While this is not one of my standard charity picks, I could not pass up Scott's request!

My father-in-law has diabetes, (not as bad as Scott's situation)! We all have someone dear that needs our help!

See Scott's blog for a very thought provoking monolog about this issue!

While you are there, help out and send The American Diabetes Association some $$$.

I can vouch for Scott's integrity, I even sent my contribution through him via Paypal!

http://www.hanselman.com/blog/TeamHanselmanAndDiabetesWalk2006.aspx

Why am I blogging here, what do I want to accomplish, what do I stand to gain!

Oh and why am I reassessing this issue now? 

Well earlier today I caught myself thinking that I must blog more, with interesting blogs to get my visitor count up!  You guessed it, I was looking at my web server stats and they are pitiful compared with some of the bloggers I read.   Scott Hanselman, Omar Shahine, Clemens Vasters, Russ Nelson, Rory Blyth, the list goes on!

I guess that old competition thing jumped up a bit me for a while, but I soon woke up. I am not doing this for you reader; I am doing this for me.

I have always been interested in writing, for hobby or profit. My favorite genre is Science Fiction. Well what does that have to do with this blog, you say?

I believe we all have a need and desire for creation, be it art in its many forms, or literature in its many forms or building something, real or conceptual.  I know that the many websites I have built over the years were mainly all about creation. Now do I have a real talent for art, literature, or construction (real or code)?

I would have to say that my skills in all these areas are modest at best.  I work in the Information Technology area, I have gravitated towards technical operations management, (Hey a Vice President of a small company), because I seem to have some wining ways with people, and apparently I just don’t have the conceptual mathematical ability to be a great programmer. 

Oh I have done my fair share of programming, but I have always ended up on the maintenance tasks. I am pretty good, about going in behind somebody else and making order out of chaos, but original coding seems beyond my skill.

So how does this equate to blogging on a site called Robosapient.com.  Will just writing about ones self, is just self aggrandizing, and while satisfying for a while, it ends up that only your mother is reading what you have to say.  Hi Mom.

So I looked around for good open source blogging software, that was Microsoft centric (MS Bigot here), and decided that I would blog, and support that blogging software. You need a useful purpose for creation, and I am a Technologist first and foremost. Well things did not really work out as I intended.

I have let this blog become a family web site, while I went off in my usual modes operandi and created http://dasblog.us and http://dasblog.info to support DasBlog.

DasBlog my chosen blogging engine and focus of my creative energy! I need to work on my creative writing skills, but I keep letting myself fall back into IT support roles. You would not believe the hours I have put into the dasBlog community. I am going to continue, but I must refocus to make sense out of this hobby, more writing less site building!

(Yea I guess you could call it a hobby!)

So the final assessment result:   Hobby + Technology + Literature + Helping Others = dasBlog

Cheers
Tom

Don't ask me why but I find economics interesting and the philosophy of Russ Nelson.

I read Russ regularly and I don't always agree with him, but I appreciate his reasoned thought on all the subjects he tackles. For example I believe that the good of a monopoly usually outweighs the bad, i.e. Microsoft!  Standardization and the lower cost of effort will always win me over.

Boy am I lazy!

I am jealous that I appear not to be so capable of this kind of reasoned thought! Maybe I will some day get the courage to try my hand at expressing intelligent thought! Until then try reading Russ.

Everyone is lazy

http://angry-economist.russnelson.com/everyone-is-lazy.html