Category Archives: blogging

Connection…

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I think I’ve made a connection. Maybe it’s just in my own head as a I struggle this Sunday morning to figure out what to write about, but I have a sinking feeling that my snap assessment is right. While I’m sitting here at the kitchen table with piping hot coffee, two dogs snoring, and the soft hum of the morning news yammering in my ear, it occurs to me that my posts are more interesting when I’ve been forced to deal with stupid people. That’s what spurs the best rants out of my head. After two blissful days of not leaving the house, I’m beginning to wonder if I might not need those interactions to keep things fresh. They give me perspective, because nothing seems so bad, wrong, or stupid as it does when it’s happening right in front of you. Is it possible that I need to be out there if for no other reason than to find new material like so much grist for the mill?

If it’s true, I should go out today and immerse myself in watching people. I should seek avenues to maximize that connection in service to the blog. I should do a lot of things, though. For now, I think I’ll just enjoy the balance of my extra long, long weekend and not force the issue. There will be plenty enough time and cause to be out in the world dealing with people when I can’t otherwise avoid it… because really, if that’s the price of keeping this blog fresh and interesting, I think I’d rather just bore you to tears.

Anniversary…

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Yes, yes, I know It’s Thursday and Thursday means What Annoys Jeff this Week. As long as I have an internet connection and a bit of power in one of my iDevices, I’ll get that post up at some point later today. Just now, while I’m sitting here watching the snow turn big_15to sleet turn to rain turn back to snow, I’m taking a moment to wish myself a happy 4th anniversary on WordPress.

I can’t say it’s always been perfectly smooth sailing, but WordPress has genuinely provided a great home for jeffreytharp.com. With 30,212 views, 410 comments, it’s been everything a small blogger who spends his day writing about whatever wild-assed idea crosses his mind could ask for. I can’t say for sure whether I’ll be here in another four years, but consulting my magic 8-ball, I’d have to imagine that signs point to yes. I’m not the kind of guy to tinker with something that works and this joint is filling my need to offer the world my opinion very nicely.

Now if the internet is any guide, I should run out and get myself the gift of fruit or flowers or maybe a new appliance. The internet is a strange place.

Two days off…

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Some of you may have noticed that I played hooky for two days this weeks, leaving the ivy covered halls of jeffreytharp.com without new posts on both Friday and Saturday. It wasn’t quite intentional, but I don’t exactly feel guilty about it either. Trust me when I say that posting seven days a week – through vacations, holidays, illness, and any number of other distractors – is a brutal pace. Don’t take that as a 538px-Concussion_mechanics.svgcomplaint, though. Given unlimited time and no requirement to feed myself, maintain an income-generating job, and keep up with the occasional outside interest, there’s not many things I would rather do than sit here tapping on the keys. So yeah, sometimes I’m just going to let it rest for a day or two

I think what’s happening is that I’m slowly trying to work my way into a new schedule – probably a slightly less intense six day a week kind of deal. Fridays are currently the front runner for my “day off.” That’s mostly because by the time I wade through a work week and make it to Friday, my brain has turned to some kind of viscous jell that can’t manage much in the way of coherent thought. I figure if one of the treatments for concussion is strict rest and minimizing activities that require extreme concentration, giving the old brain box a day off is probably a good idea. After all, five days in the office certainly feels like being beaten about the head and neck with a blunt object, so the treatment and recovery process should be more or less the same, no?

Feeling…

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One of the great problems of running a blog as a one man show is that sometimes, no matter what’s going on or how many topics are buzzing around in your head, you just don’t feel like writing. Sadly, there’s no one stepping up to stand in the breach so the best you can do is drag the laptop towards you and tap out a post about how much you don’t feel like writing. Yeah, I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around it too… but since there’s now a post where there wasn’t one before, I’m going to just consider the effort a success and move on. Hopefully tomorrow the muse will get off her duff and give me something in the same zip code as inspiration.

The guy with the blog…

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While I was home for Christmas, I managed to take care of a few odds and ends that needed doing. One of the little jobs I finished up involved needing to get a couple of documents notarized. I only mention what I was doing because it’s what triggered my best “aww shucks” moment as a blogger… and that would be getting recognized as “that guy with the blog” by someone I had never met.

Yep. Guilty as charged. For better or worse, I’m the guy with the blog. Of course in addition to being the guy with the blog I’m also a shameless whore, so I tried selling the nice notary public a copy of What Annoys Jeff this Week: 2013 in Review.

I’m not going to lie, it’s pretty awesome to be noticed. Now if I can just interest TMZ in some pictures, I think this whole writing thing is set to take off.

2013 in review

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The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2013 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 11,000 times in 2013. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 4 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

Jeffreytharp.com is pleased to announce…

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Jeffreytharp.com is pleased to announce the arrival of a a bouncing baby book. What Annoys Jeff this Week: 2013 in Review was published in the pre-dawn hours of December 30th and weighs in at WAJTW 2013458 KB and approximately 79 pages long. It’s now available through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Smashwords for the low, low price of $.99.

It’s said that those who don’t study history are doomed to repeat it. After two full years of writing WAJTW, I’m beginning to get an unsettled feeling that there’s nothing to be done against the rising tide of stupid people, awkward situations, and the the general sense that the whole world is going to hell in a handbag. It’s like global warming, except instead of new beach front property, all we get is rising blood pressure and an increased desire to run away and live in a shack in the Montana wilderness.

Still, when life hands you lemons, the only thing to do is try reselling them at a reasonable profit to those who don’t have any citrus of their own. With all new commentary, corrected for spelling and grammar, and jam packed with the snark and sarcasm that you’ve come to know and love, WAJTW: 2013 commiserates over the year that was and looks forward to the inevitable annoyances of the one to come.

The new Sunday…

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I had planned on today being the first new post on archive-free Sunday. I guess it’s still the first post, but since I woke up with a sore throat, some kind of strange hacking cough, and zero motivation, I’ll go ahead and say you might find this post a little lacking in the usual level of effort that goes into them. In fact, my first preference at the moment is to tell the internet to bugger, find a blanket to wrap myself in, and spend the morning holding down the couch. Still, since blogs don’t write themselves, here I am banging away at the keyboard since that’s what I’ve done every Sunday morning for as long as I can remember.

The truth is, I still don’t know what’s going to fill this early Sunday time slot – a weekly political rant, a review of some product I fell in love with during the week, the overflow material from What Annoys Jeff this Week. I have no idea. Maybe I need to stop looking for a theme and just go back to my roots, writing about whatever happens to pop into my head when I log in. For the time being, the “whatever pops into my head” option seems the most likely way ahead. It’s quick, it’s easy, and it doesn’t close the door on a recurring topic emerging later… and let me tell you, right now quick and easy sounds just about perfect.

That’s that…

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Well, the last post from the old MySpace blog went live here on WordPress earlier this morning. I guess that’s that. It’s been such a part of the Sunday morning routine for me that it feels a little strange now that it’s finished. Don’t get me wrong, though, I am extraordinarily happy to finally have the “collected works” all under one roof for the first time. I like knowing that if I get hit by a bus on the way to the office tomorrow, at least this one small bit of me will endure in electronic form for as long as there is an internet. Let’s not get into too deep a discussion that this is what I’ve chosen to leave as my eternal legacy to the world. Sure, it’s no cure for cancer, but as an historian, there’s nothing we like more than day to day commentary about how things were in the olden days… so, blogging is a public service (for a public that hasn’t been born yet).

I don’t have any really solid idea about how the statistics add up but a quick guesstimate would be that I’ve posted something in excess of 300,000 words and garnered something like 60,000 visitors between MySpace, Blogger, and finally here at WordPress. Those visitors have had the chance to read 1,518 individual posts between June 2006 and December 2013. Yep, if you’re doing the math at home, that’s seven and a half years of blogging, and I feel like I’m really just starting to hit my stride.

If you’d like to stop by the archive for one last look around and to see the last four posts from the days of MySpace, here’s the inevitable link to October 2008. The transition from MySpace to Blogger was relatively seamless, so you’ll have to scroll down a bit to start on October 19th. Be sure to check back next week to see what the “new” Sunday mornings look like.

Two to go…

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With this morning’s posts out the door, there are only two weeks worth of archive posts left to go. Assuming nothing catastrophic happens between now and then, the last posts will go up early on the morning of December 8th. As fun as it’s been – and as glad as I’ll be to have everything I’ve ever blogged living here under one roof – it will be nice to move on to something else. I’m still not sure what the new Sunday morning focus will be, but I’m sure I’ll come up with something.

If my math is right, by the time the last word is published we’ll be looking at a grand total of about 1525-ish individual posts from June 2006 to the present day. Most days add another to that total. I haven’t come up with a good way to estimate word count, but I’m just assuming the total would be more than enough to stun a team of oxen in their tracks. Even if we assume only 200 words per post, that will get us to 300,000 without any real trouble. Trust me, that’s a lot of words, especially considering most blogs probably survive a year or maybe two and then disappear.

With two weeks to go, make sure you stop by and enjoy today’s update from September 2008 – including my one and only foray into “Eastern” medicine.