Why this title? Our son, Caleb, has been reluctant to read anything that his school library offers, or anything else that has been “suggested” to him. That is, until now. He has discovered the Goosebumps series of books and he will read one for quite a stretch of time now. So, our eight year old is reading books for as much as an hour or more at a time. This is a refreshing change from his obsession with video games, as the write ups on the RPGs and FPSs that he plays were the only things that he would devote his attention to. This was not all bad, of course, as he learned some big words like “disembarkation” from these games.
I’m going to review what sites that I’m getting RSS or ATOM feeds from and clean up Google Reader. I’ve noticed that there are a few sites that I “bookmarked” at one time or another for whatever reason and I just don’t read them after all.
I’m going to “cut the cord” and remove some feeds and look for some that I’ve not added. Particularly, I’m looking at a few blogs that I’ve subscribed to that are either dwelling on the same topic post after post, or the ones with obvious sponsored posts that really don’t have anything to do with the person’s life.
So, if I cut you from my subscription list and you notice, you might want to think about why a reader stopped reading your stuff. I know that I’m not “normal”, but I have a lot of interests in common with others and I think that anyone who wants to keep their readers should pay attention to why they lost them.
Conversely, I think that its also important for those who have few feed subscribers, you might want to try and figure out why – perhaps its where you locate your feed links (I’m thinking about my own, actually).
From my inbox (thanks searcher 625):
A young farm lad from Texas goes off to college at Texas A&M University, but about 1/3 of the way through the semester, he has foolishly squandered away all of the money his parents gave him.
Then he gets an idea. He calls his daddy. “Dad,” he says, “you won’t believe the wonders that modern education is coming up with! Why, they actually have a program here at Texas A&M that will teach our dog Ole Blue how to talk!”
“That’s absolutely amazing,” his father says. “How do I get him in that program?”
“Just send him down here with $1,000″ the boy says. “I’ll get him into the course.” So, his father sends the dog and the $1,000. About 2/3 way through the semester, the money runs out. The boy calls his father again.
“So how’s Ole Blue doing, son,” his father asks.
“Awesome, Dad, he’s talking up a storm,” he says, “but you just won’t believe this – they’ve had such good results with this program that they’ve implemented a new one to teach the animals how to READ!” “READ,” says his father, “No kidding! What do I have to do to get him in that program?”
Just send $2,500, I’ll get him in the class.” His father sends the money.
The boy now has a problem. At the end of the year, his father will find out that the dog can neither talk, nor read. So he shoots the dog.
When he gets home at the end of the semester, his father is all excited.
“Where’s Ole Blue? I just can’t wait to see him talk and read something!”
“Dad,” the boy says, “I have some grim news. Yesterday morning, just before we left to drive home, Ole Blue was in the living room kicked back in the recliner, reading the Wall Street Journal, like he usually does.
Then he turned to me and asked, ‘So, is your daddy still messing’ around with that little redhead who lives in town?’
The father says, “I hope you SHOT that old dog before he talks to your Mother!”
“I sure did, Dad!”
“That’s my boy!”
(The kid went on to be a successful lawyer…….)
If you have a TV, why are you reading this blog entry? Last Comic Standing is on! Go watch!
You still here?
As anyone who reads this diatribe knows, I have a perchance for movies. I haven’t been reviewing many lately, though. Its not because I’ve n0t watched any. Its just be cause I haven’t felt like producing a review worth reading. So, instead of churning out a crappy review just to say that I did, I’ve not written about it at all.
This will change. I’ve seen a few movies lately that others have seen or reviewed as well. I’ve also seen a few others that I haven’t really seen anything written about. So, to fill in the gaps, I’ll be producing a few over the next little while. Sorry for the lapse.
Please take a moment in your day to remember Coretta Scott King, who continued her husband, Martin Luther King’s work of spreading peace and harmony, unti she died on this day last year.
I’ve noticed that the dashboard page in the Wordpress admin page seems to have been slow lately. I’ve been using 2.1-Alpha3 for about 2 months now and its been reasonably stable and predictable (look out for some re-arranging, folks). One thing that I’ve noted lately is that the dashboard page takes forever to load. Its not the page that loads slowly, but the feed content, including the latest from Wordpress Planet and the Wordpress blog, as well as the “incoming links” section. I vaguely remember reading in the testers mailing list something about using a different feed engine, but I can’t recall if it was with this page.
My question is for thos who aren’t crazy enough to run Alpha and Beta software, namely those who are using Wordpress 2.0.5 and before. Is your Dashboard also slow because of this thing I’m experiencing?
