2013 Year in Review - Good Parts Version

I started writing up 'Year In Review' post, and you know what, it was a total drag.  Unemployment tried its best to ruin our year, and typing up a full year in review sucked - depressing to type, depressing to read.  So I'm packing it all into one sentence and moving on.  I lost my job, it sucked, it was stressful, it was depressing, our finances are in shambles and we moved away from many of our friends.

And now, I am happy to welcome you to the good parts version of the 2013 year in review.  Rather than some sort of chronological listing, we're going through the year topically, in the order that stuff comes spurting out of my brain.

Travels:
It was a light year for traveling.  In April we made the 5 hour trip to Kirtland, OH to see the church history sites there.  Being unself-employed, we went in the middle of a week so we could avoid people (not that April is peak tourist season), and so we could go see the Kirtland Temple on April 3rd.  Rather than re-invent the wheel, I'll point you to Shannon's blog post for more details.

We also made the 1,685 mile trip (each way!) from Michigan to Utah for my little sister's wedding.  I'll try not to get too judge-y about Jessica getting married in the middle of a day that was like 102°.  I'll leave that for my sister who was like 8 months pregnant at the time.  Being the lame people that we are, we produced two blog posts on the traveling.  But only one on the month we spent in Utah.  So what did we do?  The wedding went well, and more importantly, Jessica picked a good guy.  (Jess: Have we fully explained how much better Tyler is than pretty much every other guy you ever hung out with? Not like the other guys were bad people or anything, but . . . well done.)  We did the standard Utah things: hike the Y, drink BYU chocolate milk, ride the train, see downtown and temple square, weenie roast in the canyon.  Some of our favorites were probably kayaking in Oquirrh Lake (Daybreak) with Shannon's parents and I really enjoyed my hike (with Stewart) from Lamb's canyon to Little Cottonwood Canyon (via Millcreek and Big Cottonwood).  It was about 17 miles, and we never got seriously lost, despite heading onto some trails that we were probably the first people that year to hike.  Even thinking about that hike makes me miss Utah.

Running:
This year was a banner year for running for me.  This was partly made possible by slacking off sufficiently in all other years that the bar was set reasonably low.  I ran only a single race, the Dow Run 10k, in which I got a medal for taking 2nd place in my age group.  I ran it in a personal best 43:08.  I'd be lying if I said I wasn't checking the mail every day for weeks waiting for the silly thing to arrive. I'm going to end up with new records for number of runs in a year (96) and miles (452).  I struggle a lot with running consistency; every month this year I've either run more than 40 miles (6 times), or less than 20 (6 times).  I have hopes of run a lot more next year, provided it quits being so freaking cold.  (High of 6 °F on Monday)

Blog:
blogger doesn't let me look at yearly stats (day, week, month, and all time are the options), and I don't want to bother to add up page views or anything.  But, I can say that the two most popular blog posts of the year have been Enders Game, the Movie and I like big Books (and I can not lie).  Those had 99 and 76 page views, while nothing else I've written this year had more than 40.  Ender's Game also won with 6 comments. (2 of which were me.)

Reading:
At the start of the year, Shannon and I set out to record every book we read for the year.  We gave up on the children's books after a month or two.  It was just too much work.  By the time we quit we had amassed 97 unique books, which we had read 227 times.  We did keep up with our adult reading lists though.  Currently, I'm at 10,937 pages from 29 books and Shannon is at 9790 pages from 35 books.  (Don't worry, Shannon will get to 10,000 before the end of the year!)  My top five books for the year are:

1. "Moonwalking with Einstein" a book about memorization
2. "Born to Run" perhaps you've heard about people running in silly footwear?
3. "Signal and the Noise" by Nate Silver explaining how predicting stuff is really hard.
4. "Mistborn" I'm currently reading the second book in this fantasy series.
5. Wheel of Time #14 was an excellent conclusion to a very long series.

Girls:
Julia reads all the time now.  We never really taught her how to read, but at the age of 5 1/2 she's pretty much an expert reader.  We went to the library the other day and got her two Junie B. Jones books.  Both done by the end of the day.  We're pretty sure she understands everything in the books - I mean, who would sit there hour after hour reading if they didn't grasp the story?  It's been amazing to see Julia learn manners and to pay attention to other people over this year.  She long ago learned that we demanded the use of words like 'please' and 'thank you', but now she's actually learned to mean them, and to go out of her way to use them.  On the other side of that, she's also developing an attitude sometimes.  If we ask her to share a toy with Ella her response is often something like, "Fine! I'll just never play with any toys again, and Ella can keep it forever!!!"

Ella is goofy.  She has the most toned legs of any little kid I've ever seen.  I don't think toned is the right word.  They're muscular. She can't walk, she only skips, hops and twirls.  Just this morning she was laying in bed at 6-something in the morning singing jingle bells. Not just jingle bells though, the Barenaked Ladies version, which means that it starts out slowly, then she does the swirling interlude between verses where it picks up energy and roars into a raucous double-time chorus.  Julia, meanwhile, was sawing logs on the other side of the room.  Neither of my girls have ever been snugly, but we went and saw Frozen the other day, and Ella cuddled right up to me for much of the film.  It was heavenly.

Achievements:
There weren't any round numbers this year, but we did manage to turn 32, 31, 5 and 3.  Unemployment did manage to come to an end, finally, and in September I started working at a place called Rubicon Technology.  I do roughly what I've always done, and by this point, you either have an idea what it means to grow crystals or you don't.  With the new job, oh hey, we moved.  We've still got a house for sale back in Michigan, because selling empty homes is a hobby of ours.  Julia is doing great in Kindergarten, though it's eye-opening how little we really know about her life at school - and it's only half day kindergarten.  It's a mystical world full of kids and teachers that we don't really know.  We finally got to see Ben Folds Five in person, along with Guster and BNL.  For about 15 years I've been bummed that I missed BFF and Cake at the Big ___ Show in SLC.  It was the same night as the priesthood session of General Conference.  I don't regret my decision, but I was disappointed that I could see them.

Fall Cleaning

It's like spring cleaning that you finally got around to doing . . . 18 months late.

I've cleaned out the side of my blog a bit.  So now it looks like I have no friends.  In reality, I have just as few friends as always but it turns out that a third of them quit blogging, and another third went private, so links aren't that useful.  Besides, I'm not sure how many people actually visit the actual blog anymore, I assume they read it through other means.  If you're deeply offended that you're not on the list anymore, maybe you should blog something more recently than 2010 (coughadamcough) or 2009 (ahemsuzannehackingsound).

But while we're here, what's become of blogs?  It was so cool! Did facebook kill it? Did it turn out to not be as cool as we thought? Are we too lazy to type? I can't really point any fingers here, because my blog has barely been hanging onto activity for a while now.  The last 6 years I've had 185, 131, 73, 66, 14 and 32 posts.  That's a drop from on every other day, to once a month in 2011.  For me, blogging revolves around interaction between me, the blogger, and you, the reader.  I don't want this to sound like a plea for comments or something.  If my blog isn't interesting, or doesn't somehow elicit a response, there's no need to make one up just to make me feel better.  (Though if you did a good job of hiding the fact that this was your own motivation, it would probably work.  I'm just saying.)  And really, this is probably the worst sort of post to get comments.  It's about blogging for heaven's sake, and this blog was never meant to be a blog about blogging.  It's a blog about me.

It's interesting that my blog really fell apart about the time we moved away from Utah and parked ourselves about 2,000 miles from just about anyone we knew.  You'd think that my blog would have peaked in interest now that other means of communication were limited.  But here's the funny thing: communication breeds more communication.  Shannon and I see each other all the time, and we haven't yet run out of things to talk about!  And it's not because we're some sort of magical perfect compliments to each other that share every interest imaginable. It's because I've always had the most to say to people I see the most.  I don't have any special theories about why that is, so if you do, feel free to share.

So, in conclusion, this blog post took me forever to write, because I got distracted by cleaning my keyboard keys.  And can anyone explain why the dirtiest one was Caps Lock, followed by "\".  Whose grubby fingers are hitting those on my keyboard all the time?

IE? Really?

Blogger has some fun stats associated with it these days.  It's neat to see even my rarely updated blog got 284 views in the last month.  My all time most important contribution to the world is my comments on a song about Santa using zebras to fly his sleigh in Africa, which I think I've mentioned before.

But the craziest thing is that 53% of you people are using IE to look at my blog.  IE!  If you're still using IE, any list of reasons not to use it probably isn't going to have an impact.  If you were the sort to pay attention to such reasoning, you would have switched from IE long ago.  Instead, I'll just tell you: Quit using Internet Explorer.  Go download something else instead.  It's really easy.  Go get Firefox (23%), or Chrome (10%) or Safari (5%).  I've used them.  They're good.  Each has it's own supporters who would be glad to discuss their various merits, but they'll all agree on one thing: they're each better than IE.

Oh, and one last thing.  If anyone wants to admit to being part of the 489 visits from the Netherlands (2nd place, followed by Russia (321), Germany (254), France (253) and Iran(147)) I'm kinda curious.

Update from the Road

This is a total psych-out blog post. I wrote this like a week ago! We're still driving across the country. I totally fooled all of you! Ha ha!

Good thing we have Google

Because if we didn't have Google, some questions would just have to go unanswered.

For instance, let's say you were thinking to yourself: "Where can I learn more about 'fast mathlong on.comcom'?" Now, I can't say why you would ever be thinking that to yourself. You're the one thinking it, that's your problem. But if you were thinking that, you could turn to Google to help you out with all of your fast mathlong on.comcom problems. You'd type in "fast mathlong on.comcom" into Google and it would let you know that the third best place into the whole internet to find out about fast mathlong on.comcom is . . . . THIS BLOG!

That's right folks, I am a leading world authority on fast mathlong on.comcom. The third hit from Google on the topic is this post of mine from two years ago.

inFAQ

One of my faithful readers asks: "Did you quit blogging because everyone else did, too?"

Well, here at Bethletard Blogs, we care about our reader(s), so I'm here to answer the question.

Answer: No. I did pretty much quit blogging, but not just to fit in with the rest of the quit-blogging crowd. I'm my own man. I quit blogging because:

- December, January and the first part of February were a pukey ordeal at our house.

- January, February, March and the immediate future have been a worky ordeal at work. I've been working a lot more, at home a lot less, and blogging time has been hit hard. As has cleaning time, playing with Julia time, and just about everything else. The most discouraging part is that many days I get up and leave for work before anyone else is up, and then I get home an hour before Julia goes to bed. And even with all the work, it doesn't feel like much is getting done at work. But I'd like to get off that topic now.

This weekend we went up to the Wasatch front to do the Rex Lee Run. As I haven't been running (or exercising in any other way. remember that bit about working too much?) it was an accomplishment that I finished, didn't die and never had to stop and walk. The race results aren't up yet, but my watch put me at about 27:30. We barely got there before the race started, so we were way in the back. That isn't a huge problem because each runner has a chip on their shoe to individually track their time. I didn't cross the start line until several minutes after the race had started. But that means I did get to spend the first mile weaving amid the slower runners. I probably passed up about 1,000 people! So, at least I got to feel like I was really, really fast when in reality, I never even saw the fastest third of the field. Shannon walked the 5k with her mom and pushed Julia in the stroller. Shannon's dad also ran the 5k.

We've been doing the Rex Lee Run for a long time now and have quite the collection of t-shirts. So last year I started a new tradition which frankly isn't getting the attention that it should be. Those familiar with the run know that the t-shirts are almost the same every year, generally only changing the color scheme. But I've got enough shirts now that whatever color they pick, I already have a shirt of that color. Last year they did orange, so I wore the orange shirt from 2001(?). This year was blue, so I wore my blue shirt from 2000. (2010 was a royal blue, 2000 was a much darker blue, almost a little bit purple-ish.) Anyway, no one is observant enough at the race to notice that I'm the only person there wearing a shirt that is almost the right color, but slightly different. So, if you're at the race next year, look for me. I'll be the guy wearing the shirt that is very slightly different than everyone else's.

sdf

Did you quit blogging because everyone else did, too?

The Blogs are dying in the night

Looking through the list of blogs that I follow, I see that about half of them haven't been updated in recent memory. I haven't blogged as much as I did a year or two ago, but some people seem to have stopped entirely. I suppose Facebook is partly to blame for this, as it allows people to similarly update the world on their lives, but it's a poor replacement in my opinion. I'm not anti-Facebook or anything. If you want to tell the world that you made cookies today, I suppose it's an excellent method for doing so. (side note: I find it interesting that apparently we all believe that every single one of our friends (and by "friends" I mean anyone we've ever met) are interested in every little thing we say or do. "I'm waiting in line at the library." or "I'm facebooking from my phone." (yes, a "friend" of mine felt the need to tells us all that he was enjoying facebooking from his phone.))

Anyway, I don't see people using facebook to convey substantive ideas about things. No paragraph long stories, explanations, or anything. Text messaging taught us that anything worth saying should be able to fit into 160 characters. Twitter says we should be able to do it in 140. Facebook gives you about 250 characters before it truncates your status, essentially telling you "we all want to hear about your every thought, provided you thought can fit in this little tiny box." Up to this point, this blog post is already over 1400 characters long. That's 10 full length tweets, or almost 6 facebook status updates. So, it's a new year, add a resolution to your list to not only exercize your body, but also your brain. Don't let the brevity police restrict you any longer and go blog something.

Blog Comments

So, I'm about to ask you to comment on my blog in response to my blog post about commenting on blog posts.

Ok, I read various people's blogs. Friends mostly. And occasionally they express opinions about one thing or another. While the most common topic is probably politics, this applies to various topics. (Oh, and while I'm thinking about it, I want to emphasize that there is no one person, blog or post that I'm specifically thinking of here, so don't try to read too much into this.) Anyway, my friends have a tendency to say various sensible things, a few things that I might not agree with, and then drop in something that is down right ridiculous, silly, wrong or dumb. Here, I'll create an example for you (which I am fabricating from my own brain right now):

"I can't believe Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize. I mean, he hasn't DONE anything! This sullies the reputation of those who have won the prize in the past for substantive work. And since entering office, Obama has decreased our likelihood for peace! Sure, nothing has happened yet, but because of him blaming America for everything, we are going to be attacked more for sure. I guess this is what we get for electing someone who is stupid."

So, lets analyze this hypothetical post. There are various things I agree with: Obama won the peace prize, and he hasn't achieved any meaningful peace, in my opinion. Then there are some things that I don't necessarily agree with, but that I can at least respect as a plausible opinion: America might be less safe now than when Obama took office, because of his policies. Then (and it always seems to be at the end) the post says something downright silly: that Obama is stupid. Say what you will, the man isn't dumb. He holds degrees from Columbia and Harvard.

So now we're down to my dilema as a blog reader. Someone I know has just written this silly statement that Obama is dumb. My first reaction upon reading is to write up a snarky comment pointing out to them that while they may not like Obama, they should stick to actual criticism, rather than illogical logorrhea. I usually get most of the way through the comment when I start to think about how the author will react. Because it's the internet, whatever I type will come out sounding argumentative and condescending (I think the internet does that to whatever you type, whether you mean it or not) and they will get defensive. Arguments will ensue, and now I've just taken a friend and created a whole bunch of bad karma. And the worst part is, I agreed with most of what they said! So, in the end I wind up not commenting at all. And they never know of their silliness, and they get no comments on their blogs.

So dear reader(s), what am I to do? Do I sustain my "keep the peace" policy? (Can I get a Nobel Prize for that?) Or do I try to politely point out that they are dead wrong on a topic and risk the ensuing melee? Some of my friends have some pretty strong opinions, and, while I know I do too, I try to remember that there are more important things than convincing other people that I'm right all the time. (Because I am, and deep down inside, you all know it.)

So, time for you to comment about commenting on friends blogs when you disagree with them. By all means, go ahead and disagree with me. :)

Aggregation: It's anti-impressive

I don't actually visit very many blogs these days.  I use Google Reader to do it for me.  I even pulls out comments on blogs, so I don't even have to go look for those.  As a result, I don't see any of the special things that people have done lately.  I guess what I'm telling you is: if you've been trying to impress me, you can quit wasting your time.  In a similar vein, I don't look at my blog regularly either, which is why it doesn't change; I guess my objective isn't to impress any of you with my bloggy-aesthetics.

The exception to this is, of course, people who have made their blogs private.  I understand why people do it, but it makes life harder for me.  What I can't figure out though, is why Google Reader (run by Google) can't figure out if I'm allowed to look at a private Blogspot (run by Google) blog.  It ought to be super easy for them to do, but they don't.  Apparently Google's objective in life is not to impress me.

Update

We have returned from the land up north. Christmas was good, the weather was cold, and there was lots of snow. We saw lots of people, and opened lots of presents. We barely got everything back in the car to come home.

Upon arriving home, we found that our computer has self destructed. Not sure yet what is wrong with it. There is some sort of error to the effect of "unmountable boot disk" or something like that. I don't recall the exact phrasing right now. We'll be looking into it more soon, to be sure. I just figured I'd let people know why our blogging absence will continue on a bit longer.

Still Using Zebras

This blog is a bit over 2 years old, and has nearly 400 posts. Nearly all of them have been long since forgotten. However, this post from a year ago today is easily the most visited post this month. Suzanne's response on her blog seems to be equally hot. The posts are about an old Christmas song called "Santa's Using Zebras Now". And it's virtually unknown and nearly un-googlable. Googling "Santa's Using Zebras Now" gives Suzanne's blog as the first hit and mine as the 3rd. The second reference is to someone posting the lyrics which they copied off of Suzanne's comment on my cousins blog (6th google hit on the search). (I know this, because they reference the song as an "annual Blockburger favorite," a line from my her comment, but can't figure out what a 'Blockburger' is. Apparently no one has heard of those, either.)

The last two days alone have had six visitors to my blog looking for the song. They come from Greensboro, Memphis, Salt Lake, Schaumburg Ill, Lincoln, Ancorage and Washingtong. (As I was typing that sentence I just got another visitor from Riverside.)

So, if you're looking for the song, you're not alone. And you're also not alone in not being able to find a copy. Some people have offered some help on Suzanne's blog. (Maybe we all need to convince Suzanne to get over to our parents house and track the music down. It might be the world's last remaining copy!)

We moved! This has several results:

1. We've been cleaning our old apartment a lot
1a. We're too tired to blog.
2. We have no internet access at home..
2a. We couldn't blog even if we had the energy.

We should have internet access at home tomorrow (I think) and as we get our new lives sorted out our blogging should probably return to it's old levels.

Male Bloggers

I'm not sure why, but guys don't seem to blog very well. I'm not sure why. Shannon certainly surpasses me in both posts and readership. Oh well.

On a nerdier note, I found a website today: projecteuler.net. If you don't know who Euler is, and how to pronounce his name, you can just stop reading now. For the rest of you, it's a site with a collection of computer programing math problems. They start from very easy to extra hard, and are meant as a way to learn to program mathematically. (Sorry folks, no fun stuff like double linked lists or other things I do not understand.) I did the first problem today in Maple in a couple minutes. (And Maple is weird for logic programming.) Of the languages I know, MatLab would be the best suited to all this stuff, though from what I've seen a fair number of the problems are large integer based, so the unlimited precision of Maple would come in handy there. Anyway, my point was, it could be a fun little project to work on.

And about now I realize that I already told Brett about this today, so I'm not sure who else out there could possibly care . . .

Tagging

Where would the blogosphere be without tagging to keep people busy? Via Shannon . . .

1. Did you date someone from your school?
Nope. I followed the Shannon dating plan of not dating. Anyone. Period. I'll tell you about the 2 dances that I went to in HS and the circumstances involving my going if you want.

2. What kind of car did you drive?
1987 Chevy Cavalier named "The Skunk" and a 1987 Plymouth Sundance, later named "Pansy: The Car Who Can't".

3. It’s Friday night...where are you?
I think we did the same thing every week. Basketball at Kevin's church, because his mom was the RS Pres and had keys, followed by a quick trip to 7-11 for massive re-hydration, followed by N64 at Mark's house where we played football, or WWF vs NWO or something like that.

4. Were you a party animal?
Does basketball, 7-11 and video games make me a party animal?

5. Were you considered a flirt?
If you caught me in the right mood, I might acknowledge that girls did, in fact, exist. If you kept me up until 2am and fed me tons of sugar, I may have admitted actually liking one. And that is about as far as any of that went.

6. Were you in band, orchestra, or choir?
No, no and no.

7. Were you a nerd?
Of course. Kenny and I just about staged a protest over not being Sterling Scholars.

8. Were you on any varsity teams?
No, varsity is for dummies; I was on Honors. (I hope Suzanne still reads my blog, so maybe, just maybe, someone will get that.) My sole extra-curricular was Academic Decathlon.

9. Did you get suspended/expelled?
Nope.

10. Can you still sing the fight song?
As much as I ever could: "Through all the seasons of the year . . . . . . . . . mumble mumble . . . . . . clap clap . . . . . . clap clap . . . . . . . . . ROLLING HILLS!"

11. Who were your favorite teachers?
Herlin, Merrill, Brinton.

12. Where did you sit during lunch?
Summer months outside near the tennis courts. Winter we spent on the floor in the history hall.

13. What was your school's full name?
Hillcrest High School

14. School mascot?
The school constitution states "the school mascot shall be a "husky" dog." I'm not sure what those quotes are supposed to mean. I'll leave you to judge.

15. Did you go to Homecoming and who with?
No. In my defense, I was only 16 for Homecoming my senior year, so I only went 0/1.

16. If you could go back and do it again, would you?
I think so. Maybe not for three years, but it was a blast. I didn't try, I goofed off all day, no responsibilities!

17. What do you remember most about graduation?
Wondering who on earth all those people in my grade were. I swear I'd never heard of them, nor seen them. Also, it was long.

18. Where did you go senior skip day?
Murray Park to play Frisbee in the rain.

19. Were you in any clubs?
Nope.

20. Have you gained some weight since then?
Since the beginning of high school or the end? I'm up about 15 pounds since HS, but I probably gained 30 during HS.

21. Who was your prom date?
Haven't you gotten it through your thick skull yet that I didn't date?

22. Are you planning on going to your 10 year reunion?
Sure. Not that I expect to be excited to see anyone there, nor do I expect anyone there to be excited to see me. But we'll probably go. If nothing else to get out of the heat for a weekend.

Maybe you can please everyone all the time

So, in a bit over 2 days, you all commented on my blog 57 times. That equals the number of combined comments my posts garnered from January 23rd through April 16th. So, apparently I should keep giving you what you all want:

No posts over the weekend, because, you know what? We were dead tired. We have very few priorities around here: Julia eats, Julia sleeps, Shannon eats, Shannon sleeps. If we can make those things happen, the day is a success. Julia (I still call her Wombsly sometimes) things that it is great to be asleep all afternoon and awake all night. We don't agree. But, while she was napping on top of me this afternoon, I did manage to get a picture.

Enough

Ok, I've decided that we're done with arguing with anonymous posters.

Back in January, I complained about people who confuse the words then and than. Months later, an anonymous commenter took exception to this and began checking my blog looking for grammatical errors I have made. Some of these comments can be seen here, here, here, and here. (There are others, but I don't want to track them all down.) More recently, anonymous was involved in this lengthy debate. It terminates with the revelation that the "Grammar Nazi" is retiring, but anonymous claims that some of the comments left, which are attributed to "Sha'qwantae" were not of his doing. So, even if Anonymous/Grammar Nazi has retired, Anonymous/Sha'qwantae is still commenting, as seen here, and seems to have spilled over to my sister's blog.

For the record, yes, I ranted about bad grammar even though I regularly make similar mistakes. I think all of us do things like this from time to time. We complain about someone who cut us off while driving, but fail to use our turn signals. Things like that. On some of the points recently raised (about the phrase "focus down" for instance) I still maintain that I am correct, and others have agreed with me. However, I now declare this debate to be finished. Shannon remarked the other day that anonymous has picked a fight he/she can't/won't win, because both myself and Suzanne will not give up on a debate, and will not admit defeat. We are quite stubborn. But I feel that lines have been crossed and the debate has started to turn somewhat nasty. It is time for the debate to end.

To this end, I will no longer be responding to any such comments left by anonymous. I ask others to likewise ignore such comments. Any subsequent argumentative comments from anonymous will be deleted. If that does not solve the problem, anonymous comments will be disallowed. If Anonymous/Grammar Nazi or Anonymous/Sha'qwantae would like to contact me personally, they should feel free to do so. I am fairly certain of the identity of one of them, and will discuss this with him when I see him next.

Now if only I could get people so interested to comment on the topics I pick.

Matt: A Sage (not Google) Reader

At Matt's suggestion, I'm trying out Sage. The early verdict is that it is superior to Google Reader. It does the work for you, but still encourages you to look at the post on the actual site, thus fostering commenting. And it catches updates much faster than Google Reader. I'd tell you how much faster, but Google Reader still isn't picking up things that I know have been there since this morning. On the down side, you can put things in folders to shorten up your list, but if the folder is closed to save you space, you can't see if anything in it has been updated. Silly. The other tricky thing is that clicking on a blog in the Sage window will take you there in your current browser window, which has resulted in me logging out of Gmail a half dozen times unintentionally. Oh, and if you're looking at a site, Sage will find the feeds for you automatically. Good job, Matt.

Google Reader

A few weeks ago, discovered Google reader, much to my initial delight. The idea is great. Rather than spending hours each day checking every one's blogs to see if they've updated (which I used to do compulsively about once an hour) Google reader checks the blogs for you, and puts all the new posts on one easy screen that you can read all together. The idea is great, and it's from Google! It's got to be marvelous! Actually, I've been disappointed.

Mostly, it's slow. I don't really know how all these RSS do-dads work, but when I post something on my own blog, it takes the better part of the day before it shows up on Google reader. So when I'm bored, I still check blogs manually anyway. Sometimes I get comments to an entry that show up before the entry itself does. And I only get the comments out of context. But I'm so lazy, I keep using Google reader.

Also, I think my commenting is down, because I don't visit the actual blogs.

For all the Non-Lurkers

First off, if you comment regularly, then you're obviously not a lurker and need not feel threatened by a reminder aimed only at lurkers. Secondly, since the anti-lurking event is a whole week long, you can assume that you'll have various posts over a week and can choose to wait for a good one to comment on. Finally, anything that gets me 5 comments is a good post in my book.

No Lurking Zone

Apparently this week has been declared National De-Lurking Week. (Who has the power to declare that? I guessing that whoever did declare it doesn't have that power.) For those who don't know, lurking is the official term for people who read blogs, but don't comment. So this is the time to chip in your 2 cents with some lavish praise!