John Dilbeck Musings

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We had a great time at our Christmas get-togethers yesterday.

I posted some Christmas 2005 Photos on Flickr and you’re welcome to view them if you are interested.

I had a very good visit with Mom in the nursing home, where she’s recovering from a broken leg, and then visited my daughter and her family in the afternoon. Dena was feeling poorly and spent most of the afternoon napping on the couch. The kids were excited, as you’d expect.

Dragons were the theme for my gifts yesterday. My brother and sister-in-law gave me a novel about dragons, and my grandkids gave me a great book on Dragonology.

I had a great time. I hope you did, too.

(Asheville, North Carolina) Almost one year ago, they began coming together, a group of women who wanted to create positive change for women and girls in western North Carolina.

They formed Women for Women and now have more than $185,000 to grant in the coming months to nonprofit organizations and public agencies that serve women in crisis. Grants from $30,000 to $100,000 are available, and the deadline to apply is Friday, February 3, 2006.

To date, 188 women have become members of Women for Women, a special initiative of the Community Foundation of Western North Carolina that encourages women’s philanthropy. Each member contributes $1,100 per year for three years, then together they learn about pressing needs facing women throughout the region and determine how to direct their funds.

During the first year of grantmaking, the membership decided to award grants to organizations that are helping economically disadvantaged women rebuild their lives and be more self-sufficient.

“We are looking for applicants that can supply safety net programs to prevent setbacks for women such as homelessness, joblessness, and hunger,” said Carol Minton, chair of the grants committee. “We plan to fund groups that work cooperatively with others, address causes rather than symptoms, and make a lasting impact.”

To be eligible for consideration, a nonprofit organization or public agency must meet specific guidelines and serve one or more of the 18 counties in the western North Carolina region.

To apply for a grant or become a member of Women for Women, visit Community Foundation of Western North Carolina or call 828-254-4960.

Massive Broadband over Powerline Rollout in Texas [Wi-Fi Networking News]

For those of us in remote areas where DSL, Cable, and other broadband access services are not availble, BPL (broadband over powerlines) offers hope that we will one day be able to get fast access at a reasonable price. While there are technical issues to overcome, it’s heartening to see large rollouts of BPL.

Maybe it will come to your location, and mine, one day.

(Update: September, 2006 - These articles offer more information about Broadband over Powerline Internet access at Wi-Fi Networking News.)

I want to apologize.

I don’t know who you are; I only know you called me on the phone and I was rude.

I’m sorry.

You see, I answered pleasantly enough, and told you that you called at a very bad time.

You asked, “When would be a better time,” pleasantly enough.

I said, “Not today!”

Then, you started to tell me who you were and I cut you off and said, “I can’t talk to you right now,” and hung up the phone.

It would not have caused any great commotion in the grand scheme of the universe if I’d taken just half-a-minute to tell you why it was a bad time.

But, I didn’t.

After the connection was dead, it was too late.

I don’t know who you are or why you called. I may have hung up on someone who would have become a great friend or a valued customer, but it won’t happen now.

Yes, it was a bad time, but is there any excuse for being so rude to someone? I wasn’t raised that way, and I’m not normally that way.

I have an excuse, but that’s all it is.

You see, my mother fell and broke her leg yesterday morning (again). When you called, there were five people from the rescue squad trying to get her off the floor and back into her chair so we could take her to the hospital.

There were plenty of people helping her and I could have taken a moment to tell you why it was a bad time, but I was worried and frustrated, and just didn’t do it.

We got her to the hospital, and then transferred her to another hospital to see an Orthopedic Surgeon. Both bones had clean breaks and didn’t require surgery. We got back home almost exactly eleven hours after she fell, and now she’s in bed with a cast and instructions not to walk on it. She’s in quite a bit of pain — it was painful before she broke that leg — and it will be some time before it quits hurting.

Those were the things I was thinking about when I hung up that phone.

Now, 19 hours later, and with only about an hour of sleep, I’m still haunted by my unnecessary rudeness.

For that, I apologize to you, whomever you are.

All the best,

JD

Over the last six months, I’ve been doing a lot of work to learn more about blogging and syndication, using a variety of tools.

One of the things I wanted to do was to create multiple blogs on specific topics. I’m interested in, and do, a lot of different things, and I didn’t want to confuse someone who was reading a story about marketing in one message and then one about nonprofits in another and making customized t-shirts in a third.

How can you build a readership when your blog has no focus?

So, I decided to use the easiest tool I could find: Blogger.

I built about two dozen blogs and learned how to syndicate them on multiple sites using javascript, iframes, and php. Things were going great, and I was getting ready to turn my attention away from building the infrastructure to writing more about the topics to which each blog was devoted.

However, about a month ago, Blogger installed new software, apparently, and I started going through a round of being blocked, then whitelisted, then blocked again, and so forth. Finally a couple of days ago, I had had enough of it and decided to move all my marketing, affiliate marketing, and network marketing blogs off Blogger. But, I didn’t want to lose what I’d written.

So, I registered Blog Feed Syndication and archived over 20 of those blogs there. Since they’ll no longer be powered by Blogger, they are suspended until I find a new way to do what I want without having to do a lot of extra work in the process.

I’m testing WordPress for this, but really don’t know enough about it to make a determination if that’s the way I want to go or not.

Ideally, I’ll find a way to blog in one place, choose separate categories for each posting — as I can do here with Radio Userland — and generate a separate RSS feed for each category that can be syndicated as I want. So, I have some learning to do over the next few days.

I did decide to leave my Cherokee County, NC Blog and Murphy, NC 28906 Blog on Blogger for now. Since they do not have the marketing characteristics of some of my other blogs, perhaps they won’t trip the new algorithms that have caused me so much trouble over the last few weeks.

(Update: September, 2006 - I’ve restarted both those blogs using WordPress and I’ll be reloading the old postings from the archives to the new blogs as I have time.)

In the meantime, I believe I have archived my test postings from my blogs so I can access that information and use it again, if I need to do so.

One lesson I’ve learned, again, is not to trust a free service enough to try to build a business around it, especially when their terms of service tell me my only recourse is to stop using the service if I don’t like what’s happening.

I’m old enough to have learned that lesson decades ago, but I keep making the mistake that I can trust people I don’t know, systems over which I have no control nor influence, and the inevitable gremlins that find new places to live.

Back to the drawing board, one more time.

A few months from now, I’ll probably laugh about this new opportunity to have a learning experience.