The End Is Near

The ninth anniversary of this blog will be on the 29th, and it has been a joy ... a pain ... an occasional drudgery ... and a joy again.

I've "met" many, many friends, including a few face-to-face. Some of those have stopped blogging, since. I'm pretty sure it's not my fault. :)  However, it has become a struggle to find things to write about, and it often feels as though I'm repeating myself.

Rather than drag this out, it seems 'twould be easier to simply pull the plug. No heroic measures, and all that.

I will continue to post, from time to time, when/if things of interest come up. It's nice to have the platform, and I love hearing from all y'all. And of course I'll still be lurking around the 'net, reading blogs and commenting here and there.

But times goes by, and everything changes. This is one of those things.

In the words of the old Scottish blessing,

May the blessing of light be on you - light without and light within.
May the blessed sunlight shine on you like a great peat fire,
so that stranger and friend may come and warm himself at it.
And may light shine out of the two eyes of you,
like a candle set in the window of a house,
bidding the wanderer come in out of the storm.
And may the blessing of the rain be on you,
may it beat upon your Spirit and wash it fair and clean,
and leave there a shining pool where the blue of Heaven shines,
and sometimes a star.
And may the blessing of the earth be on you,
soft under your feet as you pass along the roads,
soft under you as you lie out on it, tired at the end of day;
and may it rest easy over you when, at last, you lie out under it.
May it rest so lightly over you that your soul may be out from under it quickly; up and off and on its way to God.
And now may the Lord bless you, and bless you kindly. Amen.

ARRRGGHH

My annual renewal of this domain is April 11, but Google ... bless their darling hearts and greedy wallets ... wants me to establish an account with Google Apps for Work, set myself up as an administrator, and tell them what the company website is, and how many employees need e-mail accounts.

I tried several times to establish an account, following their directions, and they won't recognize this blog site as a "domain". And they insist that the annual renewal ($10/year) is now a monthly fee of $5.

I don't know if this page will disappear, or if they'll just put "blogspot" back into the URL.

Sigh... They really shouldn't mess with a blogger who's been on the fence about quitting anyway. Know what I mean?

Friday Feel-Good Pic of the Day

"Cooper, our Penbroke Welsh Corgi, was watching a moose through our window." -- Henry Cottle.

ALASKA PIC OF THE DAY: http://bit.ly/1OymYJa
(Viewer-submitted photo at www.ktuu.com)

* * * * *

We got a layer of fresh snow overnight, and AccuHunch thinks we'll have slowly falling temps today. At least the roads aren't slippery, this time.

Upcoming posts include another chapter of MHI Alaska: A Dish Served Cold, and the next installment of car and truck pictures. That's going to involve sifting through hundreds of unsorted photos, so it's a weekend project.

Thanks for stopping by, friends.

An Explanation About My Posts, Lately

I've mentioned, from time to time, that I manage a large commercial building (i.e., building, grounds and facilities).

The building has been sold, and the deal became official this week, when the documents were recorded. The original owners have received rather large checks, and the new owners are scrambling to make sure they pick up all the reins.

Me? The new folks have been nice enough to ask me to stay on at the same salary, because I know where all the bodies are buried I've been there a long time.

So I've been distracted by a seemingly-interminable sales/review/due diligence/document-scanning frenzy, all summer long. And oh yeah, that other tiny distraction: would I still have a job? So now, things can go more-or-less back to normal, while I learn a few new rules for doing recurring tasks.

So with favor and the grace of God, I'll get back to occasionally putting something thought-provoking here again.

Well, you know ...

Police Blotter & a Personal Note

First, the note. This blog has finally crossed the one-million hit mark; I still find it remarkable that anybody reads this drivel at all. Thank you.

 


And here's the Blotter:

Suspicious Person/Activity
Caller reported that the driver of a black pickup, parked near the South Channel Bridge, was attempting to push a female passenger out of the vehicle. An officer located a vehicle similar to that described, but found only a driver and no passenger. The driver denied that there had been anyone else in the vehicle.

Sounds like the plot of many a murder mystery...

Environmental
Caller reported strong winds had left a barrel rolling, rolling, rolling, on East Broadway. An officer secured it off the roadway.

Thank you, Frankie Laine!

Criminal Mischief
Apartment-dweller discovered that someone had super-glued the valve caps on his vehicle tires, so that any attempt to remove the cap ripped the stem from the valve and caused the tire to deflate. One possible suspect was identified.

Welfare Check
Caller reported a quite inebriated man who had been staggering along the roadway had just fallen into a ditch. An officer responded to the area but determined that the red-sweatered inebriate had apparently already crawled out of the ditch to safety.

What drinking problem? He drinks ... he falls down ... no problem!
 

Assault
Three adults engaged in a swearing and shoving match after one man, who had put $30 in the jukebox, got mad at another man for increasing the volume of a televised NASCAR event.

But it's NASCAR, man!

Assistance Rendered
Caller reported a possibly suicidal crew member on his vessel. Officers responded and found a man who had been unable to sleep, had had a headache for days and was generally unable to reconcile himself to the Aleutians' famed gloomy skies and dark oceans. There was no indication the man was suicidal but medical care was requested for his other issues.

Traffic/Roads
Caller reported a vehicle crawling up a hill and impeding traffic. An officer found the vehicle, now out of gas and stopped, and helped move the vehicle off the roadway.

... which is what the caller should have done. 

Can't Find a Wordpress Blog?

More than 100,000 WordPress websites have been infected with malware after attackers exploited a vulnerability in a popular WordPress plugin called RevSlider. The attack turns the infected WordPress sites into unwilling distributors of yet more malware, this time aimed at visitors to the sites.

The malware campaign has been dubbed SoakSoak because it causes some infected websites to redirect visitors to a malicious website at  soaksoak.ru. In an attempt to curb the infections, Google has blacklisted over 11,000 affected WordPress domains, according to Menifee, California-based security company Sucuri.

Sorry, Guffaw ... it's nothing personal. I hope they get it fixed soon.

 

I Think Roberta X is Right

She posited, today, that "blogging is essentially dead...". 

It's hard to argue with that. My readers (for the most part) are those who agree with me (again, for the most part, but by no means always). And the blogs I read are by those with whom I mostly agree.

And frankly, after nearly seven years here, I haven't had much of an original topic about which to write in quite awhile.

I won't shut this thing down. Not yet. But darned if I can think of anything to say, these days.
And life's too short for me to bore you.

I'll be back.





Eventually.

Comments I Won't Publish

I don't get much in the way of spam anymore, but sometimes ...  Well, you know. It can be amusing, sometimes annoying, and sometimes just idiotic.

• "Hey dudes, I'm heavily into shoes ..."
• Anything that starts with a URL
• Anything in pictographs, cuneiform, hieroglyphics, Sanskrit or Sumerian ... I'm an equal-opportunity deleter
• "Sometimes I've just got to have ..."
• "Meds ...." with multiple URLs
• Anyone asking me to provide a link to their sales site; I don't care if it's for purses in San Francisco, the U.S. Olympics team (yeah, right) or whatever
• "Visit us or die!" with a URL
• "This good post helped me with college assignment ..."
• "Great post! Wanna trade links?"

There are others*, and I'm sure you've all seen them. The shoes comment hit my spam folder several times a day, and then went away. Gee, I wonder why.

And the Olympics team? Seriously, have you looked at my site meter? I get 800 hits on a good day; if you need my traffic to make it, your troubles are WAY bigger than any hits I might send your way.




 
*I'm sure there are others - some are classics, in their own way - but I'm not going to take the time or energy to remember them now. I'll bet some good ones show up in comments, though.

Sorry

for the light posting recently. Between being tired from moving furniture to & fro (not to mention up & down), I'm pooped. Last night was the first good night's sleep in awhile, and if I can repeat that, perhaps I'll be able to concentrate on blogging again.

On the other hand, blogging is a hobby, and I tend to forget that.

But things are looking up, and we can at least see now what else needs to be done to reach the end of the process.

To that end (the resting & recuperating end, that is) we're leaving for vacation on Sunday. Warm, sunny, palm trees, sandy beaches, and waves rolling in.  I can't wait.

Blogging and Other Randomosity

I've heard from a number of friends and readers ... no, that's pretty much the same thing. Let me start again.

I've heard from a number of friends, both those I've met face to face as well as those I've met on-line, and the consensus is that I should continue.

Alrighty, then.

The speed and frequency of posting will be in irregular bursts, much like a teenager first encountering an accelerator. But I'll stick around. Who knows? I might have something to say, one of these days. :)

* * * * *

If you've glanced at the local temp on my sidebar, you've seen that it's been darned cold for the last week. It was a bit of a shock to the ol' system, as they say, to return from the consistent 82 degrees in Honolulu to the negative temps here. But it's not unexpected.

The temp at my building this morning (outside, not inside) was -7° F, and that's a pretty good indicator of how the last three mornings have been. I quickly discovered that the new ice scraper I purchased is rubbish. Fortunately, we have a couple of spares in the garage, so tomorrow morning's scraping-o'-the-windshield should be a bit easier.

Oh - some of you may have just caught the bit about me driving a sedan, and remembered that I posted a few months ago about a Ford Escape.

It seems that Younger Daughter, after borrowing it for a couple of days while her car was in the shop, decided she likes it way better than the car.

A dad's gotta do what a dad's gotta do. :)

I'll get another SUV or pickup ... eventually. Until then, I'm glad to see that the sedan has traction control. Snow's coming.

To Blog, or Not to Blog

If there's anyone who ever wondered why Hawaii is a popular destination, click on the photo and study it.  :)

We've been back in Anchorage only since 5:00 this morning, and I learned - a long time ago - that it's never a good idea to make a decision when you're tired. I'll get back to that in a moment.

We're exhausted, having vacationed long and hard (that's usually a good thing), and got little-to-no sleep on the overnight flight from Honolulu. The plane was full, the ride was a bit more turbulent than usual, and the landing was one of the more ... interesting ... that I've experienced since that old Navy C-3 with the port engine that caught fire upon landing. Every time. But I digress.

This time, the 737-900 hit the tarmac, bounced twice, and then swerved sideways. Amazing how quiet those 189 passengers got when that big jet described a sinuous course of S-curves down the runway.

So the decision I face is whether to pick up the proverbial pen and take to blogging again. Honestly, I haven't missed it. At all. But I need to get some actual sleep ... and then?

And then we'll see. In the meantime, I appreciate those of you who've faithfully stopped by to see if I'm still around.

Crunch Time

Astute readers will have noticed that my posting has fallen off, of late. There's a reason for that.

A week ago Monday, my lovely wife's car was hit from behind while she waited at a stop sign. While the car is still drivable, she is suffering from the whiplash which resulted as she was looking over her left shoulder at the time, awaiting an opportunity to merge. There are torn ligaments & bruised chest muscles; she's in a lot of pain, has not been released to go back to work, and is on very strong pain meds.

I've been doing double duty, taking all the chauffeuring of Younger Daughter to/from work, extra driving & errands which we normally divide between us. This, plus concern for her, is more than enough distraction to keep me from blogging normally.

Things will return to normal, eventually. Meanwhile, I've got to take her car to the body shop this morning.

Later, y'all. Thanks for stopping by.

Perhaps I Shouldn't Rattle the Cage, But...

... I haven't received any spam messages here in quite some time. Other bloggers have complained, recently, about the volume increasing. I guess my readership (averaging some 350 hits/day) isn't high enough to attract spammers' attention.

Darn the bad luck, eh?

The only oddity I noticed is that a post about a friend's H&R "The American" revolver, written in October '10, still gets 30 or 40 hits a day. Curious, that. A fluff piece on local news items from February called "Alaska Shorts" still gets 60 or 70 hits daily, and the video of the moose fight is getting hundreds of hits every day.

That's the only one I understand, as it's not something the average persons sees.  :)

WordPress comments

About a month ago, WordPress - which had been recognizing my e-mail address as all the I.D. it needed - stopped allowing me to comment on those who blog there. It kept insisting that my e-mail was associated with some other account, and that I needed to log in first.

I would try, and still it claimed not to know me. For my friend Guffaw in Arizona, I would send comments via e-mail, and he had to cut-and-paste them into his Comments section. I didn't do that for anyone else.

I read several other bloggers making similarly annoyed remarks about it, so at least I had the satisfaction of knowing it wasn't just me.

This morning, I finally resurrected a five-generation-old password ... and WordPress' response was "Oh, it's YOU!" and allowed the comment through.

They need some serious overhaul, I'm thinking.

Blogiversary

Four years ago, I started this little corner of the 'net on a whim. Since then, I've vented my spleen, had my say, and "met" lots of really great folks.

The conversation has been wonderful, and I've had the pleasure of getting to know a lot of you via your blogs and thoughtful comments. A few of you, I've met in person; I only hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. There are quite a few folks with whom I've had e-mail conversations, and those have been good, too.

Bloggers come and go; a couple of good folks have stopped blogging only recently. I don't know how much longer I'll continue this thing, but it's still enjoyable. When that stops, so will I.

Thank you - all of you - for reading this little thing, and commenting from time to time. I appreciate it very much.

The Road goes ever on and on

Down from the door where it began.

Now far ahead the Road has gone,

And I must follow, if I can,

Pursuing it with eager feet,

Until it joins some larger way

Where many paths and errands meet.

And whither then? I cannot say.

Thanks

I see that David over at Musings Over a Pint clicked the "follow" button. Thank you for the compliment, sir.

Time, energy, and inspiration have all been lagging lately; for that I apologize to my readers. I'll try to get back into the swing of blogging again soon.

Recognition

Brigid has been recognized twice in recent days with the "Stylish Blogger Award". The rules of the program require that recipients nominate 15 other bloggers, as well as telling seven things about themselves that others might not know. She was kind enough to include me in her list.

I've never thought of myself as a "stylish" anything, although there have been moments ... but I digress. :)

She went over and above, as usual, in telling 10 things about herself. It's worth your time, if you haven't already seen it.

In the meantime, there's the award.

So, I must tell you some things you might not know about me:

1. During a flood in the mid-80s, while a firefighter, my engine company used our pumper as an anchor to keep several propane tanks and a mobile home from washing away.

2. I once grew six inches in six months, from 5'3" to 5'9. My mom went nuts trying to keep me in pants that were long enough. (I remember being 5'3" because it was the same height as Davy Jones of the Monkees, who was popular at the time.)

3. While stationed in the Aleutian Islands, I helped teach cold-weather survival classes to new arrivals.

4. Helen Reddy and I once literally ran into each other as the staff from Six Flags was taking her up the off-ramp from the roller coaster, so she could avoid the crowds. I was looking over my shoulder, talking to a friend, and don't know if she hit me or vice-versa. (So much for a brush with greatness...)

5. I was nearly kicked out of college for being a rabble-rouser. (Long story, but I had quite a temper and was the prototypical "angry young man" at the time.)

6. My favorite TV shows are Firefly, Red Dwarf, Top Gear, and Doctor Who. And I do confess to a weakness for Futurama.

7. I'm just your typical, boring middle-aged husband and father. Actually, that's not much of a secret at all.


Other bloggers who deserve the recognition far more than I:

Jenny
Teresa
Tam
Roberta X
Wing
Breda
Julie
Steven
Jay G.
Joated
DR and SR

Thank you, Brigid, for the nod.