Small change to the blog…

…very small change.

Bet you can’t find it.

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After some nagging from @molliekatie, I set up a way to subscribe to my blog via email… it’s really easy and can be done with FeedBurner.

The steps I found to set it up are here. It was really easy!

Finally!

The team behind Windows Live Writer, my blogging software of choice, finally released the finished product for WLW 2011 yesterday. I’d been playing around with the beta versions of it, which I’ve liked for the most part, but now that the final is out, here are my thoughts.

• The “ribbon” interface at the top takes some getting used to, but once you figure out where everything is, it really is more user-friendly than the old way. It’s just that whole learning curve thing.
• For the most part, they took a “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” attitude with the software. Which is a good thing, since next to nothing was broken with it.
• Overall, I think the experience with the software has been improved.

Oh, and there’s one more really, really big improvement…

I should probably blog more…

…if for no other reason than that I’ve now got the domain name paid for through December 2014.

So I will…

Yea, I know, I know…

It’s been forever since I’ve blogged anything.

Rest assured, though, that I’ve got a three-day weekend coming up and I’ve got a post or two in mind for that time.

You stay classy, left! Or: Why I moderate comments

So I woke up this morning to a pending comment (from someone named Anonymous) about that recent post about my trip to Pei-Wei.

Just one question, did you burn the cross before or after your meal ?

Wow, really, we’re jumping to not just the racism thing, but the KKK. Why am I not surprised?

Though I guess I should clarify the whole KKK thing. Yes, when I was five years old, I did go for Halloween as a ghost. I don’t remember what the costume looked like myself, but I am told that I did kind of look like a member of the KKK, without the swastikas and pointy hood. But it’s not like that counts, right?

Also, it’s true that some of the family on my mom’s side are members of the KKK and probably have burned crosses in the past. It should be noted, though, that I haven’t even been around any of them in close to ten years.

But the main reason I didn’t burn a cross was two-fold: First, at 107 degrees, I figured it was hot enough outside without something burning. Secondly, the Phoenix area had, at that point, gone a little over a month without any rain and I didn’t want to take any chances of burning anything else down, because that’s just irresponsible.

I should probably note that the last paragraph was laced with sarcasm, since people seem to never understand that sort of thing.

On a serious note, anybody who *really* knows me and didn’t just stumble across a blog post of mine while doing a Google search for “pei-wei manager fired” would know that I’m anything but a racist, cross-burning idiot.

And that’s where I’m leaving it.

The death of Stupid Quiz Sunday

I’ve made the executive decision that last week’s Stupid Quiz Sunday will be the last as a weekly series, though the feature will likely make an occasional appearance as I come across interesting quizzes..

I’ve just lost interest in the feature, there’s nothing else to say, really…

A new path

It is with a heavy heart that I am today announcing that I am leaving blogging.

It was a very tough decision to make, but I realized that I simply won't have the time for it with my new career in the nude skydiving business.

I’m sure y’all are wondering to yourselves “What’s the nude skydiving business?”

Well, we jump out of planes. Naked. Yes, that’s right, not even a parachute. Trust me, there’s no better feeling in the world and it’s nowhere near as dangerous as it sounds. You see, the trick is landing on a huge stack of mattresses that you put in the middle of a field. If you hit those, you’re fine. Just, uh, make sure to not miss the stack.

It's been a great ride, with a lot of great people I've met along the way.

I'm really going to miss y'all.

Oh, and…

About the new look

Yesterday, I got an email from Blogger (who never, ever emails me about stuff) announcing their new Template Designer.

So I took a look at it and fell in love with the new, uber-customizable templates they offer.

After playing around with it for a while, this is what I came up with. I really, really, like it.

I’m curious what my three readers think about it. Leave me a note in the comments…

Back computing

After replacing the motherboard and processor, my computer’s back up and running again. Which, of course, means I’ll be back to blogging soon.

So no more oi this light blogging crap!

I’ll get a Friday Photo up sometime this weekend and get normal blogging back rolling.

Y’all miss me?

How I deal with idiots

[Note to my readers: I’ve enabled comment moderation for the time being. We’ll see how long it sticks around.]

Dear anonymous chickenshit,

Do you have nothing better to do than go around on some random guy’s blog and calling me a “FREEK?”

You hide behind the shroud of being “Anonymous,” as if I’ll never know who you are.

I don’t have a high tolerance for bullshit so, below the jump, is some information that makes you a bit less anonymous:

Announcing The Panel

Today I’m officially launching a new blog.

It’s called The Panel, and it basically consists of myself and a handful of my Twitter friends answering questions on a wide variety of issues.

Today’s first post is on who our five favorite Twitter follows are.

Come by, have a look, and stick around. I’m hoping to be posting a couple questions a week once things really get rolling.

And, yes, this is that project I hinted at last week when I killed off “Discuss Amongst Yourselves.”

Yes, I know I fail at blogging lately

…and I apologize. I just haven’t felt very bloggy lately. Nothing really hitting me worth blogging about.

So, uh… regular blogging will resume eventually.

Or not, I’m not sure.

Of course, I’m still active on Twitter, which is like 140-character lines of cocaine. Very addicting, but you can still pass a piss test at work.

Has it really been 5 years?

Today’s my 5th blogiversary. Not that it really means anything to me.

I was trading emails with @Falahime yesterday when she mentioned that she’d like to write a coherent blog post for once.

By the way, she writes Everything I Need To Know, I Learned From Anime, which I find interesting even though I know next to nothing about anime.

Anyway, this is what I replied:

My blog is five years old tomorrow. I still don't think I've written a coherent post...

So, now I have a goal for my blog.

Sometime in the next five years, I will write a coherent post.

I’m not setting the bar too high, am I?

Done cleaning up

I mentioned earlier today that I’d trimmed down the sidebar thinking that I might switch to a two-column template.

As you can see, I’ve now done that.

What you probably don’t know is that I had to do some coding and image work to spit this out. I had to produce a few custom images and edit the code of the default Rounders template to give myself the wider area for blog posts that I wanted. This way I don’t feel so squeezed when I’m trying to post images or videos. The old template got a little claustrophobic in that regard.

I’m happy with the results… for now, at least.

Cleaning up

If you haven’t noticed, I’ve made some changes to the sidebars.

I figured there were some things I could get rid of in order to make the sidebars leaner.

I’m considering going back to a two-column version of this layout, so cleaning up the current widgets is a must.

Either SiteMeter’s lying or this guy is… and I don’t think it’s SiteMeter

I got an email earlier today from a guy who wanted to do a link exchange.

In the email, he claimed that he’s added the blog already and goes on to say this:

By looking at my stats, it looks like today I have sent you 10 visitors but it may change by the time you receive this email.

So, out of curiosity, I check my SiteMeter.

No referrals from his address.

Nevermind the fact that I didn’t see a link to me on the site

Moral of the story: If you want to exchange links, don’t make a bullshit claim. It’ll just get you mocked.

Repaving

We got an interesting letter in the mail from the city on Thursday.

Starting sometime next week, they’re going to repave our street.

Our horrible, ancient, pothole-ridden street (which has to be one of the worst in town) is going to be reconstructed.

The city actually began the work today when they dumped all the limestone that they’ll be mixing into the base on the street, but that wasn’t too invasive. Take a look at the picture I posted to TwitPic.

	A shot from Google Maps Street View of a portion of our street. You can clearly see how many patches the city’s had to do over the years.

I guess the city realized, after patching potholes early this month, that the entire street needed to be done. Something I could have told them years ago.

The letter gave the impression that the work should take about a month.

Here’s my question to y’all, my loyal minions:

Would y’all be interested in seeing pictures of the work in progress?

I can post pictures here or I can not bother, it doesn’t matter to me.

Leave your thoughts in the comments.

Stuck with me

If you didn’t notice earlier this week, the countdown of how long I have to renew the domain for this blog went up significantly.

It now stands at 1060.

I must take this time to regretfully inform you that on Tuesday I added two years to my domain and so you’re stuck with me until at least December 2011.

A new feature

This blog now has star ratings.

I’ve wanted to add these for a while, but I just now got around to making a couple changes to the CSS coding that wouldn’t make it look horrible and out of place.

So, feel free to tell me what you think with the stars since most of you are too damn lazy to leave comments… or something.