Blog-o-rama-ding-dong

As predicted, I have thus far spent my morning trying to avoid a very legitimate to-do list by futzing around with my blog.  Today’s unnecessary blog task?  The blogroll.  Specifically, the Sabres blog roll.

First Task: Check blog vitals

To determine if continued inclusion on the blogroll is warranted, I conducted a highly scientific test.  I clicked on each link.  (It’s science!)  If the blog has been updated since March, it was declared Technically Alive.  March 1st was the cutoff.  Shockingly, only ONE blog was declared dead by these very strict standards.  Dueling Sabres, may you rest in peace.

Second Task: Fret about the Mostly Dead

There are a few beloved blogs that have only the very faintest of pulses.  I fear that it is only our love for them that is keeping them here on this mortal plane.  Have fun storming the castle, Side of Pork! Please don’t die!  Come back!  Truuuue love!

I’m also highly concerned about Meet Me @ Chef’s.  I love this blog for a variety of reasons, chief among them that in the web address bar, the name of the blog looks like meetmeatchefs.  Meet Meat Chef’s makes me happy, and I don’t want it to die.  Come back, Rachael!

Third Task: Marvel at the majesty that is Desperation Hockey

Desperation Hockey doesn’t even need to post to keep me in her mesmerizing thrall.  (Did I just use “thrall” correctly?  That word has always confused me a bit.  I decided to throw caution to the wind and bust it out, but it makes me nervous.)

Fourth Task: Welcome the Newcomers

Everyone, please welcome Two Minutes for Roughing to the Sabres blogosphere, where your lovely host Amanda Twentyfive will serve all your yelling-at-the-Sabres-when-they-suck needs.

Fifth Task: Comb the Interwebs for the Undiscovered

By “comb the interwebs” I mean, “write a post on my blog asking if any of you guys are writing a Sabres blog”.  Any and all blogs are welcome, even the perpetually sucky blogs.  Come one, come all.  If you write a Sabres blog, and you have updated since March 1st, you’re in.  One of us, one of us, one of us….

If you want to be included on the TWC blogroll leave a comment on this post, or email me at willfulcaboose [at] gmail [dot] com.

Sixth Task: Sit back and congratulate myself

My talents for avoiding my to-do list remain impressive.  WOOO!

….Don?

I’m starting to think that Puck Daddy actually IS Don Draper.  Or maybe he’s Dick Whitman posing as Don Draper posing as Puck Daddy.   I dunno.  It’s confusing.

Hooray For Blogging!

The Willful Caboose celebrated its second birthday a few days ago, and it got me to thinking about blogging.

I’ve been blogging consistently for almost four years now.  Before I wrote TWC, I wrote a personal blog for the amusement of my friends and family.  When I got caught up in the Sabres playoff run in the spring of 2007, I stumbled upon BfloBlog, and then I was absolutely hooked- both on the sport, and on the sports blogosphere.

It is not an exaggeration to say that blogging has changed my life.

My personal blog was where I discovered that I loved writing, and it’s also where I realized that I have a bit of a knack for entertaining people in short, written bursts.  In the great scheme of things, it’s a frivolous skill to possess, but I’ve enjoyed it nonetheless.  In the beginning, the best thing about blogging was that it gave value to behaviors that I had previously considered to be time wasters.  I began to consciously cherish the silliest aspects of my life, because they were good blog fodder.  Ridiculous, I know, but viewing my life through this lens grounded me, and best of all, it made me much more aware and appreciative of all the wonderful things I have in my life, no matter how small.  I believe it ultimately helped me be a happier person.

I want to encourage any of you who think you might want to start a blog to give it a try. It’s free. There is really nothing to lose. It doesn’t have to be about hockey.  It can be about absolutely anything in the entire world.  Any hobby, profession, music, religion, whatever.  You name it, you can blog about it, and you can read blogs about it. Or, it doesn’t have to be about anything. If you don’t like it, you can quit. If you want it to be anonymous, it can be. You don’t have to have any readers.  If you think you might want to start a blog, you should.

There are very few rules to blogging.

1. Don’t forget that once it’s on the internet, it’s there forever. If you are attaching your name to something, remember that it will be searchable for the rest of your life.
2. Don’t blog about work.  Seriously, it’s not worth it.
3. Be safe.  Use common sense when deciding how much to reveal about yourself and your whereabouts.

That’s pretty much it.

My one bit of advice would be to do it for yourself in the beginning.  Don’t worry about your stats or followers or links, and don’t make a big ta-do about it in the beginning.  Don’t email everyone you know with a link on the first day you start your blog.  Just tell a handful of your closest friends and family.  Give your blog a little breathing room before you go shouting your URL from the rooftops.  Just start writing and see what what sticks.

As far as I can tell, the internet is infinitely large, so my theory is that we shouldn’t worry about filling it up with nonsense. The internet will always have room for more, and we can’t hurt it by throwing in our two cents.  If, for some mysterious reason, your blog sucks SO HARD that you become concerned that it’s actually damaging the internet you can just erase it and we’ll pretend we never had this conversation, but I seriously doubt it will suck that hard.  It might be great.

Happy blogging!

Housekeeping

I have SO MUCH to do you guys.  The BPO season is wrapping up this afternoon, and then on Tuesday I’m headed off to Bat Shack Camp. As of right now, I’m TOTALLY unprepared to leave town for two weeks, and I have a LOT of music to learn.  So, my plan was to get up early and get some work done.

I did get up early, but I failed to get any work done.  Rather than check a single thing off my redonkulously long “to do” list, I decided that I would spend a few minutes sprucing up the blog a bit while I drank my coffee.

Three hours later, after reading almost the ENTIRETY of my archives from the last year, I have made the following improvements to this blog:

1. I updated and combined the “About TWC” and “FAQ” pages and renamed it “Aboot”.  I’ve been meaning to do this for roughly one million years, so I’m glad it’s done, but I realize that it makes almost ZERO difference to anyone but me. So…that was time well spent.

2. I’ve officially ended the Helmet Nuzzle Project.  Thank you SO MUCH to everyone who contributed delightful helmet nuzzles.  I have all the pictures stored safely in a file on my desktop, and I have every intention of one day doing something FABULOUS with them once I figure out what that fabulous thing is and I have a good chunk of free time.  I’m sorry that I haven’t done anything yet.

3.  I swapped out a lot of the “Favorite Posts” entries.  I was getting a little depressed looking at that list because most of the posts were written ages ago.  When I first started TWC I was so creatively envigorated by the Sabres and hockey blogging that it was easy to churn out decent material, but over the last year or so, I think I’ve struggled a bit.  This morning I sat down with the intention of finding a decent post written in the last year, and I discovered a few things:

-I had a good stretch in mid-March.  Three of the posts that I added to “Favorites” (Coach Killing, Please Come Home, and Lindy and Buffalo) were all written in one week.  They all have a different tone, but they all are reflect a sort of “rock bottom” as a fan.  When I think about that stretch of time I remember myself being miserable about the Sabres, so it’s interesting to note that I was apparently fairly inspired by the Sabres’ suckitude.

-I added “Poor Timmy” which I think is a pretty funny post, and I added “Sabres @ Leafs 1/1/09: Special “Fuck You, Sabres” Edition” which is a good example of the ranting lunatic that the Sabres reduced me to this season.

-Reading through the archives for the 2008/09 season was quite interesting both from a blogging perspective and from the perspective of a fan.   If you write a hockey blog I highly recommend that you read your archives because you might be surprised by what you find.  Without this blog as a record, I probably would have summed up the last season as “meh,” so it’s just fascinating to find all sorts of evidence that I WAS fully engaged with the Sabres last season.  It’s kind of cool how our emotions surrounding sports are all-consuming and TOTALLY fleeting at the same time.

4. Could I BE any more obsessed with myself today?  I just spent the last three hours reading every word I wrote about a HOCKEY team last year, and then I spent 45 minutes writing this post telling YOU all about my experience reading about MYSELF.  I’m pathetic, and I really need to get on with my day.  Heh.

Go Bulls!

Okay, I’m going to interrupt our regularly scheduled Sabres hand wringing to remind you that the the UB Bulls are playing in the MAC Championship tonight.  (That’s a football championship, just in case you’re not sure.  I, um, might have had to look that up.  Maybe.)   As the Sabres sink further and further into the smelly abyss, I’m realizing that more than being a Sabres fan, I’m a Buffalo fan.   It turns out the Bulls football team is the best thing we’ve got going on around here, and they’re our best opportunity to jump around with joy in the name of our fair city.  I’m in.

In other news, The Willful Caboose has recently joined the ranks of the WNYMedia sports blogs.  All that my new (super-foxy) title means is that TWC is now on the WNYMedia blog feed and I get to rub blogging elbows with the likes of BfloBlog, USRT, and The Goose’s Roost.  I know.  I’m so fancy!  Over the last few months I’ve gotten in the habit of checking in over on the WNYMedia main page as part of my blog rounds, and I really respect and admire the work that they do on behalf of WNY.  I’m honored to be even peripherally associated with these guys.

Tonight, Peter along with Jon Splett will be reporting live from the MAC championship in Detroit.   There will be a multi-live-blog extravaganza that you can participate in by visiting WNYMedia, BfloBlog, Goose’s Roost, or Buffalo Pundit during the game.  Using the “Cover it Live” software, the same live blog will be updated and presented on several blogs SIMULTANEOUSLY.  It’s a marvel of modern technology, folks.  I encourage everyone who is watching the UB game within reach of their computer to chickitty-check it out!

(And please let me know about how you feel about this new fangled clicky, scrolly liveblog technology.  There has been some talk of using it for a more Sabres oriented gamechat, and I’d like to know how you’d feel about it showing up on TWC someday.)

OMG, The NHL Is So Dumb.

All day long I’ve been batting around the idea of doing a Sean Avery post, but I just read this, and I am now too dumbfounded to continue.  I….don’t have any idea how to respond to that.  I’m literally speechless.

So, instead of a post about the Sean Avery “sloppy seconds” incident, here is a video of a really funny dog wearing little dog shoes.

Make sure to watch to the end!  (It’s only 45 second long)

Tweet!

Hey, do you want to follow me on Twitter?  Cuz, I want to follow you.

I’m not the most prolific twitterer ever, but I promise I won’t fill your Twitter feed with endless links advertising my new posts.  I haven’t entirely decided how I want to use Twitter, but I noticed the following tweet today from the Michael DiLorenzo, NHL Director of Corporate Communications and I realized I want to try to figure Twitter out:

Out of curiosity, would there be an appetite for a player to be the “NHL Tweeter of the Week”? Or does that seem contrived?

Yes, it sounds contrived.  And yes, I have an appetite for “NHL Tweeter of the Week”.

I keep reading about how Twitter is being used in all sorts of interesting ways to market products, and more importantly consumers are using Twitter to communicate their wants and desires back to the people selling them stuff.  If the NHL is going to use Twitter to ask me what I think, I’m totally on board.

Blog Stats

I discovered something wonderful in my blog stats today.

Here is a screen shot of a portion of the list of all time search engine terms used to find The Willful Caboose. Meaning, people have typed these things into Google, and then followed a link back to this blog from the resulting search list.  This small list is part of a much, much longer list that is written in descending order of the number of times each search term was used.

best list ever

To my great delight, the search term “monkey hugging bird” brings slightly more visitors to TWC than “Tim Connolly,” but slightly fewer visitors than “Derek Roy”.  That seems about right.

Is it crazy that I am incredibly proud right now?

2 Things

1. Last night after the BPO concert I zipped over to Fat Bob’s to join the Buffalo sports blogger gathering already in progress.  What a terrifying freak show.

2. Just kidding!  It was great to put some faces to the blogs, and I look forward to hanging with this totally normal, not-at-all-too-nerdy-to-leave-the-basement crew again.  Those poor bloggers had been there for hours by the time I arrived, watching what sounded like an incredibly bad game standing up in the corner of a loud bar.  I very cleverly avoided the bad game by having to go to work, but I’m disappointed I missed the bulk of the beer drinking.  Till we meet again, Buffalo bloggers….

Adam Mair’s Charm School For Bloggers

Katebits: Adam, I recently realized that I am TOTALLY confused about the Buffalo Sabrgosphere.  There are, like, a hundred million Sabres blogs out there!  I don’t even think I know about all the Sabres blogs anymore.  My blogroll is a mess.

Adam: Maintaining a tidy blogroll is important for any blogger who hopes to make a good impression.

Katebits: I do want to make a good impression!

Adam: And that’s why you’ve come to Adam Mair’s Charm School For Bloggers?

Katebits:  Yes. I’m looking for tips on blogging etiquette.

Adam:  I would be happy to assist you with that, Ms. Katebits.  First of all, I commend you for making this effort to become a well mannered blogger.

Katebits:  Thanks.  I try to be classy.  I mean, I’m not very good at being classy….but I try.

Adam: (gets out a leather bound notebook and fancy feather pen)  Alright, in what area of blogging do you feel you need the most guidance?

(Adam begins jotting down notes as Katebits speaks)

Katebits: Well, like I said, there are so many Sabres blogs now that I’ve gotten WAY behind in my efforts to keep track of them, much less read them all.  I spent a few minutes updating my blogroll today, and I realized there are 29 active Sabres blogs right now.  TWENTY NINE! And those are just the ones I KNOW about!  I need help keeping track of all the Sabres blogs so that I can enjoy them and link to them when appropriate.

Adam: (looking up notebook with a disapproving gaze) Katebits, if you want to be viewed as a lady of impeccable taste and high breeding you can’t have that many links in your blogroll.  It makes you look…oh heavens…how can I put this tactfully?…..well, to be perfectly frank it makes you look….easy.  A blogroll of this size is unseemly!  If you want to maintain a reputation as a woman of high moral fiber, some of those blogs have to go.

Katebits: Really?  But they’re all Sabres blogs!  I love Sabres blogs!  I could never choose!  No, I’m afraid my policy must remain: If you’re writing a Sabres blog and you’ve been regularly updating for a few weeks, send me an email and I’ll put you on the blogroll.

Adam: I say, this type of permissive policy simply will not do!  What about gossipy blogs about the player’s lives?  I suppose your blogroll is FULL of gossip blogs!

Katebits: Well, first of all, that’s not really our style.  Bloggers like to leave the unsightly gossip for the (sniffing in exaggerated disgust) message boards. Plus, not to be rude or anything, but no one really cares that much about your real lives, Adam.

Adam: What?!  I find that insulting!

Katebits: (cooly) Hm.  Well then, I apologize.

Adam: I’m not sure I can accept that apology.

Katebits: Why ever not?

Adam: I think that perhaps only a JOKE would say such a thing.

Katebits: Are you calling me a joke?

Adam: Perhaps I am!  Yes, I believe I am!  I think you, Katebits, are a joke.

Katebits: (getting angry) Oh, YEAH?  Well, what are you going to do about it?

Adam: I shall make you pay!  (rubbing a smelly hockey glove in Katebits’ face) YOU’RE A JOKE!

(Katebits and Adam start brawling until they are broken up by Sabretooth and members of the local media who happen to be filming the entire encounter.)

The End

(Moral of the story: Don’t go to Adam Mair for etiquette lessons, and if you want to be on the blogroll, send me an email.)