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And sometimes, blogging really is that hard

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Time for an aside….hang on. This post is going to sound absurd. I swear to you it is true.

I have this friend who asked to not be identified…..let’s call him “Brett Shirley” for the time being. And just to put it in perspective, let’s assume this “Brett” character is a developer in the AD/ESE group. Someone once described “Brett” like this.

“Brett” has been talking about blogging for some time. In fact, several months ago he even created himself a placeholder blog, which he would set up for his entry in to blogging. Great idea. Motion in the right direction. But where are the posts?

The only way to describe our current state of affairs is with a timeline.

December 2004 (early in the month) – “Brett” creates initial blog and selects a theme and title (subtitles have come and gone, nothing that fits has yet been found). He begins talking about what to post about and what he is going to discuss in this blog. There is some discussion among a small group of people about what topics “Brett” might enjoy blogging about.
December 2004 (late in the month) – While looking at the blogging admin tool, “Brett” discovers categories! This throws him in to a funk for several weeks. Time is spent investigating how to categorize “Brett’s” blog in to a series of consistent and all-encompassing categories (note: no posts have been written at this time).
January 2005 – Category refinement. “Brett” tackles the o-so-difficult task of ensuring that his posts will fit in to the categories. There is some progress. But January was such a short month, who could expect him to finish?
January 2005 (late in the month) / February 2005 (early in the month) – In a seemingly unrelated event, “Brett” forgets to renew his personal domain name, where he hosts the master copy of his posting disclaimer. It takes several weeks to recovery from this (and find the 5 minutes required to register his domain name again).
February 2005 – Real progress. The categories are looking good. A nice theme is up. “Brett” starts to talk more seriously about what to blog about. It looks as if a post is forthcoming.
March 2005 – Setback! We were so close, yet so far. During the migration from the old blogs.msdn.com engine to the new one, “Brett’s” selected theme is removed. Tragedy! Theme investigation begins.
As a related aside, at this time the truth comes out regarding the categories: they were not actually solid. “Brett” was only convinced that the theme was good. In fact upon loss of theme, the words uttered were “All 2% of my work is gone!”
April 2005 (early in the month) – 1-2 weeks are spent on theme investigation. “Brett” is primarily disappointed in the loss of the old theme because (and I quote) “I have nothing else orange in my life, so an orange blog seems ok.” There is discussion around asking the blogging PMs how to port the old theme to the new engine, but it is decided that it would probably be seen as absurd for someone who has a blog without any posts to ask for help in porting a theme.
April 2005 (mid month) – A new theme is selected and implemented. Categories are going through minor refinement on a day-by-day basis. In mid April “Brett” realizes that he has no category for humor, which makes him think that perhaps he really hasn’t given categories enough thought. Still no posts.

I’ll update you as to the “progress” of “Brett’s” foray in to blogging as the weeks pass by.
Perhaps you want to subscribe to his RSS feed in the event that one day he posts something. But don’t hold your breath.

“Brett”, just FYI, notice the category that this post is in. It’s that easy to create them. Why you are spinning on this, I have no idea.

As a final note to this tale, as I sit and write this, “Brett” is on the phone with me. He said he was going to ruin my fun and blog about this, but he had no idea what category to put it in…..

Comments

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    Eric Fleishman posted earlier about the fact that sometimes, blogging really is that hard in...
  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    In my regular visit to Brett's blog (I don't want to miss any new posts!) I noticed the following...
  • Anonymous
    April 18, 2005
    Best post ever.

    Tell Brett to keep up the amazing work in theoretical blogging.
  • Anonymous
    April 20, 2005
    LOL! One of the best blog posts on the web yet.
  • Anonymous
    April 20, 2005
    Hilarious!