Everyone likes seeing their name in print.

Well, unless of course it’s trash tabloid-ism or an arrest warrant… But I’m not talking just-printed-on-paper but I mean a by-line of one sort or another. I can say that from experience as I’ve gotten that kick — seeing “John Fontana” linked to letters-to-the-editor, or being sourced/interviewed by USA Today, being quoted in The Hockey News, The New York Times Slap Shot blog and la-de-da.

But I can also say that wasn’t where I intended to go with writing when I started out as a kid.  My intention wasn’t to be a face-in-the-crowd (though no matter what you write or publish, you are another face in the crowd of literature) in the newspaper.  Not another source for magazines and what not.  Not a weblogger.  I planned on doing things creatively and having my own book.  Or books — plural.  Take your pick.

But that never happened.  See, when i was a teen I got away from story writing so much and was writing poetry most of the time…  a habit that’s followed me into adulthood.  Lyrical verse more-so than deep observations and perspectives…  Well, yeah they are perspectives but they are my perspectives.   Sometimes just pop, sometimes inspired by events or people or feelings  in my life.

Over the years, I’ve had some of them available to the masses through the web…  Certainly you can find a couple of them on this site and probably elsewhere on the web…  But they’ve never really been published in the sense of print.  Never published in the sense of being out there for any traditional form of mass consumption.  I haven’t bothered to take the time with sending out poems to magazines who have niches all of their own (and aren’t available unless you pay for a subscription or pay for a copy — while you’re not getting paid for your contribution).

I ought to put together a manuscript and do something with it.  But I’m hesistant.

Catherine Durkin Robinson, local blogger and Creative Loafing contributor, has written two book manuscripts.  Her first one is being published, chapter-by-chapter, on a blogspot site.  The other, a more recent work based on her life as a teacher in Hillsborough County, is being sent around to literary agents in hopes someone will pick up the work and mass-market it.  Sadly, that has not been the case and the rejections have been comical at best.

Their loss.  I’ve read the book and it’s not only a good read, it’s provocative and controversial enough to be read widely by those fearing school-district scandals.

I also have another friend, in the Pacific Northwest this time, who went out and self-published her first novel.  The book, Steel Goddesses, is currently available on Amazon.com for purchase.  It takes a lot of courage to go out on a limb like that and self-publish any work…  But it sort of cuts out the middle-man of having to appease literary agents who tell you what a proper market for your writing is-or-isn’t and tells you to change your work to fit that niche.  At least that’s what I’ve seen with rejections served up to Catherine.

So the idea I am kicking around is actually putting together a manuscript of poetry I’ve written over the past decade and self-publishing it.   I realize that poetry is not exactly a hot seller and not going to lead me to riches…  It’d cost me more to publish than the commissions I’d get in the long run from doing it…  But it does what I have long sought to do — take the writings jammed in Mead notebooks that I’ve carried around since High School and take some of those verses and show them to the masses.  Will people connect?  I have doubts.  Will strangers read what I’ve  written?  Even more doubts…  But it’s mine, and it’d be out there.  My claim.  My piece of literature.

My book.

It’s a thought, at least.

No sooner do I find myself in print in The Hockey News…

…do I find out I can’t find a print copy of The Hockey News in Palm Harbor. Sheesh.

Yeah, I’m still here. Hello.

Sorry I have not posted here on Der Stonegauge for something like… well, a long while. How long? So long, in fact, that it’s an opinion of a falsehood and not the truth. That’s how long.
Part of it’s just lacking motivation to write something not hockey related. Part of it is the inability to collect thoughts. I get an idea for a blog post and by the time I am back at the computer I find myself having to report on something else.

I’ll try to be more involved here, but if life calls — I have to put everyone (both of you) following Stonegauge on hold again. Sorry.

Almost a year ago, Tommy over at Sticks of Fire and Brett Glisson worked out a deal where Tommy…  well, he bought / took over Brett’s brainchild TampaBLAB.  For the uninformed, uninititated or the plain flat out uncurious (helloooo Bush family!)  the TampaBLAB is an aggregator / blog reader.  It shares new posts from blogs in the greater Tampa Bay metropolitan area.

It sounds really complex but really, it’s not.   It’s simply like this:  You have a blog, most (if not all) blogs provide feeds — ways to syndicate or share their content with other web sites.  If you’re a  blogger living in the Tampa Bay area and you wanna’ share your blog with the rest of the Tampa Bay blogosphere, you submit it to TampaBLAB and lo and behold — every new post you write gets published at the BLAB (not in it’s entirety, mind you, just a lead in).

Of course, someone has to be in charge of the BLAB (acronym for Bay Local Area Bloggers).  Tommy didn’t have the time to update the theme and add newly submitted blogs, nor maintain the main blog page on the BLAB.  That’s where I’ve come in…  Running the day to day and keeping an eye on things…  Dropping defunct blogs that haven’t updated in a long while…  Adding newly submitted sites.  Occasionally posting on the BLAB Blog and fixing technical SNAFU’s that show up from time to time.

…Well, more often than not with thanks to the number of upgrades Wordpress has gone through in the last few months and compatibility issues that arise because of it.  But that’s techno-jargon you could do without.

So it’s been good so far, a little slow. Know someone who blogs in Tampa Bay and wants more readers? Suggest they submit their site to the BLAB. Brand spanking new blogs with no posts need not apply, though… Sorry. Blogs come and go so quickly that we can’t accept the newest of new kids on the blogging block.

Also, I’m trying to figure out if I should make the Skyway theme that’s employed at the BLAB available to the general Wordpress-blogging public for download. It’s cute but not cutting edge, you know?

I’m trying to get the WP-Cumulus tag cloud to show up. It already shows up in the sidebar but… Well… I’m trying to get it in the content body of the front page (and elsewhere) so… Wish me luck?

Update: As you can see, this nifty, fantastic, rootin’ tootin’ tag cloud is working.

Just FYI for people who are being redirected here while searching for the other site. It’s an issue I am only starting to deal with now.

The St. Petersburg Times gave me my closeup (as Cecil B. DeMille was not available)

I wanted to upgrade Stonegauge’s theme today. Or at least work on a new concept. The theme currently employed is not widgetized and — well, for the uninitiated, widgets are fancy thingamabobs and doohickies (dare I call them watchamacallits) that you can place in a sidebar on Wordpress and they can do various things aor let you re-arrange the sidebar with ease.

That’s besides the point…

So I went to my Happy Five years Hosting Me Now webhost and went to their one click install area and…

Well, to put it lightly, I fucked up.

I accidentally deleted Stonegauge from the Interweb.

It was just one simple miscue and yet everything I have ever uploaded to Stonegauge.com (the domain) was sent to a digital grave, to rot along with billions and billions of 1’s and 0’s. Every POST I ever made on Wordpress (and a few dozen from my former MT and HTML based sites) were safe in a database but immediately after this deletion had happened, I feared the worst.

And as the afternoon progressed, the worst got worse.

I couldn’t gain access to five years of inane blog posts and personal shit that I have rambled about on thsi Interweb and this site. I mean the information was there but Wordpress — the software I use to run Stonegauge — wouldn’t even look at it. It refused to acknowledge it.

I can’t send software to the corner for a timeout, can I?

I could barely figure out MySQL (database language) and contacted the Happy Web Hosting Overworked-and-Underappreciated Tech Support team. I laid out everything that happened in 2 different support tickets and chronicled all of my screw ups attempts to make things work.

But having not hear back from them by 7 in the PM, I decided to try to take things into my own hands — post another blog site just to see if I can rescue the database and then import an upgraded version of that DB to Stonegauge.com.

Well, I was in the middle of all that crazy shit when I get a little letter from a member of Tech Support. Everythign was fixed adn fine and back to normal.

MY BABY’S ALIVE! Try as I may to screw everything up to end all means fof ever restoring the site, it’s live and kicking again. Seems I screwed up a setting or three.

OK so I’m writing this on the Stonegauge as those who regularly stop by will see. I’m also testing out a Wordpress/Myspace bridge to see if I can post from my Wordpress blog onto my Myspace blog. Lets see what happens eh?

I get sorta pissed when I keep hearing die hard fans or supporters – be it in politics or pro sports – confess their undying devotion towards one thing or another… And then cynically stomp on what they lov eor soem item they are true blue about.

I mean, I just wrote an article last week at Boltsmag (yeah, it isn’t gone yet) about sports fans not being willign to leave their comfort zone to devote themselves to something bigger than their pro sports team… So what do you say about a political junkie who cynically tears down an issue, or a candidate, or a part position… All for the sake of the opportunist stance of “wait and see”?

If you really believe in something, aren’t you supposed to be willing to stand up for that something or at least do what you can to put it’s best foot forward? Be it an idea, a team, a principle, etc? Or are we all supposed to be just blind soldiers who will accept whatever we are handed by the powers that be?