Christmas Resolution 1: Start writing more here
Christmas Resolution 2: Fix the wi-fi in my house so I can accomplish more of Christmas Resolution 1.
Christmas Resolution 3: See Christmas Resolution 2.
Hope everyone has a fantastic holiday, search even if you are already 1/5 of the way through your vacation.
Best way to decide on a redesign? Jump in and do it.
Unfortunately, there is a lot of tweaking I’d like to do and our home Internet is cashed out right now, so it might not happen this week, but I like the flexibility that this theme allows. (Read: It features, fairly prominently, a “lifestream”, so I can post to Twitter and Facebook and pretend that I’m blogging.)
Have tons more to do with it, but as usual, I’m always open to suggestions.
Thinking about redesigns for a couple of my sites, this one and BGSUsports.com (although in the case of the latter, it’s more of a “continuing design”…I like the look of it, I just have to get the content going). Unfortunately, I’ve hit a rut. It seems that where personal blogging still exists, it has changed from when I got into this mess seven years ago.
Back then, the goal was to find something to write about that was interesting enough to you or at least a close circle of friends or strangers. The pitfall was becoming what I always remember one blogger calling “a cheese sandwich blog”, as in, “I just ate a cheese sandwich for lunch.” Because, really, who cares? Apparently, everyone cares, because Twitter was born.
But I digress.
After awhile, blogs started to turn into ways for people to make money with minimal effort (or at least say that they made money) and PageRank, SEO and Referrals were all the rage. But I just kept chugging along. Felt pretty proud of myself for that.
Of course, as you can see, I’ve spent a whole lot less time here in recent years. As I posted sometime during this latest sabbatical, I partially blame a new (three years ago) position at work that has me working on web content all day, Facebook and Twitter as the reasons to not have to blog anymore. Things are just easier a sentence at a time.
Yet now, I’m determined to change that. I want to write more. I want to design stuff for me again. I want to use this new-fangled iPhone I’m tied to for at least two years to share more, without sharing a lot more. I want to go back through my linked blogs and see what is there, what is gone and what has changed. Seriously. It’s been years since I’ve regularly, or even not-so-regularly read blogs that I once clicked at four times a day, in case something had changed.
So really, let’s do this.
But where to begin? What should the “blog of today” consist of? How do I combine the mobile me with the desktop me and try to make a 36-year-old married guy from the Midwest seem interesting, especially in this age of “ME! ME! ME!” online.
Again, let us pause for diversion time…
Maybe I’m a different breed, but I’m about done with the “personal brand” theme. Perhaps I’m jealous that I didn’t get on the bandwagon of shilling people for $$$ with the idea that you have to stick out on the Internet. I get that there are a lot of people into marketing and PR and, especially with web-related jobs, there’s a ton of freelancing and you really do need to get noticed. But nine times out of ten, personal branding tips and practices make you come off as an annoying douche. Yep, said it.
Now, possibly misguided rant aside, what needs to be on a page about me, for me and to get me back rolling in the world I once knew? What is the best way to implement various forms of social media into a somewhat more static site without it looking like a mess of links, a patchwork of blah or a sad attempt to regurgitate all my online information in one spot?
Coming from so far out of the loop, what are essential components of personal sites anymore? Do people even have personal sites outside of marketing themselves or their skills?
Seriously, any and all tips are more than appreciated. Let’s see if I can’t do this by, say, 2012? ;)
The internet problem was pretty much on my end. Had I been slightly more tech-saavy on that end of things, I would have figured that out Monday afternoon. Though had I been slightly less tech-saavy, I’d have dropped $75 on a modem I didn’t need.
Still, aside from “reaching out” with an unsolicited tech support call, AT&T’s handling of the matter was lackluster at best. The original tech took my word for it that I had unplugged the modem and re-plugged it in. Had he gone through apparently basic steps (that is, to unplug ALL cables and re-plug them) to troubleshoot, I wouldn’t have had to go through any of that.
But in my book, when I called back Tuesday and got the “we’re unable to complete an order” speech twice, along with an “I can place an order, but it will be $75” and “I see you upgraded your cell phones, did you know you can put two more cell phones on that account, do you want to do that today?” from the second level support, that’s crap. She’s lucky she took this month’s internet off the bill and that I don’t feel like sitting through another phone tree and hold music to let someone know what’s up.
On the bright side, I had the new iPhone to play with, so that was good. Still looking for ideas on “must have” apps and other (positive) thoughts about the phone. Ah and if you’re a “Words” player, look me up: haveyoumettony. That much I do know. :)
What a day.
To summarize, after getting home at 2:15 am, to bed around 3, back out of bed about 3:30, back to bed about 4:15, I woke up for the guys that were supposed to come at 8 to put in new flooring in our guest bedroom. They were going to be a couple hours late. Back to bed off and on until noon, still no floor guys, and now, the power is out. 20 minutes later, the power comes back on, but the DSL is out. Floor guys show up, still no DSL. An hour later, while hosing dirt off the back patio, a hose attachment breaks on the reel. An hour after that, during lunch, AT&T calls about the internet. Find out the modem is likely fried, but the equipment office isn’t picking up, so after 10 minutes on hold, I get an appointment for them to “call back Thursday around 2” – um, yeah. In the meantime, I get the direct number for the equipment office. They’ll get a phone call tomorrow. Get ready for work over the flooring crew, find $20 in a pair of pants that I accused the wife of misplacing a year ago. How the money stayed in the pants that long, why I hadn’t worn them in a year, and how they still fit, I don’t know. But things are starting to at least a shade of Milhouse, but I still have to go to work. Not an awful day, until I eff up the last video clip of the day, which wouldn’t be a big deal if I had Internet at home to fix it later. I don’t, so 2 a.m. at work it is.
But tomorrow’s Friday, I’ve got a new iPhone to connect me to the world, a new floor in a room designed for other people and I’m leaving on a jet plane Sunday. Don’t know when I’ll be back again.
