Tag: Blogger

  • This Week: The Best of 2022 (So Far)

    As the Summer comes to a close and we can see Labor Day on the horizon, I will be taking this week off from working on the blog. I want to spend this final week with the kid before she returns to school, and see what trouble we can get in.

    For this week, I will be posting the top five blogs that have received the highest view counts. A “Best of 2022” so to speak. (Well, the first six months of the years, anyway.) The fifth most viewed post will be today, Monday, and I’ll work our way up to the most seen post on Friday.

    I would also like to take a moment and say an appreciative thank you, to all of you who have stopped by and read my blog over the past two years. When I started out, I was lucky to get one person to look at it. Now, on a good day, I just might get ten views. So, don’t tell me that hard work doesn’t pay off.

    And (you know it’s coming) if you like what you have read, don’t be chicken, go ahead and like, comment, and share. You’ll be helping an angel get his wings!

  • ODDS and ENDS: Student Loans, Champions League, and This Site

    (I haven’t done the tag line thing in awhile…)

    I am sure you all know this; if you have a Federally backed student loan, the government is forgiving $10,000 of it, and up to $20,000 if you received a Pell Grant. This does personally affect me, as I have student loans, and when I was in college, I received Pell Grants. (Full disclosure: I did refinance and consolidate my loans fifteen years ago, so I’m in a limbo right now because I’m not sure the action I took so long ago now disqualifies me from the forgiveness. I’m still waiting to hear from the DOE as to what the status of my loans are.) What I do want to talk about is the debate about this action taken by Biden. Conservatives have an emotional response to it (It’s not FAIR!) while Liberals seem to be mucking up their response – veering between emotional (The right thing to do) and logical (It will help people economically) which makes the progressive message not very clear and easy to explain. The one argument I find funny is the Conservative accusation that Biden is just doing this to please his base, which Democrats dance around. Personally, I think that Biden should just lean into it and say, “Yes, I am doing this for my base.” Republicans have been cutting wealthy peoples taxes for years, and the only reason they do it is to make their donors happy, and no one is surprised by it. Biden has sort of said it, claiming that he’s fulfilling his campaign promise. But, really, I just want to see a Democrat put it like this, “You vote for us, you get your loan forgiven. You vote for them, you get nothing.” At the end of the day, that is politics. No one votes for a party to only help the other side. People vote for a party because they will get something first, and then hopefully the rest of the country next.

    CHAMPIONS LEAGUE is COMING! Which means I will be writing about Tottenham matches even more! And the Spurs play Nottingham Forrest this weekend in the Premier League, which I am expecting Tottenham to win. No offense to Nottingham.

    So, I paid the money and have my own site now, and no longer am I under the yoke of Word Press. I really haven’t had a chance to try out all the bells and whistles that I now have access to being that I am a paid site. Most likely, I’ll start working on some updates after Labor Day, when the kid is back in school. The one thing I have noticed is that my page views are WAY UP! While my blog views are exactly the same. Not sure if this means anything, but my gut tells me that my site is being poked by bots. The four of you who continue to come by and read this blog, again, I thank you for your dedication. I am looking into monetizing this site. Not sure how to do that, nor am I sure how I’m going to spend the $0.15 cents I will make annually. But, I think some changes might be coming.

    (Yo! Please take a moment to give tis post a like, or a share. No comments though. Seriously, I don’t know if I can handle to contact.)

  • ODDS and ENDS: Tough Questions, Hiking, and The 300th Follower!

    (If you’re here, you’re family!)

    I was very aware that when we had a kid, that at some point she would start asking some tough questions. There are all the cliché questions about babies and sex, and I was ready for things like that, as well as, why do bad things happen if God is good and all powerful? But I wasn’t prepared for when the kid asked me how a search warrant works? The kid walked in while I was watching the news, heard the phrase, “issued a search warrant” and asked the question. Now, I know what a search warrant is, but I can’t 100% say I know how they work. Like, I know a judge grants one, law enforcement executes it, and there is the Fourth Amendment protections, But… (shrug) Now, I just need to figure out how the Electoral College works so I can be ready for that question.

    The weekend is coming, and I have it in my head that we will all go hiking. Hopefully, there won’t be a surprise Summer cold to knock us all off our feet, as I would really like to get out of the City early in the morning, and spend the first half of the day walking along a stream in the woods. This Summer, I feel like we really haven’t hiked as much as we did last year. I know that we still have about two and a half months left before it gets too cold for us, so there is time. But as I sit here, I am thinking about how much I enjoy hiking in the Fall. Cool weather, leaves changing, good excuse to put on my flannel shirts.

    And, I got my 300th Follower! And, I’m pretty sure it’s not a bot. There is always a chance that it could be a bot, but I feel I shouldn’t discriminate against Russian bots. Are they any different from me? I’m trying to get people to come to my page to help my writing career, and they are trying to get people to their page for crypto scams. Who am I to judge?

    (Say! If you happen to not be a bot and found this blog to be high on your enjoyable scale, then please take a moment to like, comment or give it a share. You’d do a body good!)

  • Blog, Journal, and Fiction Updates

    Some funny things happened on the blog the other day. The first was that someone, or maybe a bot, sat on the home page and looked at it 55 times. It was great for my paltry stats, which if I am lucky, I will get four views/visitors a day. So, one person looking at my page 55 times was cool, but at the same time, if you were a person, what the hell were you looking for? The home page is pretty basic, and not very informative. Were you a person that I know? Were you looking for your name? Odds are it was a fluke, a bot, or something that wasn’t human related. I mean, who looks at a home page 55 times over the course of an hour? Anyway, just thought I’d get that off my chest.

    As for the journal, I have been having issues with it. The issue I speak of is writing in it. This is clearly an after effect of getting out of the habit of writing. Over the past two days, I have had opportunities to take a half hour and write in it, but I have passed. I came up with some excuse of why I should put it off, and I did. I wanted to blame the Summer schedule I have with the kid, as I am with her all day now, but that excuse comes down the blaming the kid, and well, that makes me a shitty parent. (I don’t want to be a shitty parent.) No, no this one is on me. Writing was easier when the kid was in school, that’s a fact, but back in the Covid days when we were all up on each other, I was able to make the time, and that also is a fact. I need to make the time, and on a small level, that annoys me. Making time, means that it’s work. And if work annoys me, then that means I’ve become lazy again. Hence, why I am annoyed.

    And if I haven’t been writing in the journal, then I clearly haven’t been working on the fiction. I got four stories that are still out with magazines. I am expecting to hear back from them in the next month. I’m not trying to be a downer, but odds are they will be rejected. What I want to do is go out and submit to more places, but I am coming around to the idea that I might want to do another round of rewrites. That will take time. I have a plan in my mind of what I want to do, and where I can tighten things up. But, again, I need to make the time.

    (Say! If this blog tickles you in a fancy way, please bestow me an appreciated like, share, or comment. It will make the bot-gods happy, and keep me on the right side of the River Styx!)

  • Reforming the Writing Habit

    July was a busy month with vacations, and the kid did some traveling with friends, and I had a huge home improvement project to finish. And I started watching Vikings, which I am finding really entertaining.

    Something had to give, and that was writing. After two years of writing nearly every day, I decided I should take a break. There was a nagging thought in the back of my head that if I took a break then in a roundabout way, I was admitting that writing isn’t that important to me.

    Maybe…

    The other thought I had was that everyone needs time away, a respite, time off. I have been working at all of this, blogging every weekday, working on stories and submitting them to magazines, and I especially have been journaling constantly. I have put down close to 500,000 words from July 2020 to July 2022.

    But, I got out of the habit of writing every day. Just the mechanical act of sitting down, either with the computer or a journal, and putting down thoughts and ideas. If I felt like doing it or not, I did it. Out of everything I had tried over these past two years, I think that was the achievement I was most proud of; I had a good habit of writing each day.

    With the time off, I have to restart this habit all over again. Maybe I’ll fall right back into it. Maybe I have to work at it again. Maybe none of this really is a big deal.

    Maybe.

    Now, I just got to start going to the gym again.