I’ve been blogging here on Blogger for the past 3 and a half years. Now it’s time to move on.

Why? Simply because I need more tools than Blogger provides.

Xeni Jardin, in an article on Wired News from October 27, 2005 comments that “When you invite the whole world to your party, inevitably someone pees in the beer.” And to a degree that is what has happened here at this blog.

One unwelcome reader has insisted on posting comments that disparage and attack another reader often enough that I had to turn off anonymous posting, which in my opinion has diminished what I hoped to achieve with this blog. It restricted the comments on my posts to those who had Blogger accounts, and even though there are a lot of people who have Blogger accounts, many of my readers don’t. And they aren’t willing to create a Blogger account just to post a comment. I don’t blame them.

What I needed was a blogging tool that permitted me to “moderate” comments before they become visible on the blog, so I went in search of a tool that gave me that ability. Blogger doesn’t.

I found WordPress. And now I have moved my blogging to a new location. If you are a loyal reader, then please update your bookmarks to that location. I don’t intend to delete this blog, because I may wish to refer back to it in the future, but this will be my last post here.

In the event that the folks at Blogger want some comments in a kind of exit interview, then I’d be happy to tell them that, for the most part, I have enjoyed the experience of using Blogger. It gave me the ability to get into blogging easily and to learn how to do it. I obviously enjoyed the exercise since I’ve been here for as long as I have. But, since moderation isn’t possible here, it is no longer acceptable to me to use this service. Also since the public API for blogger makes it so easy for splogs to abound and since the reputation of Blogger has suffered so much from that, I’d just prefer to have my blog on a different, more respected service. And yes, I implemented the captcha test to prevent the splogging of my blog, but still I can’t moderate comments of insensitive and cruel humans, who can circumvent the captcha system, and that is something I feel is necessary.

Thanks to those of you who have visited me here. You are welcome to migrate with me to the new location, if you wish, and if not, I appreciate your having been a part of the experience with me here.

So it’s now, Sayonara Blogger. Hello, WordPress.

No, that spelling of the title of this post is NOT a typo. Mememorandum is a what’s-hot-on-the-web-today type site that I visited several months ago when I first heard about it and dismissed because it was about politics, and while I’m privately politically active, I am not into the daily shouting matches about this or that hair-pulling in Washington.

This morning while scanning the blogosphere I came across a reference on Weblog Tools Collection to a Wired News article, Cliff Notes From the Blog World by Ryan Singel from October 21, 2005, in which he announced that Memeorandum now had an aggregation of TECH memes, not just political ones. This development thrills me. Now there’s a place to visit every day to find what everyone else in the tech world is talking about.

I suppose I should explain the obvious, that Mememorandum combines the words “meme” and “memorandum.” So this site collects the ideas that are spreading wildly and presents them in a relatively concise form with links to multiple instances of the idea so that you can explore it more completely, if you choose. Though having a mememorandum about political ideas didn’t enthrall me, having one about tech ideas DOES!

Check it out.

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Originally uploaded by CaptQuirk.

In September of this year, Bowen Baxter (my cousin), made a trip that he related this way.

My son, Chuck, who lives in Newnan, GA and is a builder has a rather wealthy client and friend who happens to own a majority interest in a fishing lodge on Kodiak Island, Alaska. He offered Chuck three 3 day reservations at the Lodge and Chuck took my son-in-law, Joe Landrum and I with him. It was a great trip. We flew into Anchorage where Chuck’s friend has a Condominium and an SUV. We were able to spend most of the day touring in and around Anchorage.

The next day we flew a small plane to Kodiak City where we boarded a still smaller plane for the flight to our destination, Old Harbor, AK where the Lodge is located. The only access to Old Harbor is by small plane or a one-and-a half hour boat trip. Old Harbor has a small gravel air strip, six miles of unpaved roads and a population of approximately 260 people, many of which are Alutiq Indians.

The fishing was great and the scenery magnificent. I was so taken with the scenery that I took 160 snapshots knowing that for me this was a once in my lifetime experience.

When I asked for more detail, he sent along this information from the Kodiak Sportsman’s Lodge promotional sheet.

Kodiak Sportsman’s Lodge in Old Harbor, Alaska is approximately 60 miles south of Kodiak City nestled on the protected shores of Kodiak Island on the Sitkalidak Straits. It is within the boundaries of the Kodiak National wildlife refuge and the Kodiak National Maritime refuge. Kodiak’s tallest mountains provide a stunning backdrop to the village of Old Harbor, a small native village of 200 people. The native village has a fascinating history of Aluttiiq, Russian and Scandinavian influences. Sitkalidak Island sits across the strait from the Lodge and we fish and we fish within the strait. The north strait has 10 miles of fishing and the south strait has 12 miles of fishing. We never have to run into open seas and we rarely run more than 20 minutes before we drop lines. This allows us to fish in a comfortable setting.

David Steele, a long-time friend and former client (from my consulting days), has decided to take the plunge and start a blog. He’s at the very beginning of his efforts, but I like the name he has conceived of for himself — the “heartland storyteller.” Here’s the link to his blog, spelled out in case you want to make note of it, http://heartlandstoryteller.blogspot.com/.

Good luck, Dave. I’m looking forward to your first post and all the ones that follow. Have fun.

Last night I received an email from Patricia Pomerleau who is the CEO of CEOExpress, my home page on the web. For a long time this site has permitted us users to create a page of links that we, and we only, can see so that we don’t have to be at our own computer to access frequently used web sites from the list of bookmarks (or favorites) that are stored in our browsers. Just logging into our home page displays these so-called personal links, and I have found this feature to be quite useful through the years. Patricia’s email was sent to announce they are now providing the ability to share these personal links selectively with others.

I spent the morning setting this up so that I could share links with my friends. However, when I sent out the first message inviting a slew of my friends to see the links, I unfortunately sent the wrong link. My thanks to Bowen Baxter for informing me of this. So I sent out a second email, noting the error, but again I sent the wrong link. Finally, I think I got it right with the third version.

This entry is to extend my apology to those of you who received that series of three emails. I didn’t mean to spam you; it just took me three tries to get it right.

If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error. — John Kenneth Galbraith

When you write on the Internet, you expect that some people, usually only a few, will read what you write. Some may even be so loyal to your postings that they’ll come back time and again. However, one of the surprises for me is that occasionally someone I don’t even know will leave a comment or write to say they found a post of mine interesting, and equally surprising (though it shouldn’t be) is that sometimes an old friend will “find” you.

Last night I was pleased to receive an email from Robert McMillan with whom I worked at ClientLogic. Robert had found my blog while googling randomly. He pointed me to his own blog, which is located here. He confessed to having allowed a bit of time to pass since his last entry at his blog, and I had to acknowledge that it had been a while since I had posted an entry at mine. His message gave me something to comment on, so I appreciate the nudge that got me back into posting. Thanks, Robert.