2/26/2009

You Stay Classy WKRN

I was checking on traffic this morning on WKRN while getting ready for work. They had a very nice story about some pretty big problems with the playground of a Nashville elementary school. It's rickety, floods, and a hole in the fence lets in all kinds of after hours evil doers so they're finding liquor, smokes, and condoms around.

Turns out a couple of Vanderbilt students who volunteer at the school have a project in mind to fix up the playground so the kids can actually use it again. It looks like a very worthwhile project, and they have a website raising money to pay for the work.

It was a good story, and I'm glad to see the way too rare story about someone trying to do something good, but their was one thing that jumped out at me. Both the reporter and the desk anchor mentioned the fundraising website, but neither actually gave the address. So how do you find the website? Go to our website wkrn.com for more details......

Would it have killed ya to flash it on the bottom of the screen instead of manufacturing traffic to your own page? I've noticed that policy seems to be common to most of the local news casts. They won't give an url other than their own on screen.

The Blog Is Back

Okay, so it's been awhile since I stopped by. My little cubicle of the internet is getting kinda dusty. I could say I'm too busy to write, but that's a partial truth at best. I have some free time now that the deadly duo do more than poop and eat. But it's still a premium and I've been having trouble motivating myself to use the smallish amount of time I actually have to do something cereberal like writing.

I'm a blogger in my head though. I keep running across things that would be good to write about, and even composing the entries in my head. Occasionally I've even written a post on my lunch break at work, but never gotten around to taking it home and posting it. My brain has been getting backed up by all these potential posts, so here I am back again to relieve the logjam. I think I just made blogging the intellectual equivalent of a laxative.

I've been rethinking my writing style and posting philosophy. In the past I've been holding back a little on talking about some things in my life for fear you anonymous internet hordes that pass through would think I was a geek or get tired of hearing about my kids. But I'm a geek who likes to talk about his kids, and I'm going to just roll with that from now on.

Ever since I started a blog I've noticed that I seem to always sound pretentious and/or stuffy. I can't really pinpoint why this happens on my blog because it certainly isn't the way I usually write. But put me in front of a potential roomfull of anonymous strangers and I revert to writing like it's an old school engineering report and I have a stick up my ass.... I'm going to try and correct that, so hopefully posts will start sounding more conversational, except for the stuff about science, the stick will be firmly in place for those posts.

I'm also toying with the idea of Twitter. I've never tried it, but it seems pretty suited to my current situation. Most of the comments and ideas I feel the need to send out into the internets don't seem worth a post on the ole blog, but are too involved for the status bar on my Facebook page.