Happy New Year everyone! Here’s hoping that 2009 offers up some better times than 2008 ended with. Even if it means that the human race as a whole has to work together to make it happen. Something we, as a people, have always had the greatest trouble in doing.
One can always hope though. 
‘Twas the night after Christmas,
and all through the house…
Bet you thought this was going to be a spoof on the old Christmas rhyme didn’t you? Well, I’m sorry but it’s not. I did give a half attempt at going through with it but my mind decided to take a 4 day weekend about that time and won’t be back until Monday.
So I’m hoping that everyone who actually celebrates Christmas had a happy one and for those that don’t celebrate this particular holiday, I hope you had a fine day nonetheless.
I’m taking a bit of a break from things here, I have some things to work on (getting my workbench back in order in the basement for one thing) and things to think about. It’s been one heck of a year and there are things to ponder and consider. And I need to come up with a New Year’s resolution list of course (I have a couple of ideas already).
In the meantime, if I’m not back at it beforehand, I hope everyone has a safe and Happy New Year.
Wishing Everyone A Safe And Happy Holiday Season.
Kirk M
(And a Personal Very Merry Christmas to All)
Seems like every time I seem to be ready to sit down and write a bunch of stuff something always gets in the way. This time, as usual, it was a combination of a flare up (disabilities, three each, the really bad one), a snow storm with all the wonderful cleaning up thereafter and the recovery period afterward. It’s amazing how little I can do nowadays.
So I spent my time between the computer, my easy chair, doing small household chores and, as usual in these cases, I fiddle-farted around with the back end of my sites.
Strange as it might seem, where dealing with a great deal of pain might understandably deter me from writing anything for a few days, tinkering always helped take my mind off the way I was feeling. And since I’m currently rather limited (That’s physically! Not mentally, okay?) as to what kind of tinkering I can actually do, my sites are usually the ones that suffer from this type of mental analgesic.
However, this particular site may have actually benefitted from my “distraction” technique this time rather than the other way around or at least I like to think so. We’ll see what others think about it as time goes on.
In the meantime I’m still dealing with the aftereffects of that damn flare up and just to make things more interesting, it looks like I’ll have some more snow to clean up tomorrow as well since it’s been falling steadily for a few hours now. I’d make some remark along the lines of when it rains it pours but at the moment it just doesn’t quite seem to get the point across.
To be continued…(as always)
Well, it happened. The infamous auto bailout bombed late last night in the senate.
The senate wanted to hear that the UAW would agree to bring worker benefits in line with say, Toyota and Honda. This of course brings us around to the fact/myth that assembly line workers at the big 3 make around $60 an hour.
So I was curious about this and went looking for info on what your average big 3 assembly line worker has going for them as far as average wage, benefits, etc. And this is what I found:
Let’s start with the fact that it’s not $70 per hour in wages. According to Kristin Dziczek of the Center for Automative Research–who was my primary source for the figures you are about to read–average wages for workers at Chrysler, Ford, and General Motors were just $28 per hour as of 2007. That works out to a little less than $60,000 a year in gross income–hardly outrageous, particularly when you consider the physical demands of automobile assembly work and the skills most workers must acquire over the course of their careers.
Read the article: Assembly Line: The New Republic
Well how about that. It’s basically a myth after all. But there’s more to it then that so I strongly suggest you read the rest of the above article so you know what’s at stake here and if the auto bailout went bust for legitimate reasons.
Here’s the announcement:
I’ll keep my personal feelings about this mess to myself for now but it looks like it’s going to be one skinny Christmas for those folks in Michigan this year.
Blogging is dead! That’s right…it’s dead, gone, worthless to even consider starting your own blog and a complete waste of time if you already have one.
Yes folks, blogging is completely passé, it’s just sooo 2004 or that’s what Paul Boutin of Wired News would have you believe when you read his article, Twitter, Flickr, Facebook Make Blogs Look So 2004. And he starts things off with this kicker:
Thinking about launching your own blog? Here’s some friendly advice: Don’t. And if you’ve already got one, pull the plug.
Now isn’t that a fine way to get attention?
And with what should you replace your blogging with pray tell? Why Flickr, Facebook and Twitter for starters, that’s what. It’s just so much easier and efficient that way.
Cut-rate journalists and underground marketing campaigns now drown out the authentic voices of amateur wordsmiths. It’s almost impossible to get noticed, except by hecklers. And why bother? The time it takes to craft sharp, witty blog prose is better spent expressing yourself on Flickr, Facebook, or Twitter.
So instead of sitting down with a concept and idea and putting them down on virtual paper for others to read and perhaps comment upon, instead of taking your time proof reading and perhaps changing a word or two here, a phrase or two there to make sure you get your point across, you should actually be limiting yourself to expressing your ideas, thoughts and feelings to 140 characters or less? If you can’t do that obviously you’re wasting your time? One picture is worth a thousand words I suppose? Not in this case it doesn’t. Which words? What words?
And what about the good folks who stop by your blog every day and leave comments? What about them?
Apparently, according to the article, the only type of commenter a new blogger is likely to get these days are bottom feeding trolls and insult/hate mongers. Same goes for us blogging veterans if we choose to continue in this apparently foolish endeavor of ours according to what Paul has to say. A complete waste of time.
And why is that you wonder?
Because we’ll all be drowned out by those cut-rate journalists and underground marketing campaigns he speaks of, that’s why. So expressing yourself through a social network is better? I think not.
Okay, okay…I admit that any time you quote from an article you can’t help but take that quote out of context and inevitably end up giving the wrong impression. And that’s exactly what I’ve done here. And by the way…that last quote up above is exactly 309 characters long which is hardly enough to give anyone reading my little post here of what Paul’s article is actually trying to say. My point here is that you simply cannot express yourself like you can on your own blog when you limit yourself to the likes of Flickr, Facebook and Twitter.
Sorry folks but Twitter ain’t blogging. It’s the online equivalent to text messaging. It’s a fine service, but it ain’t blogging.
The problem herein lies in that he’s attempting to compare the classic personal or niche style blog each with it’s own social microcosm of posts, comments and replies to the popular social networks of today as if they were the same type of thing. They’re not. It’s the old apples and oranges routine done in virtual.
Facebook, Flickr and Twitter definitely have their place and purpose and can easily compliment blogging and visa-versa but they can never replace blogging. And I don’t know about anybody else but as far as I’m concerned the days of rating your blog according to Google’s Page Rank and old standby’s like Technorati are over. While Technorati is still a great way to see who’s linking to your blog, it’s no longer an accurate gauge as to how “important” your blog really is and neither is Google’s Page Rank really.
For example:
If I put my online moniker, Kirk M, into a Google search my little 3 year old personal blog is 3rd from the top on the first page of results and that’s a general search, not a blog search. And according to Google, my small, low trafficked, non-Stumbled, non-Dugg corner of the blogosphere actually has a Page Rank of 5.
Now what does that tell you about accuracy?
Still, I hardly think I’ll quit simply because Paul’s article made the headline’s today (even though the article is hardly the truth of the matter) or because Jason Calacanis happened to retire from blogging earlier this year after he made millions from his Weblogs network.
And really, who cares? He did his thing, had his hand in…well…enough surprisingly familiar online entities to gain much notoriety (both good and bad), and an entry in Wikipedia (and I imagine much, much more). He made lots of $$$ doing what he did and then he retired at the ripe old age of 38—the bum. More power to him I say (he’s still a bum).
So thanks for your concern and kind advice Mr. Paul Boutin but I believe I’ll just keep puttering along the way I have been, thank you very much. I like putting my ugly mug out in public view and I just happen to be very fond of those fellow bloggers I’m happy to call my friends that I met while I was doing so.
You can look over the article for yourself of course but the way I read it, it’s a fine piece of well written satire never mind being a load of somewhat obvious comment bait. And I will say that as a journalist, Paul Boutin really seems to know his stuff especially when it comes to getting people’s attention. After all, to write a great satirical piece, you have to understand exactly what you’re referring to, don’t you?
Seems kind of funny though that when I pointed out something similar in a comment on his article, it posted as the 97th comment and there haven’t been any since.
How about that?
You know, it’s hard to write anything intelligible when you have a knife stuck somewhere in the area of your solar plexus. In fact, it’s nearly impossible. I’m beginning to feel a bit like Mel Gibson at the end of Brave Heart just after the executioner shows him an item that strangely resembles a $3.00 carpet knife.
As it so happens, this chronic pain that I’ve been dealing with over the past several months has escalated to the point where they (the VA) have put me on Percocet. This little crime-causing pill is to be taken at bedtime and supplements the non-narcotic prescription med for chronic pain I’ve been taking for over two years now.
But unlike like most others who become addicted to this stuff, I absolutely despise it. And I actually put off taking this stuff for months until I had absolutely no choice but to give in. I think it was not sleeping for several nights in a row that was the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back.
Still, I spend as many days as I can without it until the aforementioned executioner with that medieval equivalent of a carpet knife starts to work on my mid-section again. Much to my dismay those days are becoming shorter as time goes on.
Unfortunately I have found that taking this pain med called Percocet means that my normal cognitive functions are somewhat impaired during the day in that I’m finding myself sitting in front of the computer aimlessly drifting from one site to another, getting ideas for posts and forgetting them shortly thereafter. Logging into my Admin and end up staring at the Dashboard like some stoner staring at a shopping mall parking lot wondering where he parked his car.
Why can’t they come out with a nice medication that kills the pain while keeping you alert and aware? Why do these albeit effective narcotic type, chronic pain medications have to turn you into a walking zombie? Don’t these pharmaceutical companies understand that I don’t like drooling on my keyboard? Ah well, maybe someday I just won’t need these things.
In the meantime it’s down to me to find a way around this merry-go-round of pain vs pills that I’m currently riding and get some writing done. Find some way to drive through the fuzziness and mush my brain has turned into so I may continue on my journey of exposing my very thoughts and ramblings to the world at large.
Even if the world doesn’t want them.