Moving...

By the time you read this post, I will moved this blog to another site. The last post with it's screwy formatting finally did it. I can't find the problem, and that's it. I've had other mysteries as well with Blogger come up over the past couple of years, but enough is enough.
The new blog is Tom's Place. (tomsplaceblog.wordpress.com)
See you there!

Decisions, Decisions...

As if we don't have enough to decide or worry about, it's always something new. So I'm faced with a decision...

What is it, you may ask?

Is it who I'm going to vote for in the primaries and general election? Will it be Queen Hillary, Breck Edwards, Baba Obama, Tepid Thompson, Grinning Guiliani, or Ramrod Romney? I'm not telling, but it won't be a Democratic candidate...

Is it going to be on an issue such as immigration reform, universal health care, Union activities, or defending my Constitutional Rights? Well, sorta, but not quite.

I'm thinking about moving this blog to another service such as Wordpress.com.

Don't get me wrong!! Blogger has been a great service for this exercise in free speech. But I'm always looking for something better, or maybe just different.

Blogger does have some good things going for it. Custom templates for one. As many of you know, this blog template has been tweaked, stretched, and dinked with for as long as this blog has been in existence. HaloScan adds trackbacks and well as a host of commenting & editing features. StatCounter adds loads of statistical information on who and where the hits to the blog are coming from. Adding the JavaScript coding for the neat scrollers and graphics makes this site unique from all the others out in bloggerland.

But there are some downsides. Currently, there is no way to back up your posts, so unless you keep copies of your posts somewhere, you could lose all of your work if Google/Blogger takes an unrecoverable dump without a way to restore the posts. With HaloScan, you do need a premium account to have the capability of exporting your blog's comments, so that is an option. But if you don't have posts to link the comments to, you're hosed anyway.

Another downside is that I like to write my posts offline and then upload them using Microsoft's Live Writer Beta. Even though it is made by Microsoft, it does a pretty decent job. The part about using this editor is that it will not allow me to add tags or categories to the posts that I'm writing. After submitting the post to be published, I then need to log into Blogger, access the posts editor, and then select the post just published and select the tags for that post. Just a bit cumbersome for my taste...

Last, to view all of this wonderful information from StatCounter and HaloScan requires that I log into each service separately. Yes, maybe I'm nitpicking somewhat, especially for what I'm getting for free, but I still need to see what's out there and may offer something better for the long run.

Wordpress.com addresses some of the above, but at a price. There are a number of standard templates to choose from with limited options for customization. Gone will be HaloScan and StatCounter as well as any Javascript scripts as the standard (free) part of the site will not allow this type of custom code. Wordpress.com does not offer the functionality of StatCounter's statistical functions and hit tracking.

On the plus side, posting with tags & categories is handled very well by Live Writer as well as other offline editors. Posts and comments can be exported to a XML file for importation into another Wordpress blog, whether it is another one on Wordpress.com or your own private website/blog (which is a long-term goal of mine). There is even the option of importing Blogger posts and comments (not HaloScan, though) into Wordpress.com, although there are some application notes for importing HaloScan comments back into Blogger and then importing everything into Wordpress.

So it comes down to a couple of questions: Is Wordpress worth moving to? And if it is, is it worth importing this site's posts to the new one and either manually or automatically moving the comments, or just start fresh?

More importantly, is it content that you are looking for, or the presentation, and will you link to the new site? (Personally, I think it's the content that's important, but that's me...)

Revised Plans...

Well, I guess everyone's plans change.  Mine are.

On the good side, it looks like Christmas came early to the house.  Just finished wiring & hooking up a broadband connection to the house.  And it is nice and fast!  Better than dial-up any day.  Reasonable too - special through the cable TV company.

On the bad side, any of you looking at the Index will find that it's out of date.  With the recent sickness in the house and yours truly playing nurse (no catcalls out there!), plans for getting much of anything done in the way of blogging & updates went way by the wayside.

Trying to figure out how to modify this template to work with Blogger Beta is just not worth it.  I'll probably change this template to one of the canned ones & work from there.  Not happy about it - put in a lot of work on the template, but the new ones definitely have some advantages.  Just need some time to do it, and make sure Haloscan works with the new template.

Changing to a new blog hosting site probably isn't worth it either.  Awardspace may be a free server, but hosting a blog is not good on that site.  All that needs to happen is for the database portion of the server to get overloaded, and poof!! no blog.  The web portion of the server is OK though, and haven't had any problems there.  So if any of you want to play around with making up your own pages on a free server would work.  Besides, most of you are tied into Blogger anyway, and I've found a decent offline editor for Blogger, so I'll probably be sticking with Blogger.

So if there are changes to the site, don't panic!  It's just another work in progress.

November 06 Drive By Blogging

Haven't done one of these for a while. Just nothing really jumping out at me to pound on in depth, so just a little something to write (and think!) about.

First of all, I would like to wish everyone (all 6 1/2 readers of this blog) a Happy Thanksgiving. Hope everyone arrives at their respective feeding station (i.e., relative's house) safely, not make an obvious pig of themselves, and return home stuffed but not mounted. At least that's my plan (sorry, Teresa - looks like I'll be in Indianapolis too...)

Have you noticed the Democrats toning down themselves? Now it looks like they are not going to proceed with impeachment hearings, raising taxes, repealing the Patriot Act, NSA listening policies, and pulling the troops out immediately. Have they come to their senses, or is it just politics as usual, waiting to slip a fast one in without anyone noticing? I hope that the moderation is not an act, and that they will do the right things for the country (and us!).

The item that's still on my political radar is Pelosi trying to get an impeached judge (charged with soliciting a bribe) appointed head of the intelligence committees. That just doesn't make sense, especially since the Dems ran on a platform of "hate Bush because he and his administration are corrupt," and yet want this bozo in one of the most sensitive positions in government. Makes you wonder if someone offers this guy a big enough bribe that he would give up everything. But then again, all they would have to do is look at the New York Slime to find out the latest sensitive information that we don't want the bad guys to know...

Has anyone noticed that the figures for the economy are being reported in a better light than before the election? I have, and it just indicates to me that the media is biased toward one political party. What really bothers me about this is that freedom of the press was supposed to provide an independent but fair reporting of events. Editorials belong on the opinion page, not the whole damn newspaper (or TV/radio news broadcast). While censorship to keep things balanced is never a good thing, I am happy that there are other news sources out there that slant things the other way to keep things balanced out.

John Kerry thinks that he is still a contender for the 2008 Democratic Presidential nomination dispite his latest episode of foot in mouth disease. John, hang it up - HRC will cut your throat before that happens. Think "Manchurian Candidate" with one of your past associates from Vietnam (you were there, right?), and you should get the general idea.

And did you see that HRC's blast from the past health care plan got axed by the Dems? Surprising to me, but then again, they might want to save it for HRC's run for the Presidency. At least that's my take on it.

I'm going to be doing a little housecleaning over the holidays. First of all, The Stickman Chronicles will be deleted off Blogger. I don't have enough time to write for one blog consistently, much less two. I know that I haven't promoted this blog very well, and for a good reason - just no time to keep it updated. So take a last look before it fades not so gracefully into history. Second, I'll be working on Tom's Common Sense @ Awardspace, trying to get it up to snuff. Please visit there & let me know if you like it or not. Last, there will be one last update to the template on Tom's Common Sense @ Blogger to put a few things into order before the eventual migration to Awardspace (or other spot). This will include (hopefully) some Blogger Beta tags for catagories and an updated index.

UPDATE: Tom's Common Sense @ Awardspace is having problems - just might have to find another host. Anyone out there have any suggestions for a cost effective host? Thanks!

Again, Happy Thanksgiving!!

Blogger Beta Woes

Have you ever thought that you were making things better and then find out that all you did was shoot yourself in the foot? Yep, I did that here on this blog...

Blogger Beta is supposed to be better in the long run, but that's to be seen. Yes, it lets you have "labels" for you to search & categorize your posts for easier searching (for you & me), but I've discovered a few "uh-oh"s along the way.

For those of you who use Haloscan & like the feature that Haloscan has of noting which comment goes with which post by title, that feature will not work when you've changed to Blogger Beta (BB). That's because that BB uses a Google account password, and it just can't navigate through to the blog's postings. I'm sure someone will eventually figure out how to wade through it, but it's a pain for the moment.

Another item that bugs me that's related to the above is being able to write posts offline & post them from an editor such as w.Blogger. Again, the Google account blocks that as well. Sure, I can write stuff, log into BB, and post it using the editor, but that's just a pain. And emailing posts is not really an option - the posts could take up to a day to show up. Frustrating, it is...

I'm sure that someone way smarter than me will be able to figure this out, but I'm really starting to look seriously about moving Tom's Common Sense to another system. Unfortunately, I probably won't be able to export the posts to another location because Blogger doesn't have an export function, nor with the Google account stuff in place, the usual export/import functions in systems like Wordpress will not work.

Of course, this was all done to increase security of the system, and improve it. And by the way, the Blogger accounts will eventually be moved to using Google accounts. In the meantime, I'm just a little upset. Oh well...

130 Posts & A Year Later...

Yes, this is the 130th post of Tom's Common Sense, and exactly one year after the first post. It's been an interesting ride.

I originally wanted to post about my concerns with the business situation at Delphi, but soon was drawn into other subjects - politics, social issues, humor, Iraq, terrorism, and others. Some things have stayed the same, others have changed.

Also, not being content with the standard Blogger templates, the look of Tom's Common Sense has changed several times, and an index of past posts by subject was created to allow you, the reader, to see what I've had to say about various subjects. Hopefully, this has helped some of you, although this might change in the future. Blogger's Beta looks promising in allowing each post to have a subject, similer to Wordpress and others. If anyone has switched over to the new Blogger Beta, please let me know what you think of it.

Other improvements to the template most commented on have been the Points to Ponder as well as the Notable Posts. I'm looking at changing these slightly as it requires that I modify the template each time these need to be changed. And that's a pain at times.

The biggest change is that I'm having problems visiting everyone else's blogs - life is busy between job & family. I'm not on the road as much, and this has reduced the time that I once had (I would write posts and visit everyone else's blogs instead of watching TV). Hopefully, I will touch base with everyone once in a while, and I thank everyone for visiting this blog. Your comments and support have been overwhelming.

Last, I would like you, the reader, to tell me what you like or dislike about this blog. Subjects, look of the blog, or what you would like to read about. Any additional Points to Ponder that you would like to contribute and what your favorites are. Same goes for the posts that would appear in the Notable Posts. Operators are not standing by, but the comment section and email address are open for your comments.

Again, Thank You Everyone!

Mystery Solved in Time for 75th Post!!

Yes, this is the 75th post for Tom's Common Sense. Who would have thunk it?

OK, folks, I think I know what happened to the posts. When you have a double-carriage return, Blogger puts in a paragraph command (HTML <p> and </p>) or two line breaks (HTML </br>). Their system must have stripped (oh!) those out.

That's the good news. The bad news is that I have 74 posts to correct...

Nuts...

Uh Oh...

Somewhere along the line, Blogger just took all the carriage returns out of all my posts!! Now all the nice formatting has been wiped out.

It may take a while to get this straightened out as I can't just figure out what happened.

Stay tuned - same bat-channel, same bat-cave...

Haloscan Question

For those of you who use Haloscan, please comment on what you like and/or dislike about it. I'm thinking of changing over to it because I can back up the comments just in case Blogger takes a dump.

I don't want to lose everyone's input to this blog. And yes, I save my posts externally to the system - I've lost way too many files & data when servers & hard drives go "poof."

Thanks!

Mirror Site

Please note that I have started another blog over at Wordpress.com. This is due to some strange happenings here on Blogger (losing communication, odd formatting problems, non-access to everyone's blog, unscheduled outages, etc.)

For now, this will be a mirror site, i.e., a backup to this one just in case Blogger accidentally blows away all of the posts (which has been reported by a couple of other bloggers)

The link is here and on the blogroll at the left.