Well, that was embarrassing. I used my blog to edit a cover letter for some job and saved it in the blog, because I didn't have a better place to save it. I deleted it when I was done, but I never rebuilt the blog afterwards and the cover letter stayed. I just noticed this today, so it has been up for a while. :(
The reason I noticed is that I was checking to see if comments were working on the blog yet. For those of you who haven't noticed, the comments feature isn't working right now. No one can comment on my entries. This happened when we moved servers, and I don't really know how to fix it. Jordan has a few ideas of how to fix it, and will give them a try. Things will work out eventually.
I haven't been writing all that much here, and perhaps some will wonder why there is this big gap in my writing. So, I thought I'd write to answer that and put an end to the growing gap.
I have certainly had a lot to write about lately, but the things that I've had to write about are actually what stand in the way of my writing. My mind has been so occupied with things that I do not want to write about that I haven't really had much time or space in my mind for blogging.
Some of the things that are happening are too mundane for blogging -- such as working at UPS, practicing for tests and quizes, reading, and studying.
There is also some new and exciting stuff going on that I'd really love to blog about, but I haven't written a word about any of it, because I feel sensitive about criticism, condemnation, and negativity. I have let people in my life know about some of these things over the phone, but that has generally resulted in the three things that I really don't want right now. So, I've decided I wouldn't blog about all these things.
There are still other things I'd like to write about that are private. I think that they are interesting, and they are new and eventful things to journal, but I don't think that this is the place. Finally, there is also Ogame. This doesn't take up all that much of my time or thought, but it is something that is going on right now and I don't feel like writing any more about it than I already have.
So, until my life changes and goes back to where it was or I feel less sensitive to criticism and negativity I will probably not be writing nearly as much as I had planned when I began blogging. I'll still try to come back now and again to write when I can, but I have to admit that I find it difficult to write lately because of the criticism that I feel in my life. It seems to have a deep impact, and I think I've even internalized it to the point where I criticize myself before I even take action on some things.
I have been having problems with unwanted solicitation in the comment section of my blog. It has really gotten out of hand. I have mt blacklist, but it doesn't seem to block the flood of comments. Too many times this past week I have signed into my blog only to see more and more of these unwanted comments. Then I set to deleting them all, which takes a good deal of time. By the time I am done I don't even feel like blogging. So, today I thought I'd write a little complaint before I started to fight the problem some more.
If anyone has any good suggestions you can e-mail me or even leave a comment. An end to this would be appreciated. Then I can finally get back to writing again.
Today is my the second birthday of my blog. Yea!
I should do something fun in honor of this event, like... posting ten of my favorite entries or something like that. I really wish I could know some of your favorite entries though.
Have you been thinking out loud again lately?
Over at thinkoutloud.org, Conor, Nate, and I are doing exactly that... about Christianity. Check it out.
Last night I got my e-mail from Google saying that my site was approved for their AdSense program. So, this morning I set about getting the rest of the stuff set up for it and making a place for them on my main page.
I thought that this would be an interesting way to make a little extra money, but so far I have no idea of how much money this will make. Most people I talk to are thinking that I will just make a few cents each month. This means that I won't make anything at all, because you need to accumulate $100 before they even cut you a check. (I set my account up for direct deposit though... I shouldn't make myself another reason to do work.)
The way this thing works is that I get paid some negligible amount for every 1,000 visits I get. I also get paid a different negligible amount for every time someone clicks on an ad. In theory, I would have lots of visitors to my site and a good percentage of those people would click on the ads to the right. Then I'd get some money deposited into my account every month. In actuality, I probably won't see any money before the end of the decade -- unless my site suddenly becomes very popular.
This is exactly why I set this up. In the unlikely event that my site does start to generate undue amounts of traffic, I will need to start paying for Internet hosting. This will make this site cost more than the yearly domain name registration. With Google's ads in place I will be able to offset the need for more server capacity with the ability to generate the money to pay for it.
(OK, the truth is that I just wish I could get paid for doing all the things that I already do. You're probably the same way, so don't pass any hypocritical judgments my way.)
You may have noticed that these ads blend in well with my site. That makes me pretty happy. At first I was concerned that they would stand out too much. I was thinking that there would be a large white rectangle with black text. That wouldn't look all that great with the grey-black/grey/purple thing that I have going on here. So far people seem to think that the ads are fairly "unobtrusive" and "barely noticeable." I like the sound of that.
The next thing that I can add to the site is a Google search bar. This too can make me negligible amounts of money. It would work only if my visitors decided to search for something using google without first leaving my site. THEN they would have to click on an ad -- I think. Maybe I'd get the impression rate for any search done. I don't know. Help please?
I made a little change to my site's main page. You probably already noticed it by now. I am wondering what people think of this ad campaign, the ONE project/organization, and the celebrity endorsements and endorsers involved.
Here's what I think...
So far I am curious. I've read their site, and it seems like they just want you to sign something petition-like and sign up for something from which you can unsubscribe. They also accept donations, but they want you to get the word out, so your donation earns you a ONE wrist band for every dollar you donate... or something like that.
The wristbands are cool! I'm into white right now, and it is so simple. It just says ONE. Hmmmm... it's almost bridal. No wonder I'm so into it right now. It would really be cool if when the band got dirtier its message would change to TWO... like these toys that change colors in hot or cold water. Do you know what I'm talking about?
I have pessimistic views about poverty. I don't think it is something that we can end. I do think that we each need to "fight poverty" through charitable efforts, but I don't think it will end, and I definately don't expect to see the end of poverty in my lifetime. Of course, this is merely fighting "extreme poverty" and worldwide AIDS.
I also think it is neat that wealthy celebrities are so into this. They've got lots of money! Of course, I don't really believe that giving people money solves the poverty issue. You can't eat, wear, or live in money after all. (OK, you can eat it, but that would rip you apart if you were already starving.) I think that poverty issues have to do with money only in part. I think that there are also issues such as creating a livilihood, the logistics of delivering food and medicine from production points to the more remote areas of the world. (This is where ONE's partner, UPS, would come in quite handy since it is in the logistics services and parcel delivery business.)
Blah Blah Blah... see how I search for something meaningful to say about all of this? I don't have much of an opinion about this whole thing, but I am very curious about what other people think of this effort. Let me know, please!
PS -- I'm thinking of buying some of these wrist thingies. Let me know if you want one, because I'll have several to give away if I do buy some, because well... they come in batches of ten or more.
This month is shaping up to be my slowest month of blogging since the inception of this site. Hopefully, it will remain as the slowest month for many more months.
I was thinking about how few entries I have been posting lately, and wondering if some of my friends and fellow bloggers are possibly posting more frequently than usual to coax me back into blogging. If so, I appreciate it. For some reason, when I see that someone I know is blogging more, it makes me want to blog more frequently. Of course, the same is sometimes true when I see someone drop blogging from thier life for a month or so, but that tends to make me commit to staying regular with posting. Time to go read a few more to see how the rest of my friends are doing.
I guess the new word for this scourge is spamments. I was calling it blog spam, but one word is always better than too, unless you're trying to tell someone that you love them.
I haven't posted in over a week, because I have always been too busy with my time online trying to clear out all these spamments, which has taken longer than usual because there have been more than usual and because I am now closing the ability to comment on posts that have received a spamment. After doing this long enough I think almost all of my older posts will be closed to commentary and I will get almost no spamments. Sad, but that is how I am handling it. Now to write about something meaningful about my life.
I have been getting a lot of spam comments on my site lately -- more than usual. So, now when I delete a comment I have decided to also close the comments to any entry that is over a month old. This should stop most of the spam, because they seem to only spam on older entries anyway. Here's wishing the best.
Lana wrote an entry in her blog the other day that reminded me about an aspect of blogging -- Tone. Whenever I read bloggers the tone is often any combination of pensive, dark, gloomy, excited, informative, funny, or profound.
I had commented that 'it is also interesting to note that our posting tones are often quite different from who we are in real life. Often times when you are in a great mood you're just too busy to post, so blog posts inevitably reflect a slightly darker version of the poster.'
How true does this become?
The way you act in front of your computer is and perhaps should be different than the way you might act in front of people such as friends and relatives. Every situation produces a different mood and tone in people -- even if that variation is only slight.
I have many other parts of my personality, but I don't think I'll ever share my goofier, sexier, sadder, insecure, etc. sides of myself here.
I am happy to say that I may have had a part in adding to the larger blogging community. I started my blog over a year ago -- not long before I met the soon to be mentioned wonderful ladies -- and in the space of one year four people have created three blogs and are actively adding to the greater blogging community.
OK, enough of my effort to pat myself on the back for something I probably had little to do with. Check out their blogs.
First, Jenn and Megan tag-teamed their way into blogdom with the aptly named (and envy inducing) "Diabloglical."
Then Jessica dropped a bomb on the cyberscape with her prolific semi-self-titled jbrar7 -- subtitled The Woman's Heart -- God's Palace
And now... coming to a browser in front of you... Lana jumps into the fray with her debut of ArbitraryWords
Whoa! I just realized that I totally missed the one year anniversary of this blog! I can quickly realize why though -- that was the day after I got in my second car wreck in just eight days. I was rattled. I was tired. I'm a guy. I was thinking of a million other things. I've got excuses, man!
Anyway, Happy Belated Birthday to my Blog.
Hopefully July 12th, 2005 isn't so eventful that I forget the second anniversary.
Alright, this blog has gotten pretty boring lately, which really means only a handful of things, but I feel like I should update the blog and explain exaclty what it means and what has caused the decline.
1. It means that I am leading and have been leading a busier, perhaps fuller life.
2. My lack of posting is also due to the sick amount of time I have spent either working, prepping for the summer, or with the 301 girls and church activites.
3. Finally, my lack of posting is due to the decrease in the amount of time I am spending in front of my computer. I get ideas for things that I'd love to post from time to time, but I forget them much of the time well before I come back to my computer. Also, when I am back at my computer I don't think of blogging nearly as much as I did in the past two months.
Unfortunately, I will soon be even busier than I have been this month. I plan on leaving Saturday morning to do something that will likely take up nearly every moment of every day of my life for some fifteen weeks.
That is obviously a slight exaggeration, but still predominantly true. So, I will likely be blogging a lot less than I did in the past, and when I do blog, it very well may be about this job. Brace yourself. There are going to be three-four months of this before I return to normal blogging routines.
I think I think more when I don't get enough sleep or something. Maybe I just think more randomly or perhaps I just feel more like blogging because I KNOW that I will be too tired to remember any of this stuff, and I am also too tired to realize that what I am writing is just silliness that no one will want to read.
Waitaminute! No one reads any of this anyway! I should be writing whatever I want as it is -- even when I'm not sleep deprived. That's what Megan and Jenn do, after all....
I've added some category function to the blog, but it still isn't quite what I want it to be. I don't know enough about coding these things to just go in and get everything the way I'd like it to be. So, I guess I'm just going to have to write out what I want on some paper for now, and stash it away for a day when I can put it all into action.
I'm just adding other thoughts here...
I think it would be cool if I could use this blog as a type of storage cabinet / archive of my thoughts so that I could go through and have a bunch of material if I ever wanted to lead a discussion on something, write a book, or any other thing that comes up that I have time to prepare
Well, Joy has told me that she prefers this new habit of mine (writing for the blog) over my old habits of writing to magazines, newspapers, columnists, and companies, so I guess I'm doing something that makes her happier. Woohoo!
Yes, it’s true... I used to write e-mails (or if you go way back – U.S. mail) to companies suggesting things such as new product ideas, marketing campaigns, product improvements, etc. To the media outlets I’d write to tell the columnist that he or she wrote a good piece. Occasionally, I would also write to disagree with a piece, but that is fairly rare. I think it is nicer send support, y’know? Actually, I think that the only times I would ever send in disagreements would be when I read magazines targeted at women, because I think that they might actually care about my opinion I guess.
The letters and e-mails I liked the most were for new product ideas or product improvements. Some people like to dream about winning the lottery, but I always thought it would be cool if the M&M/Mars company would just make some marshmallow M&Ms. This grew into other things like a desire for Strawberry Kiwi Gatorade, pizza box recycling, a number of Ben & Jerry’s flavors, and my latest – more almonds in the new Almond Snickers (there’s ole M&M/Mars again.)
Actually, I pretty much stopped that practice when I learned that most companies would never read the letters anyway, because they often feel like they might be liable if they did use the idea. I don’t understand that at all, but I will believe it for now because I am pretty ignorant when it comes to law.
Confidence and faith (and some help) has really seen this through. I didn't really think I would be able to set up MovableType on my own, but Jordan told me that I should be able to, and so having faith in his judgement I went ahead and put a few hours into making this happen.
For this week the format of this site is going to remain in default land, but it is my intention to change it around a bit and make it something slightly less bland.