Who Are You?

. . . I'm afraid that the Police already know.

Is this a symptom or a solution of our current economy? CRV - or "California Redemption Value" has become a "take-it-or-leave-it" subsidy. Take a good look at the contents of this gentleman's Honda. It's not even 5AM and he's got a full load. The local beach recycle station does not open until 10 but this gentleman has plenty of gas and a lead foot. Either that, or he misjudged the weight of his load, patching out as I was kindly asking him to leave and not come back.

Normally, I would have stopped with the photo and the warning. A flash and camera in-your-face at 4:59AM is usually enough of a wake-up call. The empty box of 12GA shells that lay next to a trash can was an effective deterrent -- for a day or so. I suppose that the sound of a round being chambered in a pump action shotgun would have been effective in a quiet environment, but his motor was running. It might have covered the unmistakable sound, had it occurred.

Unfortunately, while his headlights were working well, his tail lights were not. The break lights functioned as he hit the end of the alley, but the running lights have been disconnected. It's a common trick to not draw attention to yourself when your rear-end is close to a roadway, like the end of my alley. There's just one problem. The Police now know that your tail lights don't work, and they have your license number.

I don't think that case of Coors is going to look too good when you get pulled over for non-operational tail-lights, and if it is discovered that you have a switch to turn them off, I think your car gets impounded, contents and all. Since we know that you could not produce receipts for all of the containers in your car, you can't be legally recycling, so that changes the game a little bit. It's called "open container" even if you don't get charged for theft.

Oh, and did I mention that you must have TWO unobstructed rear-view mirrors. Yes, I know that many cars have three. When you tow a trailer, or haul a load that blocks your central mirror, you are required to have an unobstructed view to your right hand mirror. Sorry kind sir, but your load also qualifies as unsafe.

Audible Tire Friction

Unsafe Speed

Inoperable Tail Lights (with possible kill switch)

Theft of (CRV) Recyclable Materials

Violation of the local Noise Ordinance

Yes kind Sir, Please do have a good day.

:-) Happy Solstice (-:

On such a milestone day, I can not help but post. The Google logo commemorates the day as the longest of the year. The night begins to creep forward once again, but that's tomorrow and today is today. This is as much of a new year as January 1st. It has been a cause for celebration across civilizations far and wide, at least on this wobbly rock in space. It is also something that makes us all Earthlings, and reminds us of our connection to this world.

Being a citizen of this planet is just not enough for this son of an Archaeologist, I must persist in more than one civilization, and as many know, I populate Vana'diel. It's completely artificial and fictional, yet it is a civilization and culture all of it's own. In fact, as my suitably addicted playmate would remind me, it represents several civilizations and cultures, and the inevitable clash between them driven by the forces of light and dark.

I don't know that he'd be that fleet of finger, but perhaps so. I will admit that I am pleased and proud of his progress within the game realm of Vana'diel, and I hope that he has a good time with is next limit break, which after today, will no longer be the the last in a series of tasks. I do not know what challenges lay in store for me after today, but I will find out as much as I can as soon as I can.

While Earth celebrates it's longest day of the year, Twenty-Five days will pass in Vana'diel, with several of them unpopulated as the world undergoes an upheaval of sorts. The level restriction will be raised from 75 to 80, equalling the standard level limit in the competing online MMO. We in Vana'diel know that it takes time and ingenuity to create content all the way to level 99, and that most of it is likely only an outline in Kanji in a secret book on Tanaka San's shelf.

300 posts - a Blogger Milestone

I just finished writing the short post for the daily blog. I have grown accustomed to actually doing the updates on a daily basis, which I believe helps deliver a true 24-hour delay and spin from post to post. Somehow, I can tell the difference between writing 5 posts in one day and writing 1 post a day for 5 days. I wonder if the readers can. Time may tell.

As to the 300 post milestone, well, that's the maximum number of posts that the blogger interface will allow you to view in a single page on the "Edit Posts" tab, and today, the 300th post on the daily blog will appear at the predetermined time. Unlike human blogs, the daily will not be calling attention to this fact as has been observed elsewhere. The daily has it's own milestones.

It's been How Long?

Yes, It's been nearly a calendar month since I've put anything up. There is method to my madness. In this case, I wanted to allow plenty of time for people to hit the blog and review the daily photo sequence that documents my figure-eight vacation over the continental divide and back. Many though the trip foolish. It was in more ways that one, but that's a pun that will have to be explained later.

I've seen enough traffic in Analyitics to know that I have visitors that are checking in, now and again, perhaps looking for the Pizza blog to make it's debut. Keep checking back. Having several projects in progress is the norm for me, and since this is the no-rules blog, well, it's here that you're going to see schedule slips appear, etc.

-.\\

Short Update

This has to be short, simply because the title says so.

When I pop-off with the title fist, the focus becomes clear.

I had to spend some time recovering, which really meant escape.

I also spent millions in virtual currency. No buyer's remorse yet. It's only a game.

Nobody even noticed. If they did, they said nothing.

I've finally come up with the seed theme and title for the new blog. You get to return for that.

I am doing all that I can so that I can finally go on vacation. That means more work.

Have to feed the daily, and the workload is advancing. Blog on the run? Maybe.

Was considering going frequent for my vacation. Got a new camera. Must make shareables.

Not here now? Come back again. New stuff regularly.

Hardcore Spin-Off

I like my new camera more than I like this pizza.

Chunked chicken does not belong on a pizza, so, I had to make another.

Any chicken here? Sure is. Plenty. I took a breast, grilled and shredded it. Mixed it with some Thai rub and a bit of BBQ sauce just to make it smokey and sweet. I used the shredded chicken-and-rub-BBQ as the sauce. Spoon it on and spread it around. The cheese here is a hard-to-melt English Coastal Cheddar, and some quality Mozzarella.

Olives were cut with a new sushi knife. Rings are forever gone. These things work much better.


Cooking is going nicely and the shape is going bowl-o. I had not expected this, but I have repeated the result many times. Here is a cooked and detailed ultra-thin dough. I've taken 1/8 of a recipe and made a 12" pizza. My neighbor loved it. I got one slice.

This was declared a paper-plate crust. Want one?

I don't deliver pizza anymore, but I will make a deal with you.

I've got enough pizza stuff to make a whole new blog, and there are some that have pestered me to purchase dough balls so that they can make their own gluten-free pizza. This tells me that I really need to make a blog just for the pizza thing. Therefore, I will do so.

Once the pizza blog is ready to go on-line, the first post will be the recipe for the classic gluten-free pizza crust that you see above. It works like a pastry and has a bit of forgiveness. Do me the honor and come back to this blog and check the "Links" section to find the haphazard, semi-live pizza blog.

Cheers!

Writing Overload

Overwhelm. Overload. Whatever you want to call it, the demands for my fingers to create characters either manually or by pressing keys is extreme. It's been nothing but writing every time I turn around. This is just one more task in the litany of words that I find myself awash in, and it has also become a release subject. Writing is one of those things, that when done well from the outset, bestows rewards along the way that keep you going.

Besides this weekly blog and my daily, I spend a fair amount of time here in the editing window. Words, unfortunately, are one of my better communicative abilities. Pictures work well to, and I've taken steps at improving my photographic capabilities. My abilities have not been in question for a few decades, just the availability of equipment. Now that I have direct-to-digital photo capability (which made its debut in the last post) with a viewfinder, you can look forward to more posts with pictures and illustrations. Cameras are another hobby that I had in years past, and something that is being rekindled. Not only as a pastime, but as a tool for modern life.

Here is a list of recent writing projects that I have undertaken or completed in the last few weeks:

1. manual addressing of advertising material for the daily blog


2. a colorful white paper documenting a circuit fix


3. dozens of 1,000 word explanatory technical e-mails


4. a magazine article abstract for my 4th industry article


5. my 3rd magazine article for a different industry publisher (coming soon)


6. my end-of-the-month bill paying

Yes, I list bill paying as a writing job. It uses a pen, and requires accuracy and thought. As far as this post is going, I realize that I am up against the deadline, and will be putting this through the spell check and making the final edits for grammar, clarity and content in about half-an-hour or so. I'm also letting dough rise for tonight's chicken pizza, and the Game Master icon is flashing for the help desk, begging me to check a message.

The GM reply is now clear, and I have discovered that the use of the numbered list tool here in the "old editor" has caused the formatting glitch to pop up again. No doubt that I will be adjusting the paragraph spacing yet again. I'm considering a switch to the new editor, if the spell check feature has been implemented in the tool bar. I live and die by spell check.

Pizza is slated for dinner and the stone needs time to get hot. I will likely not complete the pizza until after I've published this post. Therefore, there will not be a shot of tonight's pizza, however, here is a shot that is worth sharing.

Anyone who has shared my experience at Domino's Pizza will know immediately what the metal item in the picture is. I didn't have any PAM at the time, so there is a light layer of peanut oil on the screen, since it handles high temperature very well. It is precisely 12 inches in diameter, and is used to hold the skin, making it easier to shuffle the pizza around the work area. I bought two for about $8 each. They are valuable to have, and I will likely buy more for the party that I am planning.

The idea is to make dough and provide the stone and expertise to cook pizzas for guests. Bring your own Toppings comes to mind as a requirement, but I am also apt to collect some funds for the dough, cheese and propane. The grill will cook several pizzas per hour. If such a party happens, I will be sure to snap plenty of pics, and post what is permitted by the guests. Model releases are such a hassle.

So, thanks for coming by and reading the weekly update. I've had to keep from landing and running amok in a single topic, and hopefully, this is not as scattered as last week's post. This post is intentionally haphazard, as I am presently multitasking. The stone has been getting hot for the last 20 minutes, and it's time to work on my dough ball into a pizza crust. A Thin Crust to be exact. Perhaps next week, I will release the recipe for the classic pizza crust.

.... and tell you of some of the dangers of the previously posted recipe.

Making Netprints Visible

Perhaps you've returned to this site for another Domino's Pizza story. Perhaps this is your first visit to this Blog, ever. I really does not matter why you came, but I would like to make sure you come back. From a personal perspective, I would like to think that my random mutterings and witty writing style (if you can call it that) are enough of a reason to keep coming back on a regular basis. But how can I tell that I'm accomplishing the goal?

First, if you have not read the Privacy Policy, which is displayed in the administrative column of this blog (to the right on the current template), you might want to read it. It tells you that I might cause a cookie to be put on your machine, to help serve and track which advertisements you click on. Advertisements? What Advertisements?

If you read closely, I used the wiggle word "might" in the opening statement. Since I currently have an advertising supported blog, with an AdSense account, It's not too hard to add this blog to it, once it's approved by the Google content police. If you want to keep your ads, you'd better keep away from certain things - and with the audience that I know exists, I don't consider the Internet or the Blogosphere a place where it is safe to let-loose with the four-letter Anglo-Saxon set of colorful words, or anything that is strictly HBO fare.

Ah, you say. I've got you pegged, Mr. Blog Editor, you're here to earn advertising revenue.
I would not be able to disagree. I've seen the advertisements from Google "If you can Blog, you can Earn" and others like it. I have also read and reviewed a number of successful blogs, with lots of followers, comments, and a vibrant and living community. Yes, I created a blog because I believed that it was a marketable idea, and that means marketable on multiple fronts.


Of course, I did not know what markets my blog would appeal to until I got some kind of feedback. Like many other bloggers, my personal friends were happy to tell me what they think, and I took that feedback and stowed it. I keep looking for more of an indication as to the correct target market. After discovering a site that featured regularly updated fiction, I realized that I had created a daily blogfic that was worth listing, just because there were so few dailys out there. Generally, you're getting paid if you blog every day. Not me. Not yet.


Feedback in the form of a comment is great, but it's not all of the feedback that is out there. Just the fact that people other than I were visiting my blog would be enough. If people like it, they will come back for more, so page impressions would give me a nice counter to see. I thought of putting up a hit counter, like a little odometer, but thought better of it. It seems to be more like bragging than anything else, and my blog was not appropriate for a counter.


Then I got feedback. One of the fiction sites that I listed on had a couple of votes. 3 and 3.5 stars out of five. At least they did not give it the one-star-of-death. Plus, I am still writing. One reader also wrote a review, with feedback that I was able to use. Rather than just comply, making it easier for passersby, I used that same material as the seed for a marketing campaign.


I've been investing a good chunk of personal time on the task of pumping up the reader-base, and if you count visitors to the site as success, then I have had fantastic success. How many of those readers convert to regular readership, only time will tell. However, just like I crave feedback, I have come to realize that my readers might like some feedback as well.


Since the current campaign is via direct-mail, and I hand address each piece and pay proper full price postage, with a stamp, it's about as personal a request as I could ever make. The genius is the fact that it is a post-card, which means it's safe. It can't hold anything, like a suspicious white powder, and can't languish unopened, just with one face down. As soon as you uncover it, you recognize it. It's cheap. It's effective, and it's useful when reading the blog too.


So, here's the reverse-reward feedback. I hope it results in improved retention, as I have not had follow-on hits from the initial target states. Since you're not completely anonymous on the Internet, and are quite traceable, I've loaded my blog template with Google Analytics tracking code. Once you have an Analytics account, you can track multiple websites, with resolution as fine as the city in which the traffic originated. Every time a visit occurs from a new city, it will be added to the top of the list that now appears at the bottom of the blog.


Anyone who sees that list, is highly likely to see if their city is already named. If they come back, they will see new cities at the top. While this is a low-tech version of the "hits across the world" maps that feature pins or flags, I like it better for the following reasons.

1. I don't need another map of the English speaking world
2. 200 pixels is too small for a reasonable map anyway
3. the list is in order, most recent first, honoring those that came before
4. I can turn text into hyperlinks, and could get paid to do so
5. It's much more personal that a number on a counter
6. It probably loads faster than a graphic that needs a database of points.
7. It's trivial to update frequently.
8. It's only on the website.

This is February's twist on the marketing campaign. It also reveals that other people are interested in the blog, since the list is currently more than will fit on any reasonable screen size, but not so long that it prints on more than a single page. Being the beginning of the month, it is a good time to make such a change. I'll let you know how thing go with the marketing and the quest for readership. In the mean time, please rest assured that I am nowhere near done with Pizza.

Welcome!

Not long ago, I knew nothing about blogging except that I had fun reading one particular blog and kept checking back when the author went on hiatus. I read the entire thing, from the first post to the current, and at times, laughed myself silly and had people wonder what I found so funny. Yes, I was in my cubicle, and yes, I was on my break time. It took several days to read all of the posts. I just left an extra browser window up for the several days that it took.

Over the years, I have flipped through various blogs that I have come across, and been intrigued with the depth and detail of the illustrations, storytelling and the myriad subjects that drive people to express themselves in the blogosphere. I gave thought to the idea of starting a blog, and after due consideration, I satisfied all of the criteria that I'd distilled from a few years of observation and a fair bit of research.

Considering that I was an HTML illiterate, and knew it, I counted on my strong background in Computer Science. I learn what I need to when I need to. So far, so good, but that lack of knowledge definitely influenced the concept and scope of my first blog. Things are going well, and there is enough material now that it qualifies as an online novel. I'll let you go find it.

When you are in control of when you post, if you are just starting out, there is a danger of burnout. It happens. Only discipline can overcome this danger, by preventing it in the first place. You have to know your limits, or set them in advance. This is not my first blog post, and I do maintain a blog with daily update frequency. There are some tricks to pulling off such an ambitious project. Even users of Twitter have discovered, micro-blogging is still writing, even with all those abbreviations that they use.

If you are anything like me, writing consists of pushing the correct buttons on a keyboard, and there is an optimal size for these buttons. If you're going to write a blog, it's probably going to involve typing, so get a good keyboard. If you're a keyboard slouch, a text oriented blog might not be for you. Writing by hand and scanning the posts might be an alternative, but that will still involve interacting with a computer, scanning the original, and then stuffing it into the same editor that you use if you were a written word blogger. I think typing is much more efficient, and it takes less equipment.

Perhaps a photo-blog is more your style. This works, and I do agree that a photo is worth 1,000 words or more, but there is one small problem — photos take space, and that means that they will take time to transfer across the various segments of the Internet. If you're on a cable modem, you've got great download speed, but the upload speed may not be to your liking. If you're an accomplished photographer, and size your images for the Internet, then go for the photo-blog approach.

Video blogging is yet another approach, and You Tube is a popular site for hosting your own videos in the format of a television channel. Pod-casters can produce their own audio programs and distribute them as well. Some blogs become multimedia archives, and that's one of the reasons that I've created this blog — to provide a vehicle for experimentation and then talking about how I do some of the things that I do.

Regardless of the main medium of your blog, you're going to be using a computer and that is a task that I've integrated into my world. I even studied computers in College and got a nifty certificate for doing that piece of work. I've written lots of code in several languages, and in all of the cases, the comments, like this, are more important than the code itself. Writing code is really a dual audience publication — for the compiler and for you, because you're not going to remember why you wrote the code the way you did — but I digress.

The central theme here is that Blogging is a creative activity that will require time. What you write on a blog, you intend for anyone and everyone in the world to read, and perhaps comment upon. While there is some degree of control being an blog author, you are still putting yourself out there to be judged, and even inviting it. Only time will tell if the risk is worth it for you.

I've managed to carve an interesting niche in the blogosphere, and I am enjoying watching it grow. I've had some of my friends tell me that they want to blog, and ask me how I do it. It is for these people, that I create this site. Call it my technical support self, I consider this blog a time saver. I've been asked often enough personally, that by writing this blog I will ultimately save time and help all those that ask. Therefore I share my experience, and I invite other bloggers to chime in and share theirs via comments. Feel free to plug your blog and advertise your wares.

If you're thinking of starting a blog, and you're interested in support help, just use the contact link on the right and send off a message. It'll just prove that you've learned your way around a keyboard.