Anytime you wait for technology to refine itself and THEN jump in to the fray, you run the risk of not knowing what everyone else takes for granted. I have been learning this first hand with becoming a blogger. I am roughly 2 years behind the blog-rush and I am just now learning what RSS feeds are, how to properly categorize posts, what blogging software to use, etc…. I still don’t know exactly what “aggregated views” are and there are all sorts of other peculiar acronyms and terms that I am just plain ignorant of. It has been a learning experience that will continue for quite a while.

I never really wanted to blog. My definition of a blog was a personal diary…. a la LiveJournal…. where some acquaintances of mine have been “blogging” the events of their daily lives for some time now. These same acquaintances also live in an iRC chat channel I have frequented for many years so I heard little tidbits from time to time about what they were posting.

“I posted in my LiveJournal today about how Sally slept with Juan and broke up Sally’s marriage to Fred!”

“I just posted to my LJ about how my dog died….”

“I just LJ’d my pics from the kegger this past weekend!  Wait till you see the pics I got of that drunk chick/dude/whatever!”

Based upon those kinds of comments, I NEVER wanted to become a blogger. What goes on in my daily life is pretty damn dull. I work from home, pasted to a PC most of the day. While that may sound like a dream job to some of you, consider that I live in Southern California where, as they say, the weather kicks ass just about all of the time. The beach is 30 minutes away, snowboarding/skiing is a couple hours the other direction. Working from home isn’t nearly as easy when there are the temptations of SoCal within minutes in every direction.

Even if I thought my life were particularly fascinating, I just don’t get why anyone other than my immediate family and maybe some close friends, would care to read about it online. That is what phones are for. In this day and age of free long distance for just about anyone, I still prefer to call to tell family and friends about my exploits on the phone vs posting them into the online void only for them to be Googled for all eternity. (I don’t like phones too much either….but that is for another time…)

I have sinced figured out that blogging is much more than personal diaries. And the Livejournals of the world have their place. While I will and have posted some personal stuff, my goal is more to connect with my ITPro Audience. Of course, to do this, you have to let people into your life a little. If it is “all geek and nothing but the geek!” then it gets a a little old. I bet what happens with my blogging over time is that it become more and more personal while still maintaining some tech stuff. I think that is just the way it works for some people.

From the other side, I don’t read very many blogs at all. The ones I do read, I read on a rather infrequent basis. There is only one blog that has managed to keep my attention. The blog is for a co-worker of mine and he has a rather expansive following. And…. of all things, he posts quite a bit of personal information which is EXACTLY the kind of blog I would seem to want to avoid. But it isn’t so much the content of the blog that keeps me coming back as much as his posting style. I would be doing a disservice to him if I tried to explain how he posts. Just go check it out.

Okay……If you decided to come back from Rory’s blog….I thank you. I think his is MUCH more interesting than mine.

Rory…..your welcome for the 4 additional people I have pushed toward your blog.

 

Anyway……so I played the waiting game, had to sort through all kinds of information on blogging, screwed up my categories so that I blog-spammed some feeds (sorry MS!).  It only took me 13 days to figure that much out.

If I had to blog with a lawnmower, you would all be in the hospital hospital by now…..

Cheers!