On a Year in the Blogosphere

In which we take a trip down memory lane.

I don’t know what is harder to believe, that it has already been a year since I began this blog, or that I was able to blog for the whole year.  Either way we made it to a year and that’s pretty exciting.  So to celebrate I thought that I would remove the veil and let you all take a look at the inner-workings of my slice of the blogosphere.

You have probably never wondered what exactly goes into the planning process for this blog¹.  But I am going to tell you about it anyway.  Normally while I am writing one week's blog I think of some idea that I want to write about the next week.  Throughout the week portions of the post will come to mind.  I never pre-write anything, which sucks when I sit down to type and get hit with writer's block.  I do, however, think about what visuals I want a head of time so I can do some google searches.  This is all completely accurate except for the times it’s not.  There have definitely been weeks where I have had an idea in mind and scrapped it at the last minute (see last week).

Once I write the post I’ll run it through a spell checker on Word to catch any spelling or grammar problems.  Then I will read through it and catch a few more.  After it has been posted online inevitably I will find new problems every time I read it².

Here are some interesting facts about the last year of blogging:

• This is my 45th blog post.
• March had the most posts with six³.
• September, August and May 2009 each had the least with one.
• Since June 20th 452 people have read my blog.
• They represent 21 countries.
• July 6th marked the apex of daily visitors, clocking in at 31 visitors, thanks to On My Jams.
• I have 7 blogspot followers and 16 Google Reader followers.
• 31 posts had comments; no post was commented on more than my first post.
• I have been asked to edit (and did edit) two of my posts after they were up.
• I have deleted one post all together.
• Including this post I have had 132 different tags.
• The footnotes made their début on Friday, October 16th.
• They became a permanent fixture on November 8th⁴.

As far as my highlights for the year I would say that I had the most fun with the two On Random Thoughts postings.  I felt that my most creative moments came from On Fulfilling a Birthday Wish…Kind Of and On Scramping.  My favorite post, though, was probably On War On Film.

I have greatly enjoyed the last 12 months of blogging.  Especially when I decided that I was going to make it a habit to write something once a week.  While it has been a challenge in come up with topics to write about it has really pushed me to be creative and also just to write more.  I don’t know if it has done anything to improve my skill as an author, it certainly hasn’t done much for my spelling or grammar.

So what am I looking forward to in the next year of blogging?  Here are some things I have been considering.  Interviews, more personal stuff, Capri Sun⁵, more pictures that I took, and maybe, maybe, contests.

One of my favorite parts about this blog is the comments that I get⁶.  Unfortunately Google Reader makes it easy to not comment.  But I’d love to hear your thoughts about my first year of blogging.  So escape the clutches of the reader, venture over to the blogspot and let me know what you think.

Thanks for sharing this last year with me.  And get excited for Bravo Deploy Satchmo Year 2.
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¹ Or maybe you have, what do I know I'm not a mind reader.
² I am a terrible speller, and have an uncanny knack at missing any and all grammar mistakes.
³ That has since been decreased to five (we'll cover why in a minute).
⁴ To date I have used 157 footnotes.
⁵ I'm just going to keep on teasing this until I write it.
⁶ Except the crazy Chinese posts that come with a ton of links, its such a hassle to go in and deleted them.

On Breaking a Promise For the Sake of Trivia

In which the hidden mysteries of a common expression are revealed, and minds may be blown.

So I know I promised to write about Capri Sun this week, unfortunately it is going to have to wait for a least another two weeks.  Sorry.

Yesterday, at work, I was out on the football field with one of the gym teachers.  We were watching our students run a half mile because they were being obnoxious.  During the course of our conversation he used a common idiom and we talked about where it found its origins.  I remember finding it a fascinating bit of history, however I can no longer remember what the phrase was, or what the history of said phrase was.  The experience was almost entirely stripped from my memory by the what followed.

The teacher asked me if I knew the meaning behind the saying, “Near but it ain’t aplomb¹.”

I told him that I could guess given that I knew what aplomb meant².

He asked me if I knew how you measured to see if something was aplomb.  I told him with a plomb-bob.  He then asked me if I knew why they were called plomb-bobs.  I told him I didn’t.

Traditionally, plomb-bobs were made by hanging pieces of lead from a string.  You let it hang straight down and you can tell if whatever you are making is straight up and down.  Now if you remember back to your last chemistry class the atomic symbol of lead is Pb.  The reason for this?  In Latin lead is called “plumbum.”  Thus the plumb-bob.  During the height of the Roman empire plumbum was all the rage.  It was very malleable, relatively easy to extract and refine from ore³, and most importantly it didn’t rust.  So when the Romans went about creating a system of pipes with which to deliver water to their cities lead was an obvious choice.

Unfortunately, for the Romans, they were unaware of a little thing called lead poisoning.  Some scholars theorize that the fall of the Roman Empire may have been hastened, if not caused, by lead poisoning.

But none of this was really all that mind blowing.  Here is what got me.  The original sewage pipes were created out of plumbum, and what do we call people who work on our pipes today? 

Plummers.  Ka-boom.
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¹ This isn’t the exact phrase he said, but I know I had never heard it before.
² It traditionally means that something is straight up and down.
³ Plus, add some sheep and wheat and you got your self a D-card.

On Discovering a Video That’s Been Discovered By Two Million People Already

In which well-trod ground is traveled and foreshadowing.

When I arrived home from work today I had received an email from a friend of mine¹.  The subject line read ‘Ahh Christian worship’ and contained only this link.  I watched it and found it to be pretty clever.  The music stuff was better than the speaking stuff.  In the comments someone mentioned something called “The Academy Award Winning Trailer.”  I had never heard of such a thing so a’googleing I went.  My search let me to this video.  Go ahead and check it would and we’ll talk about it when you are done.

This video absolutely made my day.  Most everything about it was so spot on.  For me the two highlights were the conversations with the concerned friend² and the music throughout the entirety of the trailer, but especially starting at 2:26.  It seemed like it was an actual movie that was coming out, which is kind of sad.

The weakest part?  The Avatar scene, it just didn’t jive with the rest of the trailer.  But I suppose you can’t win ‘em all.

Hope you enjoyed the brief post/video this week.  Come back next week for a discussion about Capri Sun.  No joke.

“LEAD FEMALE’S NAME!!!”
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¹ Who won’t be named so that he, or she, doesn’t get in trouble at work again and cause me a huge headache.
² “Friendly concern that a string of heightened and seemingly unrelated plots may now arise."

On the Lost Art of Knife Fighting

In which stories are told, scars revealed and no actual fighting takes place.

When people find out that I have worked, in a number of capacities, with middle school students¹ there are usually two responses.  Response #1: Wow, that’s amazing, I could never work with kids that age.  Response #2: I hated middle school.  Usually, response one is tied to response two.  But let’s focus on response one for today.

There are certainly times when working with middle school students is a huge headache.  But there are times when they do or say things that make it all worth it.  This week…worth it.
On Tuesday I had a mole removed from just under my right eye.  In order to keep me from, you know, bleeding to death some stitches were utilized to close up the wound.  The result was as follows. So now I’m walking through the hallways and lunchroom rocking this sweet stitched up gash.  I figured at some point one of the students would ask where the stitches came from, it finally happened during lunch.  When the first kid asked I told her that I was in a fist fight, she didn’t believe me.  Another table of guys asked me what happened and I told them that I had been in a knife fight.  Now I really didn’t think that they would believe me, it is pretty preposterous.  ‘Really?’ they asked me.  I stuck with my story and told them yes.

Other questions followed.  Did I win? Who was the guy?  Where did we fight?  Is he dead?  My answers: I won, some dude, over on the west side of town, and I wasn’t sure I didn’t stick around to check.  I didn’t really think anything would come of the conversation but later in the day I was helping out with a gym class and one of the kids asked me, “Did you really get those stitches in a knife fight?”  I told him absolutely I did, the kids turned and said to his friends, “Oh man, he said that he did.”  It was pretty great.

Jumping to today at lunch the same table of kids that I had the first knife fighting conversation with asked me if I was in a fight club.  I told them no, I wasn’t.  Later I was covering a science class and one of the kids was from that table and way jazzed that I was there.  When a different student asked what happened he, and some others students all announced, “knife fight.”  The class then spiraled into a conversation about my knife fight.  They wanted to know what type of knife I used?  A knife fighting knife.  Was it long or short?  Short, long knives are swords and it wasn’t a sword fight.  Who did I fight? François Le’Monjello.  If they google the name will it come up?  Well, now it might. They asked me again if the other guy was dead.  I stuck with I don’t know.

So now I am the knife fighting teacher. Which, in the realm of things to be known for by students I could do a lot worse than the teacher who knife fights.  I’ll be interested to see how long this lasts, and how long the story can keep going.  I’ve decided to come up with some pearls wisdom to pass along to anyone who asks².  Here is what I have come up with so far.

Lessons about knife fighting: 1) Don’t bring a knife to a gun fight³. 2) Don’t google image search “knife fight,” ever⁴. 3) The idea of a monkey-knife fight always makes me laugh.  That’s pretty much all I have right now, I’ll let you know if I come up with anything else.
I’m also considering spreading the rumor that I had to get stitched up because while I was juggling kittens one got away from me and caught me with a claw.
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¹ Or junior high students if you are one in the early 90s.
² I actually won't tell the kids any of these.
³ You're muck'in with a G here, pal!
⁴ You did it didn't you.