Saturday, June 03, 2006

Open Letter

Dear Blogging Family, Occasional Readers and Accidental Visitors,

Been blogging now over a year. Before that I was a great surfer, savoring the grassroots aspects of every blog. Always opinionated, I wanted active participation.

Love blogging. Love my blogs. So much so that they are worth redesigning. To me, anyway. Facilitated by my
talented Blogsister Karen, our redesigns have almost gained hobby proportions. One of my less-expensive (and less fattening!) hobbies, I might add.

Our latest re-creation is
Materia is for Wusses. A.K.A. Wusses. A.K.A. A Monumental Self Indulgence.

It's got an edge to it now. No longer Blogger-looking. Yet somewhat techno, a little more organic, and a lot less girlie than most FanGirl sites. Make no mistake; I am a FanGirl. A little overripe maybe, although I prefer to think of myself as mature, if a FanGirl can be considered mature.

Yes, that is my
LogiTech controller. The PhotoGraphic is Karen's, who always comes up with something new. Usually a surprise and a delight. And if you look carefully, you might find a humorous touch here and there. We visit, correspond, and then we tweak: the journey is the destination.

At some point, I will move my sites to private domain. Because the spam has multiplied in a scary manner. Even some reverse type of spam, where Googling my stuff can get you strange spam results that mimic some of my entries. (I refuse to link to them.) Somebody really needs to get a life.

Not too sure about the costs and amount of work involved, versus the benefits. Blogger is often quite frustrating, and I am furious about their participation in, or active hosting of, spamming sites. Can anyone tell me about their experiences in cost/benefit analysis of changing domain? Keep in mind that these are all vanity sites; they make no money and are only a hobby.

Except for errands and work (the latter seems to be killing me), blogging is pretty much my contact with the outside world. My family occasionally reads my stuff and I love to hear from them. We learn a lot from each other. Same goes for my readers and especially those who've joined my ever-growing blogging family. Thanks for your interest and loving support.


BTW: the gaming spread includes, clockwise from the left:
Polar flavored seltzer water; Snickers bar; Cheez-It Grips; Black Licorice Jelly Bellys; Keebler Fudge Shoppe Mini Fudge Stripes

All my snacks are zero or low-calorie; all such good intentions are defeated by the sheer quantity consumed. Generally, though, once I am absorbed in the game, the eating stops long enough for blood sugar to catch up and cancel the appetite. It helps to tote up the calories beforehand. It helps even more to take long, arduous walks with a HuggaMutt.

Oh, yeah. Just a touch obsessed with the weight.


Blog on, Guys.
pb
Little Pond

2 comments:

Bonita said...

Wish I had some answers for you...spammers are hitting quite a few sites, even lurking on the hyperlinks to blogs. You're not alone.

Darlene said...

I agree, the spamming has reallly multiplied lately. (What you're referring to isn't on your sites per se, but in your e-mail, right?) It's been multiplying in our regular "family" inbox. Somehow seems to grab words that have been used in our computer itself (not necessarily in e-mails we've sent or received, but in documents themselves), and those words are used in text, in the subject line of the spam e-mails we're getting. And it seems like the more we have contact with the outside world, the more this happens.

Trouble is, there are companies out there that have advertised to give people "jobs" if they do this spamming. Wish I had saved the last one I found!

By now I can recognize these spams from the subject lines, so I don't open them; just put them on my "block sender" list, but new ones keep coming. Don't know how to stop them, but I don't think it's just because of our blogs. Hate to see you switch over, but at least you've gotta keep blogging. I don't want to lose you!