Tag: blogging

UPDATE

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OK, I’m backlogged. I have another essay on Rights that I owe people from a couple of weeks ago. I’ve started it, but it looks like another überpost, and those take a bit. Markadelphia has returned, once again wrapped in his blanket of “I’m not, you are!” I owe HIM a response to something from quite a while back, but that’s not gonna happen until after the Rights piece.

I’m buried at work, and I’m supposed to go on vacation starting Labor Day weekend, but it now looks like I’ll be tied up for a day or two on an emergency project before leaving for Gun Blogger Rendezvous VII on Thursday of next week – and if you think I’ll be doing any non-GBR related posting over THAT weekend, you’ve got another think coming. Over Labor Day and the days leading up to leaving I WAS going to finish painting the exterior of my house. I still hope to get to that. Blogging will, of course, suffer.

Somewhere in there I need to load some more ammo for the trip, get all my stuff put together and in the same place.

TL;DR version: Don’t expect much out of me for a week or three.

Back from Obscurity!

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I received an email from someone you might have heard of: Kim du Toit. Kim and his wife Connie dropped off the blogosphere completely a few years ago, after being major players. They were quite polarizing (did you ever read Kim’s essay “The Pussification of the Western Male”?), but largely loved by the gunblogger community. Well, Kim has always been a writer, but he sent me an email to let me know that he has a novel out for the Kindle, Prime Target. Kim describes it this way:

Prime Target is about the U.S. Government spying on its citizens through data mining, and one man’s efforts to stop them. Evil government agents, beautiful women… and of course, guns. Lots of ’em.

He has other books, too, available here.

Nice to hear from him!

Well, Damn

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Blogger-on-hiatus Jed Baer emailed me yesterday with a link to someone in need.  (I helped Jed out a few years ago.)  Fellow blogger Jeff Borland of The Poor Farm, “Jeffro” is his nom de plume, has lost pretty much everything he owned in a house fire, including his precious cat Rooster and almost all of his guns.  People are pitching in to help, and the blogosphere is also responding as only we can.

I’m reminded of September, 2005 when Mostly Cajun lost his home, possessions and cats to a fire after Hurricane Rita swept through his hometown.

Jeffro writes:

As for myself, there are two things that are bothering me. One – I cannot understand how I deserve all this help and largess. I don’t think I’m much different than anyone else, but I’m hearing that I’m not. Apparently my pal who wants to rent to me and my Cuz got together and figured this might just be a way for me to see just how good people could be, and teach me to take it. I’ve always been a do it yourselfer. Nope, don’t need no help doin’ that thang. Hate to bother ya, so I’ll do it myself.

Well, I cannot survive without sacrificing that kind of thinking.

Most of us on this side of the fence are fiercely independent. We don’t want handouts, we don’t want to be a burden. But there’s a difference between accepting help from friends and taking government handouts. One is voluntary, the other is taken at (implied) gunpoint and distributed at best inefficiently and at worst corruptly. Jeffro is getting immediate housing assistance from friends. Mostly Cajun got a FEMA trailer – after more than a month and a lot of runaround.

“Charity” is defined by Webster’s as “benevolent goodwill toward or love of humanity” and “generosity or helpfulness especially toward the needy or suffering.” You’ll note, it doesn’t say a thing about “compulsory.”

If you are feeling charitable, you can contribute to Jeffro’s recovery fund.

We form societies because, as much as we want to, we can’t always do it all by ourselves. I have to say, in my fifty years of life the society of bloggers is the finest one I have ever belonged to.

“New” and “Improved”

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I received this email this morning:

I don’t know if you realize this, but I do not think your comments are working the way you expect. When I try to view them, I get the following message:

Nothing for you here … yet. But as you comment with Disqus and follow other Disqus users, you will start to receive notifications here, as well as a personalized feed of activity by you and the people you follow. So get out there and participate in some discussions!

I switched yesterday to the NEW! and IMPROVED! DISQUS 2012! Anybody else getting this message? Drop me an email. Supposedly I can still switch back.

UPDATE:

Oh hell, now it’s doing it to ME!

Commenting (or reading the comments, anyway) is now a THREE-step process:

1) Click on the “Comment” button, then
2) Click on the “Discussion” pulldown menu, then
3) Click on “Oldest”

And the message thread will appear, oldest post first.  I’m hoping it’s a glitch on Disqus’ end.

UPDATE II:  The “upgrade” has been rolled back for at least the time being.  Commenting seems to be working properly now.

Well, Hell.

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Back in 2010 when HaloScan/JS-Kit/Echo decided to raise their fees for providing a commenting service by a factor of about twelve, I switched to DISQUS.  I was assured that I could import my Echo comments into DISQUS – all 40,000+ of them.

Well, I could, but DISQUS didn’t know what to do with them.  You see, there was no way for DISQUS to figure out what posts the comments attached to.  Echo left that information out, apparently, or at least didn’t place it where the importing program could find it. 

Those old threads are still out there on the Echo servers, but I have links to very few of them.  I didn’t figure Echo would continue to support comments for bloggers who weren’t paying them, and I was right.  Apparently even more right than I thought.  Echo won’t be supporting comments for anybody other than major commercial customers, apparently.  On October 1, they’re going to all go away.

There’s a lot of good stuff in those comments, and it pains me to know that it’s all lost.

Busy

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I put in 32 hours in the last two days at work.  Tomorrow I’m going to the Arizona State Rifle & Pistol Association annual banquet (thanks to CapitalistPig).  And on top of that, my CenturyLink DSL modem is up and down like a yo-yo, so blogging has been and will remain light for a few days.  Please peruse the archives while you wait….

Nine Years, 3,000,000 Visits

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Some time between 9:00and 10:00 MST TSM will receive (according to Sitemeter) it’s 3,000,000th site visit.

That’s chicken feed for a big blog like Instapundit (he probably gets that many hits a month) but for a third-tier gunblog, not too shoddy.

Thanks, y’all.

UPDATE: 9:02 AM


Interestingly, the post the reader landed on came from 2003 – the first year of this blog.

I Feel Better Now

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You know, as a blogger, you’re just not sure if you’re reaching anyone unless you get some negative feedback from time to time.

I received an email this afternoon from one “Chris Carlsen” – no subject line, just two sentences of missive and a sigline:

Your(sic), sir, are a fucking idiot.  Good day.

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,–that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” Ode on a Grecian Urn, 49-50.

I replied:

Good to know you care!  Don’t be a stranger.  Keep in touch.

Kevin

I have no idea just what offended him enough to fire off, but hey, I must be doing something right!

It’s Not About Me

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But in a way, it is.

Like (apparently) a lot of gunbloggers, “I have very few friends in meatspace”. I “know” a lot more people through my interaction with them in the interwebs than I do in person. When, as it happens, someone I “know” or “know of” dies, I feel the loss. The first time this happened to me was when Acidman passed in 2006. When Cathy Siepp died in 2007 I was affected, not because I had ever corresponded with her, but because I’d read so much of what she’d written.

William the Coroner passed away in November. I had listened to William on Vicious Circle, and had seen his comments at other blogs. I had read a few of his posts, but I didn’t “know” him. When Neptunis Lex recently perished in a plane crash, I didn’t comment because I hadn’t really read his blog and really didn’t “know” him either, but both of these men had significant effects on people I do know, and I mourned their loss.

Today we hear that Newbius has joined the ranks of of Bloggers of the Great Beyond. Again, I didn’t read Newbius, and I’ve never met him, but when I clicked over to his blog and saw his blogroll I was taken aback. Under “Deep Thoughts” he has listed only seven blogs, and mine is one of them. The other six are extremely fine company to be in.

And I had no idea. I am honored that he thought well enough of my work to put TSM on his short list. I am abashed that I did not “know” him well enough to be aware of that fact.

I wish I’d gotten a chance to meet the man, and try his pizza. Dammit.

I think I’ll pass on his recommendation:

Stop reading this and go hug somebody important to you. Do it now.

Fair winds, Newbius.