Blogging

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WIN-WIN vs. LOSE-LOSE: Two Approaches to Conflict Resolution

On 19 April 2007, I wrote a short post about compact fluorescent light bulbs for Get Rich Slowly. It was a throwaway post, really — just a quick update. To illustrate it, I googled for a photo of a CFL in action. Most of them sucked, but I found one that didn’t:

I downloaded the photo, added it to my article, and went about my business. A few hours later, I received this e-mail in my inbox (I’ve added HTML to make things more readable):

My name is David Hobby, and I run Strobist.com. I see that you and I have similar Technorati rankings, so I would assume you know that it is not nice to just grab someone’s photo without permission, wherever it came from. *Especially* if you do not even credit and link to them.

I spent a lot of time and thought making that photo. And to my knowledge there is not another one like it in the world. Normally, photographer tend to pretty much go apeshit and point both barrels at an infringer in a situation like this. But I do understand that you probably have a lot of things in the air at one time and I want to give you the benefit of the doubt when going forward.

Rather than go into the Default Legal Mode like I do when a big company does this kind of thing (I had a very nice, 6-week European vacation on a publisher who did this once) I would rather treat this as a minor oops and give you a range of choices for you to decide how you want to go forward.

For a few moments, I felt like the world was crashing around me. I knew I had done something wrong. I’d been “borrowing” photos via Google for years, even though I knew it wasn’t strictly kosher. I’d always thought of it as a venial sin, though, one that would never cause me woe.

In his e-mail, Hobby outlined four possible resolutions to the problem. In each option, he won something. But what I got out of each choice was vastly different. In one case, I lost a lot. At the other extreme, I actually gained something. In other words, he was offering me a variety of scenarios, some of which were WIN-LOSE, and at least one of which was WIN-WIN. I chose the WIN-WIN.

WIN-WIN

To compensate Hobby, I wrote an article about the blurring line between amateur and professional photographers, in which I included plenty of links to his site. I got to use Hobby’s photo, and he received some “linkjuice” and exposure for Strobist.

But then a curious thing happened. Hobby and I became friends. We began to pick each other’s brains. We asked each other blogging questions. We spoke by phone, and he explained that Strobist was making enough money to support him. Get Rich Slowly wasn’t quite to that point yet for me, so I found this fascinating.

Then, for one of the “assignments” on his site, Hobby created a photo with Get Rich Slowly in mind:


Nest Egg by David Hobby

Earlier this year, Hobby decided to sell his home in Baltimore. As part of his marketing effort, he created a blog. I thought this was a cool idea, but it also gave me a chance to help a friend. I wrote about the idea at Get Rich Slowly.

Basically, what started as a confrontation because I had done something very stupid turned into a mutually beneficial relationship. Why? Because Hobby encouraged me to pursue the course of WIN-WIN.

The Big Book of Everything

Not every conflict is resolved so amicably. Sometimes one (or both) of the parties is unable to take the long view, or perhaps feels so aggrieved that they’re not willing to pursue a WIN-WIN option. Here I have another example from the world of Get Rich Slowly.

Authors and publishers send me books all of the time. I get several per month (and sometimes several per week). I can’t hope to review them all, but I do my best. Last year, Mark Gavagan sent me a copy of his It’s All Right Here life and affairs organizer, a three-ring binder designed to help people organize their important information.

I was intrigued by It’s All Right Here, but I felt like it had some weaknesses (it was big and unwieldy, almost too comprehensive). Also, at $50, it seemed expensive. Instead of doing a full review, I mentioned it at GRS whenever it seemed appropriate.

I mentioned It’s All Right Here in February, for example, when answering a reader question about how to organize account information. That same question prompted a GRS reader named Erik Dewey to organize his own information. He created a personal spreadsheet to act as his own life affairs organizer. In May, Dewey sent me e-mail:

I read your post about preparing your information for disaster. I did the same thing a while back and made what I called the Big Book of Everything. I PDF’d it so I could print out new pages when I needed to. Anyway, I thought you might like to take a look at it. Enjoy, let me know if you see anything I missed.

I thought Dewey’s project was great, so I wrote back and asked permission to share it with the Get Rich Slowly community. He gave his okay. Last week, after two months of sitting on the idea, I finally posted about Dewey’s free life-affairs organizer.

People loved it. It was obviously unpolished, but it gave folks a framework with which to assemble their information. Lifehacker picked up the story, and Dewey’s project made the rounds of the web. Everyone was happy.

Well — not everyone.

LOSE-LOSE

Mark Gavagan, the creator of the It’s All Right Here life and affairs organizer was decidedly unhappy. He wrote to me expressing his concerns that Dewey had “stolen” from him when creating the free Big Book of Everything

This was a sticky situation. I had communicated with both Gavagan and Dewey, and they both seemed like nice guys. Having read both books, I didn’t think Dewey had plagiarized from Gavagan. His e-book had similarities to Gavagan’s book, but that was only natural. All life affairs organizers have similarities, just as all books about debt reduction have similarities.

I didn’t want to be caught in the middle of this dispute, so I suggested that Gavagan contact Dewey in order to work things out. Both sides agree that conversation was friendly enough, but the end result was the opposite of the WIN-WIN scenario Hobby and I arrived at a couple of years ago. This time the result was LOSE-LOSE.

Dewey took down the PDF and Excel versions of his Big Book of Everything and posted the following statement:

I received a call from Mark Gavagan who wrote the It’s All In Here information organizer. He had concerns about where I got the information for what I put in the Big Book of Everything.

Let me state that I do not own, nor have I read, or even handled his book. I could not find anything that met all of my needs in an information organizer, so I decided to make my own. I gathered the list of what forms to include from a variety of sources, including my father’s will.

Still, I am sympathetic to his concerns. He is a small publisher and something like the Big Book could have a noticable impact on him. Call it the law of unintended consequences.

My goal in posting the Big Book was just to share something I had created, similar to some of the gaming spreadsheets and quick reference cards I’ve posted on this site. I had no intention of harming someone else in the process, but that is what happened.

So, I’ve decided to take down the Big Book and I apologize if you came here specifically to find it.

Again, let me re-iterate: I think that Gavagan and Dewey are both nice guys. I don’t think either one is trying to be a jerk. But in a LOSE-LOSE scenario, that doesn’t always matter.

Post-mortem

GRS readers were upset at how things played out. Here’s a typical response from a reader named SHS:

What a shame that Erik felt compelled to take down his very useful creation! I definitely will NOT be buying It’s All Right Here — or anything else from that author and his publisher. If anyone has this file in Excel format — or editable PDF format — please let me know via a follow-up comment.

Essentially, everyone in this scenario loses:

  • Dewey is forced to take down his Big Book of Everything.
  • Denizens of the web no longer have access to this free life-affairs organizer.
  • Gavagan and his project get negative publicity.

In fact, I’m the only one who wins because I get to write this article about how not to handle conflict resolution.

How would I have handled the situation? First, let’s make it clear that this is no Kobayashi Maru.

In fact, there were a number of WIN-WIN scenarios available to Gavagan and Dewey. As a (mostly) impartial third-party observer, I think that one of the scenarios is far superior to all others. If I had the power to shape things to what I consider an ideal outcome, here’s what would happen:

  • Dewey would re-post his Big Book of Everything, both in PDF and Excel formats, just as before.
  • Dewey would also offer links to Gavagan’s products: The It’s All Right Here organizer and the new, smaller spiral-bound version, 12 Critical Things. He might even include info on these products from within the Big Book of Everything.

I think Dewey’s message should be: “I’ve created this free organizer. It’s pretty useful. But if you want something more comprehensive, check out these products from Mark Gavagan.” And I actually think Gavagan could profit by bringing Dewey on to consult with him, to create digital versions of his products for people to download.

To me, that’s a WIN-WIN scenario.

Conclusion

The older I get, the more I realize that much of what I do and choose is predicated on the avoidance of conflict. I’m still a competitive guy — deep inside, I still long for those days that Kris and I played games with Mac and Pam a couple of nights per week — but there’s a difference between competition and conflict.

To me, conflict is non-productive. It produces losers. It lessens everyone involved in some way. This is one reason that I so loathe the American political process and the petty conflicts it produces. This is why I smack down negative elements at Get Rich Slowly. And it’s also why I think shows like Battlestar Galactica are far less than they could be. (Battlestar‘s modus operandi seems to be “conflict for conflict’s sake”.)

I’m disappointed that Gavagan and Dewey arrived at a LOSE-LOSE solution. I think outcomes like this subtract something from the universe. (Boy, that sounds all mystical, doesn’t it? I don’t mean it that way.) I’m a firm believer in the notion of social capital. I’ve come to understand that WIN-WIN solutions build social capital, and lots of it. But the LOSE-LOSE option weakens everyone.

Behind the Scenes with Buying Food

One of the things I’d like to do here at Foldedspace is to have a little fun with some of the things I write about at Get Rich Slowly. When I write at GRS, I mainly play it straight. I can’t provide a lot of extraneous info or make fun of the things I’m writing about. That’s not the case at Foldedspace!

This morning, for example, I posted some grocery shopping tips from the 1950s. These tips are taken from an old educational film about buying food. Here’s the 11-minute video, in all its gender-role-specific glory:

As with all of these old insructional films (I’ve watched dozens over the past couple of months), I love Buying Food in oh so many ways. I love the cheesiness and the earnestness. But I love it for non-ironic reasons, too. I love the glimpse into the past, I love the writing (it does a great job of distilling ideas into a short segment), and I love a lot of the individual frames.

Here are some of my favorites (and, incidentally, a short summary of the film):

First up is this glimpse at a supermarket circa 1950. Self-service grocery stores were introduced in 1916, though they didn’t gain popularity until the 1930s. (Many people were resistant to the idea at first.) Supermarkets were still relatively young in 1950. I like to think that they were trying to discover their “vocabulary”.

Although early supermarkets did not contain the thousands of products we’re accustomed to today, they did flood consumers with choices. Which beans to choose? And which size?

I love this example of comparison shopping: Which beans have the lowest price per ounce?

The film belabors the point that hamburger is a cheap cut of meat, and less desirable than a t-bone steak. I find this interesting. Was hamburger once marginalized? Did people have to be persuaded to eat it? Nowadays it’s accepted as a matter of course. And look how it’s being served here! It’s in the butcher case, being scooped up oh-so-casually. I’ve never seen such a thing.

And look at this, too. “Quality frankfurters” and “skinless wieners” outside of their packaging. The film has an hilarious example of creating a tasty and attractive frankfurter salad.

I also like this comparison of food quality. Why are the grade A peaches tomatoes better than the grade C peaches tomatoes? They both look unattractive here!

Finally, here’s a shot of the happy housewife after she’s finished pleasing her husband. I wish I could tell what they were eating!

Anyhow, the Internet Archive contains hundreds of old instructional films like this on a variety of subjects. There are films on dating, diet, and driving. My favorite sources of these films are the Prelinger Archives (browse by subject) and the A/V Geeks collection (browse by subject). (You can find more from A/V Geeks at the blog.)

On the Merits of Weblogs

This article was originally published at Foldedspace on 29 May 2003. It may be difficult to remember, but blogging was young back then, and many people disapproved. I’m not sure that all of the links in this story are still relevant (or active).

I’ve been exchanging e-mail with a close friend, whom I’ll call Pete. Pete is strongly anti-weblog. He hates them for many reasons:

  • they’re narcissistic
  • they interfere with google’s search results
  • webloggers present a biased view of their world, etc.

Pete doesn’t even like to be mentioned in weblogs, because he feels he’s always mentioned in a negative light. (For example: though I have no untoward intentions in mentioning Pete in this context, or in writing about our discussion, he would likely take offense at what I say. Thus the alias.)

As you might suspect, I believe weblogs are a fantastic new medium for self-expression and for information distribution.

Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations

I read some weblogs to obtain news and information. (As I’ve mentioned before, weblogs have almost completely replaced my consumption of the mass media.) I read other weblogs to glimpse of the lives of the famous and the semi-famous.

I read some weblogs because they have interesting links, others because I love the writing. I read so-called A-list bloggers. I read the weblogs of my friends. (Guess which I prefer: A-listers or friends?)

There are weblogs that I don’t particularly like, yet I read out of habit. There are weblogs that I love but rarely read because I forget about them.

Mostly I read weblogs because I enjoy the small glimpses into other people’s lives. I understand that a person’s weblog persona is different from her in-person persona (though I maintain they’re both essential components of the individual, neither one more real than the other).

Blogging About Breakfast

Many would argue that there are limits to what one should share on the web. Some lives are too mundane, or some details of life too personal. I disagree. Within the confines of the law, and the boundaries of friendship, I think one should write about anything and everything.

Pete and I have been discussing weblogs for nearly a year now, and neither of us seems willing to budge from our position. He argues that very few people lead lives of interest, lives that are worthy of web sites. I disagree. I believe that, with few exceptions, every life is interesting, not just to the person living it, but to other people as well. Every life is instructive, is entertaining, is meaningful, though not to everyone else who might glimpse it.

If one has a complaint against weblogs, does that complaint also apply to personal web sites? Personal web sites are not new; they’ve existed since the dawn of the world wide web. Weblogging simply makes it easier to develop a rich, detailed personal site, with accessible archives and a unified structure.

Previously, most personal sites, including my own (I’ve had a personal site since 1994), were slipshod, and only those with a great deal of free time and/or technical skill had great-looking pages. It was tedious to perform frequent site updates, so daily public journals were unusual.

Ben Schumin has a personal website that I alternately love and hate, depending on my mood. He doesn’t keep a weblog [well, in 2009 it does!], but his site is guilty of most of the points about which Pete complains.

Ben records his life in meticulous detail. Want a thorough tour of his freshman dorm room? sophomore dorm room? junior dorm room? senior dorm room? They’re all there, along with an extensive tour of his college’s dining hall.

I first learned of Ben’s site from Spinnwebe, where Spinn spent a week mocking Schumin Web. I joined in the laughter at first, but with time, I came to like Ben’s site, despite (because of?) his naive goofiness, the sheer inanity of it all. Ben’s fire alarm collection is as interesting to me as a collection of snow domes, but it’s who Ben is. I like web sites that tell me: “This is who I am.” What’s the good of having a personal site if everything there is mundane, nondescript, indistinguishable from any other life on the web.

Dreams of a Bloggy Future

There are personal sites from people who might be considered strange (Dale Miller, Peter Pan), but even these are, in their way, instructive, offering a glimpse into a life that I will never live (and, in some cases, would never want to live).

Other personal web sites contain are less strange. Consider these three personal sites, each of which is one of my favorite sites on the web. I recommend each of them highly (and have linked to them in the past):

I want to see more people with personal web sites, with online journals, with weblogs. I want to see other mothers of webloggers create weblogs of their own.

Pete has some valid concerns about weblogs, and the implication of public journals. For myself, I’m glad they they exist. I only wish I wasn’t so tired so that I could write a more considered, articulate defense of their existence.

Footnote: Here’s a lovely irony. Pete, the man who used to hate weblogs, now has two of his own. Meanwhile, I’ve been pleased with the exponential growth of weblogs. Welcome to the egalitarian web…

Branded! Feedback on the GRS Logo?

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been working with a real-life graphic designer to develop a logo (and eventually a new layout) for Get Rich Slowly. She provided me with a sheet of possible logos based on my vision for the site. Many were great, but I loved none more than this, which I think was only an afterthought on her part:

Something about the tortoise just grabbed me. He’s so damn cute! I told my designer that I wanted my site to be serious and classy (and classic), but also whimsical. I want it to have a sense of humor. I think this captures that very well. Plus I can’t help but think of the different ways the tortoise (who needs a name) could be used around the site. It’s branding!

I suggested that it might be fun to see a variation with the tortoise standing on top of the site name:

I like this version best of the two, but it’s less practical. For the web — and for print — the wide aspect-ratio is necessary. Still, I think the tortoise on top represents success. I may end up using this variation in certain circumstances (coffee mugs?).

This morning, my designer sent me variations of both logos, but with a spot of color. Kris likes the green better than the black. What do you think?

Finally, here’s the proposed business card. It would be two-sided. The first side would contain the logo and the contact information. The second side would contain a handful of provocative questions and the URL.

There you go. My first steps toward “branding”. I’d love to hear some feedback. Do you prefer the stacked version or the wide version? Black or green? (Or some combination?) Love it? Hate it? Ambivalent? I’m unlikely to change things substantially at this point because I like the tortoise motif a lot, but I’d love to hear constructive criticism on what works and what doesn’t.

Leaving My Comfort Zone

As many of you know, I’ve begun to push myself in new directions. My personal finance blog has been wildly successful, and because of this I’ve been presented with new opportunities.

Public speaking

For one, I’ve been offered some speaking engagements. I spoke to graduating students at Western Oregon University last spring, and last weekend I gave a talk at the Multnomah County Library. Though I was one course shy of a speech communication minor, making presentations to groups right now scares the hell out of me. It’s tough.

I console myself with the knowledge that I will get better with practice. It used to be that I was very nervous when I met “imaginary friends” for coffee or lunch or dinner. (“Imaginary friends” being Paul J.’s term for internet-only friends, a term that has found common usage in our house.) But now I’m very comfortable meeting these folks, and even look forward to it.

Might it be possible that I’ll eventually feel the same way about speaking to groups?

Media appearances

Even more intimidating than public speaking are the occasional media appearances I make. Since my disastrous first live radio interview, I’ve had a couple of other television and radio appearances. These have been of mixed quality. In all cases, I was tense tense tense tense tense. And in one case — the series of interviews being broadcast this week on KPTV-12 — I really think I did a poor job. (It makes me sick to watch these.) But, in general, I think I’m improving.

The real test will come tonight. I’m scheduled to appear on KGW-8’s “Live at 7” program to speak about frugal Christmas gifts. Once again, I am tense tense tense tense tense. After speaking with friends and family, though, I have some goals. Paul H. suggested that I try to speak more slowly, and so I will. I’m also going to try to take a moment to compose my thoughts before answering questions.

Again, I’m hoping that by continuing to do these things that I hate, I’ll actually get better at them.

Book deal!

Okay, so that subheading is premature. I don’t have a book deal. I haven’t even completed a proposal. However, I have agreed to work with an agent from Waxman Literary Agency. Next up: a book proposal, which we hope to have done in a couple of months. Then, assuming it gets picked up, an actual book. Who woulda thunk it?

This, too, is scary, but in a better way than the previous two things I listed. I know how to write. I feel confident in my abilities. I’m not worried about my ability to create a quality book.

However, each of those first two things I listed — public speaking and media appearances — will be critical to the success of my book. I’ll need to be able to present myself in a variety of situations if I want to promote the book and encourage its success.

Building confidence, destroying fear

It seems strange to me that little foldedspace has led me to so much more. I know that many of you long for the days when I wrote about comic books and cats and computers. I miss those days, too. But I’m not sure that they’ll ever return.

In the meantime, the seeds I planted here have grown into something amazing, something that has let me climb higher than I thought possible. I’m well on the way to achieving my dreams.

One Small Step for a Man…

Last night, I made what may be an important move in my attempt to get my electronic life under control. I separated my work e-mail from my personal e-mail.

I’ve complained for months that I’m overwhelmed by my e-mail load. I’m also overwhelmed by my browser tabs and my text documents. Things are out of control. I’ve been paying Michael and Lisa to help me at Get Rich Slowly, but I’ve done a poor job of giving them assignments because I’m buried by all the stuff. I don’t know what they should be doing!

Worse, I’ve turned into a terrible correspondent with my friends. It’s one thing to be slow with my GRS e-mail, but it’s a shame when messages from Dave or Andrew or you get lost in the swamp that is my inbox.

So, in an effort to take control, I’ve told my desktop computer to stop checking foldedspace e-mail. I’ve told my laptop to only check foldedspace e-mail. What’s more, after two years of having a zillion open browser tabs, the laptop now has none. The browser is in its default state, ready for me to poke around. If I use it for work, I’ll try to work on one task at a time, and try to finish that task before moving on.

I don’t have all the text documents closed on the laptop yet, but I think I can get there over the weekend. I may just zip them up and e-mail them to the work machine. What’s another ten text documents when I already have nearly 100 open?

Anyhow, what I’m trying to say is: I’ve begun to compartmentalize my work life and my social life. I’m hoping this leads to a revitalization of the latter. Work has been my whole life for too long…

A Good Idea

We had dinner last night at Pok Pok with Lisa and Craig. Warm summer evening. Good friends. Good food. Yum. The only thing that would have made it better? If I could have eaten more chicken wings for dessert.

During our conversation, we discussed the present state of foldedspace. I’m trying to put stuff up here, but it’s sporadic, I know. Craig pointed out the readers of foldespace may not actually read Get Fit Slowly or Get Rich Slowly. He suggested that I could reuse stories from those other sites here.

He has a great point.

For example, have I mentioned that we just had the knob-and-tube wiring replaced at Rosings Park? I don’t think so. Have I obsessed about running? I don’t think so. Have I discussed how I’m hiring contract employees for blogging? Nope.

So, based on feedback from my dinner companions, I’m going to try to extract the best bits from the other blogs and repurpose them here, as well as posting funny cat stories and favorite music videos. Those of you who read the other sites might get some repeats, but everyone else will get a little more to read.

In the News

Yesterday morning a crew from KGW (Portland’s channel 8 ) stopped by Rosings Park to interview me about my personal finance blog, Get Rich Slowly. Both Amy Troy (the reporter) and Rod Stevens (the cameraman) were awesome. They were interesting and fun to talk to. Most of all, they were very understanding when I explained how irrationally nervous I become when dealing with radio or television. They did their best to put me at ease.

The strange thing was that I was perfectly relaxed when I knew the camera wasn’t on. I could chat and carry on a normal conversation. But as soon as I knew Rod was filming, I became self-conscious. I could feel myself trying to analyze my words as I spoke them, could feel myself garbling what I wanted to say. But I was powerless to stop it! Craziness.

Amy and Rod were at our house for 90 minutes to produce a 90 second segment for the evening news. About 20 of those minutes were spent doing a formal interview on the couch in the parlor. The rest of the time was spent in my office and in the yard.

The final cut of the interview that aired is okay, though I wince at some portions. I think I look like a big dork. “No you don’t,” Kris told me. “I thought it was nice.” I do think it’s hilarious that they kept my ad-libbed pea-munching. I was just goofing around.

The KGW web site also has a couple minutes of me in my office talking with Amy about money saving tips. This part is less successful. Kris doesn’t like it. I had cleaned my desk before the crew arrived, but Rod said, “Don’t you have anything you can put up there? Stuff to make it look like you’re working?” I laughed and pointed at the stacks of paper on the floor. “Yeah,” he said, smiling. “That’s more like it.”

So I put some stuff on my desk, including the notebook I’d taken with me to England and Ireland last summer. While Rod began filming, I flipped through the book and randomly stumbled upon a page listing a bunch of money-saving ideas that I’d brainstormed while on a train out of Dublin. I read them aloud to Amy. I knew Rod was filming, but I never imagined the footage would appear uncut on the web site!

There’s nothing really wrong with it, I suppose. I just look like an even bigger dork. Heh. My friend Stephen comforted me via e-mail: “I often thought I was a dork on television interviews until I got used to em.”

Anyhow, I’m glad I did it. And I’m glad that Amy and Rod were the crew dispatched to film me. The best part of the experience was spending time talking with each of them about their own experiences with money. It’s those sorts of interactions that make what I do exciting.

“If you really do get nervous, you should join Toastmasters,” Kris said after we watched the interview.

“I want to do the Dale Carnegie course,” I said.

“Yeah. But why spend thousands of dollars when Toastmasters is free?” she asked. She has a good point. Time to talk with Dave about Toastmasters again, I think.

Subscriber Counts for All My Sites (Dec 2007)

In February, I posted subscriber counts for all the sites I run. At that time, my most-read site had 6784 regular readers. Today that numbers is over 40,000. While I’m pleased with this, it also gives me a severe case of stage-fright. It’s one thing to be writing for a few hundred people, but to be writing for a small city? It makes me nervous.

This list is based on the FeedBurner survey of my RSS feeds. This isn’t a count of actual direct traffic to the sites, but of the number of people who have subscribed. In parentheses, I’ll list the number of subscribers in February and the number of subscribers now. I’ll also write a little about my plans for each site.

I’ve ordered the list based on how important the sites are to me. I consider the first four to be “active”, and it’s my goal to maintain each of them as best I can.

Get Rich Slowly (6784 readers in Feb, 40808 today) — Yes, GRS really is read by over 40,000 daily subscribers right now. (And 4,000 people subscribe via e-mail.) I try not to think about it. I love writing this site and I love interacting with the GRS community. I’m earning enough from writing about personal finance to transition to a full-time writer.

foldedspace.org (330 readers in Feb, 302 today) — Foldedspace has suffered over the past two years. My attentions have turned elsewhere. We used to have a small but vibrant community here, but I fear I’ve lost many of the old readers. Still, I’ve been working to post here more often lately, and I’ve managed to move my old MT template to WordPress. All that’s left is to move over the archives.

Get Fit Slowly (new blog — 373 readers today) — Get Rich Slowly helped me turn my finances around. I’m hoping Get Fit Slowly can do the same with my health. Mac and I are writing this blog together, and so far I’ve been quite pleased with the experience. We’re both relaxed but serious about this. We’re not letting it become a chore, yet we’re dedicated to make this site a success. Our posts here are sporadic, but should become more regular (and higher quality) with time.

Animal Intelligence (23 readers in Feb, 98 readers now) — This number actually rises to about 120 or so on the days I post an entry. Unfortunately, I don’t post entries as often as I’d like. This is one blog that will benefit from my move to full-time. I’ll be able to spend a couple hours writing posts each week. This blog will never go away. I love the subject.

Money Hacks (93 readers in Feb, 847 today) — This GRS companion site was basically stillborn. I kept at it for a few weeks, and in that time grew the subscriber base to 1,000 people, but I couldn’t maintain the site. I didn’t have time. I still hope to revive it someday, but for now it’s dormant. (And, in reality, the Money Hacks feed is an abridged GRS feed at the moment.)

Vintage Pop (3 readers in Feb, 1 reader now, and that’s me) — Ah, Vintage Pop. How I love the idea. I’m not going to say this site is dead forever, but I have no plans to work on it in the next year or so. I do think it could be huge if I were to devote time and effort to it, and I think it could be a lot of fun. We’ll see…

Four Color Comics (31 readers in Feb, 39 readers today) — Ah, my comic book site. This site is dead, dead, dead. Though I’d love to have time to write about this aspect of my life, I don’t. I’ll maintain the domain, but I have no plans to return to this blog in the foreseeable future.

Bibliophilic (11 readers in Feb, 19 readers now) — My book site, which is dead dead dead. Again, this is a nice idea, but I just don’t have the time. I once thought I’d repost all my book reviews here, but rumor has it Google frowns on “duplicate content”, so I’m not willing to jeopardize all my other sites just to keep this one alive.

These are not the only domains I own, but they’re the only ones where I’ve actually created active sites. (They’re not all active now, of course…) Other domains that may see future activity include:

  • Cougar Tracks — A site meant for alumni of Canby Union High School.
  • Oak Grove Crossing — For information about my local community. This is a slow-to-get-started project with John C. I’m also hoping Lane will chip in. (And maybe Amy Jo, since she’s in the area now.)
  • Spiral Bound — My notebook blog. Believe it or not, this site has some underground support. I’ve never posted a thing here, but I think it could have a cult following if I did. I’m dead serious.
  • Success Daily — This one is set up and ready to go. I just don’t have the time. David Hatch will be disappointed to hear that I’m now thinking a January 2009 start date at the earliest.
  • Taking the Scenic Route — Actually, though I own the domain, this is a placeholder for a future Amy Jo project.
  • Too Much Cat and Too Much Dog — Ah, yes. I actually have entrepreneurship plans for these sites. I may make them a case study for GRS at some point.

There are other ideas kicking around inside my head, but I have to stop somewhere. The truth is, nothing else really matters to me right now but Get Rich Slowly. That is my top priority. If anyone out there wants to help with any of these, let me know. I’m open to possible collaborations.

The Six Million Dollar Blog

Gentlemen, we can rebuild it. We have the technology. We have the capability to build the world’s first bionic blog. Foldedspace will be that blog. Better than it was before. Better, stronger, faster.

Wow. Amazing what a burst of productivity can do. Almost everything is in place with the template. Thanks to everyone who offered tips. I appreciate it. All of the old functionality has returned except for archives and search. Actually, I think WordPress is automagically taking care of some of that. So, the template is finished.

That leaves content. I imported the most recent MT content last night just for fun. But when John and I have actually recovered all of the old data, I’ll probably wipe WordPress and start from scratch. I’ll still end up with a bunch of duplicate entries, but I have the patience to sit down and sort things out. I’m excited to do so, actually! Bring it on!