longstride

I’m not one to get sentimental over silly holidays. I’ve never celebrated Sweetest day. But this year, I’ve been really looking forward to Groundhog Day. Why? Call me superstitious, but I want to know how much winter we’ve got left. And boy was I disappointed with the outcome today.

Phil saw his shadow. According to the AP:

Brace yourself for more wintry weather. Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow Saturday, leading the groundhog to forecast six more weeks of winter.

So there, you have it; my bike stays dormant for a few more weeks. I’m not sure I’ll be able to survive much longer than that.

Lots of people think up resolutions this time of year. I’ve done it in the past but never really accomplished anything meaningful by doing so. Being a perfectionist, I tend to turn my “setbacks” into “failures.”As a result, I gave up drafting New Year’s resolutions a few years ago. I prefer a more subtle approach to making changes in my life.

This upcoming year I’d like to write more. This includes, blog posts, emails to friends and family, or anything else bouncing around in my head. But if I try to create some sort of regimen or schedule to follow, then the first time I mess up I’ll feel like, “the whole thing’s blown; so, why continue?”

So, I thought I’d take a simpler approach. I’ll try to make writing as easy and as enjoyable as possible. The operative term here is “easy.” I want to be able to write whenever the inspiration hits. To do this I took a cue from LifeClever. In a recent post, Chanpory suggests a brilliant strategy to trick yourself past writer’s block. In a nutshell, start your writing assignment as an email. He goes on to list several reason why this may help. The biggest reason for me is a psychological one. I can write email effortlessly. I do it all day long and am very comfortable with the process. So, it’s much less intimidating to stare at my email editor than a blank Word or OpenOffice document.

My next step is to use Gmail to “manage” my writing for me. I don’t want anything complex, so a few tweaks will keep my words flowing.

1. Create a contact for my “diary” - I just add a new contact in Gmail named “diary”, using a sub-email address. For example, if my address were username@gmail.com, this new contact will have username+diary@gmail.com for its address.
2. Set up a filter - I use Gmail’s filters to recongnize any email sent to username+diary@gmail.com and deal with it accordingly. For me, that means: skip the inbox, mark as read, and label it “diary.”
3. Add this new contact to any email clients I use - I’ve already done this in Gmail, so I’ll create a contact named “diary” in each of my other address books (work, school, etc.) so I can fire off a thought as easily as possible.

This makes writing an easy and flexible task for me. And by using Gmail’s filters and labels I can keep the entries I make out of sight until I want to find them again. One easy click on the “diary” label brings back all of my entries in chronological order.

Thanks for the tip, Lifehacker.

Today is Blog Action Day and bloggers all over the world are sharing their thoughts about keeping our natural world in working order. I have some thoughts, too. But I’m having so much fun reading everyone else’s, I don’t think I’ll get mine down tonight.

Maybe tomorrow. Or next week. Can I wait that long? Will I still have an earth to blog about?

Here in west Michigan,we have TV adds for DirectBuy, a retailer whose members claim will save you lots of money. It’s not unusual for a member/spokesperson to claim “We saved $20,000 when we remodeled our kitchen,” or some such. But, even if you save 50% on everything you buy, you still have to spend $20,000 to save that much.

Well, it’s even worse than that.

Consumer Reports just published an article spotlighting some of DirectBuy’s policies. They went undercover to to a New York DirectBuy location and came away with some interesting information.

After the fee disclosure, we discovered that we had to sign up on the spot or never come back.

It gets better. In order to sign up you have to pay a membership fee that comes near to $5,000.00. That covers the first 3 years of your 10 year commitment. Don’t sweat it, though. DirectBuy is more than happy to loan you the membership fee for only 17.75%.

Anyone interested in signing up?

With DirectBuy, it will cost you a lot to save - Consumer Reports

Also, infomercialscams.com 

I haven’t been updating as often as I’d like. I was hoping to upload some pics and blog from my phone. It has these capabilities. But It doesn’t matter what the phone can do when it can find service!

We made it halfway across Nebraska when I stopped finding a cell signal. That was very disappointing. I had some fun pictures to share from Carhenge and Mt. Rushmore. Right now, we’re just a few miles from the big faces preparing to get back on the road. It feels like the vacation is over, since we’re leaving our home of the last two days. But their is no singular destination when you’re on a road trip. We have more adventure ahead of us in the days to come.

My wife and I are about to embark on a journey. We are visiting some friends in Omaha, NE for the Labor Day holiday. Then, we have the rest of the week to do whatever. We intend to see as much of the country as possible.

We’d really love to hit the Northwest. But, to keep our expenses down, we’ll probably stay a little closer to home. Right now it looks like we’ll loop down through some Southern states. We really won’t know until we leave.

Being on the road is our favorite pastime. We are most at home sharing the confines of a vehicle at high speeds.

If you’d like to share the adventure, then keep an eye on this blog (subscribe). Or, my Flickr photos. My wife may upload some photos, too. The most up-to-date information will be on my Twitter page.

Peace.

I’ve been blogging on WordPress for almost a year now. And I think it’s great. The software is easy to use, the themes are nice, and I’ve got options to upgrade. I appreciate the combination of simple and flexible. But I think there’s one thing lacking: community.

I’m not saying there’s no community here at WordPress.com. If you visit the support forums, you’ll see some bloggers who hang out there quite a bit. And I’ve had a chance to interact with a few others myself.

What I am saying is there’s no major effort to connect bloggers to each other. And that’s ok because the developers are focusing their efforts on making the best product possible. So, it’s in the hands of the users to develop the community. I’ve got a couple thoughts.

Use the Dashboard

There are a couple features built into the Dashboard that give you some connectedness. Under What’s Hot you’ll see some of the most popular blogs and posts on WordPress. You can see latest posts as well. Check out some of these sites; this is the closest you’ll ever be to most of them. Don’t wait for something to become popular to check it out. Help make it popular.

Tag Surfer

Also on the Dashboard is the Tag Surfer. This feature often goes unknown, but it has great power. Just go to the Tag Surfer tab and enter some categories you’re interested in. Then, each day you’ll find new sites that (supposedly) talk about the topics that interest you. You’ll be able to read those posts right from this page. Then, you can go comment on them.

My Comments

Also on the Dashboard is the My Comments tab. This one is exactly what it sounds like: comments you’ve left on other WordPress blogs. The neat thing about this feature is that subsequent comments also show up here. It’s great for keeping track of feedback and for keeping the conversation going.

One more great idea

Internet Duct Tape is the hub for a developer with some great ideas. Recently, he published a Greasemonkey script that helps to facilitate community here at WordPress. It allows you to open 5 random WordPress.com blogs at once. And it alerts you to blogs that have a Recent Comments Widget installed. You know, for some link-love.

Remember, use your blog responsibly. Don’t just rant; join in the conversation. Every one of us wants some kind of feedback. Start by offering some and maybe you’ll get some, too. And don’t forget this: It’s in the upper right-hand corner of your screen (if you’re a WordPress member.)

This is where I need to be.

And I may just get my chance.
My boss is giving me the week off. Hopefully, my wife and I will be able to spend that time on the road. I know I could really use some time away.

I love my new phone!

Originally uploaded by jason.rehmus

I just got a new camera phone. Right now I’m experimenting with all the cool features that allow me to interact with the web. This is way too cool. Or maybe I’m just a geek.

By the way, the photo above is my wife’s craft table. None of our animals would stand still long enough to get their picture taken.

This blog is about to hit a milestone. Sometime this week it will have 5,000 page views. I know that’s not a lot. There are plenty of other sites who receive that many views every day. Or maybe even every hour. But it’s exciting for me. Especially since I barely put any effort into it at all.

For example, my first post was almost a year ago. 5,000 views in one year is miniscule! However, this is only my 17th post. So, it’s not too bad.

I just wanted an opportunity to play with words. Along the way, I’ve had some folks add to the conversation. It’s been a lot of fun and I hope 10,000 comes along even sooner.