GrumpysMonkey

Ok, so this is sort of a rant.

Today, on Twitter, someone was complaining about random re-tweets. Those things that happen when you say something, someone you know repeats it, and then someone they know repeats it again. They felt that somehow their privacy was being invaded because the person repeating what they said was a stranger.

This irks me a lot. First of all, my dear husband, asked this person about it. Now something you should know about John. He’ll support any position if the logic is there behind it. Not saying he’ll agree with it, but he can get behind you for believing it. But, there must be logic behind it. If your argument isn’t logical, he’ll try to help you figure out logic to support it even. Even if he doesn’t believe in it. You want to know how to support a position? How best to convey your beliefs? Talk to John.

John asks why this person is upset over something said in public and gets jumped on because he’s trying to understand the logic.

Twitter is a public platform. Things you say are not private. Even locked accounts (those for which you have to approve every person who follows you) can be re-tweeted. So nothing you say is completely and totally private. It is much like blogging. You cannot control who reads a public blog. Anyone, in any country (well, any country that doesn’t restrict traffic) can read your blog. Criminals can read your blog. Nothing is stopping someone with bad intentions from reading your blog. Nothing is stopping someone with good intentions from reading your blog. Unless you’re password protecting pages or posts, what you write WILL be accessible by a shit-ton of people.

Twitter works the same way. What you say on Twitter is available to the general public. What other people say on Twitter is available to the general public. If you use Twitter, it is your responsibility to know that what you say is for public consumption. If what you’re about to type isn’t intended for public consumption, then DO. NOT. SAY. IT. 

There’s no hostility here. I have no ill will towards the person who made the initial statement. They are a lovely person with a lovely blog.  I am merely pointing out what I see as an inaccuracy. What is put on twitter is public. That is a statement of fact.  What you write on your public blog is public. Don’t have  any expectation of otherwise.

This blog is going to be under heavy construction for the next few weeks. We’re trying to work out some design issues with Cook Local and so that we don’t screw up the site, we’re going to be making all changes here first. So layout and formatting is going to change regularly. Given that I’ve only got maybe 3 readers, I didn’t figure this would be too inconvenient.

I upgraded GrumpysMonkey to WordPress so that I could spend the weekend upgrading Cook Local to WordPress. Never do anything for the first time on race day… err, wait, that’s Ben’s running advice.

But really, never do anything for the first time in your live environment where you are trying to make money. It’s just not smart. So I’ve upgraded everything here, where if I mess up, only a handful of people will know it and since they’re my friends, they’ll forgive me. (I hope).

Like the RSS feeds. In order to not have two separate blogs running on this web server, I uninstalled the old blogging platform once I verified that the new one was functional. However, I neglected one key item. The RSS feed. The old RSS feed was /atom.xml. The new one is ?feed=rss2. While those little characters might not mean much to most people, what they mean to me is that my former subscribers might not be able to find me in their Google Reader. If they hit up the home page, they’ll see the new RSS link, but if they are just relying on an RSS reader, they will probably think I just stopped posting.

So, mistake #1. Fixable, with some work.

Luckily, so far I haven’t found any more mistakes. But tonight I’m going to customize the look and feel of the page. We’ll see what fun times that brings! I can’t move Cook Local over until I can reliably add a header image and a second column to the sidebar. Once I can do those things on this blog, I can easily move Cook Local over without too much worry.

Advice time again. I think I know what I need to do, but I’m just looking for some confirmation.

Examiner just hasn’t really done much of anything. I’m averaging around 40 hits per day, less on days that I don’t post. While this isn’t necessarily bad, it isn’t great and the numbers have basically stayed the same since I started this whole gig. Compensation is dismal, because the hits aren’t there. If I had a lot more hits, I’d make more money. I’m not convinced that those 40 hits a day don’t all belong to my friends and family either.

I have gotten a few readers to Cook Local from Examiner, and I’ve gotten a few contacts that I didn’t have before, like the Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day authors, who have added me to their blogroll and have been a great source of information on baking as well as a lot of fun to interview.

John went to a blogging conference last weekend and came away with a number of ideas for Cook Local. I’ve been getting more commenters and have been putting more effort into the posts. I’ve had ideas like branching out into other cities, doing how-to posts and videos, and giving some history into some of the food we use. I’ve got so many ideas my head is spinning. I’ve even started talking with a local farmer to see if there’s a way we can help each other out.

So basically, what I’m asking is this:

Should I phase out Examiner?

As a background, I write 3 posts a week for them these days. Each post takes me about an hour to deal with. I usually take content from an old Cook Local post and use that, but I still have to reformat it, crop the pictures, upload everything, and massage the wording a bit.

My only concerns with doing so are:

1. If they replace me with someone else, will that hurt Cook Local because of competition?

2. What if they do actually come through on their promises of promotion one of these days and columns do start getting hits? Is this even something I should worry about since they’ve basically not kept their promises thus far?

In my full time job, I quite often must type the acronym CAS. In my second life, (food writing), I often refer to CSAs. You know you’re tired when you type either of the following:

1. You must enable Integrated authentication on the CSA server.

2. There were some beautiful vegetables in my CAS box this weekend.

I need a vacation. Either that or my computer is growing carrots now.

My job involves writing documentation for one of Microsoft’s products. In this job, I had to learn how to use an iPhone and write some documentation surrounding it. So last Friday I picked up a loaner iPhone and started playing around with it. My first impressions were not all that positive. Some of the UI felt klunky and it just wasn’t as user friendly as I expected an Apple product to be.

However then I kept on using it. I surfed the web a bit. It was so pretty.

Then we went out for lunch and I tried to take some notes in preparation for a blog post. Holy jeez. I typed almost an entire blog post with one finger in the space of a couple of minutes.

Then today, on the way to work, I typed out almost an entire page of script for a walkthrough while John drove.

The screen was pretty, the applications were snappy, and I could WRITE. EASILY. IN THE CAR.

Now I’m about as overloaded as you can get. I’m writing for 5 different blogs as well as my full time writing job. My massage therapist thinks my forearms are HUGE because of all of the writing, typing, and texting I do.

I just kept thinking how very much I could get done during downtime with this thing. I could write in the car on the way home. I could write while waiting for appointments. I could get blog posts half written whenever they happen (for MetBlogs for example).

The biggest problem is that I NEED to have a Windows Mobile phone for work. Plus, I actually do like Windows Mobile. That’s not just company loyalty talking, I honestly do like the operating system. So I have to pay for a Windows Mobile cell phone plan with a data plan. If I bought an iPhone, I’d need to pay for a second phone plan and data plan. That just isn’t in the cards right now. Plus, I would feel overly geeky carrying around two phones everywhere.

However, the iPod Touch has a good number of the same features and no data plan. It has wi-fi, which in Seattle, would often be enough. There’s free wi-fi a lot of places here.

So now I’m seriously contemplating purchasing the iPod Touch. I can’t say that when I get my next royalty check it won’t go directly to the Apple store. Ugh.

I need a shower now.