My latest "hobby" of late has been the "Next Blog" feature of blogger.com. When I need a moment to unwind, I wander over to a blog I know about (Wook's is my usual starting point), and click the Next Blog link to see another, normally random, blog and see if it is anything interesting.

Some of the blogs I wander to are mildly interesting. But I have to say that 99.4% of the blogs I wander past are crap. With a capital C.

Now, wait a second here, what the hell? How do I get to say what's crap and what's not? I mean, hell, this site could be the king of crap (or maybe the McQueen of crap). Aside from the fact that I don't care if this site is crap or not (my site, my thoughts, for me, not you), I figure if I immediately want to click someplace else, the site is crap.

So, I was saying, "99.4% of the sites are crap."

After a while I started wondering what made me stop to look at certain blogs, but skip right over all the other ones. Because some I'd actually read a few entries, and click around to a few pages, but others I wouldn't even wait to load the first page. So rather than going ADD on the blogs, I came up with these suggestions for making a good blog:

1. Engage the reader

   One of the really nice things about blogging for oneself is that you can put down your thoughts without really caring who is going to read it. If you have permissions on the site to hide the entries/pages you really care about, even better. But if people other than you are going to read the site, it better be engaging.

   Engagement can happen in several ways:

   You could tell me a story. Those are usually good. Tell me an entertaining story about the day, your life, your struggles. When you do, however, for the love of whatever god you think exists, vary your sentence structure! When you tell me about your day, use it to illustrate a point. What moral, insight, example does this story tell me?

   You can illustrate a point. Here's what happened to me, and all of this serves to illustrate this statement. Stories can work well as an introduction, but get to the point. "Bush is an idiot. Tree is a moron. Together, we've determined any plant with bark on its trunk is incapable of higher level thinking. Point made." Something like that.

   You can teach me a lesson. What can you tell me about MySQL, jazz music, Infinity cars, early Christianity, second order partial differential equations, MacOS applications, Java, baseball or cold fusion that I can't figure out with five minutes with Google? Tell me, and make it interesting.

   The worst thing you can do, however, is to tell me in the same sentence structure about your day cleaning the house. Or how depressed you are (and how you're not doing anything to help the problem - depression isn't the problem, not getting help is), or how angry with the world you are (like the world owes you anything, yeah, right). Neither I, nor 99.9999999999999999% of the world care about either of these things. I would venture to say if you're writing for the Internet®, none of your audience cares about the previous three things.

2. Stick to the point

   When an article starts out about deer pellets and ends up proving the speed of light can vary and the theory of relativity is inaccurate, I get frustrated. Were you talking about deer shit or physics? Pick one and stick to the point.

3. Don't use filler

   This works with the above one about sticking to the point. A story can be used to introduce a topic, that's fine. But don't make an entry longer than it needs to be. Similarly, include what you need.

4. Skip the cute l33t-sp34k

   And the text speak. Then learn to spell close to correct. The occasional misspelling isn't a big deal (everyone misspells a word here and there), but multiple gross misspellings are annoying. Oh, and if you can't take the time for the extra Y and O in "you," you should take typing lessons.

5. Write and post consistently

   Either use the tool or don't. Get hooked on it, or walk away. But posting once every two weeks, and apologizing for not posting? Don't do that. If every two weeks is your posting schedule, then it's your posting schedule. Very few people will read your post if it's not good. And fewer still will read if you're apologizing for not posting.

   Post like you mean it. (That's a good motto for life in general: "Live like you mean it.")

6. Lose the annoying graphics

   If your page takes more than 5 seconds to load all the images and music crap on your first page, I'm not waiting around for it. Next Blog, please!

You know, it's entirely possible I want entries and articles that are very similar to the five paragraph essays from high school ("Tell 'em what you're going to tell 'em. Tell 'em. Tell 'em what you told 'em.").

Or maybe the elements of writing are the same here as they are in print. If that's the case, then there are many references to far better guides for better writing. Maybe a google search is a good place to start...

Everyone has embarrassing moments. Those moments in time when you desperately want to be some place (any place!) else. Oh, god, they are the worst place to be when they're happening. But, damn, they make great stories weeks, months, years later.

The trick with those moments is to make it through them. Just make it through. Humour helps, if you can manage it.

The other trick is to remember them without the overwhelming emotions associated with the embarrassment. It's easy to let feelings of guilt, anger, helplessness overwhelm the situation.

Talking about the situation will certainly help afterward.

So, here's one:

When I was 3 years old (yes, I have a memory that old, several actually), my family was helping the Brickleys move into the house 3 doors down from our house. What can you give a 3 year old to carry into a house? A bag of something or other.

As I walked up to the house, my pants started falling down. My pants were falling down! So, when I arrived at the front door, my arms full carrying the bag of whatever, I asked Gayle Brickley (the family's mom, the adult! the big person!) to pull up my pants.

Yep. "Please pull up my pants."

Her reply?

"What? What did you just say?"

I was completely mortified. I mumbled nevermind, scampered around the door, and hurried into the kitchen, where I deposited the bag, and pulled up my pants. I'm sure I didn't say "Would you please pull up my pants?" for, as a 3 year old, I'm also sure I didn't have that command of the English language.

Three years old and so embarrassed that the adult was asking what did I just say? The tone she used clearly implied that I had asked something terribly shameful. Oh, so embarrassed!

I carried that memory and feeling of complete shame around with me for another 25 years. Every time I thought about that moment, the feelings of shame and embarrassment overwhelmed me. I couldn't tell anyone about that incident. Too shameful!

Eventually, I did tell Kris about that incident. And what happened? Poof! All the feelings of embarrassment and shame disappeared. How could such a small incident of so long ago have such power over me? Because I let it. Because I let an embarrassing moment be more than it really was. And telling Kris helped me see it for what it was.

Which was nothing.

But a little humour might have helped.

Kris listed the usual suspects:

P.S.  Have we submitted a bit to DUI?  They are due Feb. 23rd.  We
should probably get on that if we haven't already.  Here's a list of
tournaments to think about in the mean time:

Spring Fling - late March
Fools - late March / early April
DUI - early April
Quincy MUD - late April/early May
Cal States - late May
Potlatch - 4th of July
Chico - August
Hot Valley - August
Labor Day - early September 

These are all pretty local.  There is also Flower Bowl in Vancouver
which is typically in June, Kleinmann in Oregon in August I think, and a
host of other tournaments that are short plane rides away.

I received a bad performance review today. I'll admit it to being a bit of a shock, though in retrospect, not surprising.

In the past two weeks, I've had food poisoning (-2 days), a migraine (-1 day), traveled to Virginia for my father-in-law's open-heart surgery recovery (-4 days), and to Pasadena to deal with a condo flooding (-2 days). I desparately want to say, "Look! I'm not making shit up! I'm not making up excuses!" but the end result is that I'm behind in a project and it's affecting not only one client/customer/project, but also other projects.

And I don't like it one bit.

I'm going full tilt (20 minutes work, 5 minutes pause, 14+ hours today) to get this stuff done, but I don't feel like I'm getting any closer to the end. The more I do the more I see I have left to do. Geez, does it ever end?

Ta-da!

I have officially posted my most boring, I'm whining post ever. This is why blogs suck. It's someone whining about a life that is actually pretty damn fucking good, with just a hint of stress in it.

The good thing about today? I didn't cry. I realized that, well, you know, crying isn't going to help a darn thing. When I'm done, I'm still going to have all this work to do.

Nothing to be done about it? Then don't worry about it.

Three.

Count 'em. One. Two. Three.

That's the number of bee-you-tee-ful throws made to me that I was unable to catch. Three just-out-of-my-reach throws last night that would have been perfect layout throws, if only I could layout with regularity. At top speed. On offense.

This was at MPUL last night. One of the throws I knew was coming: a hammer from Adrian to the back corner. I watched that one fall.

The other two were from Andy Crews. He's definitely used to playing with much faster players than I am. The throws were completely and totally brilliant. And I missed them both. I wanted to cry. Especially since Andy is the type of player that not only inspires his teammates to play better, but his playing makes his teammates play better.

I am in awe of him.

Fortunately, Kris knows this and is in much the same state as I.

Heather Wolnick later saved the night for me when she commented that the training I've been doing is paying off. She can tell the difference in my play, especially my endurance and quickness. My being the first to the other end of the field on a pull is being noticed! I'm really glad she said something, because I was getting pretty down on my play last night.

I think sprinting 70 yards, then turning around and sprinting back ~35 yards will be next week's sprint workout. Maybe this Friday's, since tomorrow night is MPUL and Thursday night is SFUC.

So, the problem I have with most "devout" Christians (aside from the obvious hypocrisy of the religion and the practice of said religion) is that they refuse to listen to reason, logic or common sense when confronted with thoughts, events or other beliefs that conflict with their "faith." It's almost like becoming religious means you stop thinking for yourself.

Some scientific studies show there are distinct biological differences in the chemistry and makeup of the brains between devout religious persons and the rest of us (heh: I almost wrote, "between devout religious persons and normal people."). Perhaps those differences account for the desire to let someone else think for them, to follow blindly without a critical thought? Of course, the issue could be a brain disorder instead.

I know very few intelligent, well educated people who are also devout religious people. Note I said "few": I do know some. They exist. Though I'm not sure how they balance faith with critical thinking. Maybe early indocrination into the religious cult, er, organization?

Regardless, here's my thought about it: how about starting a blog or website that's nominally Christian based, but with pushes of critical thinking in it? It could have lots of Bible quotes, but a history of how the books of the Bible were selected, and how people should read the other "forgotten" books. And maybe some pointers about you shouldn't dump your money into some televangelist, because even Jesus tipped the bankers' tables over in the church (though it was probably a synagogue at that point). Oh, and how about the obvious-to-anyone-who-isn't-a-devout-Christian observation that being a Christian means respecting other people (even if you don't like their opinions). Oh, and that God gives us all free will. That means each of us chooses our actions and you, Mr. Bible-Thumper, may not choose mine for me.

Eh, we'll see. I could do it free at Blogger (and get some free links/search access to it!). If I do decide to create the site, I'm sure anyone who knows my writing style will recognize the site immediately as mine. Maybe when they do, they'll keep mum about the originator.