Why do I blog? Should I stop?

This week I was once again contemplating whether to continue blogging or to suspend my blogging efforts to use the time in a more productive manner. That caused me to consider the question of why I blog to begin with. I get virtually no immediate financial benefit from blogging, but I do enjoy some degree of writing.

I find that blogging helps to clear my head. An idea pops into my head and sits there and consumes my attention for quite some time. If I take the time to "blog that thought", I simultaneoulsy capture the thought and make it available to others, and free up my mind to move on to other thoughts.

Since my blogged thoughts are now floating around out there in the Blogosphere and indexable by Google, I significantly increase the chances of "networking" with others who might have similar interests. That might also have some professional value.

I may in fact someday finally give up blogging, but probably not until I have some more productive outlet for getting rid of my "excess" thoughts.

I have tentatively decided that I need to do more "book" reading, but I'm unsure how deep to pursue this without consuming vast amounts of my limited free time. I'll probably spend some time today "browsing" at Barnes & Noble here in downtown Bellevue, WA. I'm torn between history, politics, philosophy, economics, law, or whether I should do more in-depth reading on technology.

-- Jack Krupansky

Goodbye Gmail

I've had a Gmail email account for some time and was using it for this blog, but frankly it has not been offering me much value over my normal email accounts, so I have decided that I'll stop using the Gmail account. I'll continue to keep it in my Outlook Express list of accounts to read for incoming email, but I won't be displaying it or otherwise using it. For this blog, I'll be using my "Global Opinions/Commentary" email address, Jack@Opixia.com.

I have four web sites and have an email account for each:

• BaseTechnology.com Jack@BaseTechnology.com - my old software business
• Agtivity.com Jack@Agtivity.com - my research interests in software agent technology
• Finaxyz.com Jack@Finaxyz.com - my economics, finance, and stock market commentary
• Opixia.com Jack@Opixia.com - my global commentary/opinions

I had been using my "business" email address (Jack@BaseTechnology.com) as my main email address for many years, but since my business is now in hibernation due to my full time employment at Microsoft as of May, I have been shifting over to using Jack@Opixia.com unless the subject matter relates specifically to one of my other web sites.

I also have an email address with my ISP (MSN), but I never use it or give it out. I do have to use it for sending email since most ISPs implement Port 25 "blocking" which prevents me from using the SMTP services that my web site hosting services offer.

I certainly can understand people using Gmail as an alternative to using their ISP email address, but since I have other email options at my fingertips, Gmail has significantly less value to me.

I also have an email address at Microsoft, but I try very hard to use it only for company business.

-- Jack Krupansky

IE 7 installed

Yesterday I did finally get around to installing the formally released version of IE 7. I held off since I only have dial-up at home and I already had the latest beta release candidate (RC) anyway. I was perfectly happy with the RC, so I didn't expect any surprises, either positive or negative.

I went out for errands at noon yesterday and kicked off the download as I headed out the door.

The installation went fine except for a minor glitch. The start-up screen for IE 7 lets you choose some initial options, but clicking "Save Settings" simply jumped me to the top of that page with no clue as to whether the settings were saved and it didn't take me on to my default home page. I simply closed the window and reopened it and everything seemed fine and I saw my default home page (MSN).

To be safe, I uninstalled the IE 7 Beta RC before downloading the release IE 7. This restored IE 6, which now looks rather quaint and primitive.

So, everything went fine. I don't notice any differences from the RC, and I don't have any unresolved issues.

I'm also happy that my bank, Wells Fargo, has finally updated their web site to support IE 7. I noticed this a week ago while I was still using the beta RC. Now, I no longer need to rely on Firefox to browse "older" web sites. I do have a choice of browsers and have used Firefox, but I see no compelling reason to choose Firefox over IE 7. I actually had switched to Firefox last year when I ran into a bad memory leak in IE 6, but I switch to IE 7 last year as soon as the first beta became publiclly available.

BTW, I rarely type in URLs anymore. I usually click in the "search box" and enter keywords and then click on the link in the search results page.

-- Jack Krupansky

Blogger post failed

I emailed a post to Blogger and it kept bouncing back with a subject line of "Blogger post failed" and the following text:

Blogger could not process your message at this time.

Error code: 6.57FCC2

I suspected that maybe Blogger service was temporarily inoperative, so I waited, emailed it again, and got the same bounce-back message. I waited longer, emailed it again, and I still got the same bounce-back message.

I was tempted to conclude that maybe Blogger was down for some reason, but then I emailed another post to another Blogger blog of mine and it posted fine.

So, I looked at my post, decided it looked fine, without anything complicated, but then I noticed that I had an unusually long post title:

ECRI Weekly Leading Index indicator for future growth rises moderately and growth rate improves modestly but remains modestly negative but still near flat line

I don't see anything outrageous about that post title, but I suspected that Blogger might be complaining about the length of the title anyway, so I shortened it to "ECRI Weekly Leading Index indicator improves, suggests stable economy ahead" and it posted fine. Oh well.

So, I guess that is what error code 6.57FCC2 means: Post title is too long.

Now I know. And now you know.

-- Jack Krupansky

Getting ready to install IE 7

Sometime today I'll install IE 7. I've held off since I only have dial-up at home and I already have the latest beta release candidate (RC) anyway. I'm perfectly happy with the RC, so I don't expect any surprises, either positive or negative.

I see a lot of chatter and intense debate or criticism of IE 7 on the Internet, but so much of it is simply noise and rehashed noise. If you're happy with Firefox, fine, stay with it. If you have IE 6 and are interested in some of the "Firefox" features like tabbed browsing or the slew of bug fixes and feature enhancements, upgrade to IE 7. End of story.

-- Jack Krupansky