No Runny Eggs

Good afternoon. I know, I’m a bit early, but I’m playing cribbage tonight and I won’t be here or anywhere else on-line for the real thing. The state of the blog is pretty good. I’m holding rather steady at about 80 people subscribing to the feed, and, spikes notwithstanding, about 125 of you showing up here on a daily basis. True, some of them show up for the polar bear/Gorebal Warming pic and don’t stick around, but that counts as traffic according to advertisers. Of course, I don’t run ads here, but that’s neither here nor there. The point is I’ve somehow managed to create a nice, not-too-small cadre of readers, some of whom actually comment. For that, I’m grateful.

I’m also grateful for my guest-bloggers, Fred, Aaron, Leslie and Patrick. They all bring fresh perspectives to this place, especially when I’m not around. They know the door is always open here.

I’m blessed by all of the people I’ve met because I blog. There are simply too many to name, and that would be true even if I am horrible about remembering names. First of all, there is the Drinking Right crew; Fred, Aaron, Nick, Dave before he retired from drinking, Asian Badger, Sean Hackbarth before he went to DC, the Unreal one, Dean, James, Dickie, and more that don’t show up on a regular basis. There’s also the gang at the Center-Right Coalition meetings; Mark Block, Brenda Baas, Brian Schimming, the guys in Rich Zipperer’s office, Chris Schneider, everybody in Madison. There are also those I ran into on various road trips; silent E, Chris from OTB, Uncle Jimbo, Owen, Patrick, Dad29, Chris the head barkeep at WSB, Mary Katharine Ham, Katie Favazza, John from Argghhh, Jo Egelhoff, Dean Barnett, Fausta Wertz, Eric from Tygrrrr Express, Jim Geraghty, Swint, Bruce, Scott Feldstein, Tom McMahon and I’m sure I’ve forgotten more than a few. If somehow I did, hit me with a frying pan so I remember.

On a semi-related note, the blogroll has bloated quite nicely. Yes, there are some dead links I’ll have to eventually whack, but that will be for another day.

Over the last year, I’ve implemented a captcha system and a trackback-checking system that has greatly reduced the spam I have had to deal with. Shortly after the creater of that captcha system, Peter Keung, implemented a method for the sight-impared to leave comments, I enabled that with less-than-spectacular results. Fortunately, he’s gone back to the drawing board and implemented a more-robust version, one that will once again allow me to open up registration once I install it right after I finish with the SOTB.

I’ve also cobbled together a widget-friendly form of the template I’ve been using. Except for the tags, which I don’t use anyway, it sure seems to work with the latest versions of WordPress, including WordPress MU, what the WordPress.com blogs run on. I have made it available to a couple of people I know, though I do not particularily want to release it publicly as mine. After all, most of the work was done by Mike Little.

I’ve also implemented “pretty” permalinks. They work rather well, allowing links to the old “?p=xxx” as well as the new “pretty” ones to go through. However, I discovered a problem when I changed the date of one of my posts to a different month. It seems that breaks the incoming links to it that pointed to the “older” version. Fortunately, a bit of messing around with htaccess allowed me to redirect that incoming to the right post.

Late last year, I was invited to start using Cover It Live for my liveblogs. That is a nice little piece of software, one that a lot of others have picked up on. So many people picked up on it that we’ve crashed its servers twice in a weekend. Oh well; that happens. One of my early suggestions, that the creators of said liveblogs get to edit the liveblog, has now been implemented. Graci, Keith.

I’ve been mostly happy with my webhost, BlueHost. The price is right ($6.95/month if you lock in for 2 years in advance), they offer Apache hosts which allows the redirection noted above, and for the most part they’ve managed to stay up. The biggest problem, which still vexes me, is a CPU Load Exceeded error I occassionally get. I can’t quite get that squashed, though I hope the new version of the captcha that is set to be installed will help in squashing it.

Another bit I’ve managed to finally implement is the splitting of a post with the use of WordPress’ “more” tag in the feed. That means the feed is a bit safer for work now that most of the expletives are contained below the fold. It also means I probably will drop more expletives into posts.

The inveterate gambler in me had an almost-successful NFL season, even though I completely missed on the Packer prediction. Unfortunately, that degenerated into a complete collapse in the playoffs. Oh well; easy come, easy go, and I’m not stupid enough to put actual money or other things of value on this.

So, what’s incoming for 2008? Pretty much what you have seen is what you’re going to get. I’m not going to bullshit you into thinking I’m going to do some massive change. I’m going to keep pressing for shifts toward federalist, small-government conservatism even though it is an uphill battle; I see that as the only way for this country to continue to survive. I’ll probably keep on swearing. I’ll probably do a NCAA pool or two, and the inveterate gambler will be back in September for the NFL season. Beyond the Drinking Rights, the Center-Right Coalition meetings and Defending the American Dream – Wisconsin summit, I don’t know my blog-related travel plans yet, though I do hope to meet more of my fellow bloggers. As for the navel-gazing, don’t expect another one this year, suckers.

I keep on forgetting to add people that make sense when I first notice them, but I usually do eventually. That time has come for Anwyn’s Notes in the Margin. Now that I brought her to your attention, don’t wait as long as I did.

I know, I promised another look at the “Is conservatism out of gas/dead” question, but I have a bit more groundwork to lay before I get there. With the spectacular failure of the Thompson campaign, with its dependence and major source of support in the conservative blogosphere, I have to answer the question of whether we have any actual influence.

The question is properly answered with, “…with whom?” It is painfully obvious that, though we are by and large “Average Joes”, we have no influence with the larger populace of “Average Joes”. Because we are willing to put thoughts to electrons, we are by definition now different than the larger populace. It is an over-generalization, but we pay closer attention than the non-blogging Joe, and we put different weights on the various opinions and bits of news. Morever, we do not have nearly the reach of either the dead-tree/video media or the talk-radio media. Some sites may well reach beyond the “circular-fire” of like-minded bloggers to a larger audience; this place isn’t one of them.

The prime example of our, and the libertarians’, lack of influence with the larger populace is the 2008 elections. Without a doubt, the two candidates that have received the most blogger support are Fred Thompson and Ron Paul. However, neither candidate received more than 14% of the vote in any primary or caucus, and Flip’s unweighted average vote share for both of them is 18.1% (Thompson 11.2%, Paul 6.9%).

I would also be remiss if I didn’t mention a basic difference in blogging philosophy between my end of the blogosphere and the liberal end. We, by and large, see blogging as a way to vent our frustrations. The left, by and large, sees blogging as another means to the political end of total domination.

That leads me to the influence we do have with politicians and others in the political process. It is not, by and large, the reason behind the blogging. If it were, we’d be calling Ned Lamont “Senator”. Rather, the very things that make us different from the larger populace are the things that allow us to have influence. Specifically, the fact that we pipe up is why the pols and pros listen. On a given issue, there is surprisingly-little comment from the populace to the pols, and though we are by definition a bit different than the larger, silent populace, we’re closer to that populace than just about anybody else likely to get a politician’s ear, be they media or lobbyists. I don’t like to brag, but I know both from my stats and conversations I’ve had, I do have a not-insignificant readership in both Madison and Milwaukee’s courthouse.

The prime example of that influence was the torpedoing of amnesty. I have no doubt that, in a vacuum, we’d have something north of 10 million freshly-minted “Americans”. Most of the pols were for it, most of the pros were for it, outside of talk-radio media, the media was for it. Normally, that would be more than enough to have made it happen, even with 70% public opposition. However, we bloggers and talk radio climbed that wall, raised a ruckus, and knocked amnesty down.

I could also easily cite the end of President Bush’s dream to put Harriet Miers on the Supreme Court. Indeed, that was among the first things I blogged about, and that was the first “theme” I had.

Revisions/extensions (1:14 pm 1/25/2008) – Dean Barnett answers it far better than I could, only his focus is talk radio (H/T – Charlie).

That’s exactly what Fred Keller, late of the FranklinNOW-osphere, is doing with Bullseye.

I probably would have done this yesterday had I not the need to unleash an expletive (which through an unusual amount of self-restraint did not turn into a long string of them), and I should have done this long before today, but the combination of conservatism and a nom de plume of Vivian Lee (along with a comment left yesterday) gets Conservative Belle added to the roll. What can I say; I have a weakness for good-looking conservative women.

I figured it was time to do a proper About & FAQ page. If you have a question that I didn’t answer, pipe up, and I’ll consider answering it.

Yes, I occassionally check through Blogrolling, but it isn’t nearly often enough. I probably have a couple of these on the Blogs 4 Bauer section of the roll, but since they have me on some version of their main rolls, and because I don’t have control over the B4B roll, it’s past time to return the favor (and also add them to the ever-growing feed reader):

– Death by 1000 Papercuts
– Making Ripples
– MY Vast Right Wing Conspiracy
– A Blog For All (Lawhawk is one of the B4B guys)
– SodaBoy.net
One of these years, I will prune that bloated roll some. I’m sure I have some dead links on there by now.

Like Ace of Spades HQ, Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler comes with a major language warning. Let’s just say I’m a fucking fan of rottweilers, especially ones that bite various liberals in the ass.

If any of you are under the delusion that someday in the mid-to-long term future, a historian is going to stumble across your blog and say, “What brilliant insight into the beginning of the 21st Century so-and-so has,” I suggest grabbing your favorite comfort food or drink before heading over to Jib’s reality check. As for me, I’m under no such illusions. I know whatever little impact my words have will fade over time.

I do have to further address a portion of what Jib noted, specifically how easily links die. I’m as guilty as causing links to die as anybody else. The first several months, this place was on Blogger. I eventually moved off of Blogger, and originally cobbled together a redirect. Eventually, I used a different workaround that drives those that click on the No Runny Eggs link at my Blogger profile directly here, but that also killed the original norunnyeggs.blogspot.com address. Those posts are still here (the early archives), and also on Blogger’s server.

I was a lot better with the second move, from the norunnyeggs.eggstor.com domain to the norunnyeggs.com one. Because I maintained the eggstor.com domain, I could use a more-advanced redirect, and once I also moved the eggstor.com domain, I was able to finally have a seamless transition. Still, I had certain links that were broken, mainly pictures that were hotlinked to the norunnyeggs.eggstor.com.

Revisions/extensions (3:13 pm 1/17/2008) – I’ll repost a bit of a semi-revisit comment I left over at Jib’s place:

As for what is likely to be saved, I wouldn’t count on stand-alone “diaries” to make the macro-archive cut. That’s where the personal desire to archive comes in, just like it has with diarists through history.

I’m very torn on whether to include a further comment from Jib. It is very good; however, I do not want to steal the discussion.

It’s not just the legs that may or may not be E.M. Zanotti’s at the top of American Princess that got her on the roll (thanks, MKH), though that definitely helps. Somebody that is just a pair of legs does not peel off a wicked-good dissection of why John McCain’s fade began in Michigan.

In a continuing effort to fill in the roll with the national standards, I’ve added Ankle Biting Pundits to it. Heck, it even fits with yesterday’s dog-eat-drunk motif.

One of the fastest ways to get my attention is to link to me. It’s not a guarantee to getting on the roll and the feed reader, but if the content is good, it’s a sure-fire way to do so. Yorick’s Persiflage qualifies on all counts.

One of my MRQs this week, “You hear me talking, Huckleberry boy?”, is up for MRQ of the week over at Real Debate Wisconsin. This is the only time I encourage you to vote early and vote often.

Sorry, competition, the Egg Slime Machine™ is not for hire this week; rather, you’re the targets. First, it wasn’t the hair that killed Romney in Iowa. Second, here comes the sqeeze. Finally, just grab some collagen.

Remember, vote for Marcellus Wallac…er, steveegg this week. Otherwise, he will get medevial on your asses.

If you’re seeing this, we’re back on-line here. Bluehost decided to move me to a new version of Apache, which knocked this place silly the last hour.

Dave Casper, late of Ask Me Later and founder of Drinking Right (next edition is tomorrow, even non-drinking Patrick will be there), has decided to start anew with The Dave Casper Experience.

I know I should’ve done this long before now because I liked Mike’s stuff he put up at Flopping Aces, but stupid me was too lazy to click through to his own blog, Mike’s America. Don’t be like I was.

One can’t have too many “Right”s on a roll or in a reader, so let’s add one more – Right On The Right (not to be confused with Right From The Right)

I really have to thank John Hawkins for sending a whole heap of traffic in by calling this humble place the site of the day (sorry about that PHP error/suspension deal; guess I need to do some optimizing here). In any case, the regulars may or may not know about Conservative Grapevine; it’s a clearinghouse of good posts.

Those of you here from there, please make yourself at home. Hopefully the jurry-rigged system doesn’t break on you again.

As if I don’t have enough “rights” on the roll, it’s time to add another; John Hawkins’ Right Wing News.

Anybody with the blog name Right Wing Nut House belongs on any conservative’s or small-l libertarian’s blogroll. I don’t know why I failed to get Rick Moran on there before, but it’s there now.

I could’ve swore I added The Campaign Spot much earlier. After all, I’ve been “borrowing” Jim Geraghty’s material the last 2 1/2 months.

I have to thank Mary Katharine Ham for letting the TownHall faithful know that her father also blogs. Do add Right Angles (not to be confused with Right Angle Blog, also on the bloated roll to the right) to the long-and-ever-growing list of blogs worthy of your time.

I have absolutely, positively no excuse for missing PheistyBlog before now. Mea culpa maxima.