March 22, 2007

BlogFamily

Still clammed up.

But I did a quick rebuild on the site today to make sure that BlogKid's category heading was properly updated. I humbly request reciprocal linkage from both of my new blogroll members, if only because they're members of my second-favorite family in the world.

By the way, I'm still in awe of how Bryan can take a random song, completely spin it around in a different direction than I'd never thought of before, and make it work theologically. I'm never going to listen to "Smells Like Teen Spirit" the same way again.

Back into hiding...

Posted by Chuck at 12:44 PM | TrackBack

February 09, 2007

Yes, I've clammed up.

It's not been entirely accidental.

All deep thoughts on life, the universe, and everything, have been colored by the general environment of this semester. And there comes a point where I can't keep that leaking through the writing, and I really want to keep that from leaking through the writing because there are circumstances where I might Say Too Much and Break Confidence and all that stuff, and I really don't want to.

(I fear, if you talk to me on a regular basis, you've already seen a great deal of these thoughts leak through anyway.)

Combine this with the fact that most of my creative writing has gone into course/curriculum materials, letters of recommendation, and other "work stuff", and I am a dry well for the purposes of blogging.

I think this goes into the realm of what I was saying earlier about not being able to do anything half-heartedly. And that includes keeping the blog. I get SO jealous of characters like Dean Dad who can keep the content going on a daily basis, with fresh thoughts a-plenty. I'm not there. I'm not even close. And That's Okay.

(Confidential to Catie: those three words will probably get me through this semester. Thanks. Again.)

If you're at teh Shorter, keep poking your head inside my office door - I might look swamped and emotionally drained, but know I really AM happy to see you, and I appreciate how much you care.

If you're elsewhere, drop the e-mail to chuck dot pearson at gmail dot stuff, and you know what goes in place of stuff.

"And for those of our friends who know the King is your King, keep shinin' 'till we meet again..."

Posted by Chuck at 04:48 AM | TrackBack

January 14, 2007

Housecleaning

Have gotten the ol' big-blog blogroll sorted. Zuska moved onto ScienceBlogs a LONG time ago, and it took me way too long to update her link. Revisiting Zuska reminds me that I haven't written about science or gender/race issues in academia in darn near forever. I think this is the point where I blame the teaching load and just move on.

I've added the blogs of Dr. Shellie, Natalie Stadnick, and - a blog I have not found to this point for reasons I simply cannot understand - one of my academic heroes, Carmen Butcher. (Carmen also now has a MySpace page. I'm convinced that the friend requests from all corners I received in the past 24 hours are DIRECTLY related to this internet-shattering event, and are mere testament to the sheer unadulterated coolness of Carmen Butcher.)

I wish I knew, with WesleyBlog sitting dormant, who was in charge of the Methodist Blogroll. (Is that link an attempt to get cheap trackback so that Mr. Raynor will acknowledge my existence? Mmmmmm, could be.)

I really wish there was a sports blog out there that was as intelligent as the Sports Frog, but less of a boy's club.

And back to Dr. Shellie for the last word on the night, and what I think is a very good quotation from a very interesting little talk:

But most of all, I ask myself questions like this: am I smart enough to do science? Am I smart enough to work on the problems I am working on? Am I smart enough to find the answers? I have a female grad student, and she is very smart. She also doesn’t seem to ask herself questions like this. So one day I asked her– how do you know you are smart enough to do science?...She said this: ‘the length of time it takes me to solve a problem never exceeds the length of time that I am interested in it.’ I thought that was a pretty good answer.

It is, it is.

Posted by Chuck at 10:29 PM | TrackBack

January 06, 2007

The nature of the beast

I've tried semi-consciously to avoid whining about my own problems on this thing, because the world hates whiners, and with good reason. So I hope you'll indulge me a bit.

I don't know what's going to happen with the posting rate this semester. I've been doing a pretty good job of taking the blogroll and turning it into a useful links page for me, and that's probably going to continue. (Honestly, that was the major purpose behind the last point, and the fact that it turned into a reflection on "adult content" and disclaimers was a happy coincidence.) But deep-thinking reflections on faith, academia, the world, and sport? Probably not, unless I get into a serious rant mode.

I'm going into this semester with a good bit of fear, because I know what last semester was like. That I'm overloaded is everybody's fault and nobody's fault - whatever concerns I have about my workload are tempered by the fact that I'm surrounded by people who understand what I'm doing and why I'm doing it and are willing to go to the wall to support me, which is honestly what anybody who goes through an overload like this can ask for. In all honesty, I'm blessed, and ridiculously so.

But I'm still a bit frightened, because I know how I felt after fall semester, and I know how I work in general. I can't do anything half-heartedly. And, as many things as I see that Need To Be Done, I'm going to HAVE to do some of them half-heartedly, simply because I don't have time to put everything I want into them. And That's Okay.

Unless you're the person who I'm doing something half-hearted for, in which case it's horribly unfair.

That's what I've got to shake. And it's simple, really. More than anything else, the people who depend on me need me to be available and functional. I have to manage my schedule and my time so that I meet those two standards - I'm there, and I'm doing stuff while I'm there instead of sitting around stupored. I'm not necessarily going to be fair to every last person, at least not in my mind. Then again, the standards of my mind are about ten thousand times higher than what the rest of the world sees anyway.

This was kind of a nifty self pep-talk. Again, thanks for the indulgence.

Posted by Chuck at 11:42 AM | TrackBack

October 14, 2006

The Methodist Blogroll

I'm thinking one of these days I'm going to add this humble site to the Methodist Blogroll. One of the requirements is that we link the Methodist Blogroll is our own blogrolls. For how I have this fair space laid out, that would be a Royal Pain In The Posterior - it's a one-way ticket to a page that's four times as long and that has a right sidebar that goes on forever. If I get more Moveable Type sophisticated, I might find a way around that - but right now, with what I have on my plate, it's a non-starter.

So I'm thinking I'm just going to link this post instead. If all goes well, beyond the jump you'll see the Methodist Blogroll in all its glory - Methodist connectionalism for the internet age. There are some wonderfully deep thinkers there - I listen to what Shane Raynor has to say every time he posts, I would read Brian Vinson even if he wasn't Jenny's brother, and I've really grown to appreciate Jason Woolever's questioning spirit. (Oh, and one of the most intelligent milbloggers is a Methodist pastor too.)

And there's a lot more in there that I'm sure I've never read. Feel free to browse and think and wonder.

Posted by Chuck at 10:27 AM | TrackBack

September 18, 2006

Methodist blogosphere joy and happiness

After a three-month hiatus, as of last Friday, WesleyBlog is back.

(I suppose I ought to add myself to the Methodist blogroll sometime.)

UPDATE: Not only is WesleyBlog back online, but out of the demise of the WesleyDaily collab site, I got a link to this Methodist-blogger that looks like he's going to be well worth the time spent. Not only does he offer a useful Methodist blogosphere roundup, but he also links this update on the (ahem) growth of the Methodist denomination (don't worry, we're still behind the Baptists) and this image o' humor for anybody who has ever had to deal with the Book of Discipline. I laughed, anyway.

Posted by Chuck at 07:06 AM | TrackBack

June 14, 2006

The final straw...

Let's be clear. I've had the spam filters turned up so high that a couple of friends e-mailed or IMed and said that they weren't even being permitted to leave unapproved comments, let alone have their comments appear on the site immediately. But the spam junk was still getting through - unapproved, but still getting through.

I was just sitting at the computer just now, watching soccer and trying to get odd school-work done. I've got the e-mail that I get blog updates on sitting in the background.

I get new mail suddenly pouring in at a ridiculous clip. Five messages. Now seven. Now nine.

In the space of 90 seconds, 11 e-mails in the box - each one an attempt to post spam comments here.

And, with a little thought, I realize that the bots that are posting these really aren't trying very hard.

So I come in here and shut off comments totally.

We'll either improve the spam filters here somehow or find some other means to get comment on this site.

Posted by Chuck at 09:08 AM | TrackBack

June 08, 2006

Still testing

One of these days, I'll write something of substance and not just go on and on about the comment and trackback spam. It would be easier if I didn't have to spend so much time deleting spam comments and trackbacks.

But before I give up and totally disallow comments or make lots of people register to comment (and I don't think there's a good way to run registration on a small blog like this), I've tried a couple of tweaks in the Moveable Type filtering system. If you look at this at all, try leaving a comment. It can even be an anonymous comment - do leave your valid e-mail address, but for the "URL" put in this site's URL (http://blog.chuck-pearson.org/) so nobody tries to e-mail you.

The only person who will see the e-mail addresses is me, and perhaps the guy who helps me out with this.

Thanks!

Posted by Chuck at 02:32 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

June 04, 2006

Experiment and comfort

When it becomes part of your daily routine to delete the 50+ posts' worth of comment spam on a blog you're updating once every other week or so, there's a problem that needs to be solved.

There's a throwaway post, though, that seems to have been a magnet for the comment-spam - a link to an old Zits comic about Jeremy having too many blogs and the internet having too much space. (Which it does.) I have relegated that post to the aether. I'm wondering that that will do to our friendly neighborhood bots.

Everything I said about trackback spam before applies to comment spam now.

Oh, and I must also say, while doing this, seeing that no less a visionary than Mark Cuban is annoyed by this dark side of the 'net is more than a little bit of comfort. And I'm with him. I'd really like to know how all of this works. Many of the links in comment/trackback spam point to exactly those type of "splogs" that are engines for this "click fraud". There has been murmurings about all thos going on, but no good investigative reporting - and I'd like to know where this money is filtering from, and too.

(Whether or not I threw in that last comment to gain some cheap trackback off of Blog Maverick is left as an exercise to the reader, and an exercise that drips with irony if you think about it too hard.)

UPDATE: 33 hours, 71 spam comments. That SO did not work.

The next step might be to turn off comments totally. I might just do that.

Posted by Chuck at 08:56 AM | TrackBack

December 06, 2005

This is how crazy it has been lately.

I have not even thought to make my customary "Finals Week Prayer Request." The one that goes "Pray for me. Pray for my students."

Trust me, guys, you have been in thoughts and prayers this past week.

I suppose I can ask dear friends and readers to pray for the aftermath of finals. Because for some (for one I talked to today in particular), that's as stressful as the finals themselves.

Next week will be better. I just wish I could see next week from here.

Posted by Chuck at 05:51 PM | TrackBack

November 09, 2005

YAY

Check the right sidebar.

The trackback spam that was also haunting the site is, thanks to Jeff, no longer an issue. (This is now verifiable, Jeff. The trackback spammers tried hitting today, and they got automatically plonked.) I hail Mr. Eaton "BlogDad" for this and his many other efforts.

And I'm learning more about MT all the time, also thanks to his efforts.

I may get good at this blogging thing yet. I don't think it's going to get me able to buy Google ads, but I can still have some fun with it and get some people jabbering with me.

Posted by Chuck at 05:40 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

September 20, 2005

I would just like to say...

...that trackback spammers that would think to clobber a blog with scientific, political and theological musings with links to whatever vile pornographic and gambling crapola are not only somewhere down there with the scum of the universe, they don't have the sense that God gave an eggplant.

I would link them to my good church's beliefs on such societal ills as these if I didn't think such truths would be COMPLETELY lost on them.

Anyhow, I've cleaned up, and I'm working (or, shall I say, I'm getting Jeff to work) on how to block-out said crapola in the future.

Posted by Chuck at 10:53 AM | TrackBack

August 14, 2005

Oh, wow.

When you get a MT blog of your very own, do you know how difficult it is to figure out where all the edit tools are? That requires some measure of skillz.

I'm updating this thing again now.

Posted by Chuck at 04:23 PM | TrackBack

March 04, 2005

The future of personal blogging in this space

In a previous existence, I did a lot of very personal and very public blogging. It's out there now, I'm not going to delete any of it, and I stand behind a lot of those takes. I may even reproduce a couple of those old posts here, they were written at a time when who I was becoming was crystallizing. Posts on vocation and on fighting loneliness are particularly significant to me.

I'm going to do my best to let you into those corners of my world now as well. But there will be limitations. To wit:

So that's a lot of limitation. I'll probably stick as much to ideas as I do to talking about people. I have a lot of ideas running around right now anyway.

The last time I started doing this, I had a list of people I blamed. There are additional people to blame for this iteration - I'll simply say that they know who they are, and thanks for that.

But Jeff, thanks for the space, guy. I'm going to try to make this thing work long-term.

Posted by Chuck at 10:39 PM

March 02, 2005

This could be total disaster.

But, stubborn mule that I am, I am actually physically editing the stylesheet to get the colors right here.

This may take a while.

Whee.

Oh, here, I have to test links too.

Posted by Chuck at 03:14 PM | Comments (1)