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The Pretentious Blogging Meme 2

More navel-gazing via Sunday stealing.

12. How many drafts of potential blog posts do you have right now?

102. Some of them are for dates past. Will they become blogposts? Dunno. Some will, in all likelihood.

13. In what medium do you draft your posts?

In the Blogger thingy. It has an autosave feature, but I hit the save button frequently anyway. Occasionally, Blogger won’t save, and I end up copying and pasting the post in an e-mail to myself. Even my WordPress blog I do in Blogger, mostly because I never figured out how to size pictures in WP.

14. How often do you completely scratch or delete drafts or blog post ideas?

Maybe three or four times a year. What a pain, mostly because blogging time is so finite.

15. If you had to leave your blog in your will to another blogger, who would you choose?

There’s a woman in my office who used to blog. Her.

16. Are there other blogs that you feel are similar to yours in content, style, or voice?

Well, yes, no, maybe. Obviously I think my voice is unique, but that’s true of everyone. I think that there are elements of my blogging style in a number of blogs. I tend to think many other blogs are more singularly focused than mine. Maybe I should have five blogs or something, but I’d find it irritatingly compartmentalizing.
I pretty much hate most categories. The only categories I have for the bulk of my CDs are classical and pop. Classical is anything where the composer is above the title, whether that be Beethoven, Gershwin or Scott Joplin. Pop is everything else.

17. Has anything surprised you since you started blogging?

Yes, that I’m still doing it every day. That anyone reads it. That occasionally people are moved by what I write, often unexpectedly. That I have found it not just enjoyable but occasionally useful.

18. What are your goals or plans for your blog going forward?

Blog less. Or absent that, cloning.

19. Do you make any money from your blog? (optional) about how much a month?

No, though I’ve gotten some swag.

20. What blogging system do you use?

Does this mean Blogger? Or does mean chaos? Actually one of my blogs is in WordPress.

21. How did you come up your blog name?

From a radio guy called Rambling with Gambling. Oh, and my first name; I liked the partial alliteration.

22. How many blogs do you have? What was your peak?

Seven. Seven. Fortunately three are shared. Oddly, the most difficult one is the one for which I write once a month; more pressure, I think.

23. Are you having as much fun as when you started?

It ebbs and flows. Surely more than when I FIRST started when I had no idea what I was going to write the next day, or what my credo of blogging was. (I have a credo of blogging?)

24. Where do you find other bloggers like you?

Blog friends of blog friends.

25. What’s your one wish when it comes to blogging?

Steve Martin answered this long time ago here.

ROG

The Pretentious Blogging Meme

Apparently, I’m in a blogging about blogging mode: From Sunday Stealing.

1. How long have you been blogging?

4 years, 10 months yesterday. Or the day before, if you count the time I wrote it.

2. What made you start?

Discussed here, but what MADE me start ultimately is being very opinionated with no venue.

3. Who inspired you?

Fred Hembeck and the late Steve Gerber.

4. About how many hours a week would you estimate you spend on your blog?

You mean THIS one? Well, probably eight hours writing it, then another five checking out other blogs, getting rid of spam comments, responding to questions, etc.

5. What kind of experience or background do you have with writing?

I wrote for my high school newspaper; in my senior year, had a column called Pa Central (I went to Binghamton Central); snarky before I knew the word.
I co-edited a newsletter in college and edited one in grad school. I edited, for six years, a monthly work newsletter. Wrote some press releases for the Schenectady Arts Council and a little for FantaCo. Edited three and a half issues of FantaCo’s Chronicles Series. Inevitably, anything I edited involved a degree of writing as well.

6. Talk about how you come up with blog topics. Where do you get your ideas?

Steal ’em. Well, sometimes, but finding topics is not the problem; the problem is a lack of time to write coherently about certain topics. I have three topics I could write about tomorrow, but will I have time to compose ANY of them?

7. What or who inspires you and your blog?

Life. Politics. Sports. TV. Music. The newspaper. Really, inspiration I get easily; time, not so much.

8. Where and/or how do your brainstorming for your blog?

Anywhere – riding the bus, taking a shower, occasionally, my dreams.

9. Do you have any blogging rules or guidelines you follow?

Probably. I tend not to use language that’s likely to offend a segment of my vast readership. I try not to write about the same topic too often in a row. Not only might it be tedious for the reader, more importantly it’d likely be boring for me. Or maybe my approach is ADHD-driven.

10. Is there anything you will not blog about?

Yes. And if I told you what those topics were, that’d kind of defeat the purpose of not blogging about it. “I’m not going to tell you about…”; yeah, right.

11. Do you have any sort of a publishing schedule in terms of day of week or topic?

Well, Tuesday is ABC Wednesday. The 26th of the month is Lydia day. Mondays are memes, sometimes (not this week, apparently). Saturdays are questions, often but not always. The rest I fake.
***
More in re: blogging. I entered Rose’s blog hosting contest. Guess what? I WON! I got a confirming e-mail yesterday afternoon, and I have some ideas for a URL, but if you have some thoughts before, say, 1 pm Eastern Time today when I go to lunch and contact the provider, have at it.
***
I noted only a couple days ago that I had appeared in the Trouble with Comics blog. Then Mr. Doane wrote to comment: “My apologies, but Guest Reviewer Month has now been pushed back to April due to some technical problems. Your piece should go up 4/1, Roger. Sorry!” The trouble with this was that I thought he was making a joke; the piece should go up on April Fools Day? Les & Trudy didn’t raise someone THAT gullible.

Except that my friend Rocco noted that the piece that had been posted had disappeared. This probably has something to do with Trouble with Comics changing its URL because of changers with Blogger re: FTPs.

In other words, I have outwitted myself. Expect the piece on – April 1? Really, ADD?

ROG

Media Maven

Thursday, I got a ride from my isolating Corporate Woods office with lousy bus service to the neighborhood-imbedded College of Saint Rose, using up most of my lunch break, to film what will probably be a 15-second segment of a promotion for what appears below. It’s too bad that I had to go back to work, because my ride took us right past my house.

I was supposed to say something profound about why I blog, on cue. Yeesh. Ultimately, I rambled on about something to do with being a librarian and wanting to share information. (I think.) I know they’ll be showing the compiled video at the event, but if it’s otherwise available, I’ll make a point to share it with you.

The guy who picked me up I hadn’t seen in four or five years. I’ve talked with him regularly and e-mailed with even more frequently. But when he picked me up, he didn’t recognize me, because of the vitiligo. Heck, sometimes I literally don’t recognize myself.

Oh, one other thing: with the sheer number of participants, and the time frame, I can’t imagine just how this thing is going to work.

The upcoming Media 2010 event to be held Wednesday, March 3, at The College of Saint Rose, has sold out. We currently are accepting names on a waiting list.

Event: Media 2010: How blogs shape the new conversation
Date: Wednesday, March 03, 2010 from 6:00 PM – 7:30 PM (ET)

Location:
College of Saint Rose
Touhey Forum, Lally Building
1009 Madison Avenue
Albany, NY 12203

***
Speaking of blogging, I seem to be spending more time deleting spam from my blogs. Except for this one, the messages don’t actually GET to the blogs; I use comment moderation. On this blog, though, I don’t, but I get an e-mail copy of whatever gets posted; I click on the link and delete the rubbish forever.

There seems to be particular recurring themes with these of late:
*the guy whose girlfriend, he’s just discovered, has been sleeping with his roommate/brother/uncle/father, and so, of COURSE, he’s inviting you to see nude pictures of her
*various schemes touting particular software
*the couple touting Louisville, KY
Plus the usual scams and stuff written in Russian and Chinese.
But the ones I don’t get are the ones that say something vaguely complimentary that are signed by Anonymous and DON’T have a link to an e-mail or website. What’s the point, exactly?

ROG

Win 6 free months of blog/web hosting, own domain name

I’m a guy who likes to blog. I’m the guy who HATES having to deal with the technobabble that the task entails. I noticed that the backside of my blog was running slowly. Sometimes when I tried to schedule a post, I’d get an error message.

WordPress specific utilities such as WP-CLI, LiteSpeed’s LSCache, and Imunify360 all contribute to an ecosystem enabling different types of wordpress hosting services to be used to its full potential. You don’t have to worry about WordPress updates, keeping the server updated, or PHP versions – we handle all of that for you, while keeping your site fully optimized for WordPress. KnownHost is a quality-guaranteed hosting provider that offers the best managed WordPress hosting solution.

My provider wrote:

“Our monitoring systems show that one (or some) of your user accounts may be making your web hosting account operate inefficiently. We noticed you’ve frequently hit the memory limits of your shared hosting plan over the last couple weeks. When this happens, our system automatically stops web processes which could be negatively impacting your server’s performance. This means your visitors may see errors or be unable to access your website at all for brief periods of time.”

I’m sure I tweeted about this before – back in the days when I used to actually use my Twitter account – but Rose DesRochers – World outside my Window has been having this contest where if you comment to one of her posts – or a whole bunch of other stuff such as tweeting about said contest, one gets points towards winning a WordPress blog hosting package from VisionThisHosting.com.

Unfortunately, tomorrow the 28th is the deadline.

ROG

What a Jerk

I wasn’t going to bother talking about this, but Rose actually changed my mind.

January 21, I get a virtual greeting card signed by a nickname (I’ll call it SP), starting off Hi ROGUE. The card itself was basically giving me the finger. Two days later, another virtual card from SP using another greeting card company with a similar message.

Then I get a NICE comment on my blog from SP. I am confused.

Soon I discovered that the e-mail belonged to particular person. Ah HA! Except that there is a notice on the blog of SP saying that she is no longer using that e-mail, which led me to the conclusion that, somehow, her e-mail had been hijacked.

January 30, another e-mail, allegedly from SP but from a different e-mail address, from that second virtual card vendor. A card with this lovely sentiment: SINCE YOU FOLLOW THAT B**** [name}’S BLOG {url] LIKE A DOG AND SINCE I AM A B**** THIS IS THE MESSAGE I WANT TO TELL YOU.STOP DOING IT RIGHT NOW!! IF YOU CANT UNDERSTAND TELL ME. WILL TELL YOU THIS ON YOUR UGLY FACE DIRECTLY AS I AM SOMEONE PATHETIC,RABID,ECCENTRIC,THOUGHTLESS,TYRANNICAL,YUCKY

Now I don’t know this person named in this message at all. BUT when I write to this second person, she DOES know the real SP, is good friends with SP, and doubts the real SP would send such unpleasantness her way, or mine.

So all I know about the writer of the e-mails are these facts:

He or she is a coward, hiding under a wall of anonymity.
He or she is apparently a thief, stealing someone else’s identity.
He or she is unimaginative, needing some website to convey feelings. At least the third message has content, demented as it is.

I’m really at a loss as to why I’M getting these messages.
Am I supposed to cry? I might have when I was 12 or 13; I was very sensitive then. Am I supposed to get angry? I might have even 20 years ago, but what’s the point of getting angry with a coward?
Am I supposed to feel a sense of contrition? Well I might, if I had a REAL idea what I’m supposed to feel badly about.
Am I supposed to feel pity? As Charlie Brown said to Lucy Van Pelt, “That’s it!”
Or to quote another pop culture reference, “I pity the fool.”

ROG