very simple

The New York Times Magazine today highlights the particular complications of blogs that focus on things like sex. I actually read this yesterday morning, but the online link wasn’t available until today (the one advantage to subscribing to the actual hard copy of the Times is that you get the special "Sunday sections" on Saturday, meaning you can start on the crossword a day early).

I tend to not blog about my personal life too much, because I’m not going to write about things that involve other people without at least their tacit permission. My personal rule of thumb (strangely appropriate to the article) is to never write anything that I wouldn’t be willing to have appear on the front page of the Times. Obviously it never would, but I can guarantee that the one person you were hoping wouldn’t find their way to the blog is the one who is going to find it. I generally don’t blog about work (except in generalities) because of this reason combined with the ethical obligations of the job (that whole confidentiality thing kinda matters, a lot, in the legal profession). I think "Smitten" in the article put it best in relation to the whole Washingtonienne scandal:

I’ve added two new categories to the blog, television and movies. I blog about this stuff periodically, and entries were ending up in either random thoughts or current events. There are enough now that they get their own spaces.

I deleted a few items from the blogroll today, which was kind of sad. Most of the political stuff is staying, but at this point, the blogs that were all about the election, like the John Kerry for President link, were depressing me, and a little bit out of date. Come to think of it though, it probably would have been deleted even if he had won, since the campaign was ending one way or another…

Apparently, I’m the dotmac.info Editor’s pick of the week. Of course, nothing at dotmac.info is loading right now…

so I just signed up for this listing service. It’ll be a week or two before I’m added, but it’s pretty cool. And apparently some interesting people live (or pretend to live) in my neighborhood, including one of the earliest developers of the blog form, Anil Dash (who apparently has a really long walk from the 23rd street 6 train to San Francisco).

I was reading Frolic and Detour this morning, where this site was remarked upon. I made the mistake of following the link, and it was so damn funny I’m now actually late for work. So Go Fug Yourself is getting added to the blogroll.

Seriously. The only reason your reading this right now is because I backed up my blog files on Saturday. For some reason beyond my comprehension, when I went to publish a little while ago, All of my files started getting deleted from the server and my hard drive. Everything for the past week had to be re-created (if you’ve linked to any of those pages, the address has changed and you may want to re-link), but thanks to backup, I was able to restore the bulk (190+ entries) of my files in just a few minutes. And now I’m going to back this up too.

Sorry that my updates have been a little more sporadic recently, but I’ve been totally busy with my real job. It’s only the 19th (or 20th given that it’s 12:40 in the morning) and I’ve already billed close to 170 hours this month. I truly do enjoy what I do, but at times it does leave a little less time for the whole hobby-blogging thing. Plus, spending several days writing corporate documents can really suck the political and literary creativity out of anyone (yeah, I know – from the outside it looks like the most boring job on earth. Maybe I’m just a boring person in denial – whatever the case, my job suits me, or I suit it). Not to mention that I couldn’t get any work done this weekend, due to one of my best friends getting married. And with this post, I’m coming close to breaking my personal rule about never writing about work or friends in any substantive way, so that’s where it ends. ‘night y’all.

Ron over at Bear Left on Unnamed Road plugged this blog under his "New Blog Discoveries," saying the following:

Very Simple: Don’t let the name mislead you; there are some very thoughtful posts in this iBlog, particularly on political and legal topics.

I think this counts as my first review. It’s funny. After a couple of false starts, I created this blog over a year ago, really just as a way to vent my own frustrations (I think I was having a particularly bad fight with the cable company, actually). I knew on a theoretical level that other people might see it (It was being published on the internet, after all), but as I’ve watched my referral logs grow over the past year, I’ve noticed that I have a series of regular visitors, and I actually feel some responsibility to keep things up to date, not just for myself, but for them (or y’all, since you are them). I never kept a diary for more than a week when I was a kid, largely because I didn’t understand why I would want to keep a journal that no one else would read (that, and I certainly wasn’t going to write anything truly juicy, given a nosy brother 6 years my junior). This, however, is just different. It allows me an outlet for both my inner geek (ok, not so inner geek – even my boss calls me before he calls IT), and my apparent need to write creative, opinionated things (something I didn’t realize I actually needed until I started writing contracts and SEC disclosure documents for a living).

Anyway, thanks for reading.

Check out the permalink – I finally figured out how to add the comment and trackback fields directly into the entry. Thanks to Greg and the other fine posters at the iBloggers forum for getting me part of the way there. My big problem was actually getting the height that I wanted, but by entering an absolute number instead of a percentage, it seems to work just fine.