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

Last year, I heard from someone from the University of Missouri who was writing a story about the art of espalier if they could use a photo that I took of the Belgian Fence espalier at Disneyland for inclusion in their piece on the Mizzou site.  At first, I wasn't sure *which* photo - because I've taken a bunch of them - but the one he was asking for was the second photo in this post :  the diamond-shaped one close to It's A Small World After All in Disneyland.   That story ended up getting published last year and my photo was included here: For those of you who have a little bit of interest in espalier or training trees, you should go ahead and give the story a read.  Head here to go through the full post. It is titled: " Espalier: Pruning as an Art Form " by David Trinklein - University of Missouri, Division of Plant Sciences. 

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

I suppose it is more like seventeen years and seven weeks.  I seem to have missed chronicling the 17 year mark of publishing the Web here on the blog back in February.  February 16, 2004 was my very first post on my Weblog that traveled from JoinTomCross to RhodesSchool to JakeParrillo.  But, thankfully (lol), I've brought over all of those posts to this one place online.  Seventeen years is a long time for anything. For me, it is 40% of my life.  I fell in love with the Web back in 2004 and haven't looked back.  But, plenty of you others have moved on - to other platforms and other tools.  But for me, there's a lot of joy to be putting my fingers to the keyboard and everyday: " Show up, sit down and type. " That exercise - writing something, every day, is because I fear atrophy.  As I've reached my 40's, I realize (painfully so) that my body is atrophy'ing.  But, my mind?  And the idea of creating?  I can fight that off by pushing "publish"

Today is six straight years of posting on my blog here.  Every day.  For six years.  And, it seems that I posted twice on one day in July.  And this is the ninth year since 2010 that I hit a post per day.  Seems the two years that I took off were in 2013 and 2014.  Why not go for seven years in a row, right?  Here's to an even better 2021 in the garden, yard and here on the blog. 

I've been publishing here on "Why I Oughta" for more than fifteen years.  And over that time, I've used the blog to reconnect with some childhood/grade school friends, had some of my photos licensed in various ways and have had dozens of journalists, agency folks and some website owners pitch me stories and content opportunities.   I have a 'contact' page that has a form on it that people can fill out and drop me a line.   Some of them are interesting (gardening stuff) while others are total SEO-honeypot plays.  Like...'can I publish an article about topic X' for your readers.   If you haven't figured out by now, this is *my* place online and I don't do guest authors/submissions.  And, I don't run any ads or affiliate links or monetize the blog in any way.   But, that hasn't stopped the pitches from coming.  And, somehow, I've ended up on a LIST that people who are shilling eldercare/senior living topics want to pi

Today, February 16, 2020 marks my 16th year of blogging.  I started in 2004 with this post on February 16, 2004 that originally lived at JoinTomCross.com and then moved to RhodesSchool.com and finally moved over her to my name url.   Last year, I marked the occasion in similar fashion  but because it was 15 years, it felt important.  I haven't marked this anniversary every year on the blog, but have done it a few times. 2020 - 16 year Blogging Anniversary 2019 - 15 year Blogging Anniversary 2016 - 12 year Blogging Anniversary 2014 - 10 year Blogging Anniversary 2013 - 9 year Blogging Anniversary 2011 - 7 year Blogging Anniversary This post marks the 3319th post on the blog.  That's 3319 days or more than 9 full years of posts.  16 years means my blog is old enough to get it's license.  It means that I've been doing this for 39% of my life.  I've been a blogger longer than I've been a husband and father.  It is the same amount of time in my life th

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've arrived here on the blog, you'll (maybe) note that I've swapped out the header image at the top of the page to better reflect the season we're in:  Winter.  The image at the top of this post shows the header image that I had up until I made the swap.  I had this from Fall of 2018 until now. And here's a look at what it looks like now: Cold.  Barren.  Yeah...that's what the world looks like through my eyes right now. The new image shows off our fly-through bird feeder, part of the fence on our southern property line and our little Weeping Cedar tree on the middle/right on the image.  I've done this before.  Here's the 'Summer/Spring' cleaning post when I swapped out the header image in June . 

As another year comes to an end, I figured I'd mark the moment of hitting 365 posts this year.  Once again.  This is the sixth year that I've hit a post-a-day and the fourth year in a row.  Due to a variety of circumstances, I've been fortunate to been able to keep posting here in my diary everyday and while I know there are some of you guys out there that are reading these, the point of this isn't to grow my audience but to flex my writing/creating/posting muscles and to chronicle some small moments/items/places/things in my life while filling up the funnel of my online life.  The years that I hit a post-a-day: 2018 2017 2016 (366 posts due to Leap Year) 2015 2011 2010 I'm looking forward to 2019 and to spending the year posting here on the blog.  There will be plenty of changes but some things will be certain:  we'll chronicle our gardening, pizza-making and vintage finds.  I'm also trying a new resolution that I hope will carry me through all

While I've been posting here on my blog "Why I Oughta..." (nee JoinCross.com/blog, joincrossblog.com, rhodesschool.com) since 2004, but I also have been (apparently) posting over on my link blog for five years.  I was just reminded by Tumblr (which is where my linkblog is run currently) that I crossed the five year mark over by dere .   And, yes, I wrote the phrase "Over by dere" - which happens to the name of my link blog.  Think of this as my 'favorites' feed from the old Google Reader days.  You can keep up with my posting over there at:  http://www.parrillo.info/ . I shared the details of Over by Dere here on my main blog a few years back where I mentioned the name . The name is straight-up Chicagoese , but for those of you who aren't aware, it 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 o

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