Happy Blogiversary

So I almost forgot; today is my three year blogiversary.

First Post!!!!! Ok folks, people have been telling me to write my own blog for two years now, so finally, here it is. Yeah I said I'd get around to it before, but I'm lazy, what can I say. The initial content is mostly going to be stuff I've written for other peoples blogs, and fora etc... Suggestions, praise, worship, and deification are all welcome. Unrated Chris Byrne at 2/14/2005 08:53:00 AM Comment (0) | Trackback (0)

This will be post 1880, and something on the order of... I'd guess about a million words; maybe as much as 3 million. Add to that well over a million unique visits, and a couple million page views.

Damn... doesn't seem like three years.

Well, here's to three more.

Gunthing.com outage

to anyone checking here for an update, yes, http://www.gunthing.com and http://www.theothersideofkim.com are experiencing a temporary service outage.

There was an error requiring a restore from last nights backup; and the issue will hopefully be resolved shortly.

Big post delayed again

Ok, this time I swear, it'll be up tomorrow. It's year end crunch time both at work, and at home, and I haven't been able to finish the big piece yet (it's only been... uh... two weeks).

I am about 3/4 done; but I also spent all night last night playing portal instead of sleeping, so I'mna pass out now and finish it up tomorrow.

Oh and this one isn't about guns, politics, money, sex, or religion... it's something FAR more controversial.

Paying for it

Well, we had a great time camping and this weekend, but now I'm paying for it.

Mel is now off to her shooting camp; unfortunately both girls are feeling under the weather a bit, and apparently camping out with 28 degree overnight temperatures has made whatever crud I had early last week relapse a bit.

Thankfully, Emily is helping out while Mel is at the camp, so I'm not stuck with two sick girls and a sick dad; but still, one legged man, meet ass kicking contest.

So don't expect TOO much content this week...

Of course every time I write that I end up posting some 10,000 word epic the next day; but I can't think of anything right now that would make me do that.

8000 words in...

So I'm about 8000 words into this new firearms mythbusting post, and I'm not happy.

The piece is at that stage of long where you start thinking, oy this is too long. The problem is, even the merest skim on the subject is several thousand words long so you might as well hit the high (and low) points.

So I'm right at the point where I think there is just enough information there to be useful and informative, at least a survey level of comprehensiveness (is that even a word? My spellcheck says it is, but I swear it shouldn't be).

Unfortunately it's also at the point where the experts on the subject who read this page (and I know theres more than a couple who do), are probably going to be irritated by the stuff I left out or skimmed. Of course if I put everything necessary into it, it would be 20,000 words long at the least (which is a bout 1/3 to 1/4 the way through a typical non fiction book).

Plus theres the joys of blog reading patterns, and feed readers. I was planning on publishing it this morning, and now it's Friday afternoon, and most people have stopped reading blogs for the weekend. If I post it tonight, a lot of people won't bother checking until Monday morning, and by then it may have fallen out of their current feed.

As of right now, I've probably got about 8 hours of actual writing time and effort into it; a bit more than my usual long posts, because I've been doing a lot of on the fly revising; and honestly at this point I really want to finish the damn thing.

Ahhh screw it, I'm just going to keep writing it until it's done; however long that may be; and I'll post it right then. I write this stuff to amuse me, and relieve my stress, not worry about how other people read.

Much Needed Blogroll Update

So for the first time in about a year and a half I went through my blogroll. I deleted or updated about a dozen, and added about 20, to indicate the blogs I read at least once a week.

I might as well tell people what my blogrolling policy is.

1. I only blogroll blogs I read at least once per week; and generally only those I read three times a week or more. I don't do link exchanges etc... and don't expect them in return.

2. Write good stuff well; don't just be a linker. There's only one heavy linker in my blogroll, and he's a personal friend, who when he does write something original, is quite funny and interesting.

3. Have a visual format and layout that I can stand to look at. There are a few blogs that I read on an occasional basis that I like the content on but can't read unless I disable their page styles (thank you Firefox)

4. If you are dealing with facts, be true, factual, relevant, and mature. I love the humor of Iowahawk and FrankJ, but I don't read them on a regular basis, because I don't like their non-funny stuff. SteveH on the other hand I read a couple times a day, because although everything he writes is funny, it's also useful and relevant (though not always tasteful).

5. The second most important factor (the first is to write good stuff, well); post at least three times a week, preferably every day. In almost three years, there have been less than 8 weeks where I have had less than 5 days of posts in a week. I almost always have a new post Monday through Thursday; but only do "the good stuff" on Fridays and weekends (unless I get a wild hair or inspiration of some kind). Even if I don't have much, I try and post something, just to let people know I'm still here and thinking about writing.

If you think I should be linking you, and I'm not (for example if you know from your logs, or from frequent comments that I read your blog); or if you think I would LIKE your blog and would then link you, let me know here in comments.

If you thought you WERE on my blogroll and aren't there anymore, it's probably an accident; let me know.

Rough day, no energy, no inspiration

Blogging will resume tomorrow.

In the mean time, someone convince Joanie she shouldn't stop blogging.

Site is hosed up a bit

All,

for some reason the site has been screwing up off and on all day, and aprt of yesterday; so I havent been able to post. Comments and sitemeter are also hosed.

I dont see any notices about it in any of the support forums; so I think I'm being spamdossed.

Unfortunately since I use blogger, theres nothign I can do but wait for them to fix it. Here's hoping this post goes up.

I am a crunchy crustacean

In the TTLB ecosystem.

Meaning that I actually have some traffic after only tree days of having a blog, mostly thanks to my friends at the Nation of Riflemen, Kim DuToit, and the readers of The Smallest Minority, SondraK, The Whatever, and Publicola, where I am a frequent commenter and contributor.

Aint referrer logs cool?

That and I seem to be getting a lot of google traffic, but I'm not a sitemeter pro member, so I don't know what search terms they are using.

I used to use extremetrack (thats where the first 148k hits I had were, from the hits on my main page of the past 5 years or so), which showed a lot more detailed stats for free, but sitemeter is what TTLB uses, and what the Alliance of Free Blogs use (or is that uses? Alliance is a singular term but made up of plural members so....) so here I am on sitemeter.

INSTAPUNDO DELENDA EST!

My aspiration, to be a floppy bird.

UPDATE: I am now a Crawly Amphibian. Soon, SOON I will be a Flappy Bird, BWAHAHAHAHA!

So what am I all about

So, why write a blog? What's this blog about? What am I about for that matter.

Well in short it's about geeks with guns. The material on this blog is going to end up being about geekiness, guns, computers, cars, airplanes, music, role playing, books, sci-fi, fantasy, movies, the military, politics, security (information and physical), women, and more guns and random shit floating around in my head.