Category Archives: BLog Technicalities

Information about the creation and maintenance of this site.

A Perfect Storm

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Why I’ve been neglecting this blog.

I don’t have much time to write this — and that’s the reason I haven’t been writing more regularly. I like to compose at least 5 blog posts a week, yet this is only my third in just over a week. The last post — a video — doesn’t really count, since I didn’t write anything.

So why the neglect? As I mentioned above: time.

Every once in a while, life throws a perfect storm at us. You know what I mean — it’s a period of time when everything seems to go crazy at once.

In my case, it was the following, which have all occurred since July 29:

  • Completion of the annual revision of one of my books (ongoing throughout this period).
  • Reposition my helicopter from Quincy, WA to Seattle, WA.
  • Reposition my camper from Quincy, WA to Page, AZ.
  • Brief 3-day catchup period at home in Wickenburg, AZ.
  • Distribute the animals among multiple boarding facilities.
  • Trip to Seattle, WA.
  • Reposition helicopter from Seattle, WA to Page, AZ.
  • Set up housekeeping in my camper in Page, AZ.
  • Entertain an overnight guest in a very tiny camper.
  • Deal with FAA, airport manager, and local tour operators in Page regarding tour, photo flight, and charter work in Page, AZ (ongoing).
  • Provide moral support for my sister, who has been laid off from her banking job.
  • Three photo flights from Page to Monument Valley.
  • Start of new book with August deadline.
  • Three trips to medical facilities in an attempt to diagnose some severe back pain.

It’s this last thing that’s really gummed up the works. I did something to my back while I was home and the pain became unbearable after the commercial flight to Seattle the next day. I was in an urgent care clinic there where I got prescriptions for drugs I couldn’t take because I had to fly. The pain has varied from annoying but bearable to absolutely crippling every day since then, with one day so bad I was in the hospital emergency room. It hurt to sit and since I need to sit to write, I couldn’t work on the new book — let alone write blog entries.

Miraz hit the nail on the head in her Twitter comment to me, when she said, “Pain is so time consuming and draining.” Wow. I’d never really thought of it like that — probably because I’ve never been in such severe pain for so long.

So now I’m behind in just about everything, racing against the clock to finish a book that’s due tomorrow. (It ain’t gonna happen.) The pain is under control — yesterday was the first day that it was tolerable throughout the day — and physical therapy starts on Monday.

Please bear with me. I do have lots to write about. When I get this book off my plate and catch up on my FAA stuff, I’ll be back with some interesting (I hope) new content here.

Another Comment Policy

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And you thought mine was strict.

Reader comments are often what can make a blog far more interesting than it would be without comments. In fact, the commenting feature of blog software can create a community at a blog when regular readers and commenters add their two cents to blog posts.

Unfortunately, not everyone has something of value to add to a conversation. And that doesn’t stop them from adding it.

Comments Here

I review every single comment posted to this blog, so I know the full range of comment quality. Tossing aside the hundreds of daily automated spam comments caught by my spam protection software and the obvious attempts of human readers to redirect my blog’s readers to their sites, the “real” comments can be informative, helpful, interesting, funny, or thoughtful. But they can also be sarcastic, nasty, rude, or offensive.

June 30, 2014 Update
I’ve finally gotten around to writing up the site comment policy on a regular page (rather than post) on this site. You can find it here: Comment Policy.

I state my comment policy in various places throughout this site, including here. Although I occasionally do have to delete a comment that’s overly offensive or one that’s sure to generate a nasty argument, in general, this site has a great group of regular readers and commenters that don’t need to be watched over as if they’re poorly behaved children.

As an example of how much commenting can contribute to a blog, check out one of my posts, “The Helicopter Job Market,” which has accumulated almost 50 comments in just over a year. Many of these comments offer helpful insight to helicopter pilots and wannabes. They’ve created a conversation that just keeps growing — indeed, five comments have been added to that post in just the past week.

Anyway, I welcome comments and won’t prevent one from appearing unless it’s either offensive or totally self-promotional. Get a conversation going. I really enjoy it. And reader comments are often what trigger me to write new blog posts.

A Comment Policy From Down Under

Today, while in search of both images from the Iran missile photo controversy, I stumbled upon an article on the Herald Sun Web site. It showed both photos and provided some commentary about the situation. It mentioned that Iran was firing more test missiles today. The thought that if they kept firing missiles for tests they might run out came to my mind. Since the article had a comment field, I decided to voice that unlikely but amusing thought, mostly to lighten things up.

I posted the comment and submitted it. On the confirmation page, the following comment policy appeared:

Please note that we are not able to publish all the comments that we receive, and that we may edit some comments to ensure their suitability for publishing.

Feedback will be rejected if it does not add to a debate, or is a purely personal attack, or is offensive, repetitious, illegal or meaningless, or contains clear errors of fact.

Although we try to run feedback just as it is received, we reserve the right to edit or delete any and all material.

What I like about this comment policy is how clear it is. It’s warning commenters, almost up front, that what they submit may not appear at all or as it was submitted. I like the second sentence/paragraph. (Oddly enough, the commenter before me said “I Still dont Belive USA went to the Moon” and I’m wondering how that got through the moderation process, being that it’s pretty much meaningless, contains clear errors of fact, and does not add to the debate, but I guess that’s just my opinion.) I find the third sentence/paragraph bothersome, mostly because I don’t believe in editing someone’s comment. If it needs editing, it probably shouldn’t appear at all.

Up for Commenting

Anyway, I’m just tossing this out there, mostly to see what visitors here think about it.

Commenting is one of the good and bad things about blogging. On this site, I really enjoy most of the non-spam comments we receive. As long as you keep commenting, I’ll keep writing.

Quick Note to Blog Readers

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I may be off the grid for a few days.

Just want to let readers know that while I’m traveling for the next five or so days, I might not be able to check the site regularly. Since all comments must go through moderation, posted comments may not appear for a few days. Be patient; I will eventually get around to it.

I look forward to posting updates about my trip and reading your comments.

A Few Random Things

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Or why I’m not blogging as regularly as I should.

I’m deep into preparations for my summer-long trip to Washington State and Page, AZ. And it seems that every other week, I’m traveling. And I have two video training courses to record for clients. And I caught a bit of a bug that had me out of action for about a day and a half.

W KeyAnd the W key on my MacBook Pro is not being very responsive.

I’ve also been reading, and when I read, I have less time to write.

Those are just some of the excuses I can offer as to why I’m blogging once or twice a week rather than once or twice a day.

But I’m working on a few blog posts now and hope to release them as they’re finished. Getting started is always the hardest part, so I thought I’d start a few of them at once and let them sit in ecto until I’m ready to finish and publish them.

Let’s see how I do.

On Small-Minded, Nasty People

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And why I have no use for them.

This morning, I reviewed an interesting comment left in this blog’s Guest Book. It had been held for moderation, which means I have to review and approve it before it appears online.

Nasty for No Reason

The comment was one of the nastiest I’ve ever read. The person who decided to try to ruin my day told me that this site was like a garage that needed clearing out — or something like that; I didn’t preserve his words for posterity. He told me I should delete anything over six months old. He said he’d come to find information about my books but that he wasn’t willing to use the “convoluted” (his word) methods needed to find content here. He finished up by saying he was an editor — imagine that! — and that he now has no interest in any of my books.

Whew!

He evidently forgot to mention the problem with his eyesight that prevented him from seeing links clearly marked “Books” and “Articles” in the NavBar at the top of the page. He also appeared to miss the note in the description of this site — which appears “above the fold” on the Home page — that clearly said support for my books had been moved to Maria’s Guides. And that Search feature at the top of the site navigation column — I suppose the label “Search This Site” isn’t clear enough. And I guess I couldn’t expect him to scroll down on any page of the site to see the list of books supported with the links to content related to those books.

Convoluted? The only way I could make this site easier to navigate is to take control of his computer while he’s online here and guide his mouse to the link he needs.

He probably spent more time wording and editing his comment than he did looking around the site for the content he evidently wasn’t so interested in in the first place.

I deleted his comment, as I do with any other nasty comment that serves no purpose other than to rudely criticize me or someone else. I think that if he had presented his opinions more courteously, I would have given them some real consideration. But since his comment was obviously posted as a personal attack on me, I threw it away with the rest of the crap I encounter online.

On Bottom Dwellers

But it reminded me that there’s a lot of bottom-dwellers out there, looking to bring other people down to their level. The Internet is full of them and the worst thing you can give any of them is a keyboard and a form to fill in with their rude and destructive comments. I know bloggers who have turned off the commenting feature on their blogs because of the amount of crap like this that they get. Other bloggers let it run rampant in their comments, letting it feed the other bottom dwellers lurking out there until there’s nothing mature or civil about their blogs. As we’ve seen in the past, that can quickly get out of hand.

What these bottom-dwellers clearly do not understand is that my blog is mine. I decide on the design, I decide on the content, I decide on how long to keep blog posts, I even decide whether a comment is appropriate on a post. If he doesn’t like my site, he can go somewhere else — there’s enough content out there for everyone. As my mother would say, “Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.”