Also, by early February I will be eliminating the email address I currently use at this domain because 99 percent of what I receive is spam. If you don’t have an email address for me that doesn’t have uneasyrhetoric.net in it, contact me. I might give you a different one.

The domain will remain live. Just so you know.

Thanks for reading.

Update, January 10, 2007: as a point of clarification, things are good right now. I stand by what I said before. 2007 is my year.

In honor of my participation in National Novel Writing Month, and in order to keep my sanity, I am declaring a 30 day hiatus here at Uneasy Rhetoric. I’ll be back on December 1st, hopefully having succeeded once again at turning out 50,000 words of utter drivel, held together by a thin plot and poorly realized characters. Heck, there might even be pirates.

If you have a burning desire to know how I’m doing, you can always check out my nanowrimo profile (after the site calms down).

Update (November 26, 2006). It turns out I needed at least an hour and a half each time I sat down to write in order to get any meaningful amount of work done. With a newborn to handle, such luxurious amounts of time were few and far between, and generally involved getting all of the other mundane stuff done that I couldn’t do before. And if I have it bad, my wife has it much, much worse, so I really can’t complain. Still, no Nanowrimo victory this year, and I have a plenty good excuse. Until next year…

Two years old.

I saw a video of Diane Sawyer and her male counterpart Mr. Whatshisname “interviewing” a two year old golf phenom. I don’t begrudge the kid his fun, but I have wonder for whom is it more fun? The kid? The parents? Certainly not me because I don’t give a shit.

Let the kid be a kid, people.

(see ipso Sacto)

Back in March, Beth posted a link to a USA Today article (I must be mad to quote that rag, mad I tell you!) about the fact that liberals breed less than conservatives:

Childlessness and small families are increasingly the norm today among progressive secularists. As a consequence, an increasing share of all children born into the world are descended from a share of the population whose conservative values have led them to raise large families.

So, my wife and I have stepped up to the plate. In October (if you do the math, you’ll notice that we identified the problem long before the article writer did), you can count one more child who will be raised in the progressive manner. Take that Focus on the Family! Just call me “Daddy Uneasy.”

I promise to get back on track one of these days. Right now I’m preoccupied with my non virtual life (baby-related and otherwise). Contrary to the belief of at least one reader of this blog, it will not become a showcase for baby pictures, baby rhetoric, or baby paraphernalia. There are already a bazillion babyblogs out there, and if we decide to do one, it will have its own subdomain.

Moreover, I think little blue bunnies would clash with my manly, if not sinister, red, orange, and black color-scheme.

So I’m breaking my no blogging at work rule to tell you all. That is all.

First, and foremost, Uneasy Rhetoric is about Sacramento, the town where I live, the town where I was born. This is appropriate because my original concept for this blog, back before I’d come up with the uneasyrhetoric domain and when I was still living in Portland, was to talk about Sacramento from the perspective of an outsider. Because it is a discussion about a city, the blog will also be a place for me to discuss related issues of urban design, urban management, and urban living.

Second, it will be a blog about politics and the political. The democratic process fascinates me. The whole machine around a candidate running for office fascinates me. The biggest office I ever ran for was Democratic precinct committeeperson. I won, but who cares? I did run several campaigns and have volunteered at least a few hours every major election since 1992. I have not written as much about politics, but I intend to write more.

For the time being, I will continue to write posts about management–both personal management and the management of altruistic organizations–as well as posts about language on this blog, although I expect the latter to appear infrequently except as links in my daily del.icio.us posting. I may move my management discussions to another venue at some later date because I’ve been giving it a lot of headspace lately and, if I were actually to write anything, it could overwhelm the contents of this blog.

What’s mostly gone are the posts about beer or wine or food (except restaurant reviews), and I’m going to try to keep my technology related posts to a minimum, unless they reflect Sacramento, politics, language, or management.

I’m still toying with the idea of a blog for language learners, a sort of diary of my travails as I try to maintain and improve my French and prepare to learn those elusive third and fourth languages. However, that will likely be on a different site.

My blogroll will be changing as well. I’ve been remiss in adding several Sacramento blogs I’ve been reading, and I think I owe them a link.

What won’t change (much) is the layout and look. After toying with several changes, I’ve decided I like it this way.

So that’s what I’m thinking this evening. Tomorrow I may change my mind. For now, I must leave you, for my battery is low.

I enjoyed talking to the Bee reporter (Erika Chavez) and thought her story was well done. I especially enjoyed the juxtaposition of my comment that I don’t expect to have much influence with Jason Daniel at Eyes of Argus and his efforts to create change in his community.

I think I’m just too lazy. Want proof? It took me a day to get around to posting about the article!

And by the way, hello to everyone who found their way here from the article. Feel free to comment!

It isn’t quite ready for prime time. The automated voice can’t handle contractions (it spells them out – wouldn’t becomes w-o-u-l-d-n-t) and it doesn’t like periods inside of quotation marks. “Yes.” Would come out “yes dot.”

Still, just for kicks, I included the feed URL at the bottom of my sidebar.

1. No Author Biographies. Got that one covered, sort of, on my Rationale page. I don’t got into a lot of detail, but I might at some point. Of course, the Electronic Frontier Foundation might disagree with Nielsen about letting the world know who you are (see How to Blog Safely (About Work or Anything Else)).

2. No Author Photo. Got my photo up.

3. Nondescript Posting Titles. Given that blog titles are supposed to be short, I think we should all be cut a little slack here, especially because short, witty titles may not always be informative, but may still spur the reader on.

4. Links Don’t Say Where They Go. I’m somewhat guilty of this, though I’m making a conscious attempt to get better about it.

5. Classic Hits are Buried. (Ahem, not a very descriptive title, is it?) I’ve got maybe two “classic hits,” posts that seem to bring people to my blog. I probably should have a “features” column, but that’s a project for the redesign I’ve talked about before.

6. The Calendar is the Only Navigation. What calendar?

7. Irregular Publishing Frequency. We can’t all be corporate blogs. Sometimes I post, sometimes I don’t. You can depend on one or two posts per week from me. Besides, shouldn’t we all be using RSS anyway, and doesn’t that sort of get around the need to always publish on Tuesdays?

8. Mixing Topics. So what you’re saying is either 1) I should only have one interest in life or 2) I should have an entirely different blog for each of my interests? Isn’t that why we have category lists?

9. Forgetting That You Write for Your Future Boss. I probably violate this from time to time, but I think my blog is pretty tame.

10. Having a Domain Name Owned by a Weblog Service. Who cares? Some of the best blogs out there are hosted on Typepad or Blogspot. Some people would rather write than tinker with their domain settings. Yes, I do own uneasyrhetoric.net. But I own it because I like to tinker.