By The Way...

1:44:33 PM EST
Hearing These Are Days -- 10,000 Maniacs


Well, and here we are.

This my last official entry here at By The Way, and I don't have any particularly good way to come to the close of things except to say thank you. Thank you AOL, first of all, for picking me four and a half years ago to be the front man for AOL Journals. And thank you, those of you became AOL Journalers, for being part of this community we built together. I was in many ways its public face, but I'm not so foolish as to think that I was at the heart of things. You were, and always were, and I am honored and thankful to have been able to spend this time with you.

Also, thank you for all the "ScalziCelebration" and testimonial posts. I'd speak more about them, but I'm misty-eyed enough as it is at the moment. Just know I've been delighted by them, and they've helped to make this transition easier. I'm sad to be leaving AOL Journals in my official capacity, but I have to say I'm excited about 2008 -- I'll be writing books full-time, which is both cool and terror inducing. Wish me luck.

Remember that while my responsibilities are now officially over here, I may still drop in from time to time, in an unofficial capacity, to post and to say hello. It'll likely be infrequent, particularly at first (I have a book I need to finish -- yikes!), but don't be surprised if I pop up now and then. And of course, I'll be over at my personal site Whatever, which you are welcome to visit any time.

Partings are sad, and this one especially so for me -- AOL Journals has been an important part of my life for four and a half years. But everything has its time. This was ours, together. I'll not forget it. I hope you feel the same.

Be well. Fare well.

           



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1:00:16 PM EST
Hearing Nothing at the moment
To everyone who participated in the last Photo Shoot, waving goodbye, I have just two words to say:

Thank you,

Thank you,

Thank you,

Thank you,

Thank you,

Thank you,

Thank you,

Thank you,

Thank you,

Thank you!

Thanks also to people who left nice notes in the comments.

And thank you to everyone who ever participated in the Photo Shoots!


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1:07:32 PM EST
Hearing Nothing at the moment


For your end of the year eye-popping needs, the best pictures of the year from the Astronomy Picture of the Day site. So you know they'll be good. And spacey. Enjoy! Those are the Pleiades above, incidentally.


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11:38:16 AM EST
Hearing Nothing
If you like to spend money on food -- I mean, really like to spend money on food -- then 2008 is shaping up to be your year:

The sharp rise in food prices seen in 2007 is expected to be followed by another higher-than-normal jump next year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) said last week. And 2008's punch will be to the breadbasket.

Items made with wheat (breads and crackers) and soybean oil (cooking oil and fried foods) are expected to rise so much next year that they'll boost the cost of cooking at home by up to 4.5 percent — half a percentage point more than predicted just a month ago.

So pinched consumers thinking they can cut back by eating at home more will find little relief there. Home cooking remains less expensive than eating out, but the gap is closing.

The reasons? Well, one is that the drought in Australia is making wheat prices rise; another is all the farmers planting corn for ethanol rather than producing for food crops. Yes, it's more profitable to feed your car than you. But don't worry -- gas prices are expected to go up too. So that's fine.

Anyway, 2008 sounds like it's going to be a great year for that diet you've been planning to go on.


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2:43:29 PM EST
For those of you who are wondering what I liked in music is this year, this is probably my favorite song of 2007 -- or at least it was until it became unbearably ironic because the singer in real life quite clearly needs the thing she's rejecting in the song.

           

Really, it's sad. Get yourself together, dear. We'd like you around after you're 30.

My other favorite song of the year is not actually from this year, but I found it this year, so it qualifies on that score. Here it is. Watch it for a few minutes and you'll see why I think it's pretty clever:



Scary, ain't it?


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9:08:43 PM EST
Hearing Nothing at the moment


As next Monday will be my last day on the job here and at Ficlets (for those of you who missed the announcement about that, it's here), I know some of you have wondered where I will be from here on out. The answer is simple: I'll be at my own personal blog, called Whatever, from which I have been blogging since 1998 -- that's right, going on ten years now. I realize at least some of you are aware that Whatever exists, because I've seen you link to it, or you've popped up in comments over there, but it's also true that I've kept the two blog spheres fairly separate, so the existence of Whatever may be news to some of you.

I had two reasons for keeping the two largely separate. First, early on, it was agreed that I wouldn't link to it basically to keep the focus on what was going on here at AOL Journals rather than anything I was doing on my own site -- this was work, and over there at Whatever was another thing entirely. I didn't have any problem with that; indeed, I agreed that when I was over here, I was supposed to be on the clock for AOL. Work is work.

Second, related to the "work is work" theme, is that my tone here at By The Way is markedly different than it is over at Whatever. Here at By The Way I have responsibilities to AOL and responsibilities to you folks in the AOL Journals community; I'm supposed to be helpful and useful and friendly, and to keep things here on a generally light and even keel, and to keep you folks busy with Weekend Assignments and Photo Shoots and such. To be sure, this was not a burden, nor have I been fake over here. I've enjoyed being helpful and useful and friendly. I've had fun.

Over on Whatever, however, I'm not under the same set of engagement rules, and what that means is that the tone can be quite a bit different. Some of the major differences:

1. I write about a wider range of political and social topics than I do here and am not shy about expressing my opinions there, whereas here I've kept them pretty much to myself;

2. I use much stronger language there than I do here (AOL had perfectly reasonable expectations on my language, which I was happy to follow), and am generally somewhat more sarcastic and cynical than I am here;

3. I engage readers and commenters quite a bit differently, which is to say I am very often combative in discussion, and when I think the occasion warrants it, I am occasionally actively rude. Most discussion, to be clear, is civil and wide-ranging and (in my opinion) very interesting; I have a great set of commenters there. But from time to time things get intense.

Again, none this means I am or was being fake here, or that Whatever shows the "real" me. What is more accurate to say is that both sites are me as I really am, just not all of what I really am. I can be helpful and friendly; I can be sarcastic and combative. I can express my opinions; I can keep my opinions to myself. And so on.

That said, one of the things I am very conscious and concerned about is that people who have largely experienced me as the By The Way helpful guy will wander over to Whatever and experience a bit of a shock that I'm not presenting myself in exactly the same way over there. To be sure, it works the other way around as well -- people who know me primarily from Whatever will come over here and scratch their heads about what's going on here. But going from there to here is not so much a shock as in going from here to there.

The point I'm trying to make is: After Monday, I'll still be online, just on my own blog and on my time, and if you decide to visit, I want to make sure it comes as no surprise to you that my tone and presentation are substantially different there than here. You are absolutely welcome to visit and explore and comment and become part of the community there. Some of you already have. But if you come and visit and decide that the flavor of that site is not to your liking, I won't be offended.

For those of you who have not already visited there and are curious what the tone is there, probably the best way to get a feeling is to look through my Best of 2007 entry, which links to 20 of my more memorable Whatever entries this year. In these entries you'll see examples of each of the points I enumerated above. Again: Very different tone and feel. Be ready for that. But I think it'll help you decide whether Whatever will be for you.


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7:03:35 PM EST
Hearing Nothing at the moment
Looks like I'm not the only thing that AOL is letting go of at the beginning of 2008: Netscape, the venerated Web browser, will no longer be supported as of next February. Which is kind of sad, really, if you're a net geek. I spent a lot of time using Netscape back in the day -- heck, I remember creating entire Web sites using the Netscape Web editor. I still have a copy of Netscape 4.6 (for my money the best iteration of Netscape) just in case I ever need to slap out a non-blog-related Web page.

That said, it's been years since I've used any Netscape browser; my browser of choice is the Mozilla Firefox browser -- ironically originally created from the Netscape browser source code after AOL spun it off. I've checked out each new iteration of Netscape when it came out, but after checking it out I mostly go back to Firefox. Still, I'm sad that Netscape is going away. It is indeed the end of an era on the Internet.


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5:40:14 PM EST
Hearing Nothing at the moment
Idiot texts on his cell phone while he's driving, hits something, thinks it's a mailbox and keeps going. Turns out, it was a 13-year-old boy.

I hope that text message worth it. I somehow doubt it was, though.


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2:10:00 PM EST
Hearing Nothing at the moment
For you foodies who don't want to leave 2007 without trying something new: The Los Angeles Times' 10 best recipes of 2007. Heck, I'd like to try the sausage-stuffed squid braised with tomatoes and potatoes myself.


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1:42:56 PM EST
Hearing Nothing at the moment


Out here in the country, our driveway is gravel, and over time the gravel migrates to other places, and we have to get more gravel laid down. And thus, the appearance of the gravel truck, delivering -- you guessed it -- gravel. Such is the length of our driveway, incidentally, that we actually need two truckloads of gravel to get the job done. These are things I think most people don't have to deal with.


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