NEVER KNOW WHAT YOU GOT TILL IT’S GONE
Happy anniversary to Admirable Thoughts: Writings of Code Monkey. February 1, 2007, marks year two of this blog. On the blog’s anniversary I write a yearly review of the blog as a way to refresh our memories about why this blog exists. Also, I use it to list stats about this blog that probably only I care about.
Feel free to leave comments about what you love or hate about the blog, changes you would like to see, or how this blog has changed you life.
Reasons For The Blog:
I had a few reasons for starting this blog. One was because I figured it would be good to know how to setup blogs in case I had to do one for professional reasons. Another reason for this blog was to help improve my writing and grammar skills.
The entries in the blog can be about anything that I feel inclined to write about. I don’t limit myself to anything since I am not an expert at anything so I might as write about everything. I am told from some readers that most of the stories feel like they are about baseball and mountains. I feel I write about other things like football and hockey, but yes I write about baseball and mountains a lot as those are some of my deep loves.
The blog was added on to my personal website. Hopefully, with the pictures and the blog, you can stay connected with me even if you don’t get to be around me that much or maybe you can learn about me if you have never met me. I hope the blog has been fun and useful to the readers as it has been fun for me.
Titles:
After my first entry, I decided that once and in while, I would have a bullet point format of thoughts called Monkey Meditations. If the entry was not Monkey Meditations, the title of the entry would be a line from some song. Hopefully, those things will help give my blog a little bit of character to call my own and to be a little different from other blogs out there.
There is a link that is in on the side bar called Name That Title; so if anyone wanted to know what song the title was from, they could find out. Some lyrics get used for specific entry types and that is explained on the Name That Title page.
Stats:
- Entries:
Type Past Year Overall Entries 65 135 Monkey Meditations 9 19 Ok, the number of stories went down a tiny bit but pretty much still doing at least an entry a week.
- Categories:
Type Past Year Overall Faith 11 21 Family 13 27 Friends 12 20 General 23 47 Hiking 5 15 Music 11 23 News 5 16 Sports 29 54 Some stories where in multiple categories.
- Entry Song Types:
Type Past Year Overall Country 24 41 Christian 28 47 Rock and/or Roll 2 8 Other 2 5 Still pretty consistent between the two types of music I most love.
- Comments:
Type Past Year Overall Number of Comments 97 127 Different People Who Left Comments 16 19 The most comments on one story is five. A big thank you to Matt for leaving the most comments and causing others to leave comments!!!!!! As a way of saying thank you, he the only reader or friend I will mention in this year review.
- Spam:
Type Past Year Overall Attempts To Leave Spam 3363 4824 The list of spammers who loves me has really grown.
- Regular Readers:
Based on those signed up for the blog’s emails update, people who have emailed me about the blog, those those leave comments, and those who use rss readers to know when the site is updates I believe there about 17 regular readers. I know of a few others who check it out now and then. So I would guess the blog has around 20 loyal readers.Really, that is not big number, especially compared to the 185 who are signed up to be notified when the main personal website is updated [however, blog readers get sneak previews of the pictures of the site]. Those people may read the blog when they get the website update, but I don’t know. However, the number of blog readers is up from last year. Thus, there is growth. Maybe some others read it from time to time that I don’t know about, if you are loyal reader and you don’t think I know about you and you want me to know that you read it, leave a comment or email me if you know my email.
As for links those who link to the blog or the personal website, I only know of a few that do. However, I would like to give those people a big thank you link love.
Also, I would like a great name to call the loyal readers of the blog and I am open to any suggestions anyone has on what readers of my blog should be called.
Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule and reading this blog. I feel privilege that you read it.
LikePERFECT PRAYER IN A DESPERATE HOUR
It is a great book if you have ever wonder how to pray or why prayer, if you have ever struggled with why a prayer was not answered for you (I assume if you are human you fit in this group), or if you are debating if prayer is worth it. Yancey’s honest look at prayer is so refreshing and needed in my life.
Here are a few quotes from the book that I thought I would share with you in this blog:
- “I do believe in miracles, but I also believe they are miracles, mean rare expectations to normal laws that govern the planet. I cannot, nor can anyone, promise that prayer will solve all problems and eliminate all suffering. At the same time, I also know that Jesus commanded his followers to pray, certain that it makes a difference in a world full of opposition to God’s will.”
- “What is the point of prayer if not to express our heart’s desire, especially when it matches what we know to be God’s will on earth? Who knows what will happen when we pray what we know God desires? Remember the many prayers of Christian behind the Iron Curtain and in an apartheid South Africa, prayers that also seemed impossible and idealistic.”
LIVING ON LIFE NUMBER NINE
Congratulations to the Cincinnati Bengals who improved their streak to nine. This is nine players to be arrested in the past nine months (read more). That is an impressive streak for not being major college football program like Nebraska, Miami, or
A PICTURE OF ME WITHOUT YOU
Since one of the “benefits” of reading the blog is the sneak preview of pictures that will go on the rest of the family site, I thought I better put some photos out there for you. This does not mean there will be an email sent to that family site’s mailing list anytime soon telling them new photos are there. It is just that I have some more pictures that I thought I get out there now and tell everyone later.
- Blizzard 2006 – Round 2 – You maybe sick of the snow but I thought I put the second group of photos out there for anyone who wants to see them..
- Miscellaneous Friends Photos – These are a few pictures we got from friend from various events at the end of 2006.
- World Vision – Jan 2007 – Our small group go the chance to serve again at World Vision, so here are some photos of our time there.
SO EXCUSE ME, Y’ALL, I GOTTA ANSWER THE CALL OF THE WILD
So I just finished reading, The Way Of The Wild Heart by John Eldredge. I have been wanting to read this book as I really like John Eldredge and his insights. I highly recommend Wild At Heart (the book that sets up his new book). It is a must if you are a man, know a man, or want to understand a man.
You can choose to read the book and decide for yourself if you liked it or not. So instead of a review of the book or something like that, I thought I would just list a few quotes from book that I really liked. These quotes caught my attention mostly because they remind me why I love the mountains, what life feels like to me right now, why it is good to be a mentor in someones life, or just because I love it when coffee-bean/Starbucks cult is dished.
- “I came to the mountains because I was summoned. Exhausted from months of battle and hard labor, I needed to get away, knew that I needed to get away, yet somehow could not bring myself to do it. You know how that is—you find yourself on the treadmill, hating it, but accustomed, even addicted to it, and getting off seems like an inconvenience, even if it will save your life. Thank God, something deeper in me was being called—a longing that is hard to describe, a compelling ache for Beauty.”
- “Thankfully, climbing, like life, comes to us one piece at a time. You cannot take on the whole mountain at once, just as you cannot create a marriage at once. You make the next move, committed that your only plan is to do it. Much of it is unpredictable, like the weather, the lost radio, the unknown route itself.”
- “A young man’s heart is wounded when he has no one to take him into the adventures his soul craves, no one to show him how to shoot a free throw or jump his bike or rock climb or us a power tool.”
- “We might think of them as the ancient paths. Only recently have we lost touch with them. In exchange for triple-venti nonfat sugar-free vanilla lattes. The result of having abandoned masculine initiation is a world of unfinished, uninitiated men.”
Monkey Meditations
- The van MUST be 12 passenger (insurance reasons). We cannot purchase a 15 passenger van
- We are looking for a newer van (2000 and up)
- We have $12,000-15,000 available to spend on the vehicle
- Working seatbelts are a must
- We are able to travel to pick up a van if it is in another state (besides Colorado)
- We are more than willing to hire an auto-broker if someone has a reliable connection
WRITE THIS DOWN, TAKE A LITTLE NOTE
I can not believe, not another one. Yep, I went to mail box today and I got another 2007 calendar from another company I don’t know. I have been sent so many calendars, I don’t know what to do with them. So if anyone out there has any ideas what to do with a surplus of calendars for 2007 let me know. Also, if need a calendar for 2007, let me know. I know I don’t need more than one and I have many, many more than that.
Note to myself as President of my company, don’t sent potential customers calendars anymore. Think of something more unique and useful.
THERE IS NO ONE LIKE YOU
It is time to squash a deep fear of some of you have, there is only one Scot Marion. There is not another one of me.
How do I know, well, thanks to HowManyOfMe.com I was able to determine this fact.
I found out the following:
- There are 14,998 people in the U.S. with the first name Scot. [However, I doubt that there are that many Scot's with only one t or more people would spell my name right]
- Statistically the 1495th most popular first name. (tied with 85 other first names)
- More than 99.9 percent of people with the first name Scot are male.
- There are 20,998 people in the U.S. with the last name Marion.
- Statistically the 1664th most popular last name. (tied with 279 other last names)
- There is 1 person in the U.S. named Scot Marion.
So no need to be afraid of multiple Scot Marion’s unless I get that equipment from Multiplicity to work.
