility), then you'd be pretty much in the ballpark.
To be honest, my H. Allen Smith was actually Dave Barry, who I thought was pretty much the funniest human being on the face of the planet. I'm sure that there are countless numbers of hacks like me who have tried unsuccessfully to duplicate Barry's style, because he makes it seem so doggone easy.
Of course, unless you're Dave Barry and, really, who is? it's not.
In the end, the title of this post* says it all: one must be a writer to have a writing style, and I'm not there. Someday? Perhaps. But I feel truly sorry for the poor desperate soul that decides to emulate my "style."
*For bonus points, identify the source of the title. There may be several right answers; you'll have to guess which one I'm expecting.
Excuses
The Writers Guild called and told me that while they appreciate the gesture, they'd really prefer that I resume blogging so that they'll look that much better by comparison when they go back to work. Hey, somebody's got to lower the bar.
I'm off to hear Justin Peters as he continues an absolutely fascinating study of the Word of Faith movement. I hope to make time for a report on that...eventually.
Meanwhile, feel free to talk amongst yourselves.
1/20th of a Century of Unrelenting Trivialities
I don't normally observe a so-called "blogversary," primarily because it's an unattractive word (as is almost every made-up work prefaced with "blog-"), but today marks five years for the Gazette and symbolizes the fact that even the striving to attain mediocrity can be celebrated if it goes on long enough.
According to the stats, the Gazette's archives now consists of 3,348 posts (plus this one), complemented by 15,968 comments. That works out to about 1.8 posts per day, and I'm sure you'll agree that things were only improved by my inability to achieve that last two-tenths of a post.
While I've quit blogging at least a hundred times over the years (even though I succeeded only once, and even that success was short-lived), and even though I tell myself I'd keep doing this if no one but me was paying attention, the truth of the matter is that it's your comments and emails and conversations during chance encounters in the grocery store aisles and church pews and buffet lines that keep me doing it. So, you're either to blame or to thank, depending on your outlook.
As for me, I thank you. As do the baby squirrels.
Foggy Re-entry
Dang, is it Friday already? I seem to have misplaced a few days this week.
Things are a bit hazy, but I recall visions of a large floating bottle of NyQuil (the yucky green color, not the soothing red) doing battle with allergens and viruses and such.
I'm better now, but thank goodness this isn't a audioblog. You wouldn't want to hear me talk.
Why Blog: Part Eleventy
Several of my blogging buds recently posted about an article that appeared in Christianity Today in which the author proclaimed the death of blogging. I haven't read the article (nor, I confess, all of the posts about it) but I suspect it goes something like this: blogging is hard, you can't make any money at it, and besides, no one cares what your cat had to eat yesterday.
Fine. Whatever. If that's what the author had to say, he or she missed the point of most blogs, and that point was eloquently stated by my pal Jim (OK, so I did read some of the posts): I'm just interested in writing stuff down. IOW, there's no grand over-arching scheme to get rich and famous and do anything more than have fun with words and ideas.
And, occasionally, uplift the spirit of someone you don't know and likely never will.
Like the family of the man to whom Tricia pays tribute in this post, a man many Midlanders will recognize.
That post is an example of why blogging should continue. A woman writing from the hinterlands of Michigan about her memories of her pediatrician back in West Texas represents the purest motives for blogging: telling others about someone who was important to her, and doing so in a way that honors the memory of the one she's writing about. As an added bonus, she also added something to our knowledge of our city's history.
I didn't know Dr. Allen while he was alive, but, thanks to Tricia, I do now, if only in the tiniest of ways. Because of her skillful writing and her interest in just writing stuff down, an intangible fabric is woven a bit stronger.
What did you do with your time today?
Excuses
It would be presumptuous of me to offer an apology for the silence around here, as that would imply that someone missed the blatherings that appear periodically, and I doubt that's the case (except, perhaps, for Lyle, who apparently is ready to appear as the poster child for the sad state of commercial airline travel in our country. "Esteemed members of this Congressional panel, let me summarize by saying that if the quality of air travel has indeed been reduced to the point where decent, hard-working citizens must pass their time in terminals by reading the "Fire Ant Gazette," then I submit to you that there can be no argument that the terrorists have, indeed, won.").
In truth, the combination of paying college tuition and building a new house works wonderfully in causing one to focus on revenue-generating activity, a classification into which this here blog-like thing doesn't even peek over the edge, let alone fall. (That, by the way, continues to be a source of mystery to me, given the universal appeal of Gazette merchandise. Order some stuff, folks!)
That's not to say that I haven't devoted considerable mental effort to blogging. It's just that I go out on a bike ride and compose these elaborate, witty, and sophisticated essays in my mind, fully intending to pixelize them when I return, but finding that (1) they don't look so good when transferred from the mushy confines of my brain, or (b) it's too much trouble. I mean, after all, I already wrote them once, in my head; why should I do it all again? (Then there's the not inconsequential fact that you're not coming here for "elaborate, witty, and sophisticated." You're coming here for photos of Abbye, and tips for folding fitted sheets.)
Then there's the recovery from my bicycle wreck. Oh, did I not tell you about my bike wreck last Friday? Oh, well, we seem to be out of time. Maybe later.
The thing about blogging is that even a post of excuses is still a post. Believe me, I've got plenty more where this one came from.
Say, what do you guys know about Lucy Woodward?
I got nothing (again)
And even when I have something, it feels like nothing.
So, out of pity for youse guys, I'm going to take a break. Catch you post-Labor Day.
A Note to My Fellow Midland Bloggers
If you're blogging in Midland, you should be on MyWestTexas.com's list of Local Updated Blogs. And, if you have an RSS feed for your blog (and why wouldn't you?), your new posts should be hitting the rotation shown on the "Blog Roll" on the left side of the afore-linked page.
Here's a tip. If you'd like the excerpt shown on the MyWestTexas.com page to be something other than the first 40 or so words of your article, try using the "Excerpt" field provided by many blogging software packages* to generate a more descriptive summary of the post. MyWestTexas.com's aggregator software should automatically pick up and use that excerpt instead of generating one based on the first few sentences of your post.
I know. It's more work. But it can also be useful in helping readers decide whether to click on your post (and, generally, when they're in doubt they don't).
*If your software doesn't provide this feature, it's old and busted. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
Note: Comments are closed.
Unionized Gazette? Never!
Of all the harebrained ideas to float out of the port side of the blogosphere, this one takes the cake.
"Unionization would raise the professionalism of blogging"? Give me a break.
Here's where I stand on the issue (if it's not already clear):
Feel free to use this button on your blog, with or without attribution or link.
Technorati tag: Blogger Union | Yet Another Stupid Idea
Move along, folks; nothing more to see here...
There's no particular reason for this post, other than really needing to drop that last one off the top of the page.
Yes, I know. You're welcome.
Blog Font
It was inevitable that some designer would eventually name a new font "Blog," and that has indeed come to pass.
As the illustration above shows, the font isn't as ugly as its name, but it's also not breathtaking in its originality or its ability to evoke blogginess. I will admit that I have no idea what qualities should be imposed on a font design to make it, well, bloggy, but then, I'm not a designer. But when I look at this, "blog" does not pop into my mind.
And as long as we're on the subject of blog-evoking (blogvocative?) characterizations, I'm still waiting for someone to design a universal symbol for "blog."
Thanks!
I wanted to take a moment to give a sincere "thank you" to everyone who left comments, send e-cards, made phone calls, transmitted text messages, and generated emails with birthday greetings. You guys are great.
A number of you also left a variety of questions in the comments to yesterday's post about one of my birthday presents, and I didn't want you to think I ignored them. So, here are the answers: no, yes, yes, probably not, twelve, there's no proof of that, Angelina Jolie.
Thanks again!
[Not] Thinking Like a Blogger
My wife and I were visiting with a friend and fellow blogger last evening on the patio of our favorite caffeinery when our conversation was interrupted by the roar of a car engine followed immediately by that sickening metal-on-metal crash. Thirty feet from our table, a older-model black Cougar had backed forcefully into a new Pontiac, which in turn was pushed into a new Tahoe parked next to it. A new Tahoe which, unfortunately, belonged to our friend.
We sat, stunned, for a couple of seconds, not believing what we'd just witnessed (for we had looked up at the sound of the engine just in time to see the crash). We then rushed over to the female driver who was already out, inspecting the damage, and in tears. She was fine, physically, but shaken by what she'd just done.
The Pontiac was badly damaged. The driver's side rear wheel was canted at an unnatural angle and the rear quarter panel was collapsed. However, it was difficult to discern the damage to the Tahoe, because the passenger side rear quarter panel was firmly embedded in the Tahoe's front passenger side panel (it had been backed into its parking space). There was no way to move either car without adding to the damage.
We had been preparing to leave for home when all of this happened, but we stayed around long enough to loan a cell phone for a call to the police and requisite family members, and to assure ourselves that the situation was under control. When we left, our friend was discussing Harry Potter with a barista, while the unfortunate woman driver continued to shed tears while sitting on her car's damaged bumper.
"So," you're probably asking, "what does any of this have to do with the post title?" Good question; I'd expect nothing less from my astute readers. Here's the deal: it never occurred to me to take photos. We had two perfectly good phones with cameras, and we didn't capture any part of this scene for later reporting.
I've never had illusions that this blog is a journalistic resource, and this seems to confirm it. Of course, it's not like this was Big News not like, say, "Paris In Prison" or "Paris Not In Prison" or "Paris Eats Cheerios in Prison" but it was something out of the ordinary. A real journalist would have responded differently.
On the other hand, it's also a bit comforting to realize that maybe I'm not an obsessed blogger, after all. If my first (or even second or third) thought wasn't, "man, I've got to blog this!" then perhaps there's hope for me after all.
On the third hand, I did blog about it, didn't I?
It's worth noting that if a picture is worth a thousand words, I've at least offered 45% of a photo via this post. Not including this footnote.
Nice try, but it won't work
Judging by the traffic numbers to this here blog yesterday, my writing seems to be most attractive when there isn't any. I can only attribute this phenomenon to the actions of hundreds of people who, scarcely believing their good luck, keep coming back here to confirm that I have, indeed, not posted anything.
But I'm on to your nefarious plan, and I'm going to keep writing even if it means driving the readership back down to zero, where it belongs.
Caution: Self-Editing at Work
Despite a recent promise to the contrary, and fueled by a combination of late night ingestion of caffeine and an irrational need to employ the phrase "intentionally provocative," I descended into the depths of punditry with respect to the just-announced lawsuit by the ACLU against the Odessa school district over the latter's inclusion of a "Bible as literature" elective in its curriculum.
Having slept on it, I've decided to remain true(r) to my promise and I've deleted the post. An unfortunate consequence is that that also required deletion of comments which as usual were more pithy and well thought-out than the post itself. To those who left the comments, I apologize.
For the rest of you, perhaps this post will be sufficiently intentionally provocative.
Getting out of the 'sphere and into the real world
I spent an enjoyable two hours this afternoon with Bob Westbrook, chief pixel wrangler over at Ran with the Devil, Walked with Angels. Bob may be the only blogger in Stanton; I feel pretty safe in saying that he's the only Yankee blogger in Stanton (in case you haven't kept up, he and his wife recently relocated to west Texas from Ohio, but Bob has lived in Texas on prior occasions, so I'm playing the Yankee card just to give him a hard time).
Bob's got a great life story, and he's using his blog to try to convey some of the lessons he's learned over the years. These are lessons having to do with the human spirit and God's grace and the stomach-churning roller coaster ride that we call life.
It's always fun to get to meet a fellow blogger, and I appreciate Bob taking the time to drive over from Stanton. We also got to confirm that the free WiFi at the south-side IHOP works as advertised, and the overall service is attentive and friendly -- especially at 3:00 p.m.
Changes
I was about halfway through a post in which I was sharing my wisdom about gun control and related issues when it hit me with magnum force (ha): this isn't any fun.
Blogging in general hasn't been much fun for the past couple of months, in fact, with a few exceptions. And those exceptions have been good reminders that I somehow lost my way. I got busy trying to be a pundit (I don't even know what that is, but that didn't stop me from aspiring to be one), thinking that my insights and perceptions were really key to straightening out the rest of the world.
Well, that's all gonna change, starting now. You'll have to go elsewhere for pith, angst, schadenfreude -- no, wait; strike that...schadenfreude falls into the category of "fun" -- and overarching politosocioecocraponomic commentary. There are plenty of folks linked over in the right-hand column who provide that stuff and who have the added benefit of actually knowing what they're talking about.
So, look for shorter posts about trivial subjects which are guaranteed not to put ideas in your head that will cause you to lose sleep. That's my pledge to you. No, really. I'm dead serious. Content Free™ is back, baby!
But first, I have to go eat a sandwich.
Random Accomplishment
Bret and the RFCCT (Random Family Charity Cycling Team) did a wonderful thing over the weekend. While you and I were napping in preparation for the Mavericks to lose yet again to one of the lesser teams in the NBA, Bret & Co. successfully completed the Houston-to-Austin MS 150 bike ride, raising four grand in the process.
Drop by and leave your congrats to Bret, but don't feel overly honored if he remains standing in your presence. That's just the normal aftereffect of riding 150 miles in two days.
Next up in the Blogger Charity Ride Series: Foo's North Texas MS150 over the first weekend in May.
I'm still here...
...despite all appearances to the contrary.
Posting will resume when I come up with something interesting or intelligent to write.
Gee, I almost was able to type that with a straight face. Don't worry; we're not changing the criteria for posts around here.
Good news for Patti
Patti's still got a long recovery ahead of her, but, man, is this ever good news.
I'm sure she'd appreciate your words of encouragement.
I picked a bad day to start taking Ritalin
I have no idea what the post title means. I just type what the voices tell me.
Oy, what a day. I've worked on 13 different websites -- 13! -- traveled to Odessa to meet with a new client -- new! -- and put $70 worth of gasoline in the truck and various containers -- explosive!
The really fun part is that I've generated exactly 95 minutes of billable time out of all that activity. Still, $12 is nothing to sneeze at.
OK, I'm pretty sure this counts as a post. Yes, I'm positive.
Oh look! A baby squirrel...
Programming Note
Posting may be light-to-nonexistent around here for the next few days due to the Easter holiday...
...although...you never know what might show up here. ;-)
As always, quality bloggage is still available 24-7 from the fine folks listed in the right hand column.
A Writer's Advice
There's a meme going around disguised as an award, and it's called "The Thinking Blogger Award." It's supposed to provide recognition to bloggers whose posts are thought-provoking, but since The Gazette has been nominated a couple times, the vetting process is obviously flawed. Nevertheless, if anyone deserves such an award, it's Deb Thompson over at Write Lightning, for a body of work that's uniformly high in quality, but especially for this post in which she bestows some valuable advice for anyone who would be known as a writer.
Her reminders hit close to home, as I can read the list of important things I should or should not be doing, and my mental checklist informs me that I've been failing on every count. I'm not reading, I'm not staying engaged in friends' lives, I'm not allowing myself to stray from a to-do list in order to interact with a non-orderly world, I'm not trying to figure out what God made me to be...much less being that person.
And it shows on these "pages." Surely you've noticed (and, thankfully, been too kind to point it out), but whether you have or not, I have.
I'm not sure what to do about it, but I thank Deb for articulating so well what I've been feeling, and for providing some clarity. It's hard to find answers until you know the problems.
Another loss in The Neighborhood
Please join me in sending condolences to Jennifer and Brian in the death of their oh-so-very-good dog, Carla, who succumbed to cancer yesterday. She will be missed.
How do they know?
I suspect that many of you can confirm the following observation: if you want to ensure that your clients/boss/spouse/kids/etc. will demand more of your attention than usual, you can easily do so by opening that familiar piece of mail containing a jury duty summons.
On the bright side, if I'm selected to serve, I'll enjoy a significant bump in daily income.
Blogging will resume once my dire has been sufficiently voired.
Meaningless Milestone
This is the sort of thing that only a blogger can appreciate, but at 7:43:15 pm the Gazette had its 500,000th page view. According to SiteMeter, the huge industrial conglomerate responsible for tracking such trivialities, the visitor was from -- get this -- Englishtown, New Jersey. Not only that, but he/she/it (in case it was a 'bot) was running Konqueror 3.5 (a Mozilla-flavored browser) on Linux.
I wish I had some pithy insight to explain the significance of this milestone, but all that comes to mind is that this is further proof that -- in blogging anyway -- longevity can trump quality.
Nevertheless, I appreciate the patronage. Immensely, in fact.
Random Thursday canceled due to excessive orderliness
I have two words: "Pesky Clients."
Or, "Wonderful Clients."
Depends on whether I should be blogging or paying bills.
And I SO wanted to tell you how I reduced my carbon footprint yesterday. Oh well.
Municipal WiFi: Bloggers Beware
An article in this weekend's Midland newspaper described several "WOW" projects being considered by the city, and among them is the implementation of citywide WiFi.
At first glance, this seems to be a wonderful idea, and at least a couple of people over at Jessica's Well profess great enthusiasm at the prospect of dumping their current ISPs in favor of the municipal option. I've given the issue literally minutes of thought and have come to the conclusion that I won't be one of them.
There are a lot of unknowns in the proposition, including pricing, reliability, and security. What is not unknown, at least in my mind, is that giving control over my internet access to the government seems foolish.
Last Tuesday, my internet access went missing all day due to a still-unexplained technical problem at my service provider. Annoyed as I was at the interruption, I felt confident that the company was (a) doing all it could to get things back online, if for no other reason than to minimize the chance of losing customers, and (b) the outage was not intentional. Perhaps I'm naive and paranoid, but as much as I personally like and respect most of the people I know in our city government, I cannot bring myself to assign those motivations to any government entity in a generic sense. Nor can I count on having our government perpetually staffed by people with noble intentions.
The folks who should be most skeptical of government-provided WiFi are those who consider blogging to be a valid form of journalism. I fall into that category, although the reality is far less impressive than the concept, given the extremely low signal-to-noise ratio we currently experience in the blogosphere. (And I count myself in that non-journalistic ub๋r-majority -- most of the time.)
Blogging does have the potential to play an important role in keeping citizenry informed, but it has the distinction of being a medium in which its practitioners have little control over the actual dissemination of the information they generate. Very few of us know how to independently build and maintain a backbone to the internet; we're at the mercy of folks who have the technology and willingness to do that for us. Up to now, those folks also need what we're willing to trade in exchange for that access. The real question is whether we can say the same thing about the government.
In closing, I'd like to address one additional piece of that article, a quote by one of our city councilpersons to the effect "...government should compete with the private sector as long as it can beat it." The previously linked post at Jessica's Well took issue with that statement, but I happen to agree with it. In fact, I wish that was the cornerstone of all government endeavor, for if the government actually limited itself to only those things it can do better than the private sector, I think we'd be in much better shape overall.
Join me in wishing a fellow blogger...
...a very happy birthday and a special blessing for the following day.
Tomorrow (Monday, the 5th) is Patti's birthday (I know which one, but you'll have to ask her if you want to know). And, as you probably know, Patti has also been undergoing treatment for cancer, and is scheduled for surgery on Tuesday.
So, I'll bet she'd love it if you'd pop over to White Pebble and (a) wish her a happy birthday and (b) assure her of your thoughts and prayers for a full and speedy recovery following her surgery.
And from me, Patti -- albeit in a west Texas accent -- yom huledet same'ach and shalom uv'racha, amiga!
Same Sunrise, New Blog
The photos from yesterday's sunrise generated some very kind responses, and I thought I'd follow up with a link to a photo of the same sunrise captured by another blogger about twenty miles to the east of us, while at the same time introducing you to his site.
Ran with the devil, Walked with angels is published by Bob Westbrook in the small community of Stanton. Bob is a Traumatic Brain Injury survivor, and has a very interesting background and story to share. He's been blogging for a while, but has apparently been hiding his light under a bushel until now. Drop by and say hi to a fellow west Texas blogger when you get a minute.
Sneak Peek at Gazette's New Layout
I know everyone's been waiting with frantic anticipation to see the Gazette's new design, which was supposed to have gone up a couple of months ago, but -- like the cobbler's children's shoes -- my own place has gone neglected in favor of work that, you know, pays.
However, I did manage to carve out some time earlier this week to devote to the makeover, and just so you'll stop thinking that I'm a big fat liar (well, about this, anyway) I'm going to take the unprecedented step of letting you have a peek at the new layout as it currently stands.
Feel free to check it out and share your thoughts. Keep in mind that none of the navigation actually leads anywhere, and the blogrolls are just placeholders (if you're on the old one, you'll be on the new one. Assuming your comments on the new layout don't tick me off. Just kidding. Probably.). Also, I haven't even looked at the layout in anything other than Firefox 2.0 for Mac; for all I know, it slags IE for Windows in a smoking heap.
Also, I'm pretty sure I'm not switching to Latin for future posts, although I'm still kicking that option around. Agnosco?
[I'm actually serious about wanting to hear your comments, if you care to leave them, and especially feedback about how the layout looks in different browsers and other platforms.]
Back in Yellow
Back in June of 2004, I posted something about a new way to show support for cancer patients and survivors. The yellow LiveStrong wristband is now a ubiquitous symbol, perhaps one of the most recognizable in the world -- but it's still a powerful reminder of someone special to the one who wears it.
My wife and I donned the wristbands in support of our friend Sherry, and she beat cancer, just as we knew she would. The bands eventually weakened and broke, but not until after she got the first check up that gave her the good news. We never got around to ordering replacements; by the time the supply caught up with the demand for the wristbands, we'd gotten distracted by other things.
When I recently learned that my blogging friend Patti, over at White Pebble, was diagnosed with esophageal cancer, I decided that it was time to bring back the yellow. But this time, I made sure we'd have plenty. I visited the Lance Armstrong Foundation website, ordered three packages of ten, and left a donation to boot (something I hope each of you will consider doing). So, here I am...back in yellow. This is for Patti (and for Sherry; such things are not to be forgotten):
[By the way, until you've tried to hold a right-handed SLR in your left hand in order to take a photo of your right hand, you may have no concept of how difficult it is. Although it just now occurs to me that that's what the self-timer is for. Heh.]
I know that some of you visit Patti's blog from time to time, and if you'd like to join me in this show of support, I'll send you a wristband just for the asking. Email me your mailing address and I'll take care of the rest. I know where to get more.
Whether you choose to wear yellow or not, I hope you'll stop by and leave a word of encouragement for Patti, who continues to blog with the same fire and wit she's always had.
The blogosphere just got a little more interesting...
...because Janie's now a blogger!
Stop by and leave her a welcome message when you get a chance.
It's the most busiest week of the year...
The post title really works only if you sing it to the tune of that Christmas song. No, not "Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer"; that other one. Go ahead, try it; I'll wait for you.
Anyway, I'll bet everyone reading this has one of these weeks each year, and it probably comes around this season, when a whole fistful of events is crammed into a small space on your calendar and you think, "if I can just get through this week, I've got it made..." Which, of course, you don't, but it doesn't pay to acknowledge that.
Realizing that you've got your own scheduling challenges, I still want your sympathy for mine this week, which include: nine hours of volunteering at our church's Christmas Store (free toys for needy kids); one hour of running Abbye back and forth to the vet for a glucose curve; six hours of Christmas parties (assuming an average of three hours each, although one night we have two scheduled simultaneously); one hour of annual dental checkup (I have good teeth); 30 minutes of haircutting (which is twice as long as my inventory merits, but I have a gabby barber); and two hours of dance lessons.
OK, now that I've typed it out like that, it doesn't look so daunting. Heck, I might even have time for a post or two.
Blogger Friends in Need of Prayer
I've been remiss in pointing out a couple of folks who could really use your prayers right now. Jen over at Lintefiniel Musing is confined to a bed due to some possible complications in her pregnancy. The last prognosis was promising, but I haven't seen an update within the past few days.
Of immediate and serious concern is Patti's situation, described over at White Pebble, where just yesterday she received a diagnosis of a cancerous tumor in her esophagus.
I know many of you already read these two blogs regularly, and I trust that you've got both of them on your prayer lists, as I do. And even if you don't happen to believe in the power of prayer, I'm sure they'd still welcome your words of encouragement.
Local Blogger Convocation
I just got back from the big Midland blogger shindig luncheon, and it was quite the affair. In attendance was Jimmy Patterson, Jeff McDonald, and Wallace Craig. Darrell Ward attended as our token media hanger-on; I was going to link to his bio over at KWES-TV, but it seems to be missing. (What's up with that, Jeff?)
A lot of interesting things went on around the table, but I was sworn to secrecy and can't share most of them. I can, however, report that Jimmy ordered shrimp scampi and re-created the climactic scene from Dirty Dancing using the shrimp as the cast. Jeff told us obscure stuff about journalism, and Darrell spoke with a really deep voice. Wallace wore a pink shirt.
Predictably, each of the other bloggers brought their cameras so you'll soon see photos of the occasion appearing at their sites, except for Jeff, who had two cameras but couldn't work either of them. Darrell didn't get the memo, and thus will have to rely on his memory.
I've decided that photographing those mokes isn't all that much fun, so I've relied instead on my keen eye for detail and an innate artistic talent, honed with an advanced degree from the prestigious Art Institute Online, to provide a photo-realistic sketch of our group:
From right to left, that's Darrell, Jeff, Jimmy, yours truly and Wallace. The shadowy figure on the far left is the specter of the Jessica's Well crew; they were invited and we presume were in attendance at another table, disguised as elderly matrons wearing a lot of purple. I can't draw purple, however, so this will have to suffice.
I think it's pretty obvious why an invitation to these luncheons is highly coveted.
Condolences to a Friend
Please join me in extending sympathies to fellow Midland blogger Wallace Craig whose dad passed away earlier this afternoon. His death wasn't unexpected but that doesn't make it any easier.
Our prayers are with you, amigo.
It could be worse...
...I could be using Blogspot.
I was feeling guilty (sort of) about not posting anything today, then I saw the string of Internal Server Error 500s on all my pals' Blogspot joints, and then I didn't feel so bad. It's not schadenfreude, exactly, but it did give me a topic for a post.
I apologize to those who came here looking for something meaningful, even as I snicker at your naivety.
[It occurs to me that in three sentences, I've managed to offend (1) all other bloggers, and (2) all of my readers, leaving only me unscathed. And thus, I don't feel so good...again. The circle of life is an awesome thing, isn't it?]
And the winner is...
The voting to pick the Gazette's new tagline for the next year has ended and the results are definitive, if somewhat surprising:
The winning entry, submitted by Clarence Bowles who blogs from Kentucky via the creatively-named Can You Hear Me Now? won the contest by 13 votes, with the margin of victory coming relatively near the end of the voting period. Ironically, Clarence himself agreed with my suggestion that someone might be stuffing the ballot box, and even more ironically, Clarence himself implied that he would never have picked this method for choosing a tagline for his blog, and most ironic of all, Clarence didn't even think his entry was the best of the finalists. However, I think Clarence will also agree that he takes these things more seriously than me, and I don't have any heartburn accepting the results of the process that I set up.
So, congratulations to Clarence (and he'll get some kind of special link for 12 months in the Gazette's new design when it's finalized), and many thanks to all of you who played along as submitters, judges, and voters. I enjoyed the process, and I hope you had fun with it as well.
340 miles later...
...and we're ensconced in a Ramada Inn Limited in lovely Gainesville, Texas, with an internet connection that finally is working after two complaints to the front desk.
Unfortunately, I have nothing to say and no energy to say it.
Hope your weekend is a good one.
Gazette Tagline Voting Update
With just a few days left for voting, the top two taglines are separated by only four votes, which is a bit surprising to me. "Fiery little bytes..." sprang into an early and apparently insurmountable lead, but "Leg crawling content..." has gotten some unexpected momentum over the past couple of days.
I'm pretty sure someone's stuffing the ballot box, having taken a cue from Jeff's exhortation to vote early and often, as the total number of votes far exceeds the Gazette's readership. But surely that's a mark of success for a blog, when people care enough to cheat.
If you haven't yet cast your vote, click here to do so.
Tagline Contest: Last Week to Vote!
Just a quick reminder that voting in the Gazette's tagline contest ends when September does. If you haven't yet cast your ballot, just click on the goofy looking gray box in the top portion of the right column on the front page. Or, you could just click here. (How's that for empowering voters?)
Not Seeing Things?
Some of the more perceptive among you may have noticed that something is missing from this blog, that being a post about you-know-whose involvement in you-know-who's you-know-what that will be released you-know-when.
While permission was sought and given for that post, sometimes permission is later withdrawn. I didn't ask why; life's too short to worry about stuff like that, and I suspect we've all been guilty at one time or another of mistrusting what we don't understand.
If this makes no sense to you, then you should feel free to continue to...oh, look! A baby squirrel...
Tagline Contest: Time to Vote!
Okey-dokey, the moment you've been waiting for has arrived. The poll is now open for voting for the Gazette's new tagline. [The details of the contest are here.]
The six entries in the poll were the top vote-getters from the esteemed Celebrity Panel of Judges, each of whom was selected for his or her unique qualifications, including superior intelligence, creativity, scholarliness, vocabulary, hygiene, and also the fact that they didn't bother to submit a proposed tagline so they're sure to be apathetic objective. Seriously, though, I'd like to thank the following folks for serving on the judging panel:
- Writer Deb Thompson, blogging from California via Write Lightning
- David Gerstman, aka Soccer Dad, weighing in from Maryland
- Midland Media Mogul Jeff McDonald who holds forth at ArchaeoTexture
- Patti Niehoff from the great state of Ohio, proprietress of White Pebble
- The mysterious FooRider who crafts Random Synaptic Misfires from his secret hideaway in north Texas
- The lovely and talented Phyllis, who represents the Gazette's vast and esteemed non-blogging readership
Knowing how much you guys dig stats, I thought I share these with you:
- 38 entries
- 20 contributors
- 14 of whom are bloggers
- 9 of whom live in Midland
- 18 of whom live in the USA
- 4 entries were in Latin. Or something resembling Latin. Thankfully, none of them made the cut, as I have no idea how they'd really have translated.
- My lone tagline suggestion didn't make the cut.
Voting Guidelines and Other Semi-Official Stuff
- The poll will be up for a couple of weeks or so. You can click on the preceding link if you're ready now; if you want to take some time to consult a ouija board or your local guru, there'll be a link over at the top of the sidebar on the Gazette's home page. [I never could figure out how to embed the poll itself into this page. It can probably be done via framesets, but I abhor them.]
- Vote as often as the cookie allows.
- Everyone is eligible to vote, whether you submittted an entry or not.
- I cannot tell who votes for what. Really.
Thanks again to everyone who submitted an entry, and to those who thought up entries but decided they were lame and didn't submit them. And stay tuned for the results and -- someday -- the new layout!
Midland: World Destination for Bloggers
Jim's whirlwind "Meet the US Bloggers Tour" blew through west Texas and it was a pleasure to meet the man behind Serotoninrain. Up to this point, he'd had Starbucks with Gwynne in Kansas City and barbecue-and-blues with Cowtown Pattie in Foat Wuth, but in Midland he had his work cut out for him as there were three bloggers anxious to get better acquainted with him.
He pulled up in a lean, mean, blogger-touring machine that we christened the Beige Bull:
This is the Ford Taurus that Jim's using to cause Budget Car Rental to rethink what it means by "unlimited mileage."
MLB and I hosted Jim for the evening, taking him for his first taste of asado puerco at Jorge's and then on to the newest Starbucks where we met up with Jeff for coffee, dessert, and a rather esoteric discussion of the Christian themes present in the LOTR trilogy. (Actually, they discussed and I listened; it's been too many years since I read the books.)
Afterward, back at home, we learned why Jim is such a good blogger:
Yes, once he hooked into our wifi, the remainder of our communication was via email and IM. ;-) But, no matter. He brought chocolate.
This morning, Jeff gave us the VIP tour of the KWES TV studios and then we drove downtown to get a similar tour of the Midland Reporter Telegram facility, hosted by Jimmy.
This was followed by a leisurely lunch at Jimmy's regular spot at The Italian Village, where the owner falls all over himself to make sure Jimmy's happy. It's a sight to behold. Anyway, here are the Three Amigos (l-r): Jeff, Jim, and Jimmy. I'm not in the photo because I lack the requisite number of j's in my name.
The most revealing bit of information to come out of lunch was the realization that we were all high school band members (yeah, like that's a big shock), although Jim got the award for cool assignments as he played a car battery-powered electric bass with his marching band.
Following lunch, Jim packed up, confirmed directions to Starbucks (one for the road) and headed west, to parts unknown. You'll have to look for clues on Serotoninrain to try to guess where he's going. Jimmy thinks he's headed for the Grand Canyon, but only time will tell.
Anyway, as I said at the beginning, it was fun to meet yet another blogger from many miles away. Jim's a great guy and I'm looking forward to his return trip with his family as they come back to visit Big Bend National Park. You are returning, right, Jim?
OK..step away from the keyboard...
I'm always slightly amused -- and more than a little bemused -- when I go a few days without posting and folks start emailing to see if there's a problem. Apparently, four days is the limit of allowable downtime, based on the fact that I've received more than one such email today. (Although, really, it hasn't been that long, as the Gazette's 9/11 memorial post was simply removed at the end of the day on Monday.)
OK, I admit to feeling flattered that anyone even notices, let alone cares whether anything new gets published in this space. I suppose I need to do a better job of announcing beforehand a lull in posting, but to be honest about it, I don't always plan those lulls. It seems like every couple of months or so, I hit a creative or motivational wall, and every idea I have for a post seems like dreck or I feel that someone -- everyone -- can write about it better than me.
Anyway, despite the fleeting thought that some of you might also need to take a break from the blogosphere every now and then, your caring inquiries seem to be just the right lever needed to break the chains of apathy, bringing back to life all the mixed metaphors and bad grammar that had lain fallow. I would apologize, but, really, it's your own fault. ;-)
Oops!
I've had an onslaught of comment spam in the past 24 hours, dealing with 150 or so bogus comments (note to self: now might be a good time to investigate upgrading your blogging package to something with a captcha routine). After noticing that almost all the spam was linked to either Belgian or dot-info domains, I temporarily added .be and .info to my blacklist, and proceeded to delete all recent comments with those domains.
Unfortunately, my goofball blacklist plugin misunderstood my intention of banning .info and .be URLs and instead flagged for deletion any comment with either of those strings in the text...including my own comments because they were accompanied by my email address which, of course, begins with "info."
While I finally got a clue before doing major damage, I fear that I've inadvertently deleted up to 50 recent comments via this boneheaded move. If yours was among them, I apologize.
On the bright side, having to use "oops" in this context is much preferred to using it in another...as, say, a neurosurgeon in the operating arena.
Quality Linkage
Honestly, I have no idea why you're here, when you could be ingesting quality bloggage such as:
- Julie's account of her brush with invisibility;
- Bret's double-play about contemplating and preparing for the eternal;
- mis_nomer's articulation of our universal yearning for an undo keystroke for life;
- Jennifer's vision of her neighborhood through God's eyes.
Good stuff, all of these, and plenty of justification for the existence of the blogosphere.
The Kiwi Connection
I mentioned a special visitor in the previous post, and she arrived on schedule this afternoon. "She," in this case, is the lovely young Rachel, who blogs over at Precipitation and who is making her first ever trip to the States from her home country of New Zealand.
I'm not sure what the local Chamber of Commerce would make of the fact that she chose two primary destinations for this trip: Los Angeles and Midland.
Anyway, MLB and I picked her up at the airport around 5:00, got her checked into her hotel (and watching the young ladies behind the counter try to figure out how to enter a New Zealand address and phone number into the computer system was a hoot), and then we headed out for barbecue (K.D.'s, for the locals who care about such things). Yep, nothing like a big honkin' slab of meat slapped on a sheet of butcher paper to welcome an international guest. I think she enjoyed the meal (I'm sure she'll have her own report up when she returns -- we were joking with each other about who'd get to blog first about this stuff), although I never could convince her that the jalape๑os weren't that hot.
Afterwards, we went to our house so she could meet Abbye -- they were quite taken with one another, Rachel being a dog-person and Abbye being a dog-person-dog, if that makes sense -- and we chatted about plans for the weekend, life in New Zealand, and how none of us could do metric/english conversions in our heads.
Some of our plans are tentative due to the uncertain weather: the airplane tour, the trip to the shooting range, the high school football game. I hope some of that stuff works out, because, frankly, we're really pretty boring people when you get right down to it, and I'm sure Rachel will be wishing she'd signed on for one more day at Disneyland if our company is the best Midland has to offer.
We'll let you know how things unfold. Then, in a few days, you can get the real story over at Precipitation.
Tagline Contest: The Next Step
The "Give the Gazette a Tagline" contest is now closed to new entries and we enter the next step in the interminable process of choosing a winner. We'll submit the thirty-plus entries to our esteemed panel of celebrity judges and they will score each suggestion using a complicated series of criteria that makes the BCS computations seem like a kindergarten paste-eating exercise. The entries that emerge from this step as the highest ranked will then be voted on by Gazette readers, and the top vote-getter will be added to the new design, when it's finally rolled out.*
Many thanks to all who submitted suggestions -- even those whose ideas took a form so obscure that I don't have a clue as to what they really mean.
And, in the immortal words of Hillie...stay tuned!
*The timing for this is likely to coincide with Mel's keynote speech at an ADL national convention.
Tagline Contest Reminder
Just a quick reminder that this is the last week to submit your suggestion for the Gazette's new tagline. Contest details are here. You can submit your ideas either via the comments of the post or email them to info -at- ericsiegmund dot com. Enter as often as you like...make the members of the Celebrity Judging Panel earn their non-taxable goody bags full of west Texas air.
Go North, Young Ant
About the same time BP was announcing that its Prudhoe Bay pipeline system was dissolving like a fizzy in battery acid, our friends Lyle and Cindy were off on a vacation jaunt. Could there possibly be a connection?
Well, you decide:
Fire ants on the North Slope? Hmmmm...
This would make a great recurring feature: Fire Ant shirts in exotic locales. The only problem is that it will require that the eight people who've actually purchased one will have to start doing some serious traveling.
Contest: Give the Gazette a Tagline
Update: The Tagline contest is now closed, as we await the next step in the interminable process of picking a winner. Many thanks to all who participated. Stay tuned!
We're getting close to rolling out a new design for the Gazette ("close" being a relative term, and in this case roughly equivalent to when scientists speak of the sun being "close" to going supernova), and that new design just screams for a catchy tagline. So I'm sorta hoping you can do my work for me, and come up with a good one.
In order to provide sufficient motivation, we're hereby proposing a modest little contest. If you provide the winning tagline, you'll win Fabulous Prizes, and the quote will appear in the Gazette's header for at least one year. You'll also get a one-year link in the sidebar, extolling your awesome creativity and apparent overabundance of discretionary time.
Contest Rules
- Tagline should be 10 words or less.
- Entries are due via comment or email (info -at- ericsiegmund dot com) on or before September 1, 2006.
- Taglines should be at least vaguely relevant to the Gazette's style (or lack thereof), tone, and content (ha!). Concepts might include references to: Texas, fire ants, Content Free posts, and/or baby squirrels.
- You can enter as often as you wish, or as your pride will allow.
- After September 1, five entries will be selected by a panel of objective, um, panelists. Those five will then be included in an online poll and Gazette readers will have the final say-so in picking the winner.
Fabulous Prizes
The winner will receive a $25 gift certificate from either Amazon.com or the iTunes Music Store, and a Fire Ant Gazette coaster (what can I say? I over-ordered for Blogathon, and I sure don't want them.), along with the aforementioned one year's worth of valuable publicity.
On your mark...get set...
Go!
Oh, and thanks a bunch. All I've been able to come up with so far is "Got Milk?" and I'd swear I've heard that somewhere else.
Update: By the way, just so you won't get your feelings hurt (I know how sensitive you guys can be), I will not be commenting on your suggestions during the duration of the contest. It's not that I don't want to, and I will be reading them all with great interest, but it's probably best that I stay out of it.
Blogging Forecast: Scattered to Mostly Absent
Probably won't be much going on here at the Gazette beginning...3...2...1...now.
My wife has the day off, and with our wedding anniversary today and her birthday on Sunday and a calendar full of fun stuff, I likely won't be spending much time in front of the keyboard.
I do want to take a moment to thank you for your Blogathon pledges, especially those of you who've pledged over the past couple of days and to whom I've not yet gotten around to sending a more personal "thank you." You can see the Gazette's total over in the upper right column (if you're on the home page); if you add that to what Jimmy's raised via his two blogs, we're over $2,500 in total, which is wonderful. (By the way, if you've looked at the Blogathon website, you might have noticed that their total doesn't match the one I'm showing. That's because Blogathon doesn't count "unverified" pledges in its totals, but I do. I know the folks who are pledging, and know they're good for those pledges, whether they've clicked on that "verify" email link or not.)
Anyway, have a great weekend...I plan to!
Rob's Re-Entry
I just learned that Rob Stewart has made his new blog -- Just a Blog -- public, and you should stop by and welcome him back. Rob, a professor at Texas Tech (in Lubbock for you non-Texans), is a fine blogger and all-around good guy, and he's been missed since Snippets went fallow earlier this year.
The only thing I find fault with on his new joint is his cool little analog clock that's captioned "Texas Time," which, of course, is going to peeve the folks in El Paso and the Guadalupe Mountains National Park. But, then, perhaps that's his intent. ;-)
Sleepy Theater
In the absence of new episodes of Fire Ant Theatre Classical Readings, a separate and more than equal answer may be found over at Beth's joint, as she indulges in a Spoonerism tribute (or is it "Troonersim Spibute"?).
HBTG
Oh, before I forget, be sure and drop by to wish Gwynne a happy birthday!
I'm pretty sure there's gonna be cake.
HBTM
Someone* once said, with respect to blogging, that it's not all about you (the blogger). I've given careful consideration to his words through the years, mining that wisdom to the bedrock, and have come to the conclusion that the person who said that is an idiot. Of course it's all about me. Duh.
And so it is that I'm not just privileged but I'm downright compelled to announce that today's my birthday. However, I'm not completely self-involved, not like Ann Coulter, for example, and so I'm happy to share this occasion with the rest of you who, unfortunately, do not have birthdays today. I'm happy to act as a Birthday Proxy for you, giving you the opportunity to feel the joy of my birthday, without actually getting any of the presents.
In my official self-designated role as your Birthday Proxy, I'm pleased to report that you are hereby entitled to enjoy the knowledge that I am enjoying, on your behalf, the following gifts:
- From MLB, an amazing and wonderful Canon CanoScan 9950F flatbed scanner, the first scanner I've had that will handle negatives and slides. She also gave me a copy of SilverFast AI, a powerful piece of scanner software whose capabilities far exceed mine. The only downside I can see to this whole package is that it comes with an implied assignment of finally digitizing the hundreds of decades-old slides that have been slowly deteriorating in our closet.
- Also from MLB, a new Craftsman cordless screwdriver to replace the one that crapped out six months ago and for which I've been pining ever since. This new one comes with a stupefying array of bits, the completeness of which would make MacGyver -- to borrow a phrase from Mel Brooks -- stand up and salute even as he remains seated.
- From my parents, you will be able to enjoy by proxy the following books:
- King Dork, the book that out Napoleons Napoleon Dynamite;
- Garner's Modern American Usage, raved about by David Foster Wallace; and
- DOM Scripting: Web Design with JavaScript and the Document Object Model, because blogging and reading novels doesn't pay the bills.
- From my father-in-law, a very generous gift Barnes & Noble gift card which will enable you to enjoy by proxy our weekly gathering for coffee and dessert and reading magazines instead of buying them.
So, many thanks to the above folks, as well as to those who have been thoughtful enough to adorn my mailbox with ecards of exquisite taste and decorum -- especially the one about cutting the cheese -- and also my best wishes to you for whom I'm generously providing Birthday Proxy services at absolutely no cost. Enjoy!
*Mea culpa
New Blog: FireRANT
I'm not a fire ant expert, but I play one in the blogosphere.
Sorry, I couldn't resist.
Anyway, the Gazette gets a lot of hits from folks searching for information about fire ants. I'm sure they're disappointed when they land here, expecting to get information about how to kill the little demons and instead get photos glorifying them. Or posts about folding fitted sheets.
I feel awful about the misrepresentation. OK, not awful. In fact, I couldn't care less. But, still, I have included at least one link in the blogroll to a legitimate fire ant resource, the Texas Imported Fire Ant Project, hosted by Texas A&M (Motto: "Cows and More"). And, as of fifteen minutes ago, I've doubled the available fire ant resources by adding FireRANT to the roll.
FireRANT appears to be a commercial blog, sponsored by GardenTech, the company that makes Over'n Out Fire Ant Killer, among other things. The blog gives generous promotion to that product, as you would expect, but it also provides a wealth of general information about fire ants, and presents it in a very readable format. I was especially impressed with the post about the apparent impact of Hurricane Katrina on the fire ant population in and around NOLA.
I have no idea whether Over'n Out works as advertised, having never tried it. At this particular moment, our personal homestead seems to be fire ant free. That's almost guaranteed to change, however, and when it does, I think I'll look for that product and give it a field test. Watch this space for a review. And if you're dealing with fire ant infestations (of the non-blog kind), you might want to check out FireRANT.
For your weekend reading pleasure
I suspect that not all of you are aware of Norman Geras's Normblog, and its extensive collection of interviews with a wide variety of bloggers. Many of them are fascinating, and if you've spent much time in the blogosphere you'll recognize a lot of the names of the interviewees.
At the very least, be sure to read Norm's interviews with Patti Niehoff (whose White Pebble is one of the Gazette's Neighborhood blogs), Scott Ott, the best satirist in the 'sphere, doing his thing over at ScrappleFace, and Manolo the Shoeblogger, whose Manolo's Shoe Blog will covers far more than fashionable, expensive, and terribly uncomfortable footwear.
Update: And although Scott Ott is a brilliant satirist, he can also be much, much more. Be sure to read his Memorial Day tribute.
Later...
As in, "catch you..."
This is shaping up to be a week of very little blogging, here at the 'zette, for reasons varied and sundry.
Aggregation Consternation
I just discovered that the Gazette is being included in a new (to me, anyway) aggregation site called austinsnews.net. According to this "note to content providers," the site is in "early beta" and won't be officially live -- whatever that means -- until October. This means that the content, format, and everything else about the site could change before then. I suppose that the site could even cease to exist. Certainly one outcome is that the Gazette's stay on the list could be temporary.
They still have a few kinks to iron out. One of the most glaring is this sentence in the sidebar: That's what we're doing -- telling people about the best blogs, music and citizens content from Nashville. Nashville? That confused me at first, until I hacked the URL and visited nashvillesnew.net and found the same basic layout and approach...only it really is for Nashville. I assume the template simply got copied onto the Austin site.
I have mixed feelings about this whole thing. Obviously, we'll welcome any readers who might click over from the site, although I don't expect much traffic for a variety of reasons. And since I provide only excerpts of posts for the Gazette's RSS feeds, it's not as though austinsnews.net will get any benefit from the posts themselves (which, now that I think about it, is laughable to begin with). The thing that bothers me a bit is the copyright notice on each page of the site which implies that anything that appears on the webpage belongs to austinsnews.net, and we all know that's just not true.
Of course, this has been the concern about aggregators all along. They take content created by someone else and, well, aggregate it to presumably make it easier for consumers to find that content. My assumption is that austinsnews.net is not a work of charity...that the creators are interested in making a buck or two (and I'm a big fan of the profit motive). So the question becomes whether those whose content is being included should be concerned about sharing in any profits that our content helps generate. The site's "Note to Content Providers" addresses that...sort of:
So, if I'm reading this correctly, content providers might receive some sort of compensation, but only four per week will actually get anything from the website itself (anything else will come from reader tips).
This gets even more complicated for me, as founder of the Coalition of Unpaid Bloggers, a tongue-in-cheek non-organization that actually fronts a serious position: I do this blogging thing for many reasons, but getting paid -- or attempting to get paid -- is not one of them. What happens in the unlikely event that some of the Gazette's content actually generates some revenue via the aggregation site? (And what if the sun goes dark tomorrow?)
I'm willing to stick with the status quo and see how it plays out. I'm confident that they'll soon come to their senses and find some real content in place of the Gazette's posts. I mean, which part of "Content Free™" do they not understand?
Blogroll Re-roll
Without sufficient consideration for the time it takes to do such a seemingly trivial task, I've set out to reorganize the Gazette's blogrolls. If you're a Texas blogger and your site has disappeared from the list, please be assured that it will resurface.
Here's why. I'm creating a new list of Texas blogs and also renaming the Midland roll so that it will be more inclusive of West Texas as a whole. Until I get all of this rearranging and setup work finished, the blogs that have been shifted from other categories into the new Texas list won't appear. My sincere apologies.
We now return you to your regular non-programming.
Public Service Announcement
Now that Cox Communications has completed the sale of its west Texas operations to Cebridge (soon to be known by the uninspiring name, "Suddenlink," which conjures up visions of car wrecks), its customers will be forced to change their email addresses.
For those of you who have been using esiegmu -at- cox dot net to send me email, please start using info -at- ericsiegmund dot com, effective immediately (although you can continue to use the old address for forwards of emails warning me about how Madeline Murray O'Hair is going to reach out from the grave and finally succeed in turning all the churches in America into brothels unless I sign an FCC petition). The old address won't go away for a few months, but I figure it's better to try to stay ahead of the curve. Plus, if you have a lot of Midland folks in your address book, you'll undoubtedly be making similar changes for them; just think of me as practice.
Thanks for your patience. In order to prevent this from happening again, I'll do my best to resist the temptation of selling my name to someone else. I can't make any promises, though.
On behalf of my software, I apologize
Sometime around 8:00 p.m. last night, my email program (Entourage, by *cough* Microsoft) apparently decided to stop delivering messages to the address associated with this here blog. I thought things were strangely quiet, but decided that folks had finally -- and somehow simultaneously -- reached the point that I knew would inevitably arrive, as they realized that Content Free™ blogging was a terrible waste of their time and pixels and they would from this point forward devote themselves to watching "South Park" reruns instead of visiting and commenting on this drivel.
Anyway, after restarting Entourage (which I assume was retaliating for the earlier post about the new Apple ads), I was relieved to see a full inbox. But I'm now also way behind in responding to your comments, and given the day's schedule, I may not catch up.
I'm not ignoring you. Really. And thanks for not leaving. Yet.
Where does the magic come from?
"Zits" © 2006 Jerry Scott & Jim Borgman
[The irony of this post is not lost on the author.]
Reaping the Whirlwind: Ad Agency sues a blogger
Read this and then sit back and watch what happens. I suspect that Warren Kremer Paino Advertising LLC has no idea of the incredible dumbness of what it's just done, but will find out pretty quickly.
The blogger in question, Lance Dutson, has had an ongoing campaign to expose what he believes is incompetence on the part of the Maine Tourist Board and its advertising contractor. Exhibit A is a print ad that ran with a phone sex number instead of the correct agency phone number. For pointing out this and other faux pas, he's been slapped with a multi-million dollar lawsuit alleging libel, copyright infringement, and defamation.
Stay tuned...this will be page one in the blogosphere for a good while.
Hat tip: WSJ's Law Blog
Technorati tags: Maine Web Report | Frivolous and Chilling Lawsuits
Blogging IS forthcoming...
I've a commitment as a pallbearer in a funeral right after lunch, and with the usual Monday meanderings I'm running behind in my bloggage quota. But, never fear...I shall return later today...with a smackdown of another local blogger, no less! ;-)
$70 oil is good for business...
...mine, anyway. Not quite a good as actually being in the awl bidness, but there's definitely a trickle-down or halo effect. Regardless, I'm up to here with busy-ness, just in case you're wondering. Feel free to chat amongst yourselves for a bit.
Sad News from a Blogger Friend
I'll let Jen provide the details; she does a beautiful job in heartrending circumstances. I'm know that she and her husband will appreciate your encouragement and prayers.
Too busy -- or blocked -- to blog?
Well, why not just buy your next post?
I guess I'm gonna have to come up with a new chiclet to accompany those for "Content Free" and "Coalition of Unpaid Bloggers." Perhaps something along the lines of "It ain't much, but it's Mine."
Technorati tag: x:posted
The blessing of having gifted "neighbors"
You meet the nicest people while in the blogosphere. Take for example, Brian and his wife Jennifer, proprietors of BeanQuest and Jennifer's Nest, respectively. You no doubt recognize their names and/or their blogs from 
previous posts...a wonderful young couple living in Ohio. Both are quite talented, which you'll quickly perceive after spending a little time on their blogs.
They're both generous with their talents, which is even better, and I've been the recipient of some of that generosity. Brian has helped me with scripting issues in the past (although it's like trying to teach a dog to play Wagner). And now Jennifer has bestowed upon me a one-of-a-kind handmade bike tool roll-up pouch! And I just have to share more about that with you.
That's a photo of it on the right, in its unloaded, rolled-up configuration. You can click on it to see a bigger photo. You may not be able to tell from the small photo but once you unroll it, it's easy to see that it's made of a dish towel, folded and stitched in such a way as to form a series of pockets. Each pocket will hold a tool or other piece of bike-related gear, as shown below. Starting on the left, I've got a CO2 tire inflator, two CO2 cartridges, a set of nylon tire levers, a multi-tool with chain breaker attachment, a small crescent wrench and a small set of Channel Lock pliers. Again, you can click the photo for a closer look.
