Back from Vacation

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Well, not really vacation…more like a bunch of visits.

If you’re wondering why this blog has been so quiet lately, it’s because I was away on what I thought might be a vacation. It turned out to be a bunch of visits to friends and family in Florida, which is actually a very different thing.

I brought my laptop with me on the trip, but none of the places I stayed had a wireless Internet connection for me. I wasn’t interested in dialing up and I didn’t have an Ethernet cable with me (almost brought one, though) to connect to a friend’s DSL router. In fact, the first time I got on the ‘Net was while waiting for our delayed plane out of Jacksonville, FL. They have free wireless Internet there — a great thing that every major airport should have — and I sucked down a week’s worth of e-mail before climbing on board the plane.

Marco Island BeachOur trip to Florida started in Fort Myers. We can’t fly direct from Phoenix to that airport so we flew Continental and stopped over in Houston. We arrived late at night, rented a car (can you believe they gave me a PT Cruiser?), and drove to our first host’s house on Marco Island, about 60 miles south. Will is Mike’s former partner (now retired) and Annette is his wife, who was also the bookkeeper for the company. He sold the company a few years back and the buyer bought out Mike’s share. Will and Annette bought a home on Marco Island, right on one of the many canals there. We got to stay in one of their guest rooms.

Stan's Idle House RestaurantWe wound up staying there for four nights, which I think is the most number of nights we’d ever stayed at someone’s house. It was very comfortable. Each day, we’d do something different — breakfast at the country club followed by a walk on the beach and a visit to Stan’s Idle Hour Restaurant, a boat ride to a lunch spot, a walk around the Naples historic and shopping areas (nearly indistinguishable, although several blocks apart). I took photos, but not many.

On Wednesday, we headed out early for a long drive to my Mom’s house in the St. Augustine area. Imagine Florida — a long peninsula of land. Marco Island is near the bottom, on the west side. St. Augustine is on the top, on the east side. I don’t know how many miles we covered, but it was a long drive.

Along the way, we stopped at my Dad’s house. He lives in Ft. Pierce, which is a little less than halfway up the peninsula, on the east side. About halfway to my Mom’s place. We had a short visit with him and his wife that included lunch out at a marina and homemade cream puffs for dessert. They have four cats and it’s a lucky thing that we went out for lunch. Mike is allergic to cats and he had some breathing trouble for a while after we left.

We hit traffic on I-95 just 20 miles short of my Mom’s place, but managed to get there just after 7 PM. A leg of lamb dinner awaited us.

We camped out in the guest bedroom my Mom had designed into the house for my grandmother. We call it Grandma’s room. It’s not a big room, but it’s at the end of a private hallway with its own bathroom and has its own private entrance to the pool area. Although my grandmother stayed there a few times, she never moved in. She’s gone now and her room is the most coveted of the guest rooms.

Flagler CollegeOn Thanksgiving morning, Mike and I took a walk around St. Augustine, which I believe is the oldest city in the U.S. Lots of great architecture. This photo shows Flagler College.

Thanksgiving was nice at my Mom’s house. She had another couple over to join us, so there was just six of us. And a ton of food. Turkey, stuffing (you might call it dressing), mashed potatoes, yams, mushrooms, artichoke, turnips, broccoli (from her garden, picked moments before cooking), peas and carrots, cranberries, gravy, and rolls. For desert, there were pies and bread pudding. When her friends left at around 7 PM, another few friends arrived. Dessert lasted about 2 hours, which is how dessert should last in a perfect world.

On Friday, we packed up and went to Orlando. I’d bought my Mom and Stepdad tickets to see Cirque du Soleil at Downtown Disney. Since the show was at 9 PM, I also got a pair of hotel rooms at the nearby Buena Vista Palace. We had an excellent (and terribly expensive!) dinner at Wolfgang Puck’s before the show. The show was great. This is the fifth Cirque du Soleil show I’ve seen and I’ve never been disappointed. This was the first for my parents, and they were delighted.

Blue Spring State ParkThe next day was my Stepdad’s 70th birthday. We’d done all our celebrating the night before, so there wasn’t anything special planned. On our way back from Orlando to St. Augustine, we stopped at Blue Spring State Park to see the manatees that hang out there. Although we could clearly see them lounging in the water, we didn’t get any close views (or photos). But we did have a nice walk in the jungle-like forest around the spring.

Our return flight to Phoenix (by way of Houston) was from Jacksonville. We got home just after sunset.

And that’s my week, in a nutshell.

Vancouver Waterfront

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The view from just outside my hotel.

In August 2006, I went to Vancouver, BC, Canada to record a training video about Microsoft Word for macProVideo. The trip, which was paid for by the folks at macProVideo, included five nights at the Westin Bay Shore, right on the waterfront. Every evening, after work, I’d put on my walking shoes or rent a bike and explore the waterfront, taking photos and enjoying the scenery.

Vancouver WaterfrontThis photo shows the view from my hotel room window, taken from ground level. What you’re seeing is a marina, with some covered slips, on a peninsula of land on the northwest end of the city. There’s a wonderful walking/biking/skating trail that goes around the peninsula, and I had the pleasure of biking its length one evening.

I grew up on the east coast and my family always had a small boat, like some of the smaller ones in this photo. This reminded me of those days on the water. I enjoyed the smell of the salt air and call of the seagulls. It was a pleasant week.

And yes, I did get the job done.

On Blogging

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Maria Speaks Episode 32: On Blogging – Looking back on three years as a blogger.

This episode covers my thoughts on blogging: why I blog, my personal history as a blogger, and the future of blogging as I see it. The transcript for this episode can be found on my Web site, www.aneclecticmind.com.

And sorry about the nasal sound of my voice. I’m just getting over a cold.

Transcript:

Last month, I celebrated my third anniversary as a blogger. Well, I didn’t really celebrate anything because I really didn’t think about it then. But I realized today that it had been more than three years since my first blog entry. A little research found that entry online in my current blog: “iBlog.”

Why I Blog

I am a writer. I’ve been a writer since I was 13 or so, in the days when I worked on stories and a novel while sitting at the desk in the room I shared with my sister. I’ve probably written billions of words by now.

The way I see it, there are two kinds of writers. Well, three:

  • The first is the person who writes because of that need to write. The person who, like me, started at a young age and got hooked on it. But for whatever reason, they did not pursue a career in writing.
  • The second is the person who doesn’t have that need to write but writes for a living. Copywriters, business people who spend much of their time writing reports, tech writers — those might be some examples.
  • The third is the person who needs to write and writes for a living.

Through hard work, an understanding of the writing business, and a good dose of luck, I’ve managed to join that third group of writers: I write because I need to write and I’m fortunate enough to get paid for it.

Writing is like an addiction for the people who need to write. They can’t go more than a day or two without writing something. And that’s where blogging comes in. It’s the perfect outlet for writing whatever you want, whether it’s a description of how you spent your weekend (Days in My Life), your view on current politics (Deep Thoughts), a narrative about your hobbies (Flying for Pleasure, Writing for Pleasure), or a discussion of your work (Flying for Hire, Writing for a Living).

And that’s why I’m a blogger. It gives me the opportunity to vent (so to speak) the words and thoughts that are in my mind.

My History as a Blogger

Back in October 2003, I got started as a blogger using a blogging client called iBlog. It was an interesting tool that was very easy to use and didn’t require a bit of HTML or programming knowledge. I’d create blog entries on my computer, using a WYSIWYG format. When I was ready to publish, the software would create all the pages and links and upload them to a Web server. They were static pages — that means they existed in plain old HTML on the server until I replaced them with new pages.

I liked the software, but as technology moved forward, I ran into its limitations. The author of the program — it’s shareware — was busy with work and couldn’t spend the time needed to rework his creation and add features. I decided that it was time to find another solution.

I played with Blogger and actually built two podcasts that used it for an engine. (I even wrote an eBook about it.) But Blogger had a lot of limitations, too. I wanted something I could get under the hood to change, something I could tweak forever, fine-tuning the appearance and functionality all the time.

The answer was WordPress. I decided to install it on a Mac OS X server in my office. It was a chore and a real learning experience. But I always get a certain feeling of satisfaction when I work my way through a tough task and succeed.

The first big challenge (after getting WordPress up and running on the server) was to import my 300+ iBlog entries to my new WordPress site. That required exporting all entries as an RSS feed, modifying the entries to be WordPress compatible, and importing them into the new blog. I did this over time, in batches. I still have about 50 entries to import, but they include photos and require a lot of work. Frankly, I’ve been too lazy to do it.

Once the content was online, I reworked the blog to merge it with my personal site and my book support site. That posed some organizational challenges: to keep my work separate from my blog but both of them in the same place. I’ve gotten complements on the site’s organization from several people, so I think I may have done a good job.

Now, with the work mostly done — other than the tweaking, which I do occasionally to fine-tune the site — I’m free to write. I never stopped, of course. The site has been building itself slowly but surely, with 5 to 20 new entries a week, depending on my schedule. These days I’ve been pretty busy, so I’m not writing as much. But I still try to get a post in each morning, as I sit drinking my coffee, listening to my parrot run through his repertoire of words, phrases, and weird sounds.

The Future of Blogging

Over the past few years, I’ve seen blogging change from its original purpose — a personal online journal — to a commercial phenomena. People are blogging for money, splashing advertisements all over their sites. Companies are starting blogs to advertise their own products and services.

Although I will be the first to admit that I talk about my books and articles and flying services on this site, those topics are not my primary focus. They’re part of my life and, like most of my life, they become blogging topics. But I just can’t bring myself to splash all those Google ads all over my sites. I’m not in this for the money. The little ads that appear at the bottom of some pages on my sites are just my attempt to raise cash to pay for this blogging habit of mine. (Please feel free to click one or two on every visit. ;-) )

But it saddens me that blogging has become so commercialized. That some bloggers are using this form of communication solely to gain wealth and fame — or try to. That some bloggers are irresponsibly spreading inaccurate information in an attempt to sway public opinion. That the media is spreading falsehoods by quoting blogs as news sources. That some blogs (like some podcasts) are simply another form of advertising to sell products and services in a world that’s already so full of advertising that it invades every part of our lives.

I don’t know what the future of blogging will bring. But I do know the future of my blogging activities: the same as the past.

I blog because I like to blog. I need to blog. And whether my words are appreciated or scorned, I’ll just keep blogging.

Treadmill vs. Walk in the Park

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Pros and cons.

I joined a health club recently. Wickenburg has an excellent “exercise center” that’s part of the Physical Therapy department at the local hospital. It has weight training equipment, elliptical exercise machines (is that the right name for those things?), stationary bikes, and treadmills. Just about all of it is computerized, so you can set goals and quantify many activities. The place is clean, there’s good music playing at a volume that’s not too loud to override it with iPod earbuds, and there are even televisions with captioning so you can read what’s being said onscreen.

Best of all, the members are an incredible mix of people, from the 20-year-old, skinny as a rail (as I was at that age) to the 40-something-year-old-who has had about five hundred too many cream puffs in her lifetime to the 90-year-old who comes in on a walker. I fit in nicely with this group, since I’m middle aged, overweight but not dangerously obese, and just enough out of shape to have to really work at my exercise regime, which is still in its infancy.

The treadmill is part of that regime — the warmup part. I start with a 20-minute session on the treadmill, using one of its built-in programs and setting the speed to about 3 mph. The programs change the machine’s incline, so I could be walking on flat ground for part of the time and climbing a hill moments later. Not a big hill, mind you. But one that’s enough to get your heart beating, which the machine monitors for you. In fact, if I enter my age and weight into the machine, when it gives me my heart rate, it’ll also tell me whether my work out is for weight loss or cardiovascular. I try to keep it in the cardiovascular range. I want to break a sweat, but not get soaked.

When I first thought about treadmills, I thought they were pretty dumb. After all, why use a machine to go for a walk. Why not just go for a walk? But I realized, after using a treadmill for about a week, that it does have some benefits over just walking. I thought I’d summarize them for people who have never tried one and, like me, wonder why they should.

TreadmillWalk in the Park
You can set a speed and stick with it.You don’t really know how fast you’re walking or whether you’ve changed speed.
You can monitor exact distance, speed, incline, time walked, and calories burned.You can’t easily monitor exact distance, speed, incline, time walked, and calories burned
You can do other things while you walk: watch TV, listen to music or podcasts, read a book or newspaper (a bit tricky), or talk to a companion.There are a limited number of things you can do while you walk: listen to music or podcasts or talk to a companion.
You’re breathing “conditioned” air, which may or may not be of a good quality.You’re breathing “fresh” air, which may or may not be of a good quality.
While you’re walking, there’s nothing to look at but the room you’re in, the view out the window (if you face one), and the people around you.While you’re walking, you can see a wide variety of things as you walk past them.
You can do it in any weather, at any time of the day or night (dependent on access to machine).You can do it in any weather, at any time of the day or night (but you probably will avoid hot, cold, rainy, and dark).
There’s nothing to interrupt you while you’re walking.You can be interrupted by friends and acquaintances you pass along the way, traffic, or obstacles along the trail.

 

This is all I can think of right now. The conclusion I’ve reached from all this is that a treadmill offers an efficient way to walk for exercise. Efficient is good if you’re pressed for time and want to make the most of every minute. That’s me. Right now I’m walking at 3 mph (average) for 20 minutes as a warm up for other exercise, including weight training. During that time, I can burn about 75 calories (no Hostess Cupcakes in my immediate future) and get my heart rate up to 130+ beats per minute. But if I didn’t want to do weight training and wanted to base my workout around a good, long walk, I could easily choose a more difficult program at a faster speed and for a longer time, I can just push a couple of buttons, pick a good playlist on my iPod, and have at it. Nothing will interrupt me and I’ll get the workout I want.

If you live in Wickenburg and have been considering the hospital’s exercise facilities, I highly recommend it. It’s moderately priced — I paid $300 for 6 months, but that includes the “setup fee” to introduce me to the weight machines (and them to me via programming). A longer membership is cheaper per month; a shorter one costs more. But the way I see it, what’s more important: money or my health? I know I won’t walk or exercise regularly on my own. And I know I don’t walk as fast when I’m out with my walking buddies as I do on that machine. So I’m getting a lot of exercise each 90-minute session at the “health club.”

I must be. I slept 10-1/2 hours straight through last night.

And a side note here: I also started the Atkins/South Beach diet. I know they’re not the same, but they’re close enough for my purposes. I’ve lost 8 pounds in a week. Still very overweight, but starting to get back to the point where I can wear most of my jeans again.

And the way I see it, every pound I lose is one extra pound of passengers I can take flying. With some of my passengers so big they fully extend the seatbelt before fastening it around their midsections, somebody has to lose weight.

Getting Regular Blog Readers

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What good is blogging if no one reads what you write?

The Zero Boss has written a good article about how you can attract and retain readers for a new blog. Lots of good advice.

Read it here: http://thezeroboss.com/2006/11/05/so-i-have-a-blognow-what-how-to-get-people-to-read-

what-you-write/

In the same vein, Connected Internet has a great article specifically for WordPress users that lists four “engagement” plugins — that is, plugins that engage the reader and encourage visitors to read more of what’s online. I’ll be adding at least one of these plugins to my site soon.

You can read it here: http://www.connectedinternet.co.uk/2006/11/04/1022/