Category: blogs

After

Well the big festival / mess that is Christmas is over. Now we can all turn our gaze to the coming new year.

A special thank you to everyone who sent me cards this year. I easily got more cards than I sent. And while I don’t send my cards expecting one in return, it was so very sweet getting all the nice cards. Hell, I didn’t even know some of you had my mailing address. [1]Stalkers! lol  I probably say this every year but it really meant a lot to me. It was just me and Cooper this year and I was afraid I’d end feeling lonely. I didn’t at all. I’ve actually been in great spirits the whole time. Nonetheless, it was still very comforting having so many of my friends and readers reach out to me. You guys are awesome.

On  a side rant, several of my friends don’t get why I spend so much time on cards vs the actual holiday. Well, the holiday itself has become an over-hyped consumer event for one. I also don’t celebrate “christian” faith so I honestly don’t get much from the day itself. Doing my cards is more fun. It’s a big process for me. I often will buy 5-10 different packs of cards at a time. [2]Even though, I chose to use up all my leftovers this year. If you got the same one twice, apologies.  As I go thru each person on the list, I reflect on how I know the person. For my blog readers, I use this time to purge all my blog emails for the year. But before I do, I pull up my comment emails and sort by users so I can review all their feedback. It makes me feel closer to the person. Of course, the wax seals are a blast. It’s probably one of the few old traditions I embrace. There may come a day when we no longer send snail mail but until then, I’ll keep doing it.

As I move into year 9 of the blog, I’m so very grateful for all the advice, feedback, support, comments, and even differences of opinion you all have given me. This blog represents an important chronicle of my growth. It not only covers my life over the last 8 years but also my life in general and my growth into manhood. I honestly don’t think I’d be the person I am now w/o having done this blog. It has helped me (and others I’m told) in so many ways I’ve lost count.

Here’s to year 9 being a good one! My number chart says this is supposed to be a good year for me. I don’t put a lot of stock in it but here’s hoping it’s right! I could certainly use a good year. So from the bottom of my heart, I offer you all a huge thank you. Cooper and I wish you a very prosperous and happy year ahead!

~ Moby

References

References
↑1 Stalkers! lol
↑2 Even though, I chose to use up all my leftovers this year. If you got the same one twice, apologies.

Stats

So I had a post all done up about my blog stats since the move and it has mysteriously Emotes face surprisedisappeared. For the life of me I can’t find it now. I thought maybe I might have published it and forgotten but not there either. Ironically, since I originally pulled the stats they have changed a bit so I’m just gonna start over. :p

First, you all know I’ve been happier than a pig in slop with my new hosting provider. I’ve also been on the warpath lately commenting on social & news sites. This has brought some interesting visitors to my modest home on the web. Quite a few have been from rather “religious” sites and let me tell you, some of God’s gentle people have absolutely filthy mouths on them. Seriously, one guy, not realizing the filter was kicking in, posted 9 times hoping it would hit my blog. lol [1]Silly boy, all new comments get held for moderation  Another guy apparently thought I was black and kept using the N & F words together. lol  So as a reminder dear readers, you are welcome to post comments here, even if we disagree on subjects. That said, you may not make personal attacks on me, my blog, my readers, etc. Such behavior well get you banned lickety-split. [2]If you notice some of my recent posts have been on adult subjects. Ain’t I a stinker?

Anyway, in other news. There is a big upset on referrals. Kelly from Rambling Along has taken over the top spot of referrals to my blog. hehehe. Number 2 & 3 added together still falls short. I don’t know what he’s been doing but keep it up! lol And speaking of #2, a newcomer [3]well to me. Nik the Greek snuck in out of nowhere to claim the number 2 spot. Welcome Nik and thank your readers for me for bouncing over so often. Large Tony fell to third and brettcajun fell all the way to 6th place. Even jimbo beat him. Tsk tsk Brett, you’re slipping in your old age. hehehe

In related info, I decided to add my blogroll back to my blog. Considering the list is a fraction the size it used to be, it is easier to manage now. Plus, these guys are sending readers my way, I feel it’s only fair to return the favor. So if you visit my page directly, you should already see the blogroll.

References

References
↑1 Silly boy, all new comments get held for moderation
↑2 If you notice some of my recent posts have been on adult subjects. Ain’t I a stinker?
↑3 well to me.

Meet

I finally got a chance to meet jimbo the other day! He was one of the few remaining bloggers I had yet to meet. I can scratch another one off my list. hehehe

He was here on a trip to LA and we met up in SOMA for a drink. We met up at the Holy Cow bar, which I’d never set foot in till that moment. He looked just like his pictures and was exactly what I expected. I guess you can say he does a good job of conveying his essense thru his blog. We hung out, chatted about his most recent move, and how short brettcajun was compared to the rest of the world. We then danced while jimbo admired several of the woofy bearded guys in attendance. There was an awkward moment between myself and the who shall not be named. He promptly and smartly avoided me like the plague, as well he should.

Being a work night, I couldn’t stay out too late. I had to cut the evening short and head home to the Cooper. I left jimbo in the comfortable hands of several of his friends. He left the following day so we didn’t get much time to hang out, sadly. Regardless, it was great to finally meet him. I hope his new life in Portland gives him plenty of blog fodder.

Settling

Ok, I’m officially in my new hosting space. Apparently, I setup my account a bit wrong so they had to move everything around internally. I must say, while there were a few unexpected delays, the customer support team has been great. I opted for 1 month of managed shared hosting, which is a fancy way of saying I paid them to help me.  It comes with 24/7 tech support by phone, chat, email, and/or online.

I think I’m gonna be happier with them. I’m still discovering more and more how shitty 1and1 was in so many ways. I have direct access to chron jobs, apache, mysql [1]To be fair, 1and1 did give me mysql access, email filtering, IP blocking, etc. For basicaly a dollar more a month, I have so much more control over my domain and how it functions now. Some of these items are not for novices but it’s nice knowing I can use it, if and when I need it. I’ll definitely be using the chron jobs now.

In other news, I’m gonna attempt to import my old blog data into this one so I can do away with the duplicate setups. I figured since I’m moving all this stuff around, I might as well go for broke! lol I’m gonna try an XML import to avoid conflicting issues with API keys, blah blah blah. You shouldn’t notice anything significant. Well, if something goes horribly wrong you might see the domain go blank while I fix it again. lol

Another post coming today so sorry in advance for doube emails. I turned off subscribers so as to avoid bombarding everyone with emails.

References

References
↑1 To be fair, 1and1 did give me mysql access

Pings v2.0

As I settle into my new digs, you should begin to notice “likes” from facebook showing up in the comments section. Imagine my surprise when they suddenly started showing up! I’m discovering several of my plug-in errors were caused by not by poor coding skills but my old host, 1and1.com. [1]Needless to say, I do NOT recommend anyone EVER using them. I can’t tell you how happy I am to be on a new host. If I’d know it would be this easy, I would have dumped 1and1 ages ago.

If anyone is interested, I’m now on lunarpages. My only beef so far is their tech support is only avail 24 hours by email. They do tech support by phone 7a to 7p. Not the end of the world but in this day and age you’d think it would be ubiquitous. Anyway, I’m now going back over a few of my old plug-ins to see if the original errors have been fixed.

In related news, I have like 10 or so posts backed up. lol It’s funny when I was holding off on posting due to the move, I wanted to blog about everything. heeheee Instead of dumping them on you all at once, I’ve scheduled them out every other day. Some I’ve already had to edit for relevance.

References

References
↑1 Needless to say, I do NOT recommend anyone EVER using them.

Celebrity

I totally forgot to mention over the week of my vacation and Castro St Fair, I ran into uber-blogger joe.my.god. He was here with some friends for a week long trip. I was eating at Firewood in the hood one night and look up. There he was sitting down at the table next to me. It took a moment for him to recognize me, but he did. [1]I was flattered he remembered. lol  We met right after I moved to SF before his move to NY. It was mostly in passing but over the years we chatted a bit via blogs, email, etc. He reached out to me once during the whole Bent Collective fake blogger scandal that rocked the blogosphere. Anyway, I’ve been reading his blog since before he went more mainstream and still do to this day. He covers mostly gay-related news these days and has had some pretty impressive rewards for all his hard work.

He asked if I was blogging at the time which I found very amusing. lol We exchanged pleasantries for a bit before I left him alone. It was obvious he was trying to enjoy some down time so I didn’t feel the need to invade his space. It reminded me how far blogging has come since it first hit the scene. Blogging and I go together like beans and rice so it’s no surprise I took to it. It got me to thinking about a lot of my favorite blogs that have come and gone over the years. There are only a few left. Brettcajun is still around, ever the braggart and all around drama whore. Jimbo, who recently moved away from DC, is also still at it. Homer is still going strong. Large Tony is on his 3rd blog as well. DurbanBud stopped blogging a while a go but only just recently finally killed off his blog. Vic, having a kid to raise, killed off his. This boy Elroy dumped his shortly after moving to SF. The list goes on and on. Many succumbed to the allure of Facebook, others just got tired of it and stopped.

Anyway, it was nice to see Joe and I congratulated him on his long years of hard work. He is still one of my daily reads and I get a huge chunk of my daily gay-related news from his blog. Now if I could just get him to have his web guy fix my broken link on his blogroll?! lolol

References

References
↑1 I was flattered he remembered. lol

Comments

I have to give one particular spammer credit. His comments are often somewhat relevant to my blog. His email and link fields are the give away of course. But what makes me laugh is while the comments are often relevant, they are 99% of the time posted to the wrong post. I’m curious to know what program or bot he uses because the comments are almost comprehensible enough to be written by a live human…almost.

Sadly (for him), the filters are adequate enough to catch 100% of his many comments and they get moved to the trash bin w/o fail. Should you happen to be reading this, maybe if you tried spamming less, your comments would get thru.

Advice

I have a friend who has been in military service for over two decades. He and I met when I was still in my early 20’s and ended up becoming friends. While we don’t talk often, we do catch up from time to time. John (not his real name, duh) has always depended on me to give him honest advice, even if it wasn’t what he wanted to hear. It is and has been a strong tenant of our enduring friendship. He knows he can’t bullshit me but he also knows he can be perfectly frank w/o fear of judgment. He often confides in me with details he doesn’t really feel he can share with anyone else.

Being in the military creates a set of challenges for keeping ones work and sexuality somewhat separate. Even now that DADT has been repealed it is not as rosy as some would have us believe. So the other day, I’m busily calling him out on some of his more bizarre, and often conflicting, standards for meeting, hooking up, and/or dating guys when he tells me I should start a sex-advice blog. I laughed so hard I almost fell off the sofa. And he was serious! While I certainly flirted with the idea of giving advice to others via my WWMD [1]What Would Moby Do? posts, I have no plans to start such a blog. I was very tickled by his enthusiasm though and told him I’d also mention it here for all of you.

I think he is just a tad bit naive and gives me more credit than I’m due. Being cooped up the in military his whole life, his views are definitely skewed. lol Lord knows if I was so good I wouldn’t be piecing my own life back together after yet another failed LTR. But of course, it is often easier to be more objective about other people’s problems than our own. I’m certainly no stranger to giving others my opinion and/or advice. Why I could write a whole book on all the advice I’ve given brettcajun over the years. [2]Advice that he routinely ignores mind you.

I do try to follow a solid rule when it comes to giving (or accepting) advice. That is I am hearing said person’s version of events. Their version may not always be the whole truth or even the truth at all. So giving/accepting advice should always be under the proviso that it is based only on the situation as presented. If you are accepting advice based on a limited version of the whole picture, you are asking for more drama IMHO.

The flip side is realizing when we are close to a problem. We all have a tendency to justify our behaviors or actions. We seek advice that coincides with our own desires or wishes. The trick is knowing how to be objective while still maintaining a fair overall view of events. Or at the very least, acknowledge our own short-comings and accept that the advice presented may not be what we hoped. Not always an easy task.

So no, I won’t be starting a sex or even relationship advice blog. I’ll certainly keep blathering away here with my .02 and life experiences so feel free to tag along and glean whatever you can from my mistakes.

🙂

References

References
↑1 What Would Moby Do?
↑2 Advice that he routinely ignores mind you.

Comment

Interesting factoid. Ever since I commented on the other site a while back about the reparative therapy guy preaching how he wasn’t really cured of ‘the gay‘ but was turning his life over to [insert deity of choice] my junk mail has taken on a very ‘christian’ theme. lol Co-weenky-dink or God’s gentle people being a bit bitter? You decide.

Either way, all new comments get held till I can log in to review them. This catches about 99% of the wackos. Sometimes, I read thru them just to get a good laugh.

On a side rant, some of the s p @ m m e r s are getting creative. Some of the comments are relevant to the post but the outgoing links are to junk sites. lol Don’t they know I check ‘sheet‘ before it’s approved? lol