Hat In Hand, Doing A Little Begging

I realize that posting here has been nonexistent for a while now. I apologize if you've come by looking for something new and finding nothing but BFL picks. I've just been too tired and busy to be creative. I had a holiday job that took up a LOT of time and energy, and I plan to write about it, but I needed to take the Christmas break to rest up, especially as I started to come down with a cold the day before Christmas! I haven't left the house in three days now, and it was a good respite.

During that time, I had a decision to make. Not a terribly important one, but one that I went back and forth, back and forth on for a while. The commenting system I've used here since the start got bought by another company a while back and they decided that the day after Christmas was the last day I could use it without paying. If I did nothing, I'd lose all the comments I had. I could export them but I had zero idea how to do that successfully and zero energy to try to figure it out. Honestly, I felt a little like I was being held hostage.

The larger problem is that this blog, technologically speaking, is being held together by duct tape and bubble gum. The banner disappeared and it's on the oldest Blogger platform available, which tests my abilities any time I want to make a change. It needs a complete makeover, but I can't decide which direction to go, so I've just kept it in a holding pattern. I really need a blog guru but haven't spent the time finding one and can't really justify an expense for it right now, given that I have been pretty delinquent in keeping up with it!

So why am I writing now? After all my back-and-forthing I decided to pony up and not lose my comments until I can figure out the direction I want to go in here (and see if I can find someone to fix the joint up for me!). So while it's a similar commenting system, there are changes and I don't really know if I've got it set up as it should be. I tried to keep the hoops you must jump through at a minimum, while trying to keep out meanies and anonymouths.

But I need you to help me test it. Even if it's just to say hi, I'd be ever so grateful if you'd leave a comment to this post to let me know it's working. If you have feedback about how it's working from the user perspective, that would be ideal. If you're feeling chatty, tell me what you're looking forward to most in the New Year. Thanks for your help!

[UPDATE: After getting some feedback, I took off the settings that required logging in, so it should be pretty seamless now. Thanks to those of you who took the time to help me out with this.]

Just Under the Wire

Another set of last-minute picks from me!

Thursday
Pittsburgh @ Cleveland - no pick (Arrrgh, Thursday games!)

Sunday
New Orleans @ Atlanta
Green Bay @ Chicago
Denver @ Indianapolis
Buffalo @ Kansas City
NY Jets @ Tampa Bay
Miami @ Jacksonville
Detroit @ Baltimore
Seattle @ Houston
Cincinnati @ Minnesota
Carolina @ New England
St. Louis @ Tennessee
Washington @ Oakland
San Diego @ Dallas
Philadelphia @ NY Giants

Monday Night
Arizona @ San Francisco
Combined MNF Score = 42

Good luck to everyone.