Oct. 4: Stuff Jen says about Stuff Jen Says

Found this fun one at Momma Blogs a Lot this morning and had to play along. I hope all my bloggy friends will too—I’m looking at you, Sherilee and Sunshine and Kath.

This blogging themed meme came my way via Jen @ Our Daily Big Top who found it at Life In The Carpool Lane.

1. Where are you blogging right now?
   At my desk in the family room.
2. How many unpublished posts do you have in your ‘draft’ box?
   None right now. I rarely leave posts unpublished. If I decide not to post, I delete.
3. Whose blog inspired you to start your own?
   No one’s. My students encouraged me to start my own web site in 1999. I had been teaching a bunch of web design classes and every day students would ask what my personal site looked like. I finally got embarrassed enough about not having one that I created manullang.com. Not very many people were calling them “blogs” back then, but looking back, that’s exactly what it was.
4. When do you usually publish your posts?
   I tend to write in the morning. Some days I post all day long. Occasionally, when Victor gets home and says something I have to share with the world, I write in the evenings. I guess my answer to this question is “whenev.”
5. In your guesstimation, how many blogs do you read?
   I’ve got 66 RSS feed subscriptions in Google Reader. Of those, 20 or so are blogs. Seven are subscriptions to blog comments. There are a handful that may or may not be considered blogs.
6. How long have you been blogging for? 
   Since 1999—so, um… let’s see… that would be… ten years. And people say I can’t do math.
7. Why did you start blogging?
   See answer to #3. But more specifically, I was pregnant when I started our web site in 1999, so I was looking for an easy way to share photos and news of the new bebeh with family and friends. Mission accomplished, and then some.
8. Why do you keep blogging?
   A few reasons… first, it’s still a great way to share photos and news of the fam. Secondly, writing is therapeutic for me, and it’s also just plain fun. Lastly, I love the people I have met in the blogosphere. [singsong voice]: Awesome!
9. If you could only recommend one blog to a friend, which one would it be?
   I can’t pick just one. It all depends on what that friend is interested in, and what their sense of humor is like. If they want insanely funny and occasionally very weird stuff, go to The Bloggess. If they’re interested in starting a blog and want to see the trolls that appear when one opens up their life to others, check out Dooce. If they’re like me, I’d recommend my friends’ blogs, of course. And if they want to read a blog that rarely gets updated, I’d point them to my sister’s. (I’m not allowed to link to it because of her stalkers, but I mention it in the hopes of shaming her into writing once in a while.)
10. If the internet was “turned off” for one month, what do you do with all the time you used to spend blogging?
    Cry without ceasing.

I gotta add one more thing about blog software. When I first started blogging, I’d write updates on a regular HTML page in Microsoft FrontPage. Eventually I moved over to Blogger (Google’s blog software), primarily because it did the archiving for me. I usually composed the post in Microsoft Word and then copied and pasted it into the Blogger window—Word did the pretty little curly quotes and apostrophes, em dashes, and Auto Correct, and Blogger didn’t. But I didn’t love Blogger’s layout preview—I couldn’t see the true layout of a post until I published it, so I had to publish and edit and re-publish until it looked right. Argh. Then I ran across Windows Live Writer, and my life improved considerably. It takes a template of your blog and lets you create a post within it, so it’s as close to WYSIWYG as can be. Me likey. Me recommend.