Why I Oughta...

Today marks two decades of blogging on JakeParrillo.com.  Twenty years.   Plenty has changed since I fell in love with the Web via political blogging.  I've met some good friends, have earned jobs, *almost* compelled Da Coach Mike Ditka to run for US Senate and was allowed to flex my writing muscles via my own online diary.  My goals have changed over the years, too.  From being a member of the "Blogosphere" and linking to other bloggers/getting links from other writers to distributing the content via both feed and email newsletter to attempting to monetize things via AdSense and FeedBurner (hey!!!) ads to what I've shifted to over the past 10-or-so-years: writing mostly for an audience of one:  myself.   Somewhere over the years, I dropped having ads and when FeedBurner email newsletters were sunset, I, too, sunset having my daily blog posts distributed beyond this little place on the Web.  My very first post - basically my own "Hello, World" was posted on

Another year, another round of 365 posts.  Well, in this case, I'm going to close 2023 with 366 posts - because I posted twice on November 23rd due to Thanksgiving and needing to squeeze in a post about The Last Waltz .   I've been keeping up with daily blog posting for eight years straight - dating back to 2015.  I've gone back and edited out (reverted back to draft status) a few posts over the years that I thought might be best as drafts.  But, overall, I've kept up with posting daily - mostly in spurts.   Just across those eight years, I've posted close to 3000 blog posts here - as a stretch.  Translated to days, that makes 3000 days-in-a-row that I've had something published.  SUSDAT , indeed.  The Blogspot CMS lists 4,727 posts published here - not counting this one. I'll save the categorization for another day - my hunch is that the vaaaast majority of my posts in 2023 were of the [garden diary] variety and I suspect that won't change much in 2024.

Today marks 19 years of blogging.  My very first blog post - basically a 'testing, testing' post was published on February 16, 2004 .  Nineteen years feels like a really long time.  Actually...it IS a really long time.  Doing anything for nineteen years is a huge swath of time and covers close to half of my entire life.  Next year - the 20th year - feels more significant because of the 20-year-number, but nineteen gives me a chance to really reflect on the length of time I've been at it. This past year, I continued my trend of writing one-post-per day (365 posts) and crossed my 4,000th published post back in April .   Although the idea of publishing something online in your own venue has fallen out of favor since I fell in love with blogging back in the aughts, there has been a tiny little bump in interest recently as more people have thought about/taken the plunge to get back into blogging.  Why?  Seems a lot of the interest (or re-interest) is tied to the changes that are

The end of the year came-and-went and I failed to mark the closing of another chapter in daily blog posting here in my online diary.  If you look at the full archives over on the left rail, you'll see that I published 365 posts in 2022 - one for each and every day.   I've written similar recap posts over the year, including last year .  2022 marks the eighth straight year that I hit 365 posts.  One everyday since 2015.   With the first part of 2023 already behind me, it is wild to think that I'm now in my 19th calendar year of posting to this blog.   I did a quick look and it appears that I wrote 307 of the 365 posts (84%) using the [ garden diary ] tag - up from 260 out of 365 (70%) posts in 2021.      Posting here on my own little blog has been something that I have enjoyed doing - creating, writing and publishing - in a venue of my own.  With all the uncertainty around the Web and in particular (some people's feelings about) Twitter, there feels like there is a sligh

I was digging around in some of the old landscape design files and I found this sketch of an expanded patio that adds a secondary square onto one of the corners that expands the whole patio, includes a firepit and a seating wall.  It appears that we discussed going this route out of the gate, but opted for a smaller, starter patio.  That doesn't mean this doesn't have merit - aside from the firepit - and a good reminder of what we *could* do back there with a slightly larger patio.  Filing this drawing below for future reference. But, the other reason for this post is to mark an occassion. This is my 4,000th post on the blog.  Across 18 years of blogging - since February 2004.  More than half of those 4K posts have come in past seven years, so the once-a-day-everyday momentum has pushed the volume up in a big way.  

I was doing a little thinking/looking at this here online Weblog (or diary as I like to think of it) as it relates to the template.  It has been a number of years since I've done any real housekeeping and moving things around.  As part of that process, I thought I'd let some of the data lead the discovery process to understand how most of you are engaging with my diary.  First...let me say that I continue to be amazed that ANYONE reads any of these posts.  I do ZERO promotion of the blog.  I have no ads and cater the posts/topics to an audience of one:  me.  I write MOSTLY as a resource for my own sanity - and to flex my own publishing muscles.  Seth Godin calls it SUSDAT .  I call it SUSDAP.  Shut up, Sit down and Post.  Every.Single.Day. But, what are *most* of you using to read these diary posts?  By a large margin, you lunatics who are here are reading this post (and everything else) on your mobile device.   And, you're slightly more iOS than Android.  But, also slightl

Today marks a seven year stretch of publishing a post in my online diary here on my blog.  Seven years straight, starting back in 2015 when I stopped posting on my Illinois political-meme blog (which lasted just a couple of years) and came back home to my homestead on the Web.  This year, I've hit 365 posts - this one is the 365th one and there's no reason to not keep going in 2022.  Just post, baby.  I'm like the Al Davis of blogging in 2021.   By my quick count, there are 260 posts in the [ garden diary ] for the year, so that's 260/365 = 71% of my posts were related to our yard and garden.  I suppose I'm not surprised by that number, but it certainly points to where my interests are (currently) and how I've been able to use this place on the Web as a reference for what I've planted, what has worked and what I need to work on.   That feels like a good way to look at the new year:  Recognize what I've done, think about the good and the bad and focus on

Today marks the 365th post on the blog - one per day - that spans the entirety of 2019.  And this marks the seventh year since I started counting that I've done that very thing: post online once per day, every day.  This also marks five straight years of posting on the blog - dating back to December 31st, 2014 when I posted from Coloma, Michigan .   Loved spending New Year's Eve there. This year, I'm posting from the "new" Lake - in a different state.   And I love spending NYE here, too! I posted 136 times (the first one this year was February 20th ) in the [ Garden Diary ].  Means that the garden diary accounted for almost 40% of the total posts here.  If I've hit five years, why not go for six, right?  Here's to a great 2020 in the garden.  And on the blog.  For those keeping track at home, here are the years that I hit a post-a-day: 2019 ( here's last year's post ) 2018 2017 2016 ( 366 posts due to Leap Year ) 2015 2012 - posted 35

Today is February 16, 2019.  And today marks my 15th year of blogging.  15 years of doing anything is a lot, but 15 years of writing on the web feels like a good milestone and worthy of noting (at least here, on said blog.) The first post in the archives here on JakeParrillo.com comes from February 16th 2004 .  Back then, it was either at JoinCrossBlog.com or Rhodesschool.com.  But today, those are ported here.  And I've been writing here every.single.day for a number of years. I've failed to note this anniversary since 2016 when I hit 12 years .  Today....I'm at 15.  That's more than 1/3rd of my entire life.  In that time, I've had a few jobs that involved media, digital and communications. But, never strayed too far away from the Web.  I fell in love with the ability to publish online and never looked back.  I was lucky that I wasn't lured in by the siren call of The Facebook or anywhere else that publishing happens these days.  I've stayed here

If you look around here on the blog, you might have noticed a little bit of updates.  Call it 'Spring Cleaning', but a few weeks ago, I ended up updating the fonts site-wide to Roboto, tweaked some of the colors (Blog title, tags, tabs) and added a header photo.  You can see the screenshot of the blog above that includes that header photo of the new set of Frans Fontaine Hornbeam Trees that I recently put in. The last time that I update the look of the blog was back in March of 2017 when I added this responsive template that was mostly blue . While this isn't an exhaustive look at the process, this is the (at least) 11th documented version of the blog over the years.  Here are the first nine versions of screenshots that I have from 2004 to 2016 .  And here's the 10th and most recent .  The fonts are an improvement (imho - and that's 'humble' for sure, btw !), but the real improvement is the header photo.  It personalizes the site a bit, as one of Na

Today marks the beginning of my 40th trip around the Sun and as such, it seems like an appropriate time to ponder the state of the blog.  Yeah...I'm a blogger.  And have been so for more than 14 years.  I have the archives to prove it !  I started with the JoinCross Blog and then RhodesSchool and have been settled in here at "Why I oughta" on my personal domain for more than a decade.  And now with more than 3,000 individual posts, I've left behind quite a bit of digital and personal brick-a-brack over the years - especially with a handful of recent one-post-per-day-every-day years.  I'm on track to keep up the one-post-per-day for 2018, too. Like a lot of you guys, I've read a bunch of the 'is blogging dead' pieces like this one, but a few have stuck out and I feel are worth sharing to talk about the place of a personal blog in the face of publishing platforms like Facebook and Twitter and Instagram what-have-you.  Now...I'm on Facebook a

Early this morning, the folks at ProPublica Illinois released a widget that documents the fundraising and spending of the gubernatorial candidates in Illinois .  Well...it shows most of the candidates - the ones who are *in* the race with a shot at winning their respective primary.  I'm embedding their widget below.  ( Also...one cute thing to mention here:  the url of the story is at: their domain/nerds/story.  Nice touch, right?? ) Loading... There's obviously some interesting things going on here in the race ( like JB Pritzker's burn rate ?!?) that smarter and more tuned in political people can provide context on, but the reason I'm posting this is that it reminds me of the old days. The old days?  Yeah...like back in the mid-aughts when there were plenty of local bloggers - and specifically local political bloggers - that had their own little homesteads on the Web .  That's when I fell in love with the Web and met so many people who shaped bot

Those were the days.  I was going through some of my personal effects and came across this piece written by Tony Scott at the Kendall County Record (I think?!) that covers some of the shenanigans we were up to back in the early aughts.  I made some of the strongest connections of my career during these JoinCross.com blogging days as Chris Rhodes.  Pretty incredible to think back at how far the Boss let us go with the blog.   Today?  They're probably right to be a bit more careful with their political image.  And who's blogging today anyway?!? Here's post from the archives here on the blog from Dan Johnson-Weinberger that talks about the same thing Tony Scott says :  those were some heady days of GOP blogging. 

Last week, Tim Brey posted a piece on his blog titled "Still Blogging in 2017" that was shared by Jason Kottke on his own blog . That's how I came across Tim's original post.  Isn't that how blogs *used* to work, right?  You'd read something in your feed reader that referenced someone else's blog/post and you stumbled upon them.  Liked it?  Usually, I grabbed a subscription to their feed and kept up on them. I'm not one to pine for the 'good old days' (or, maybe I am?), but that little blog-to-blog transaction (about blogging!) struck me. I read both of them and figured that it warranted comment or two here on my *own* blog.  I've been doing these daily diary entries on objects, experiences and occurrences in my life for the past few years after picking blogging back up 2010.  For a few years (2010, 2011, 2012, 2015, 2016), I've been able to publish *something* everyday here on " Why I Oughta... " (which, is what I used t

It was just over a year ago that I posted a new blog theme redesign here on "Why I Oughta..." and showed the previous 12 years or so of what the blog has looked and felt like over the various changes.  If you're reading this in your email, you're likely unaware that I've made another switch recently.  Go ahead...click through on the title of the post in your email and you'll see this blue theme below.  This is one of the new(ish) themes that the team at Blogger released recently . I'm certain that there have been more, but this is the 10th *documented* version over the past 13 years .    I've streamlined things a bit by removing any and all ads as well as the 'you might like' feature boxes.  And for the first time in I think ever, I have only one column. Here's the full length screen grab, but because of the scrolling and the resizing of the header image, you'll see the white band across the photo in the top post.

As if you didn't get enough of my drivel on a daily basis, right?  But...for *some* of you, there's a new place to keep up with things that I read and places I go and photos I take online.  It is my newish link/photo home on the web.   You can find it here . It is called "Over by dere".  Which, if you speak Chicagoese , you know roughly translates to : Over by dere. i.e. "over by there," a prolix way of emphasizing a site presumed familiar to the listener. As in, "I got the sassage at da Jewels down on Kedzie, over by dere.' For now, it is a home to things that I come across on the web that are somewhere in between re-Tweets and blog posts here on the blog. I haven't totally figured out what will be up there and how often, but there's enough that I've put up there that I figured it was time to share.  Besides...part of the reason for it is me thinking about vanity SEO and having this post up with inbound links to Over By Dere by

In marking the 12th anniversary of the blog earlier this week , I thought it would be interesting to (at least interesting to me!) document the 'look/feel' of the blog over the years.  Here's some screenshots that I've collected starting with today and going backwards.   February of 2016.  Orange and blue.  Responsive blog with two columns.  Right rail for widgets/gadgets and a family photo of the five of us in the top right:   May of 2013 .  Orange and blue with a cursive domain name.  Argyle in the background in orange.  Two columns with a different mobile version.  Right rail with gadgets/widgets.  And a family photo of just the four of us.  "Why I oughta" dumped from header: March of 2011 .  This is what the blog looked like on a Moto Xoom Tablet.  Remember those?!?  It was a maroon and grey layout with a right rail.  Still called "Why I Oughta..."  Photo on the right was just me and The Babe.: February of 2010 .  A lot of white

All the way back on February 16, 2004, I posted the very first blog post here on the blog .  Well...it wasn't *here* then, but it was on what would become this blog. 12 years is a long time.  A lot of writing.  A lot of nonsense.  When I started, I was working for the House Republicans and living in Frankfort with my parents.  Today?  I'm living in my sister's house with my wife and three kids and a dog and working at Edelman.  Still writing nonsense, though. Over the past 12 years, I've now written  published 1932 posts.  Including this one.  Hundreds more on other blogs like the political satire one or our family blog.  But 1932 here.  Some started as "Chris Rhodes", but most as just me.  (Those of you who were around in 2004 will get that "Chris Rhodes" reference!) Here's a look at a screenshot of the archives totaling up the blog posts across time. I didn't mark the anniversary every year, but in looking back at the archives,

While we're not quite at the end of the calendar year, I think I can safely say that 2015 is looking to turn out to be a 365 posts in 365 days kinda year.  I have had a few of those in the past - both in 2010 and 2011.  In 2012, I came awfully close with 354 posts.  Last year?  A paltry 94 posts. I also believe that I can safely say that not all of the posts written this year (or any year) were total gems.  There were plenty of turds mixed in there.  But....but...but...there were *some* that worked better than others in terms of attention/engagement.  And no good blogger these days isn't writing list-icles, so I figure I need to include one of those in my posts for the year. Without further delay, here's the Top Ten posts on this blog that were written in 2015. 10.   A post showing off the new Melrose Park Menards store (with fancy cart escalator ramp!) 9   A post documenting the gateway drug know as Shopkins 8.   A post showing the progress I've made on my De

Ah....the question as old as time... When, exactly, is it appropriate to put on Christmas music? To try to help solve the dilemma, I've put up a new project:   http://www.canilistentochristmasmusic.com/ . There, you'll discover the answer to the question:  " Can I listen to Christmas music ?"  Trust me...this is *the* official answer to whether it is socially acceptable to have holiday tunes playing on any given day. I'm working on some tweaks, so check in once in a while to make sure you're getting the right advice.