If I’d known how much traffic not posting would bring, I’d have stopped trying long ago.  Kidding actually, but it is kind of humorous. Somebody Stumbled my Iraq category last week, and I got quite a bit of traffic. That got me looking at my stats. It seems that while I quit posting for several months, my stats didn’t really change. So much of my traffic comes from search engines anyway, not writing new stuff really didn’t change anything. Apparently real people don’t come back, but search engines love me! I’m glad I come here to blow off steam rather than live on the proceeds of this site.

Not exactly. I still won’t be writing much, and I’m not reading anything current. Rereading Louis L’Amour and Dick Francis mostly. You shouldn’t hold your breathe for a reply to your e-mail either, it won’t be soon coming.

I’m sure the e-mail notes and e-cards I’ve been receiving are very nice, but I’m not reading them.  As I mentioned, I’m taking time off. I’m not reading e-mail, I’m not reading blogs, I’m just watching the scenery go by. Life’s too short to spend it all behind a computer, and I’d hate to miss out on the good part.

I’m tired of working at a computer, tired of blogging, and tired of the Internet. I’m taking time off from all of it. I won’t be posting here, I won’t be answering e-mail, I won’t being doing any of it. I’ve turned off comments on all my posts but this one, and I likely won’t check this one any time soon.

I’m going to spend time with my family, takes some photos, see some country I haven’t seen before. I may be back, but don’t hold your breathe.

“The trail is the thing, not the end of the trail. Travel too fast and you miss all you are traveling for.” - Louis L’Amour

See you down the trail.

If you’re wondering why blogging is erratic… you must be new here. If however, you’re wondering why blogging has been light, I’m in the last couple weeks of a significant project. This will of course be followed by several weeks of sitting around in a stupor wondering what happened. I like to call this “vacation”. Not entirely coincidentally, this vacation will fall over a major holiday, so that will suck out any blogging ambition I might possibly have…

On the plus side: I’m planning quite a bit of wandering in the next few months (Can you plan wandering?), so I should be able to post a lot of photos.  Midwestern travel mostly, but of course I have to get there too, so we’ll see what I can find along the way.

You may have noticed that blogging has been light. I’ve been busy this last week or so on several large projects. They’ll continue for some time to come. I’ll try to keep up. In the meantime, try browsing my sidebar links, or go visit some of my favorite sites, CascadeExposures and Where is Ben?. Then go read Lorelle’s post on Spinning Spammers Steal Our Blog Content .

This is the Thursday edition of Open House, and comments and trackbacks are now open. If your site doesn’t support trackbacks, use the Wizbang Standalone Trackback Pinger.

I noticed today that I wasn’t getting any comments. IN fact, I hadn’t received any for a couple of days. When I checked my site however, it wasn’t that I hadn’t received any, but that I hadn’t been notified of them. When I upgraded WordPress to version 2.3.1 recently, I stopped being notified of comments, pingbacks and trackbacks. My e-mail account was still working, and my auto site backup e-mail came in just fine, but those discussion related e-mails didn’t come in. Apparently, this is caused by a change in how WordPress handles these outgoing e-mails. The e-mail account it was trying to send them from was wordpress@(mydomain.com). I don’t have an account by that name, so my hosting service (Bluehost) was justifiably disallowing those e-mails. Adding that account at my hosting service, and the problem is solved.

I’d like to say thanks to Double Blind for showing me how to fix the problem.

Has blogrolling been slow lately? It sure seems to be slow loading here. I’m considering restructuring my site so it loads last. Currently it leaves my content off when it fails to load.

This is the Monday edition of Open House, and comments and trackbacks are now open. If your site doesn’t support trackbacks, use the Wizbang Standalone Trackback Pinger.

As you no doubt noticed, I didn’t have time to post yesterday. Several projects popped up that needed quick turn around. Busy again today, but I hope to have a new Design Review post up soon. I’ve been working on ideas for it, but haven’t had time to write it yet. Hopefully later today.

This is the Thursday edition of Open House, and comments and trackbacks are now open. If your site doesn’t support trackbacks, use the Wizbang Standalone Trackback Pinger.

Update: This looks like fun. Making giant soap bubbles.

I’ve been updating my blogroll as you may have noticed. I’ve now split into the blogroll, and The Creative. The Blogroll is mostly political sites, but has a few more traditional blogs too. Classify it as “people with something to say”. The Creative is a little more self explanatory. It’s my list of artists, photographers and designers whose sites and or work I enjoy. Please go check out the lists, I recommend every one of them for various reasons. If you’re interested in putting either of those lists on your site, I’d be willing to supply the code.

High Desert Wanderer An alternative (read: conservative) view by an intelligent cowboy who can articulate his opinion. Such clear thinking is rare these days. - Alexanders Archive

Now that’s flattering. Despite the title of this post, flattery will actually usually get you at least a link. In this case I added him to my blogroll too, he’s got a nice site.

“Intelligent and articulate” Obviously he hasn’t read my site for very long. Give him a few weeks, and he’ll likely change it to something like “A cowboy who can occasionally put words together in an understandable order.” He must have got me on a good day.

While I wasn’t paying attention, the third anniversary of this blog passed last week. Doesn’t seem like that long. I’ve met some interesting people, learned a lot, and for the most part it’s been enjoyable.  I guess I can’t ask for much more than that.

I was unexpectedly away from my e-mail and computer most of yesterday, today doesn’t look any better. If you’re trying to contact me, be patient, I’ll answer when I can.

This is the Thursday edition of Open House, and comments and trackbacks are now open. If your site doesn’t support trackbacks, use the Wizbang Standalone Trackback Pinger.

I’m changing my WordPress Plugins around. It sholdn’t affect site use, but you never know. I’ve dropped the Challenge plugin for instance. While it was working well, it was a little annoying. Spam Karma is more than capable of filtering out what comment spam I get. Essentially I was using the Challenge as a diagnostic tool to help identify a PHP time-out error. It ruled out the problem I suspected, but I found the problem anyway, so that’s taken care of.

I’m trying out StumbleUpon. It’s essentially a search engine with a randomness factor in it. You tell it general categories of things you like, and on demand it shows you interesting content in those areas. For any of you already using it, I’ve added a Stumble it! button for your use. Use it!

I’ve been slowly making changes to my blog theme, you may have noticed, but probably not. Pretty minor stuff for the most part. Trying various things to streamline the blog design and make it function smoother. It’s actually working very well, but there is always room for improvement.

I’m still slowly changing my WordPress setup. I’m just trying to make things run a little smoother, and be a little lower maintenance. WordPress is pretty low maintenance to begin with, but with a few plugins, and a patience you can make things run even smoother. A good spam blocker like Spam Karma, automatic backups, and a few other things and it’s pretty hands off for the most part. If I could just quit designing new themes for it that is.

For future reference, all Open House posts will have comments and trackbacks turned off a week after they’re posted. I’ve had a rash of posts linking to older Open posts, which sort of defeats the purpose of the idea. I want the newest comments and links on the home page, not last December’s open post.

My hosting went down for 30 minutes or so, but it seems to be back. Anybody who is trying to contact me, bear with me, my e-mail service is with the same hosting company and it seems to be intermittent at the moment. First time I’ve actually had any sort of problem like this in two years, so I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt at the moment.

Odd. As soon as my hosting here came back, the site I was online at, no relation to this one, crashed. Looks like there maybe some sort of internet issues going on today. 

I’m doing some revising of the site to combat spam commenting. I’m continuing to use Spam Karma, it’s been working well. The problem seems to be that so much spam is hitting Spam Karma that it’s using up my entire PHP load and timing out the site.  In an effort to stop this I’ve installed a challenge question.  This should cut down on the spam that gets through to Spam Karma, and speed up the whole process. I’ve also installed WP-cache so that pages should load quicker.

I’ve turned back on comment subscribe as well. Hopefully the other changes will allow this to remain on as I’m fond of it.

Registered and logged in commenters will not receive the challenge, so if you find it annoying you’re welcome to register.

I’d appreciate it if a few of you would comment on this post, or any other,  and let me know if it’s working properly. My e-mail link is at the top of the sidebar if you can’t seem to get a comment through.

Another Monday, another Open House.

Subscribe to comments is turned off for the moment. Something is causing my site to bog down, and it seems to be comment related. It’s likely at least somewhat related to spam, I’ve been getting hammered for a couple of weeks. Nothing is getting through, but it’s taking bandwidth to filter it out. Working on the problem

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I see that Jarrett Fuller has an interesting post on The New JeremyCowart.com!. Go read it… then come back of course.

I’m playing around with an Amazon.com ad over on the sidebar. It’s the first ad I’ve had up for quite some time. I like their services, so I thought I join their affiliates program. I doubt I’ll earn enough for more than a token gift certificate, but I figured I’d give it a shot. So go to Amazon.com, buy stuff, and make me some money!

I’m also playing around with their wishlist feature. I don’t actually expect anyone to buy me anything, but it’s an nice way of keeping track of books I want. I see something I like but then I forget about it when I’m in the market for a new book. Now I can keep a running list in a location where I can find it again.

Anybody notice the site running slow? I don’t see a problem in the code, but it’s running a little off today. Could be hosting or my internet provider I suppose. I’ll have to look into that.

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I’m back and normal blogging should commence later today.

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I’ll be traveling for the next week or so, so posting and e-mail will be sporadic at best. Hopefully I’ll have some good photos to post when I get back.

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