Time

I feel I don’t have enough time during any given day. At least not enough to do what I want, when I want to do it. This is why my blogging has efforts have fallen by the wayside.

Wife. Kids. Work. Eat. Commute. Sleep. These are the priorities in order. Wife. Kids. Work. Eat. Commute. Sleep.

Sleep is nice if it can be had. When it is possible, it doesn’t come in consecutive hours, not since the kids were born. I’ve learned to function with chunks of sleep here and there, sneaking in a few extra minutes on the commute to-and-from work.

Commuting and working are dedicated blocks of time. The commute is not fixed in its length. It can take up to 2 1/2 hours a day. And if there is an incident on Caltrain, add another 90 minutes to that time. I try not to take my work home with me, but my job is easily accessible through any device.this makes it easy to read and answer work issues.

That leaves the time spent with the wife and kids. They are the center of my world, the reason I do what I do. During the week I don’t have the opportunity to spend much time with them. An hour or two in the morning while getting ready to leave for the day. A few hours at night at dinner time then bed time. At least we have the weekends together.

Eating is done between all of these times.

Setting aside time to write has been tough. I can steal a moment away here-and-there to jot down a thought I want to explore. Finding the time to think that thought through and writing it down can be difficult. But I believe I need that time, the time to use my brain and stretch my fingers. My writing may not be revelatory but it is mine. It is seething I wish to express, even if it is a trivial matter.

And so I’m making an effort to post more, to write more in this space. It may be a simple comment on a link or a long bitch fest about a day gone sideways. But it’ll be something I want to share. Whether you want to read it is up to you.

I hope you do.

Domain Swapping

If you found me – if you are reading these words on this blog – you could have only come here one of two ways. Either you’ve come directly to ://giron.me or you followed a link from my photo site, ://janella.com.

Prior to this new endeavor, I wrote on janella.com. But as you can see, things have changed. Those older blog posts still exist. I didn’t delete those posts. I simply moved them to ://janella.giron.me. They are safely there to search and read.

Why the shell game?

I wanted to keep words and photos separate. Not that I won’t post photos here.  I’m just looking for a little more segmentation, a little separation. When people ask about photos we’ve taken, I’d like to simply point them to janella.com – which would load the photo gallery – instead of a blog where you would need to find the photo link.

Plus, I don’t write often. And I find it a bit embarrassing when I point someone to the blog – again, to see photos – they will inevitably comment that I haven’t written in quite some time.

So, I’m still settling in on this space of the interwebs. Drop on a by every once in a while to see what’s up here, ok?

Comment No Longer

I read a lot of things online. I would often read commments that accompany the articles and blog posts. But I’ve grown tired of the often snide and rude remarks people make in the comment section.  Instead of providing meaningful comments, thoughtful responses that could add to the subject of the article, blog post, or photo, some people choose to make an ugly destructive comment. They make these ugly comments with ease, enjoying the lack of repercussion afforded by their anonymity.

I know my blog doesn’t run into this issue. What I’ve had problems with are spam comments. I receive more spam comments then actual comments each month. And since most people now comment via Facebook, where I crosspost often, having comments enabled on the site appears unnecessary. If you don’t have a Facebook account, I have to ask: “Who are you?

Go Free When Possible

Rethinking

I am rethinking this new blog thing. Yes, it only took me two months to start rethinking this endeavor. What started me thinking was Nick Cernis’ well written post called “Rise of the Tablog”. I discovered this via Merlin Mann on Tubmlr. It got me rethinking why I blog.

The answer is the same: I enjoy writing – when I can. I want to put my thoughts down on a variety of subjects. I never enjoyed using pen and paper because my penmanship is horrible. My tool of choice has either been a typewriter or a computer. Sure, I don’t necessarily need to publish what I write on a blog, but I enjoy it. It’s something I’ve been doing since 1999. Plus I find putting what I write on a blog more liberating, even now more so since I don’t have commenting enabled. If someone reads it, then great. If not, then so be it.

When I started this new blog, I had hoped to write more. I set a low goal of 500 words on any subject, with the hopes of posting once a week. I’ve done ok, posting almost every Thursday. But I really had hoped that I would write more often then I have. I’m sure it will come with more thought, time and effort.

Cost per Post

Since I don’t write often (yet), it is difficult to continually justify having this blog on a web hosting service. There are many reasons why I wanted to use a web hosting service instead of WordPress.com or Tumblr. One reason is having full control of not just my content but the whole website. I have been using Laughing Squid as the web host. I’ve always wanted to try their service and it has been great. I also like that they are local to me. But in this economy even their least expensive plan of $8 a month is difficult to justify for four blog posts a month. After all, I could use that $8 for two Venti Mochas, which can fuel my brain for the day.

Where and Why

And so I have moved the content I generated over to this Tumblr account. Why Tumblr and not WordPress.com?

As part of this rethinking process, I also wanted to decide where would be the best home for what I wanted to do now. It would seem WordPress.com would be a natural choice since I use the WordPress CMS for the hosted website. But when I’m on WordPress.com I realize how much “I can’t do” as far as customization or other tweaks that I can do with a hosted version of WordPress. This annoys me. I’m comfortable with what Tumblr can provide. Clean and simple. But the ‘Tumblarity’ score really bothers me. I need to not pay attention to that sidebar. I’ll hopefully get past this annoyance.

So right now I have two active Tumblr accounts. One is used for reblogged content, the other is for content I (hopefully) actually create. I can envision these merging (Why have two separate accounts?). But at this point, reblogging is an effortless task I prefer to keep separate. I would really like to have an account where I can post a long rant on a subject and not have it seem out of place with the rest of the posts. At this point, it makes sense to me to have two separate accounts for this.

And So It Begins Anew

I blame the economy.

The web hosting account for janella.com has come up for renewal. Dotable, where the site is hosted, has been a great web host this past year. Their pricing and support have been great. I have nothing bad to say about their company or service. But money is money.

Granted it only cost “x” amount of dollars a year for the account. But “x,” when factored with “y” and “z,” makes hosting a web site an extra expense I can do without. I must consider alternatives to web hosting.

There are many free platforms to blog out there – WordPress.com, Vox, LiveJournal, MySpace, Facebook, etc. The logical choice would be to go with WordPress.com. I know WordPress well, as my blog ran on WordPress. But I love how Tumblr works. Tumblr is drop dead simple.

Yes, I’ll need to deal with the fears I’ve mentioned in my old blog postings: lack of control of data and loss of data. But I’ll learn to deal with it. I trust in Tumblr. (Now don’t let me down.)

And so it begins anew…here on Tumblr.

blogger

Well, I gave in to the Blog. I wanted to be able to update this portion of the web site from wherever I may be (e.g., work, school, home, Europe ;)) And so I jumped on the Blogger bandwagon. It’s actually a pretty cool tool for updating news/journal/diary type stuff. I guess I could also go on a freehand rampage about the state of the world or television or something. I might just do that shortly. The photography course at De Anza is winding down. One project is due this week, and I think the last one next week during finals! I already signed up for Photo 2 which should prove to be interesting. It covers the use of filters, lighting (both flash and spot), different camera types, and other projects that stretch the mechanical side of photography. Now I need to work on seeing the image, which I think is a big weak point of mine. We’ll see what my final grade is in a couple of weeks. For now, that’s it.