NEWS


New things going on with Plainly Ranting that I think you should know about, dammit.



Friday, March 30th, 2007:

Hey guys,

After a six month battle with cancer, my mother finally succumbed at 7:25 PM. She died peacefully under a good deal of medication surrounded by her family and friends. Tomorrow would have been her 65th birthday.

I'll put something up soon.

-Alan

Sunday, October 1st, 2006:

Some of you have e-mailed me asking why there haven't been updates here at PR this last couple of weeks. I've been promising to publish something every Monday, and I was able to stick to that for about a year with no hiccups. Unfortunately my schoolwork is kicking my ass and I couldn't get anything up. Also, there were some personal issues that I had to deal with, and I just didn't feel like writing.

No, I take that back... I simply didn't have anything to write about. I just had the wonderful experience of telling my mom that she has terminal cancer.

Changing the subject wildly again, one of my classes is English Composition this term. It takes up a considerable amount of my writing juice to maintain an "A" in the course, and adding PR as well as TODC to the workload is busting my ass. Something had to give. As a bonus this week, I'm going to publish my A+ paper under the title, "The Last Load". It is NOT normal PR fare, but at least you get an idea what I'm doing. If you like it, I may post more pieces from class.

-Alan

Monday, July 10th, 2006:

Hello everyone,

Today's post went up a few hours late because I recently suffered a complete hard drive failure which resulted in the loss of around 90 GB of data. Fortunately, nothing critical was destroyed, and my network has made a full recovery, albeit with a new HDD.

Hey, didn't I promise you guys an update every Monday?

Oh, and today is my birthday. Send money.



Sunday, May 20th, 2006:

This little gem was waiting for me in my inbox this morning:

Tuesday, May 16th, 2006
Hello,

Your blog has been reviewed, verified, and cleared for regular use so that
it will no longer appear as potential spam. If you sign out of Blogger and
sign back in again, you should be able to post as normal. Thanks for your
patience, and we apologize for any inconvenience this has caused.

Sincerely,
The Blogger Team

Spam blogs! I wish stupid people could come up with something better to do than making my life difficult. I swear this whole fiasco is like something straight out of the Asshole Olympics, isn't it? Besides, Plainly Ranting isn't even a blog in the first place; it's a website that I've built using Blogger's engine. Apparently my linking system made their robots file me under their blanket 'evil-bad' category, but I'd say matters are solved now. Keep checking back with me, because you never know when the newest monkeyshines are coming. (Hint: They arrive every Monday like clockwork.)



Sunday, May 14th, 2006:

I have been informed that Blogger robots have identified my website as a Spam Blog. Of course, this makes me more than a little miffed, but it's a mindless algorithm that's pointing the finger. Plainly Ranting is subject to review by a live person to determine that they've made a mistake. Sadly, had they asked me, I could've told them this. I've already been offered hosting by a couple of webhosting services with my own domain name instead of something on Blogger. However, I am reserving judgement until this is sorted out.



Monday, May 8th, 2006:

There is a new Archives section here at Plainly Ranting! The main page was getting a little too hairy and I had to shorten things up a bit. Just click on the new "ARCHIVES" button on the main page and you should be able to find your old favorites waiting for you.



Sunday, April 2nd, 2006:

Search engines feedster.com and Google have finally picked up on the good goings on here! This means that my website can now be found via a Google search for "Plainly Ranting"! Unlike Google, feedster.com still doesn't access my main page, but it does index at least some of my articles, which is just as good to me.

So it seems enough of you like the site that search engines are beginning to take notice. (Remember when search engines helped expose sites to new readers? That's all gone the way of the Dodo and it's entirely the other way around now. Thanks PageRank... ass.) Now thanks to you, loyal and devoted readers, the site is more accessible to everyone on the internet. Thanks to everyone who's wandered in for a laugh, linked to me, or just told some friends about me. As always, feel free to leave comments or fire me an e-mail and keep the buzz going!



Wednesday, February 22nd, 2006:

On February 19th, 2006, the people over at http://www.theobservationist.com/ came across Plainly Ranting using highly secretive and technological methods. They snooped around and laughed their asses off. They showed it to one another. They were astonished.

They were so taken by what they saw that they asked me to come write for them. Then it was my turn to be astonished. Negotiations began. There, in a smoky room in an undisclosed location, with only a greasy yellow lightbulb hanging from a string for illumination, we struggled back and forth....

Oh bullshit.

They asked me to write for 'em and I took the job.

That means that you can also find my stuff at http://www.theobservationist.com/ now. (Opens in a new window.) I look forward to working with the staff there and lending my particular brand of hostility to their otherwise serene and mellow atmosphere. I feel like a wolf in a henhouse. One that just had an orgasm.

However, it must be noted that nothing from PR will be published at The Observationist. Ever. So if you want to read all my stuff, you'll have to check both sites now. ...and buy the book later. Hell, get a few tee-shirts too while you're at it.

Check them out. They're a good buncha' guys.