Blog Potion Number 9.5

I tell myself that this blog is just a journal for personal use, and it happens to be online, and sometimes people happen to comment.

But really, it's all about the comments. It's odd how some days you can get many comments, and other days none. You say to yourself - I was extra funny today, what's the problem?

Or you have an off day and write what you think is a lackluster post, and you get nine comments. You try to analyze the topic, the tone - what was it you did right that day? Or were people just in a chatty mood? Day of the week? The weather? Nothing good on TV?

Was the post too long? Too short? Should I create a 'reasons I the reader did not comment' poll? Would non-commenting types really bother to take a poll?

I'm not alone. Many bloggers enjoy feedback. Perhaps I could start a paid subscription service - for X amount every month, I will read your blog daily and post a goodly comment. Hmmn. A while back, I jokingly considered starting a blog printing/binding service, so people could have snazzy hard copies of their blogs. I think many folks would enjoy that - Litany mentioned converting hers to book form the other day, and reminded me. Mebbe it could be one business with multiple services.

Looking at the StatCounter info, I see that my months ago mention of the keywords "showering naked gym" gets hits every day, though (thankfully?) these folks are not commenting. If I want more hits, I suppose I need to talk about getting all soapy, sudsy and wet and scrubbing myself at the gym, surrounded by naked men and their hairy backsides. (that should get me some hits, hoo yeah) Hmn, no thanks.

Perhaps I need to compose a formula which would dictate the use of popular subjects then in the news, establish the optimum post frequency - twice a day would be good, best post length, eye-friendly quantity of line breaks/new paragraphs, links to always high quality web sites, a topical variety of subject matter - say three separate but somehow related subjects, each of which would appeal to different people and encourage different commenter. And pictures - cool pics that tie in and emphasize my exquisitely lucid points and objectives.

What am I trying to run here, FHM?

Screw it, I'll just keep rambling.

Blame the Media! Brilliant!

The ever angry and always funny Maddox has a few choice words about the blogging community. I can agree with many of his points, but he never gets around to complaining about the truly annoying blogs.

Paulius offered some good insight on blogging recently as well.

In researching my Snippets blog, I can spend a lot of time clicking 'Next Blog' to little result. Most blogs seem to be auto-populated product-selling ad pages, which I have no time for. If I want to research a product, I'll search with Froogle.

The media is the largest culprit in making blogging a tiresome subject. It's not as if posting one's thoughts and opinions to the web were new ideas or activities.

A lot of blog content is silly people rambling about their silly lives (like this blog), and loving every minute of attention that they get in the comments.

It's a good thing to keep a journal, be it paper or virtual. If only for our own perspective, looking back and looking forward. It's all about not taking yourself too seriously. And if someone else gets a chuckle out of it, that's cool too.

Bollocks!

All right, all of you scions of the British Empire - this is notice!

In reading your fun and interesting blogs, I've begun to absorb your word use.

I found myself thinking "Get a load of this bloke." yesterday while driving home, when a lorry driver cut me off. What?!

Next thing you know, I'll be saying "What's all this, then?" and "Bloody Hell!" and "Could you loan us a fiver till Tuesday?"

It's got to stop!
So I won't be able to read your blogs any longer.

Nuff said, yeah?
Right then. Off you go.

A Noble Endeavor, What?

I want to write an epic novel where the main character dies in the middle of Chapter 2, and the next five hundred pages of the book are blank.

Deep Thoughts, Wow Golly

During the day at work, I take a walk while on each break. I have a desk job, and I get stiff and achy.

Southern California is really the place to be for consistent, pleasant weather. I can walk in June or January, and the weather's fine no matter what. This is not the case in Ohio, which is one reason I'm glad I no longer live there.

It's really refreshing to get out of the office, get some fresh air, enjoy the birdly chirping, the valets watching soap operas on Telemundo, and corporate snobs chilling on the patio of PF Chang's. I'm lucky enough to work in a pretty area, and there are lots of trees and flowers and shrubs.

I was walking the other day, happily kicking a pine cone.
Like you do.

You know how when you're on a laid-back walk, and you encounter a pebble or other rolling item, you kick it, and catch up to it, and kick it, and catch up to it.

Eventually, the rolly thing bounces out of bounds somewhere inconvenient. You could go chase it down, and return the rolly thing to the sidewalk, and continue kicking merrily.

But you rarely do. It's too much work.
Or another pedestrian comes along, and you feel silly, so you stop.

So many of the things I want to do, attempt and/or don't manage to finish are like that. I don't want people watching me do it, or it's too much work.

Why am I depriving myself of the joys of kicking, singing, dancing, and living?

One day I'll be dead, and so many pine cones will have gone unkicked. I'll really feel silly then.

It's Contagious!

I contracted a virulent strain of 'The 3's Meme' from Laziest Girl, darn it. I'll have to start wearing gloves and protective goggles as I mouse through her blog...

Three Nicknames
- Babydu
- Turkeybutt
- PillowMan

Three Things I Like About Myself
- I'm open minded
- I have no interest in fads/trends/fashion
- I have hazel eyes

Three Things That Scare Me
- Drowning
- Blindness
- Lonliness

Three Everyday Essentials
- Altoids
- Lots and Lots of Water
- Internet Access

Three Things I'm Wearing Right Now
- Sketchers sneakers
- Jeans
- Those new Hanes underwear- super comfy waistband, yow!

Three Fave Bands Growing Up
- Nine Inch Nails
- Sinead O'Connor
- Depeche Mode

2 Truths and a Lie
- I've lived at the Grand Canyon
- I own a pebble from the Moon
- I'm a published author

Three Things I Can't Do Without
- Discovery Channel
- Early morning alone time
- My iPod

Three Things I Can Certainly Live Without
- Thoughtless people
- Noise
- Smog

Three Places I Want to Go On Vacation
- Kate Winslet's Lap
- Italy
- The UK

Three Things I Want to Do Before I Die
- Have kids
- Walk on the Moon
- Visit the North and South Poles

Wheelin And Dealin?

While at the gym the other morning (yeah, I talk about the gym a lot - I don't get out much, I go to work, the gym, and an occasional bookstore - at least I won't miss the wild days of my youth, once I'm a parent - I'm a thoroughbred homebody).

Ahem. While at the gym the other morning, I was on a machine near the wall of windows that faces the parking lot. So I was looking out the window, watching people park badly, and cringing.

There's a Bally's guy who does cleaning, and he was out sweeping up the litter from the parking lot. He parks his car in the member parking every day, which is slightly irksome, since as anyone who's parked at a gym knows, parking is at a premium. But whatever.

He's a chatty sort, so I don't think anything of it when a woman comes out of the gym after her workout and starts talking to him.

Then they go over to his car, an he opens the trunk. Then he carefully dons latex gloves, and opens a small cooler - the size you might keep a kidney in during donor transport.

He pulls out of the cooler a white vial - or more likely a bottle of pills. He's not being surreptitious in the slightest. It's as if he's selling her a Beanie Baby - and not even a rare one.

He appears to take a long sniff of the closed bottle, and they keep chatting for a few minutes. She's got some money in her hand, and he holds his goods, she holds her money, and they chat for a good five minutes. Chatting, or bartering? She sniffs the bottle, he sniffs the bottle, and finally she pays and departs with the bottle.

So what the hell is this guy selling? Even if it's just vitamins, what was with all the sniffing? Does he market custom perfumes? What's with the latex gloves? If they are perfumes, perhaps he just doesn't want to smell like lilac all day.

Were they prescription drugs from Mexico? Probably vitamins, since they were so laid back about the whole thing. But I doubt that Bally's employees are authorized to peddle nutritional supplements to members on the retail property.

Perhaps he wore the gloves because his hands were a bit grimy from cleaning the parking lot? Possibly.

I Did It! I Did It!

It's pretty typical for me to come up with a 'clever' idea for a gizmo or gadget.

I think about how it would work, and how it might be built, and that's usually as far as it goes - I entertain myself with the concepts.

For once, I actually built something. It's an ice-cooled air conditioner, built of rubber and copper tubing, pvc pipe, an aquarium, and a water pump.

We don't have air conditioning in our apartment complex, and the windows are the wrong type for a window model. The free rolling portable models are too expensive.

My sweet wife is very patient with my ideas, but if I started building a pile of gadget components, she might voice some concern. Since I did not want to concern her, I bought the supplies slowly, over a month. I spread my purchases across several pay checks. Copper tubing first, then the pump arrived - ordered online and shipped to my work, aquarium, tubing and pvc last. She never suspected, aha hahaa haa haa!

When assembly was complete, I took the aquarium into the kitchen, cleared the area, filled the tank with water, and very slowly and carefully plugged the pump into the wall.

Carefully now...
Goggles on, fire extinguisher at the ready...

Plug!

It whirred peacefully.

I waited a good minute, sure that it was waiting to spring a catastrophic system failure on me, as soon as I relaxed.

It whirred peacefully.

I'd expected eight different leaking connections and a grease fire. (And it doesn't even use grease) It works! Exactly as I designed it. Granted, it's an extremely simple design, but I was still very pleased.

It was a silly little project, but it was fun - and should come in handy.

I has hoping to surprise Cindy with a full demonstration on a hot night, but it's not really hot enough. Darned fickle summer weather, with its unseasonable chill.

My expectations are the problem

I get irritated by little things. Almost any little thing, really. I very rarely get angry, but I'm always ready to be annoyed, furrows and frowns at the ready.

People really don't like to be frowned at, and will change their behavior but quick, let me tell you.

If only!

Say I'm driving down a residential street, and there are cars parked on both sides of the street. As I try to drive down this street, three different people abruptly back out of their driveways directly in front of me, and then take their sweet time getting out of the way.

That's annoying - my internal impatience yells "Hey, I'm driving here!". But of course, a lot of people need to go to work at the same time, so it's likely that other drivers will delay me. It's not the drivers fault that parked cars are blocking their view of the street. Did I not expect to encounter other drivers on the road? Did I expect to have the world to myself?

If so, I should move far out into the desert and build a hut.

The expectation of certain results can be applied to almost everything that gets on my nerves. Things happen. The unforeseen will delay or derail my progress. Should I expect delays?

That's a pessimistic viewpoint, and I'm an optimist. So instead of expecting delays, I should try to go with the flow, and not have expectations.

Very Tao of me, yeah.
I need to focus on the whole 'go with the flow' thing.

Active Vision

Ok - no job interview after all. I'm relieved and disappointed.

The HR woman got back to me about exactly what their need for "scripting" was.

Here's a quote: "They think that you might want to practice with something like Unreal script or NWN scripting."

Get this - this just boggles my widdle mAhnd - they suggest that I practice scripting, and then set up the interview when I'm ready.

What the huh?? I mean, that's amazing and all, but surely there are hundreds of qualified people, at least a third of which would kill or maim their own mother to work for Activision.

I'd be stupid not to put forth some effort and learn the skill and go for the interview. They're bending over backwards to be helpful.

There's something very odd about this whole situation.

Magnificent New Blogs!

I've been thinking about separating my blog into subjects for a while now, and I finally got around to it.

Now there are many unnecessary categories!!
Seven Blogs! Seven times the Fun!

Check out the links to the right.
Isn't it just so exciting?