Making Progress

I've been taking my list of goals for the year seriously and I'm trying to be mindful of the items on it, in order to look for opportunities to advance them. (I think blogging three times this week -- so far -- is a fine example of that!) I realized that my blog anniversary is coming up, and it would be nice to have made progress on my "Get a new blog design" goal before then.

Last night I decided to take the plunge and made major changes to the layout. I figured that if I pay someone to do a full-blown re-design, I'll have to upgrade it on Blogger in any case, so might as well do that. I've been cobbling together bits and pieces of HTML on the original layout to keep things afloat for a couple years and it just gets harder and harder to make it what I want. That is simply not where my talents lie.

As you can see, if you've ever been here before, things look seriously different. I realize that it's not great just yet, there are still a lot of things that need to be tweaked. I'd let you tell me what you like or don't like, but the biggest problem I've encountered is that my comment function is not working with the new template. I'm sure it's an easy fix, but I haven't been able to puzzle it out on my own. I'm getting some help with it, but people have been coming to visit today and I wanted to thank you and apologize for not having comments working.

Because of this, I've added something now that I'd planned to add later: A link to me on Twitter. I've resisted doing that for a long time, but the reasons for doing so seem less relevant to me now. Twitter has become a huge part of my life and I want to integrate it into my blog. Over there to the right is a rather clunky-looking widget, which I hope to improve on, that will take you to my Twitter page. If you're not already following me there, I hope you'll come by and say hey. If you are, please feel free to leave your feedback there until I get the comments up and running. Because, let's face it, tweets are great but there's nothing to equal a comment left with a post.

So, technically, I've met the challenge of my goal because this definitely constitutes a "new blog design." But I'm not ready to cross it off because it's not the final version and it doesn't meet the spirit of the goal. So let's consider it to be struck through with a dotted line for the time being. I'll keep updating the progress over there in the Welcome message and I hope you'll come back to watch as things develop.

***UPDATE: For the moment, it's essentially back to the old template. But the header and comments are back up. (Thank you Emma!) But the Welcome message I mentioned is gone. This will be a work in progress. Thanks for your patience.***

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.]

You Know You Want To

I've decided to take advantage of Delurking Day '09 to make a few comments about comments and lurkers. I know a little bit about both, although they are not nearly in proportion to each other on this site. The number of lurkers far outweighs the number of comments you see. There are some lurkers that I'm just dying to find out about and want to directly address, but I really don't want to alienate them because, hey, there's nothing wrong with lurking. But.

But, there's also nothing wrong with commenting, even if it's just to say, "Hey, I enjoyed reading this," even if you don't add, "...and the 25 other pages of your blog I viewed today and didn't comment on!"

I know that a lot...no, let me amend that..A LOT of people end up here via a Google search for the phrase "one ping only" from the quote in the movie "The Hunt for Red October" and that this is not really the page that they're looking for, at all. I can't apologize, because that's one of my favorite movies and it's not a mistake that I used that line here.

I also know that, recently, quite a number of people have ended up here via a new thing called AlphaInventions.com, which has been both a blessing and a curse. A blessing because it's really nice to have new people stop by and see your site visit number rise because of it. A curse because not one of the people who has found me that way was inspired enough to say so much as, "Boo!" So that's a little frustrating. I have found a few blogs by it that I was intrigued about enough to bookmark or subscribe to them and go back from time to time. I try to make sure to let them know that I found them via AlphaInventions because I think it can be helpful to let people know where they're finding an audience. And since I know how much I enjoy comments from people, both those I know and those I do not know, I think it's a good way to reach out to newer bloggers.

And finally, I know that I can't be all things to all people, and that I have to write for myself (essentially) for me to enjoy doing it and want to continue. I value beyond measure the Internet friends I have, who I can count on to comment on my recent posts and let me know I'm not completely typing into the void here, and the people I know in person who stop by from time to time. I appreciate that what I often choose to ramble on about isn't necessarily enough to inspire people to add their own two cents -- the notable exception being the recent holiday donation drive that really brought people out in gratifying numbers -- but I hope that maybe once in a while you'll be willing to just say hello and that you enjoyed stopping by.

It's OK, the water is fine, c'mon in.