Jerry D. Russell dot Com

Also Known As: My wife’s JOB: A comedy of errors.

Some of you might recognize the reference to the immortal Robert Heinlein’s work in the title.  For those who don’t, if you are into Sci-Fi or Fantasy, you’ll love the book, which you can find by following the link attached to the image of the cover on the right. It’s a lovely diversion from daily life and I highly recommend it.

As for why I titled this post with a reference to JOB… It’s that life itself has become far stranger than reality television with evil producers who are on a tight budget and losing ratings.  In other words: it’s become a little tiresome for the cast, in this particular case that would be myself and my family.

Every long distance move comes with a slew of challenges. We are aware of these and please let me assure you that I’m not whining about having to get everything ready for a 1,700 mile transition.  I’m more than prepared to make adjustments.  What I’m miffed about is that every single thing we’ve done has come with issues…

The military has had problems completing our paperwork. Our home loan is getting very near to falling through; not because we’re not doing everything we can, but because our lender isn’t talking to anyone, including us. Plans for visitors and last minute get togethers fall through daily, mostly where family is involved and in the midst of all this I’m still trying to get all of the mundane day-to-day things that have to be accomplished on my end completed.

And then there’s work… Which isn’t getting done… But has to be done…

So what do you do when life is stranger than fiction?  Do you fight valiantly onward, forgetting the chaos around you, or do you fold beneath the waves of insanity that come crashing down around you?  Do you tackle one project at-a-time, working steadily towards your goal or do you try to handle everything at once and thus gain a little breathing room?

For me it’s a combination of both methods, depending on the day.  It is a sometimes vain attempt to balance home life, work and parenting with looming deadlines, commitments and other impending calendar dates of doom. I’m not always successful, but I do my best.

What’s your method for dealing with distraction, diversion and chaos?

Jerry Announcements chaos, ehtics, work, Work Habits, workflow

One of the two bggest reasons fellow bloggers give for staying with services like blogger or WordPress.com is that the cost of web hosting is simply too high to justify the move to their own domain. I really hve to stress the point that the downside of having to pay as little as $2.49 a month is more than worth the benefits of hosting your own blog installation.

Sure, staying with a service provider gets you updates and a few other freebies, but it robs you of much of the power of your own hosted site.  If you want truly custom layouts, you’ll be paying for them, and paying big.  You have to dael with slowdowns on the networks caused by high traffic to blogs that have nothing to do with your own, you have to abide by their rules and your options for monetization are limited to just a few of the major players in the industry.

In short, you’re holding yourself back. There may never be a point at which you are comfortable moving your blog from a service-hosted solution to your own, bt I guarantee that within a few months of doing so you’ll wonder exactly why you hadn’t done so sooner.

Jerry Observations Blogging, Hosting, nc, Tools, web hosting

In the battle of the search engines, Google has long held the top position. Most of the big G’s die hard followers claim it is the simplicity of the tool that keeps them using it.  Another smaller percentage will claim that they would rather eat week old gym socks than to have anything to do with a Microsoft product. In either case, they may need to rethink their stance on search.

Enter Microsoft bing, the new search platform from the software behemoth that has brought the world such mediocrity as Windows 95 and Windows Me along with such utter failures as Internet Explorer and Windows Vista, just to name a few. (Does anyone remember Microsoft BOB? <shudder>.) With a long sting of disappointments and failures under their belt, it would be a fair assumption to immediately class the newly re branded Microsoft bing as one of the many almost-great ideas the company puts out on a fairly regular basis. The only problem is, it’s not a failure at all.

On the contrary, bing works, and it works very well.  Under threat of being ostracized by every member of the “I hate Microsoft Society”, I’m willing to say that so far I’m willing to skip Google as my primary search engines in favor of this new Microsoft tool in most cases.

Wait! Before you get out your torches and pitchforks, let me explain why!

Bing is fast…  Blazingly fast. While Google Search isn’t usually slow, bing just feels faster, and that counts for a lot when you’re in the midst of looking for something important.

Bing gives you options… need to refine your search?  bing hands you a list of suggestions in a manner similar to Apple’s spotlight or Microsoft vista’s Desktop Search.  This can drastically reduce drill-down times. The mouse over quick view of page content can be a lifesaver in rejecting that “almost relevant” page or two in the listings.

Bing listens and tries to adjust to what you’re looking for. Rather than just throwing out a list of keyword specific results that may or may not have the slightest thing to do with what you were actually searching for, bing seems to take the time to put your searches in context.  Google doesn’t bother with little things like this; it deals more with keyword relevance. bing responds a lot more like the original Ask Jeeves, which was my search engine of choice before it was bought out in the early 2000’s

Bing Feels finished… This may be the Mac user and designer in me, but Google’s interface just doesn’t have what it takes to be considered a modern application. It stagnated somewhere in the early 90’s and now relies on iGoogle to make it feel mature.  Bing delivers a modern experience without the need to log in to an account.  In my opinion this is a huge plus.

In short, I think bing is giving users all the options and power of Google Search with the added advantages of intelligent algorithms and a polished experience that far surpasses the competition.  This time Google does have something to worry about, because bing is bringing a new level of search to the table, and one I think deserves your attention.

Jerry Productivity bing, Microsoft, research, search, Tools

Has it really been over a month since I last posted here? With all that’s been going on, is doesn’t feel like it.  Then again, date stamps don’t lie, do they?  It really has been over thirty days.  What in the world could possibly keep me from updating for so long?

In short, anything and everything. It’s been a very hectic month for the Russell family in many ways, all of which conspired to keep me from getting much in the way of work done here, or on any of my other blogs and if you will indulge me for a moment, I’ll fill you in on some of the highlights.

Firstly, for those of you who aren’t aware through twitter or my food and recipe blog, we’re gearing up for a move. This is a military move, and one of the more complicated types.  My wife is moving to Incirlik Air force Base in Turkey and my son and I are moving to northern California to be close to family.

The logistics of a move like this are staggering, not only from a family standpoint, but from a paperwork standpoint.  Much of my time has been spent making sure that everything I can do to help my wife get things in order has been done.  After that it’s taking care of my son. In what little free time I have left, I’ve been handling the paperwork for the home we’re buying.

If there’s anything left after all of that, I’m usually content to spend my time mowing down hordes of parasitic alien beings in Resistance and Resistance II: Fall of Man, or creating and destroying cities in Civilization IV. Getting all technical minded just hasn’t been on my high priority list after a day of pushing to get things done.

I’m happy to announce that almost al of the paperwork side of the move is done.  On my side at least, there is little to be done now except wait for the movers to come and pack our things.  We should get word on the house sometime today or tomorrow.  If we got it, great!  If not, I’ll rent in California.  Either way, there won’t be much to worry about.

Now I can get back to work. I’ve been looking forward to it for weeks.

Over the course of the next month much of my blogging will be done from locations other than my trusty Mac, which will be packed for moving by Father’s Day. I can’t promise that I’ll be posting in great length, but blogging from a hotel room or while I watch the kid play in the park will pretty much guarantee a heavy posting frequency.

In any event, this station is now resuming its regularly scheduled programming.  We apologize for any inconvenience that our technical difficulties may have caused our viewers.

Peace. I’m out.

Jerry General delays, Personal, silence

I wish I could tell you that from personal experience, but alas, I’m nowhere near those numbers yet.  Even though I’m not qualified to give you that information, I know of someone who is, his name is John Scalzi.

You may have heard of John.  He’s an incredibly talented and successful Science Fiction Writer and former journalist. He’s also the author of one of the most popular blogs on the Internet, a little thing called whatever.

John is very aware of what to do with 40k + readers, because he’s GOT those numbers, and he’s willing to share his experiences with the rest of us through a video stream of a panel he was on at last years Tools Of Change Conference.  The panel also includes such notables as Ron Hogan (Beatrice.com), Patrick Nielsen Hayden (TOR Books) and Tobias Buckle (Self Employed).

John and the rest of the panel do a wonderful job covering the basics of blogging and the importance of community.  I can’t encourage you strongly enough to take the time to watch this video.  While you’re at it, make sure that Whatever is one of the subscriptions in your RSS reader, you’ll be very glad you put it there.

I’m going to be shameless about this.  John Scalzi is one of my all-time heroes. He comes in second only to Robert Heinlein as an author, but as a blogger he’s at the top of the list.  I want you to watch because this man has something to teach you.  The other members of the panel also run very successful blogs.  They know what they’re talking about, and they’ve got the numbers to back it up.

Take the time. Watch the video. Learn.

Peace, I’m out.

Jerry Blogging Blogging, community, readers, readership, Scalzi