6/30/2006

What good is it, exactly...

if the little twiddle on the sides of blogrolls that tell you how recently something was updated lies? I can't count how many times I've gotten all jazzed cause it says that someone has posted something new and I get there and...nothing. It's all still the same. No change.

So I hit refresh, thinking clearly I just have yesterday (or the day before that...or the day before THAT...seriously, people, what is with all the blog-slacking that's going on here? Some of us are in dire need of work-avoidance techniques and you. are. letting. us. down. Got that? If picturing your mom with the sad, head-shaking, "I'm just so disappointed I don't know where to start" look is what it takes, well, get those mental images revving!) still cached. But no. It's just that my blogroll has told a big, fat, nasty lie.

Clearly my blogroll is going to hell.

And while that does provide some happiness, knowing that eventally it'll get ...well, its. That doesn't alleviate the intense betrayal that something I had hoped to trust just up and lies like that. Without any remorse or, from what I can tell, even a second thought.

I just thought you'd like to know. Cause, while I may be out of thought provoking (heck, interesting) things to say, by golly, I will continue to post so that bored people everywhere have something to do. (And to my 6th grade teacher, I know, I know, I know. Bored people are boring people. So sue me.)

10 comments:

  1. What I'd like to know is how you get yours to lie (I mean, I'd be happy with that even). My blogroll just sits there and stagnates. Also, how come my name never says "rambling" by it, even on those rare occasions when I might ramble a bit?

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  2. Check your blogrolling settings. There's a way to set the thing to show updates in a shorter time frame. When I used BR, I had mine set for 2 hours. I think you can set it for as little as 10-20 minutes.

    That said, it's summer - blogging greatly diminishes as people get out. By mid July things will pick up again as vacations have been taken and people gear up for the new school year.

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  3. Gwynne - is your blogroll by blogrolling (www.blogrolling.com) or something similar to that or did you hand code it? If it's by a service then yeah, check your preferences to see how you indicate updates. I have mine set to 3 hours I think (as in it puts 'Rambling' next to things updated in the last 3 hours. Or it should. I'm pretty sure I've seen yours listed.

    Jen - I will try to be patient for people to go on vacations...even if they're not taking me. :) It's just such a sloooow day today.

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  4. Listen, I feel your boredom pain today. I was told yesterday that The Marshal was going to let admin folks go at 3pm today, but would I take one for the team and stay until 5pm? I'd get comp time for the two hours. Since I'll need the leave in February, I said I'd stay.

    I'm an idiot. Because I have nothing to do here since we closed out the finances on Wednesday and I can't get into the system until Monday. So I'm not just procrastinating when I don't actually work - I have no real work to do.

    *sigh*

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  5. ...or did you hand code it?

    Ha! I like the sound of that though. I definitely don't use a service. I cut and pasted my code from something that looked like it was supposed to be a link in the magic template provided by Blogger, and then I cut and pasted each person's url into each link, and then...well, you get the idea. The day the template disappeared, I was not happy to re-do all that and so I followed Rach's advice and save a copy of the whole template as a Word document. All that to say, I could not "hand code" something if you paid me big dollars to do so. Does this mean I don't have a way to indicate updates?

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  6. Jen - ugh. I at least kind of had something I could do (though not totally, we're between projects right now). Still - comp time is good!

    Gwynne - Yep that's what it means. The good news is that, should you want to have a way to show updates, blogrolling is free (for one blogroll, at least) and pretty easy to set up. There may be (probably are) other services out there as well, this is just the one I saw the most when I was choosing something.

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  7. I gave blogrolling a miss and decided to just put my links up and go with Bloglines. It never lies to me :). I always know when you've updated too!

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  8. I'm glad I found this thread (courtesy of Eric's Fire Ant Gazette) as I wasn't even aware of such services out there.

    Being something of an anal retentive sort, I occasionally will edit a post of mine after the fact -- I'll notice a typo or a badly turned phrase and won't sleep until I correct it. Do these services distinguish between an updated post and a brand new one? I'd hate to be creating in my few readers the same sort of torment you describe here!

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  9. With blogrolling - not that I am aware of. With Bloglines - yes there is a setting that solves that problem.

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  10. Bret - thanks for stopping by! I think Bloglines are more for readers (they're an RSS or some sort, I'm pretty sure) but blogrolling just does the links in your sidebar (or wherever) - but I'm pretty sure that each time you republish it's going to say that you're new, even if it's just a typo tweak.

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