Littering Imagination | Short writings from a short writer.

When I posted this earlier this evening, I was distracted and in a rush and shorted things a bit. Updating now.

Back at the beginning of the year, I'd made grand plans to write one blog post every day and I did pretty good there for a few weeks in January. But that dwindled off. Now nearly the entire month of April has gone by and I've not posted a thing. I'm okay with that.

Somewhere in the past few months, some friends shared a blog written by their daughter. I forget which, but it was either Nikomas or Rachel Perez. I've mentioned the Perez family before, former youth ministers at our church and good friends. Their oldest daughter is about Olivia's age, if I recall correctly. And she is a writer, with a fiction blog of short stories or chapters.

It makes me smile quite a bit. She's not even 12 years old and blogging more often than I am? It is impressive. Anyway, check out her fiction blog here: Littering Imagination | Short writings from a short writer.

More About My Del.icio.us Archive

So I'm pretty sure that My Del.icio.us Archive has a Google Pagerank of 3 -- at least at the moment. The traffic for this site actually surpasses the root directory for the Arconati News - http://arconati.net/ site.

I just went through the site's controls today and smoothed out some of the settings. I especially concentrated on the "Blogroll" section, adding links to a lot of my friends' blogs. The following is what it looks like right now.

Blogroll

• Bryan Farr
• Derek Brink
• Kate Tuskey
• Michelle Nicholson
• Nikomas Perez

I also included links to my two main sites as well as Ferguson Christian Church and MonsterCommerce. I think one of the main reasons for the site's success (if that is the right word for it) is due to Wordpress' Trackback / PingBack features. In del.icio.us, I have been bookmarking a lot of high profile, high quality tech sites, and a lot of these sites list the most recent / most relevant links to their sites reciprocally.

The website builds itself. Thinking about it, every del.icio.us user should at least create a free Wordpress blog and make sure their bookmarks are being posted there every day.

Where Is My Life's Story?

One thing I've been thinking about lately is the fact that I originally opened this blog back in August of 2003 with the idea that I would write my life's story. Well, I wrote a few posts like that, but eventually just stuck with the day to day stuff.

Well, a friend of mine and the former youth minister at our church, Nikomas Perez, has recently done something closer to what I had wanted to do.

• My Life: Preface
• My Life: Part 1
• My Life: Part 2
• My Life: Part 3
• My Life: Part 4
• My Life: Part 5
• My Life: Part 6
• My Life: Part 7
• My Life: Part 8
• My Life: Part 9
• My Life: Part 11
• My Life: Part 12
• My Life: Part 13
• My Life: Part 14

Coming right on the heels of his father's tragic death, this depth of digging into one's life and sharing it from beginning to end today was very inspiring. I'm ashamed that I strayed a little bit off my original goal with starting with my birth and early childhood and bringing it up to today. Instead, I post about my lunch and pictures of my dog. It's not like these aren't important, but I feel I am missing my mark. It's time to type less about the present and delve more deeply into my past. Wanna come along for the ride?

An Honorable Mention of Mentioning People

I've blogged since 2003 or so and one of the features I've always been hassled with was how to easily link to someone else. I mean, it's very easy to use the built in link tool and simply enter the proper URL of their personal website or blog or ... whatever. But my problem is recalling the right URL. For instance, let's say I want to link to my friend Vincent Le Pes III's website. He's a musician, web developer and all-around cool guy so perhaps I want to share a link to his site. However, I always have a moment's pause here as I try and recall the exact URL of his site specifically -- www.vincentlepes.com -- since I don't go there every day and I don't have the bookmark handy. In case you don't know this, misspelling a URL can lead you down a dark path. If you don't believe me, try going to www.whitehouse.com instead of www.whitehouse.gov. Inevitably, I end up going to Vinnie's Facebook profile and then his About page. Sure, it's handy but it seems like there are too many steps. I've always wanted a shortcut of some kind. I start to type out his name (or the name of some other friend) and the Blogger tool completes it for me and adds in the link. Facebook has had a feature similar to this for their posts and comments for a few years now, so it stands to reason this is not impossible.

I didn't really notice it right away, but it would appear that Blogger has added just such a feature recently. They talk about it on Blogger Buzz and explain how this feature works with Google+ to link your friends' names at your choice to their profile. It does not escape my notice that this is their profile on the social network, which might be somewhat private or might not. But it is not linking directly to their site. Still, it's a potentially cool feature.

It's kind of funny that my second thought regarding this feature was... "I wonder how many people I can annoy with this new toy?" Suddenly this feature seems a bit dangerous. Oh well, time to put the question to the test.

Say hello and a big HAPPY NEW YEAR to Lisa Arconati, Matt Armfield, Shashi Bellamkonda, Michelle Behymer, Ian Baird, Eric Berger, Amy Bliss, Amanda C. Peterson, Andy T., Adam Hallas, Andy Scott, Ben Durnell, Eric Baggett, Brad Vonder Haar, Cale Fischer, Chris Coy, Cathy Nicol, Chris Stoddard, Shawn Duncan, Don Krutewicz, Rachel Duncan, Mike Damewood, Dave McCann, Mike DuBois, Dan Kennedy, Erin Moloney, Erin Steinbruegge, Eddie Parker, Cari Schueller, Eric Patmythes, Aaron Eversgerd, James E. Arconati, Jonathan Frazier, Fayth Kleg, Scott DuBois, Alex Foster, Matt Galligan, Gina Ronat, Gina Maness, Mike Goggin, Greg Simms, Angie Garner, Heather VanMeter, Russ Henneberry, Jerry Henderson III, Jason Kevin Hill, Ryan VanMeter, Travis Irwin, Robin Rath, Jeremy Stoeckel, Janet Lackey, Jeremy Polen, Jeremy Zhang, Jacalyn Rausch, Joseph Madden, J.D. Pohlman, Toni Phillips, Scott Kingery, Brandon Kendall, Lisa Keller, Andrea Kuehnel, Jordan Koene, Lexi Long, Stephen Lotz, Adam Lefever, Mark McCoy, Nils Rurack, Robert Noles, Nikomas Perez, Jonathan Needleman, Nathan A. Tuskey, Jayme O'Renic, Jason O, Tracy Papproth, Mark Page, Robert Amos, Sparky Walkup, Tracy Papproth, Tolga Tanriseven, Tony Mast, Josh Brink, Valerie Starr, Wain W, Timothy Yow, Jeremy Zhang ...

Note: As I go through this process, these listings are showing up in alpha order, but sometimes by first name and sometimes by last name,.. and sometimes by email address? With this setup, I'm likely to have listed someone twice... Errrk! Usability fail!

Also notable are a few folks who don't 'technically' have Google+ profiles, but I email them often enough they got invites somewhere along the line. However, if Google/Blogger allowed me to link to them here, I kept it. There were a few names that did not become links. If you see your name and you'd rather I removed you please let me know immediately!

It does occur to me that I just made a very public list of nearly all of my friends, exposing important information about me in addition to possibly exposing their information without their permission. It gets all the privacy-loving hairs on the back of my neck standing on end. I'm guessing that you all each got some sort of notification emailed to you OR posted to Google Plus OR both. Perhaps you even have to approve my link or something. Perhaps not. My intent is test the technology a bit and wish you all a sincere Happy New Year. I apologize in advance for any inconvenience. If you are mad, I owe you a beer or coffee. Let's catch up.

New Blogger Version

I've just had all of my blogs upgraded to the latest version of blogger. It took a few minutes to complete, but was mostly painless. One immediate change I noted was that the dashboard lists all unmoderated comments and has a decent interface for viewing them. I noted immediately that this blog had five comments I didn't even know about. I'm wondering if they were there and I just never went to the "Moderate Comments" section, or if some bug had kept them hidden even on that menu.

I thought nobody read my blog and here were several different comments from people other than my close family. There were two comments from J.D., one on my post about Ferguson-Florissant School District and another post about Olivia's adventure in the supermarket late one night. I also had a comment on my post from last summer when I created the website for Ferguson Christian Church from our former Youth Minister, Nikomas Perez. I also got a comment on one of my posts from a coworker from MonsterCommerce, Janet Lackey thanking me for linking to her site, which I was all too thrilled to do.

Most exciting to me was a comment from an old best friend, Jeff Kirchhofer, who I've been thinking of getting back in touch with for the longest time. What bugs me most about this comment thing is that he posted a comment way back in January of this year and I am only finding out about it now. Don't I look like a jerk? Oh well, I'm emailing him now.

Today is Election Day

If it was entirely possible that someone was not aware, it will be election day in the United States by the time we all wake up in the morning. I've been reading a lot about the election for the last several months, but I haven't really written about it. I can count on one finger the number of times that I've ever written about politics and I'm certainly not going to start writing about it a bunch now. It's a little late in the game, if that phrase is proper. However, I did want to express myself about my choice in case anyone was curious. One formality first:

Barack Obama '08

I don't think that's going to surprise anyone, at least not anyone that knows me well at all. But how did I --how does anyone-- really make a decision to support one candidate over another? I wouldn't set out to change anyone's mind who has already made a decision, especially between now and when the sun comes up. But if you find yourself a member of the one in seven registered voters who are still undecided at this late hour, perhaps if I document my process it will help you vote with more confidence. It's the least I can do.

As background, my parents --my mother most specifically-- were Democrats and my upbringing has perhaps leaned me in that direction. But I find myself sometimes thinking more conservatively as I grow older. As one illustrative point, I find myself sometimes leaning more pro-life than pro-choice. I'd never dream of restricting a woman's rights. I've just grown to understand the preciousness of life a bit better. This leads to an inner conflict I didn't have as a teenager when I thought pro-lifers were insane and throwbacks to the Dark Ages.

But that's just one issue. And I'd never want to be a one-issue voter. Except lately, I've come to understand that these dedicated individuals are just that; dedicated. They've drawn a line in the sand and said that the people who represent them shall never cross it. Ever. There's a certain heroism to that. There is a certain valor to looking at an issue as black and white blue and red and not allowing shades of gray purple to convince you to compromise when you really don't want to. I may not feel that strongly about many issues, but I want to say that I'd fight to the death for someone else's right to feel that strongly about one. And they shall not be denied that right by me, even if I disagree with them wholeheartedly. It's a truism that makes America great.

I don't recall how I first heard about Obama. Perhaps it was this video:

What made this special to me is not the celebrity endorsements or the interesting video cuts. Barack's voice and speech cadence is easy to listen to and so easily lends itself to music that I imagine this song incorporating his speech wrote itself. The next president is someone who we will hear speak many times over the next several years. How about choosing a candidate because they are easy on the ears? If they speak plain english, but eloquently and with subtle style... Perhaps that may seem superficial but it's important that leaders be charismatic in order to be taken seriously.

About a month ago, there was a special on 20/20 or 60 minutes that profiled both candidates and their wives quite deeply. I really liked the fact that it was very fair and bipartisan and showed the human side of both men and their families. I really enjoyed the interviews. Contrary to what you might hear, neither of them is actually evil! When the show was over, I felt that no matter what our country will be led by a good person that I could get behind. It's really too bad that only one of them can be the president and the other will likely fade into obscurity. I was left wishing for a way to vote them both into office.

I'll mention the war briefly because someone would say that I have to. I think that we as a nation have failed in this and every other conflict for the past dozen+ years because we have lost the stomach for protracted wars. Where is Bin Laden? What happened to the search for him? Can we just forgive our enemies without conceding defeat to them? I don't even know the difference between the need for justice and the need for revenge anymore. Neither candidate has a magic wand for this issue. I don't really want to talk about this and so I'll just stop there.

The issue that really clinched the deal for us --and by "us" I mean Lisa & I-- was the fact that back in June of this year, Barack Obama very publically proposed legislation to better track SIDS and stillbirths, bringing attention to an issue I care deeply about. If you can look me in the face and tell me that you can't at least consider the guy for that reason alone, I don't want to hear anything more from you.

Beyond this, I listened carefully to what some of my friends, ministers and other people I looked up to had to say. For instance, check out these blogs:

• Nikomas Perez's Posts About Politics
• Derek Brink's Posts About Politics
• ...and a lot of other sites I bookmarked: My Bookmarks on Delicious Tagged Politics

No matter what, it's time to vote. If you need one more strong push to do so, understand that 48 months is a very long time. Want to feel that down to the marrow? Listen to 48 Months by Sinister Dane [mp3] or download the mp3. Once you're done head-banging, pick yourself up off the floor and go vote!