199 Posts on the Wall...

Real life has been keeping me busy. This is the 199th post on this blog. This thing started as a sideline of a half-baked (and half-executed) effort to cash in on the frustrations of the election of 2004. But now it is just about stuff that interests me. Somehow or other though it seems to interest about 150 other people a day, which is pretty darn good by Iowa blogger standards, but is absolutely nothing by the larger Internet blog standards.

By comparison, BoingBoing, the most popular blog according to Technorati receives more than 300,000 hits per day. That is more than the daily paid circulation of the New York Times print edition.

Anyway, welcome to those of you who have started coming here recently. To my loyal readers in Brazil and Germany, who are you? Everyone feel free to leave posts in the comments.

So, while real-life keeps me busy, why not check out a couple of these posts from the good-old-days.

• Other Than That Mrs. Lincoln -- The No. 1, linked-to post on this blog. About my ill-fated trip to the Chicago Fire's Stadium Opener. Contains some gory photos.


• Can't Leave You Kids Along For A Minute -- Arriving home from vacation last summer to find a new war going on. 4th Generation War Primer


• If George Ryan Doesn't Rot in Jail, He Will Surely Burn in Hell -- The very personal reasons for my fixation with ex-Illinois Governor George Ryan.


• New Orleans Is Uninsurable, Part 2 -- Post on global warming and implications for the insurance industry. I got a lot of heat about this post from people in the Democratic Party. I still stand by it 100%.


• Designing The Future -- The first 'real' post on the blog, about the Viridian Design movment and what it will take to build a sustainable future that is actually worth living in.

I have to go be billable and take care of family health issues. Back soon.

Personal Update

It's been a hell of a start to the year. Business at Effective Networking is booming and it is keeping me very, very busy. On the home front, the mid-winter cold and flu season has finally run its course through the kids. However, I have come down with the sucking chest cold in the form of Rihnovirus. Ick. Liam had it a week or so ago.

Lastly, my mother is struggling with Chronic Lymphocyte Leukemia. She stats chemotherapy this weekend. Laura is going to Cedar Rapids this weekend to be with her and I will be taking some time off as soon as I am no longer contagious to provide some care for her as well.

Whether this means more blogging or less all depends on my energy level. So please bear with me and keep checking the site. You may have figured out by now that I do most of my posting on the weekends.

Billmon Is No More

A few weeks ago, in a post on Jim Webb I cited blogger Billmon as I often do. At that time I mentioned that one of the strengths of this participatory culture is that, once you make the investment of time in finding a blog or blogger whose judgment and opinion you could trust, it was like having another brain. There was someone else out there who had the attention and time to find the stories that interested you and who could put them in a context that spoke directly to you.

Since the early days of the Iraq war, Billmon has been one of those bloggers not only for me but for millions of readers. However, around the first of the year, after dropping a number of hints over the last several months, Billmon shut the doors of the famous Whiskey Bar.

Best of luck to you man, whoever you are.

The Philadelphia Inquirer covered the story.

RSS Feed

Another bug in Blogger beta. As I go back and tag past articles, they show up as new posts in the feed. This is a known bug. Best bet for now is to bookmark the blog home page at www.cman.cx/connor/blog.html.

Blogger Beta Upgrade

I've upgraded to the Beta Version of Blogger. Nothing you'll notice right away except that posts can now have labels, or tags by subject matter. As time allows, I'll be going back and tagging selected posts.

Hard to believe I have 140-odd posts.