The JackB

"When you're in jail, a good friend will be trying to bail you out. A best friend will be in the cell next to you saying, 'Damn, that was fun'." Groucho Marx

Archives for May 2012

Some Posts Make You Cry

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I know the words to a tale that will break your heart and make your eyes water. This is not link bait nor a clever attempt to gain your attention or capture your heart. This is merely me exposing part of the shadow that lies across my heart. This is just me trying to make sense of something that won’t ever make sense. There is no rhyme or reason to this.

And so I offer you a chance to walk with me through fields of fire and under a night sky that is painted with stars and a moon that looks close enough to touch. Walk with me and listen to a man mumble and perhaps together we shall find something more than that.

Ten Songs

  1. America- Simon & Garfunkel
  2. Bookends- Simon & Garfunkel
  3. The Boxer- Simon & Garfunkel
  4. Carry That Weight- The Beatles
  5. The End- The Beatles
  6. Golden Slumbers- The Beatles
  7. Into The Mystic- Van Morris0n
  8. Into The Ocean- Blue October
  9. Summertime- Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong
  10. Time- Pink Floyd
  11. Happy- Bruce Springsteen

Yes, I know that there are actually eleven songs on that list but I am trying to catch smoke with my bare hands so I ask that you indulge me. I ask that you just keep walking and I shall tell you that those eleven songs are part of a song list that plays when I go to sleep.

Some people might wonder if I did that intentionally. They might ask if I tried to create Double Chai but I did not. There isn’t any Gematria involved in that list, at least not intentionally.

However I intentionally did not include any links to the musical videos or to the definition of Gematria. I have been dealing with a broken link issue and videos are a big part of that problem.

The Happy Man

Some people might argue that a happy man wouldn’t have to say that he is happy. I might have said that too, but I know better. I know better because life is complex. I am very happy but my heart is heavy because it sees and feels what is to come and what has been.

These changes have been rough. They have been brutal and my children have had to deal with more than I would like. They have faced some challenges that break my heart because I have seen how hard it is for them. I have seen how rough some things can be and that hurts me in ways that nothing else can.

When I say I have a high threshold for pain it is not bravado or arrogance. It is truth. Whether that needs to be said or shared is a different discussion. What is relevant to this discussion is this:

Every time my children cry it hurts me. But I look at the situations and circumstances and ask if this is something that is good or bad. Every time it happens I try to identify the root cause and that helps me to determine how to respond.

If they have a scraped knee I feel badly because they are hurt but I don’t think much of it because they will recover and do so quickly. Other situations generate similar/different responses.

But there are some that strike me in the soft places where I have no armor and it burns. It hurts because those are moments where I feel like I have failed them. My job description covers a million different things but at the top it says “bodyguard and defender.”

The president has The Secret Service and the children have dad. They get paid to take the bullet but I don’t have to get paid. It is not a question or a thought. It simply is.

Transitions and Changes

Sometimes transitions and changes make it difficult to maintain the kind of vision you want. You lose perspective and things become cloudy, muddled and mirky. We are in motion now and it is a bit more challenging to see through the fog. These harder moments that we are all dealing with might not be very significant. They might be simple moments in time that will pass quickly but I am not completely sure.

I try hard not to react. I don’t wear a sweater just because you are cold. Even though it hurts when they cry I don’t just jump because part of my helping them is teaching them how to deal with adversity. Call that dad blogging 101.

The real challenge is trying to find that balance.

Music and Song

If I found the genie in the bottle I would use two wishes in the following manner:

1) I wish for the ability to have kind of singing voice that stops people in their tracks. Let me be blessed with a voice that has power and range. Give me a voice that makes you stop and listen, that lets you see what the singer is singing about.

2) I wish for the ability to write the song of my heart and show it to you. Let me write songs that make you feel, laugh, love and listen. Let me write so well you can’t help but be moved.

More Adventures to come.

If it pleases you keep reading and I promise there will be much more. Good night from Los Angeles.

The Weekly Review- What You Missed

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The plan was to prepare the perfect post for you to read but as they say “People plan and G-d laughs.”

Consequently you are not reading the perfect post but a quick review of some recent posts that you might have missed

And just for fun here are some of the more popular keywords that lead to my blog:

  • i wrote this for you
  • best cover letter ever
  • hitler’s intestinal gas
  • teaching kids to deal with mean girls
  • the most important things in life
  • there are no coincidences
  • how to make money with amazon using twitter
  • things to do on a daddy daughter day
  • letters from fathers on mother’s day
  • are john and bob denver related

And courtesy of the stat services a sample of popular posts for you to read:

You should expect to see some significant movement on Words Left Unwritten this week. I hope to be able to jump on that tonight. You can also expect to hear more news on a variety of things of interest. Stay tuned for the details.

Happy Mother’s Day to all the mothers out there. See you in a few hours.

Does Your Blog Use Protection?

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Does Your Blog Use Protection? What will you do if the bad guys decide to take your blog down? What will you do if some other technical mishap causes your blog to crash or otherwise be unavailable for use?

It is something that I have thought about quite a bit and not because I use this blog for business. The reality is that while I can say that I have made money through blogging and that this blog has led to multiple business opportunities it is not my primary source of income.

Truth is that if you look at the amount of  time I spend here versus what I have earned my hourly rate would make indentured servants look wealthy. It is not a secret to say that I hope to change that. It is not a secret to say that I hope that one day this will be my primary source of income or if not that, a significant part of it.

However that is not the case now and I am ok with that. I am good with it because I love writing and I love blogging. My daughter has a passion for fashion. Me, well I have a passion for blogging.

But that is also part of the reason why I have taken steps to protect my blog. I have invested too much time here to just hope that nothing happens.

Here Is What I Have Done

I signed up for Vaultpress and for Sucuri Security. As an FYI the link to Sucuri Security is an affiliate link, Vaultpress is not but if they offered a program I would have participated. Got to pay for both programs and there is no harm in trying to find ways to help cover costs.

Yep, I am using paid services to protect my blog. So let me give you some information about both of them so you know what I am doing.

Vaultpress Basic Plan

“VaultPress provides realtime, continuous backup and synchronization of every post, comment, media file, revision and dash­board setting across at least two separate cloud services in addition to the Automattic grid, ensuring no loss of content.

How? Using WordPress hooks to receive alerts when information changes on your site, VaultPress immediately syncs all of your changes with our servers. The net result? 11 copies of your data, backed up continuously and in realtime.”

Sucuri Security

It took about 20 minutes to sign up and set up both systems. I am not naive enough to believe that my blog is now invulnerable because let’s face it even Superman had to worry about Kryptonite. If I have to continue with my inner geekiness I’d say that it is now a lot more like Wolverine.

Not bullet proof but pretty tough to kill and endowed with a very healthy constitution and the ability to heal quickly.

Most importantly I don’t feel like I am running naked down the street any more. There is no guarantee that you will be hacked or that you will have significant problems. In eight years of blogging I had relatively few but I am a big believer in having good insurance coverage and I am glad that I am not taking any chances any longer.

If you aren’t covered now and are interested in getting help I’d love it if you would use my affiliate link to do so.
Protect your sites with Sucuri!

Be well my friends. It is well past midnight and this old man needs to get some sleep. Good night from Los Angeles.

What Is The Value of A Comment?

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I have a love/hate relationship with comments. Many bloggers use them as a sort of currency or social proof of the success of their blogs, but I don’t.

That is because I find that to be too simplistic. You can look at a post with a 100 comments and find that that majority of them were made by just a couple of people and that very few of them advanced the conversation.

Is that really a sign of success. Do people really want 29 different versions of “great post” added to the 33 different ways that others said “thank you for writing this.”

I don’t see that as being indicative of anything of import which is why I finished those sentences with a period and not a question mark. For good measure it is worth noting that I wonder about blogs where the comments are filled with nothing but praise for the blogger. That bothers me too.

My preference is to see a comment section that shows that the community is composed of people who think and are thoughtful. I like to see commenters challenge the writer and other commenters.

That doesn’t mean that I am looking for flame wars or insults. Nor does it mean that every post has to have Pulitzer Prize winning comments either.

Why I Changed

Long time readers will tell you that I blog first for me and then for you. I write because I love writing. This is a passion and it fills a purpose. I would write if no one commented but I would be lying if I said that I didn’t want or like comments.

That is because I have learned from commenters. I have made friends. I have had my mind opened. I love that.

It is part of why I have never been afraid to change commenting systems. I am always looking for one that will help foster community and build a commenting section that is filled with people I can learn from.

I changed back to Livefyre because I think that it will help facilitate that and I grew tired of having to work so hard to moderate the crappy comments that I had been getting innundated with.

I am not referring to people who wrote “great post” because I don’t think that it is fair or reasonable to say that it is always wrong or inappropriate to say that. Sometimes that works. Sometimes you want to let the writer know that you enjoyed the post and that works.

The comments I refer to are from individuals who use multiple email addresses and populate recent posts and the archives with a bunch of comments that say nothing and are there strictly for link juice.

That doesn’t fly with me. It is “spam lite.”

Technical Issues

But I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that I am mildly frustrated because Livefyre hasn’t imported all of my old comments yet. There are posts that have 50 comments on them but you can’t see them right now because of technical issues.

Their support is working on it but they are also prepping for a big roll out so I haven’t seen much action. Granted it is a free service so I cannot expect them to just drop everything for me, but I hope that it is fixed soon because the blog looks a little bit naked.

What do you think about comments? What do you think about Livefyre? I would love to hear your thoughts.

Livefyre Returns To The Blog

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“Some men see things as they are and say ‘why’? Others dream things that never were and say ‘why not’?”
~ George Bernard Shaw

The 17 long time readers know that I have spent a chunk of time testing out different commenting systems. At one time or another I have used Blogger, Haloscan, Intense Debate, DISQUS, the WP native system, CommentLuv and Livefyre.

When I first moved from Blogger to WP I spent a chunk of time using DISQUS and was relatively happy with it, but there were a few issues and I chose to move to Livefyre.

My initial go around with LF was good but I received a regular flow of complaints from several readers about it. Technical issues with the system made it impossible to comment so I moved over to using CommentLuv with the WordPress native commenting system.

That worked very well and overall I was quite happy with it. However recently I have been getting hammered with comments that straddle the line between spam and useful and it is creating an enormous amount of work.

These people aren’t commenting because they want to be part of our community or because they are trying to advance the conversation and I am tired of it. LiveFyre is about to roll out a number of changes that sound very exciting and I think the time is right to turn it back on.

I want to see if that helps fix the problem. I also like the fluid manner in which LF encourages community building within a comment section so I am ready to see if that will work here.

And that is why I turned it back on. In the interim your old comments should be importing themselves into the system and business is going on as usual here. We’ll take another swing at bat and see how it plays out.

As always if you have questions, comments or concerns please feel free to leave them in the comments or to contact me.

Spit Or Swallow Meets High Performance Underwear

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“Once that goes in your mouth you have two choices, spit or swallow. Stop screwing around and get it over with.”

Dark brown eyes look up at me, questioning why there is an edge in my voice.

“Don’t make me do this. I already told you that if you don’t like it you shouldn’t do it, but you didn’t listen.”

The words above my friends are not dialogue that I made up for one of my stories. It is not my shot at trying to write my own version of Fifty Shades of Grey either. I really said those words  but probably not in the context you are thinking of.

That is because I seem to be channeling my father again. It is a slightly different version from the other Spit and Swallow moment I blogged about, but similar. This time I am talking to the dog.

No one else is home so the two of us are alone and the foul beastie has managed to secure a piece of the turkey that is supposed to be part of the sandwich I am making for lunch. Most of the time he would just snap it up, but not this time.

Don’t know why, but he seems to be playing with it and I just know that if I don’t put an end to this I am going to discover that turkey in my bed or in some other unexpected place. And I know that if that is how it goes down I won’t be happy.

“Be silly. Be honest. Be kind.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson

I am working hard to be all of those things…consistently. I am good at being silly, perhaps even great. Hell if there were a doctorate in silliness I would probably have it and a post doc too.

Honesty isn’t particularly hard for me either, but the thing is that I have become too honest. I find myself telling people what I think with a lack of diplomacy and I don’t particularly like that. I don’t like it when people say that they are telling it like it is because that really means that they are telling you what they see and that doesn’t always mean everyone sees it that way.

So I am working on being a kinder man. I don’t think that I am mean and I am willing to bet those who know me won’t say that I am…most of the time. To quote the boss there is darkness on the edge of town and sometimes I show people a side they don’t deserve to see.

This is part of why I blog. I like introspection. I like looking at all sides of myself. I like trying to figure out what drives me. The raw honesty in some of these posts is sometimes hard for me to look at. I much prefer the clown. I like being insouciant.

It is fun.

Walk through the mall with me and I can promise you that I will find all sorts of interesting ways to entertain you and I. But we’ll save those stories for now.

“Don’t be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson

That’s one of my favorite quotes. I try to live that way. It is part of why I changed how I blog. It is part of why I got into other social media platforms and why I made a point to meet some other bloggers in person.

It is also part of how I got a free pair of High Performance Men’s Underwear. Yep, you read that correctly. Thanks to my Klout I received a free pair of these bad boys. I really like them but I wouldn’t ever buy a pair on my own.

Not for the current price. Hell for that much I’d expect to get something else with it, but we won’t talk about it here. This is a family blog.

Speaking of blogs this joint continues to evolve. It continues to grow. That isn’t just because I Write What I Know or talk about dying a hero. It is because I am following my passion and some of you can relate to that.

I am taking chances, like the newsletter I am starting. Have you signed up for it yet? You can do so on the right side of the page, not quite at the top. My life isn’t what I want it to be right now so I am working on changing it. That is all I can do.

Speaking of changes, someone found my blog by using these key words

the jack b blog dad bloggers hate

Got to tell you that I haven’t a clue how that came about. I am beginning to wonder if I should change my tagline to riff off of that. Might be fun to be a villain for a while. Or maybe I should just remind myself that Mr. Emerson has something to say about this too.

“To be great is to be misunderstood.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson

Bring on the hate, bring on the happiness, bring on the love- just bring it. And now if you’ll excuse me I have to go back to working on my plan to take over the world. Cue evil laughter.