The 10th anniversary of this here blog

Today being the tenth anniversary of the start of the Ramblin’ with Roger blog, with new content every single day, I thought I would describe how I started blogging in the first place. I’m sure I’ve told bits and pieces of it before, but like some oft-told tales, the details either become clearer inr focus or muddier over time.

I had heard about this thing called the weblog – it was in all the standard press – in the early part of this century. However, I had not actually READ any blogs. Therefore, I concluded, without a single strain of evidence, the same thing that most “everyone” else was saying, that blogs were self-indulgent bits of drivel designed for people far more self-absorbed than I.

Then, in October 2004, I see my friend Rocco, who I knew from my FantaCo days. He says to me, “Have you been reading Fred’s blog?” Of course, I had not been reading what our mutual friend Fred Hembeck had been writing, and in fact I had fallen out of touch with him over the previous decade.

So I checked out Fred’s blog

Circular question answering New York Erratic

And in an act that defies logic, I am now answering questions that New York Erratic answered for me, even though I gave them to her, based on questions Lisa posted, and which Dustbury also answered… Oh never mind.

1. What is your dream vacation spot and why?

It would be a place by water, preferably running water, like a river or a waterfalls, because I love water; maybe it’s the Pisces in me. It would be neither too hot or too cold. Maybe

The Return On Investment of leaving blog comments

Wayne John wrote in June: “Well it’s been about 2 months since I’ve written my little ‘I’m back’ post, and not a day goes by that I don’t think about writing something here. I have, in fact, written a number of posts that I simply haven’t made public.”

Now he has a different, more monetary reason for some of the non-production. Still, many bloggers will relate to this:

There is one decision that I’m making though, and that is to stop being so damn hard on myself.

I haven’t posted anything because I have been striving for a level or quality that is simply not achievable on a consistent basis. With each post I write, I try to make it “Epic” or “value filled”, and while those are great marketing buzz words, I simply don’t have time to write a post of that nature each and every time.

I’m sure you don’t expect it either, so why have I been so damn stuck?

It’s all me. I strive for perfection. Add to that a healthy does of OCD and nothing gets done.

To some degree, that even happens to me, the guy who blogs day in, day out. I want every post to be “value filled.”

June Rambling: Hal Holbrook; Marimba Queens

pinned on Pinterest by Roger Green (not me)

My denomination, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A) voted for marriage equality at its General Assembly this month. “Ministers will be allowed to marry same-sex couples in states where it is legal.”

On the other hand, Freedom and Faith Coalition’s Road to Majority conference had an Obama figurine in the urinal.

CBS News Sunday Morning did a piece, Born this way: Stories of young transgender children. The ever-interesting Dustbury on Gender Confirmation Surgery.

Writer Jay Lake worked closely with Lynne Thomas, an Illinois-based librarian… to ensure that all his blog posts and essays would be saved for posterity. “Though this is a relatively uncomplicated task for his blog content, which he unambiguously owned, it gets problematic when you wade into the legal rights of preserving your social media presence. ‘You can’t just download Facebook content into an archive.’”

A cartoon from 2008, and still apt: A Concise History Of Black-White Relations In The United States.

Mark Evanier on O.J. Simpson trial nostalgia.

Why the 70th birthday; and why did they rig the student election?

Way back in 2012, Uthacleana asked:

What’s this “Turning 70” meme you’re promoting, Roger? Doesn’t anyone just turn 59 anymore?! ;-p

(I should note that he. and I, turned 59 that year.)

I started doing the 70th birthday thing because the Beatles (Ringo and John by then; Paul and George followed) were all turning the big seven-oh. Other folks I admired were heading towards a milestone. I noted at the time too that three score and ten was noted in the Bible as well (Psalm 90:10).

But it occurred to me only recently that it is also

Almost on the BBC

I had written this blog post on March 28 about the Adagio, attributed to Albinoini, which also appeared in my Times Union blog the same day. On the latter, I received this comment on April 4 at 7:30 a.m.:

Dear Roger,
I’m making a programme for BBC Radio 4, Soul Music about Albinoni’s Adagio. This series looks at those pieces of music that never fail to move us.
I would love to know more about your choir mom.
Please would you be kind enough to email me with your number so we might have a chat.
With many thanks
Lucy

ALSO, I had written this blog post on April 2 about Marvin Gaye, which again appeared in that day’s TU, and generated THIS comment, also on April 4, at 9:02 a.m.:

Meta: the case of my missing blog

When I went to the dentist to get a cavity filled back on the morning of Wednesday, April 16, I knew I’d feel pretty crappy afterwards, so I took off the whole day. That afternoon, I tried to get rid of an alarming amount of spam – 770 and growing every minute – caught in the Akismet, fortunately. Eventually, though, I couldn’t access my blog at all.

I had suffered an outage earlier in the month; the vendor said it was 18 minutes, but I believe it was longer. The NEW problem, though, was for what turned out to be 15 +/-2 hours. I knew at least a few people noticed that my ABC Wednesday link was not working.

This got me thinking: what if the server never came back up? I wasn’t particularly bothered by the loss of the items I had posted over the last nine years.

Blogging revolution #9

Nine years of blogging, every day; nine trips around the sun. This is remarkable, or remarkably crazy; the line between the two is paper thin. There were weeks this past year when I could write only one or two posts. It was almost never out of a lack of content ideas, but rather a lack of time. Then there’d be an outpouring, usually at 4 a.m., when my mind was swimming with the thoughts I wanted to write.

It’s rather like the pushmi-pullyu of Doctor Doolittle

My first Facebook unfriend

I expected that the first time I would bother to unfriend someone on Facebook would be because of some great, substantial, important issue. And it wasn’t. It was Because Facebook.

I wrote, on Facebook:

FACEBOOK wrote to me:
Why am I not seeing a movie?

If you aren’t seeing A Look Back movie when you visit facebook.com/lookback, it may be because you have not shared very many things on Facebook. Depending on how long you’ve been on Facebook and how much you’ve shared, you’ll see a movie, a collection of photos or a thank you card.

The days of whine and hosers

This will be a breakfast blog* post, just for my friend Dan:

30 December, 2013: Took the bus to work early so that I could get my monthly allergy shot and not miss much work. There was a woman on the bus who was complaining about everything, sitting near the front of the bus. She was fairly loud