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Niches

Thursday, June 18th, 2009

I really wish I had more to blog about.
Though I’m starting to get the sneaking suspicion that I actually have plenty of things to blog about, I just don’t see them. This leads to annoyingly long stretches between posts.

Like on the parenting front: Kevyn is officially potty training. He went pee twice in the potty yesterday, even getting upset when he didn’t make it, because he really, REALLY wants to do this right. I’m insanely proud of him!

On the WoW front: I’ve rolled some Hordies on some US servers (Ysera and Argent Dawn)to, supposedly, start weaning myself off of the Australian server (Nagrand)I play on. But I can’t bear to leave that server and all the wonderful people I’ve met. On top of that, the move to the east coast has put a major dent in my ability to raid with my guild (The Obsidian Order) due to time zone differences. This is steering me towards taking my main toon out of the guild, in favor of another guild that raids when I’m available, a prospect that breaks my heart.

On the work front: things are going well. I’m 4 months into my 6 month probation, learning stuff, and generally enjoying the work.

On the social life front: See the work and WoW fronts. Seriously. My social life involves going out with my co workers or playing WoW. I need some new friends around here. I am more and more tempted to attend each time I see tweet for a bloggers meet up in NYC. I am a blogger, right?

I think I need to be less picky about things I blog about. After all, this is not my job, I don’t have a ‘niche,’ and, like it says at the top, “iz mah blog.” Well, unless working-class, geeky, WoW playing dads are a niche…

Posted in Blogging, Family | 1 Comment »

A blog is a dictatorship

Wednesday, May 20th, 2009

 

By LindaH via Flickr

By LindaH via Flickr

We live in a wonderful country, where the freedom of speech is one of our most cherished, protected rights. It is a concept foreign to many in this world, as their nations and cultures limit what they can say.

Freedom of speech is not all it’s cracked up to be, however.

We all self-censor a lot of the things we’d like to say. We’re careful about what we say to people we meet, our co-workers, friends, and family. We’re careful about striking the proper tone in our writing. We dress up for job interviews, eschewing individuality for the sake of formality. We’re very careful (most of the time) about what we post online.

It takes a lot of courage to put oneself “out there,” publishing  stories about one’s life. (Note, I don’t see myself as courageous. I just lack modesty). Doing so can have great rewards, from  monetary compensation to building lasting relationships.

Then there are the trolls.

I am fortunate in that I don’t get trolls on my blog. I’m unfortunate that I don’t get many visitors at all, period. Mamasick, a person I follow on Twitter, started a blog recently, and already has a fanbase. Apparently, she also has detractors. The troll in question has apparently been following her on Twitter for some time, and saw the opening of the blog as a perfect opportunity to jump in and start swinging, venting whatever anger has been building up.

Funny things, these trolls. There’s a sad sense of entitlement with them. They think that their right to free speech extends everywhere.

They are dead wrong.

A blog owner has every right to delete comments. It’s a dictatorship. They are absolutely allowed to shape their blog, including the interactive elements, to create the atmosphere that they want. I have, on this very blog, deleted comments that I feel were contrary to the message I wished to portray. I’ve even deleted my own blog posts, as I realized they were published in anger and haste. Like it says at the top, “iz mah blog.” I can do what I want with it.

To the trolls, I know most of you are just assholes with nothing beter to do. You can ignore this. But to the trolls who take exception with someone they follow, or a blog, here’s what to do:

Stop following that person and reading their blog. If you don’t and you get edited out, don’t get all indignant.

All bloggers have that right. Just sayin.

Posted in Blogging, Get Off My Planet, Just Sayin | 1 Comment »

On Blogs

Tuesday, March 17th, 2009

Just a quicky: any of you friends/readers who have your own blog, leave a quick comment with the url so that I can subscribe to it. I love that you read my blog, and I want to read yours too!

Posted in Blogging | No Comments »

Begging MySpace for a Crossposter

Saturday, February 28th, 2009

The following is a message I just send to the MySpace customer support guys. It sounds whiney, but GOD is this ever annoying:

Please PLEASE create/allow some way to post from a personal WordPress install to my Myspace blog, or be able to integrate another RSS feed into it. I know you want people to stay here, etc, but some of use REALLY don’t want to have to post things twice, even if it’s just a “Hey, I just blogged something, go check it out” link (I know it sounds lazy, but when you do a lot of posting on your Blackberry browser over EDGE, having to go to more than one place is tedious.)

PLEASE!

Hopefully, they’ll do something soon. Honestly.

There IS a crossposter out there, but the general consensus is that MySpace changed their code so it doesn’t work any more.

Posted in Blogging, The Tubes, Web Sites | No Comments »

Everywhere and nowhere

Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008

If you’ve noticed some unusual activity on my blog, and on MySpace, it’s because I’m trying out some new things.

I like having/hosting/maintaining my own blog. However, I’m well aware that with the connectivity of this age, where people have more friends and acquaintances than ever due to the web, asking ALL of my friends, past and present, to always check this bog is totally whacked. It’s just not going to happen.

I’ve already got an app on Facebook that reads my blog posts and updates my feed with them, driving the visitors here.

What I was lacking was something similar for MySpace. I gave up blogging on MySpace over a year ago, but I realize that a lot of my friends are still there, still blogging. So I found a plug-in for this WordPress installation to post my published blog posts to my MySpace blog.

It’s a little funky. It doesn’t quite work right, and I actually had to go into the code for the plug-in and modify it to get it to work a little better.

I also had to decide whether or not to post the whole article to MySpace or to just post a notification. I went with the latter.

Part of the problem with hosting content in different places is that it becomes nearly impossible to keep up with the feedback. Trying to read comments on Facebook, MySpace, and the blog itself every day would become pretty tiresome. So I’m making the best compromise I can. I’m having all of them come back here. Hopefully, my friends will come visit me here more often, and leave their feedback.

I’m also subscribing to all of my friends blogs in my feed readers on my computer and my Blackberry, because I miss knowing what’s going on in their (your) lives as well.

So here’s hoping that these tools help me maintain the close relationships I once had.

Posted in Blogging, Friends, Technology, Web Tools | No Comments »

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