There are a couple things missing (any kind of worthwhile content in the green social media box at the right, for one), but I’m happy with how this turned out. I used Colorschemedesigner.com to help pick bright, non-clashing colors for the extra content boxes. To save space and reduce the amount of repetitive text in the sidebar, I janked together some code to display a random post with a matching tag for each tagged post. That way if you’re reading a post on a certain topic, you can jump straight to another one instead of picking through the archives. As ever, the WordPress Codex made this less painful.

I’ll be adding links and stuff, but the whole point of the blue and red boxes to the right is that they’ll pull content based on what I share in Google Reader, favorite on YouTube, and listen to with Zune. What’s missing? Any suggestions for social media features?? Leave a comment – which you can now do with your Facebook, Twitter, or OpenID account! For the low price of all 10 of the old comments being eaten…

Yeah, maybe I’ll fix that next weekend!

Classy segue! I added an archives page, which you’ll see now in the top navigation. This is something I meant to do a long time ago when the archives in the right-hand sidebar started stretching towards Antarctica and I cut them at 12 months. Basically, you can find what you’re looking for based on tags under the Topics heading at the right, based on publish date under the Archives heading at the right, or with the Seek box on the left. But if you’re wondering, “what were these guys up to in April of 2006,” or “what are all the different post categories,” the archives page is the place to be.

This may be useful to the handful of new subscribers I’ve seen registering on the site lately, assuming any of you are not spam-bots. Which reminds me – welcome, non-spam-bot subscribers!! The other changes you’d notice if you glanced at Before and After versions of the site are the result of overdue housecleaning. I removed the music and movies links from the top stripe and dropped them under the posterior section, to reflect the fact that they’re dated content we’re unlikely to mess with in the future. Last but not least, I added a book link, which points at the book I wrote in college and recently moved into WordPress.

Yes, when I was at Miami I tried to write a book. Overall I’d say it was a great exercise in wasted time and failed self-promotion, but I still hope the thing’s a worthwhile read for any random high school juniors or seniors – or even college freshmen – who stumble across it here. Details on the In Dependence page.

While I’m on the topic of IMAO (now that they’ve linked us, at worst this will come off as retroactive butt-kissing instead of the usual link-begging), I should point out that if you’ve not visited their site a good place to start would be Frank J.’s Nuke the Moon essay, for which I’ll admit a troubling affinity.

The old dated entries are accurate to the day they were written, but not the time. Come on, even I’m not that much of a geek.

Lately I’ve been leaning more towards the latter. In part, because I know (as I’ve always known) there are not all that many people wandering the internet looking for music and movie recommendations from some random dude. Why bother with my crappy reviews when Rolling Stone, Yahoo!, and every local paper in the country is more than covering the crappy reviews beat? That’s a serious question in terms of whether or not the site is worth my time, especially since the chances are even slimmer that someone will like my music reviews and dig further into what I’ve got online.

Another serious question is “What part of my brain is broken?” Because no matter what big or little change I’m making to a page, I have to change a hundred thousand other things while I’m at it. I finally got around to adding reviews for a couple of Foo Fighters CDs I’ve had for… sheesh, going on a year now. And then when I was finished – I started messing with one of the other reviews. Then I noticed some bad grammar in the one before that. Then I decided to change some other completely unnoticable things. And here we are! Although I might make changes to the way Blogger works, the hands-off-ness of the system is what got me writing here in the first place. If I can type something up and hit a button, it’s a little easier to post without subsequently changing it over and over like a total whack-job nerd genius.

But just a little.

Now is not one of those times. Lately I’ve had a lot of papers – ranging from two to thirty eight pages long – to work on for classes. This is always a reminder that as much as I like writing, I hate writing when I don’t get to pick the subject, length, and format. Hate it. Usually, having to write something I don’t care about makes me want to write something I do care about, but that’s not the case right now. So what am I writing for, you might ask.

Nothing. I’m realizing that my motivations for writing are often negative ones. Something I read online was so idiotic that I needed to put in my two cents. An article in The Miami Student was too assinine to ignore. But as I start to reflect more on graduating, counting the days to unemployment, and not wasting my life, I wonder if anything I’ve written has been worth more than what I intended to counter.

I can’t say. I can’t say, which sucks quite a bit considering the time and effort I’ve put into writing over the past several years. Words of encouragement from the right mouths go an incredibly long way, but have they actually been more than words? Have I encouraged or brightened the days of people I care about, or are said people just too sweet to tell me I’m boring?

It’s quite the thing to wrestle with. Maybe in a few days or weeks or months something will work me up sufficiently to make me stop wondering. I sort of hope not. We hear more than enough stupid things from stupid people; I’d like to never write again if I’m one of those people. As far as current events and politics go, some good news: a Rabbi punched a Nazi in the face in Kansas City. I’m sorry, but that’s excellent. Unless you’re the Nazi, in which case you sucked to begin with and deserve some slapping around.

I’ve been trying to find a “job.” Fellow college students, perhaps you, too, have heard of this fabled item. From what I gather, it’s something that takes about 8 hours out of 5 days of every week for the rest of your life (more, if you pick the wrong kind of “job”). In return you get money to buy a new car when you feel like it, and you don’t have to become a penniless wino or continue going to school forever (to be honest, I’m not sure which would be worse).

So, anyway, spring break is next week and graduation is two months from yesterday. If you happen to own a company in Columbus that is looking to pay a new MIS graduate around $30 grand a year for doing stuff, be sure to let me know. Or if you wield control over someone who owns a company in Columbus that is looking to pay $30 grand a year for new-MIS-graduate stuff, well, wield ‘em my direction. I’d especially like to work for The Ohio State University, because they are cool and I could get discounted football tickets, so if you’re a big donor or the president’s niece or something, put in the good word. Thanks.

Until then, the site will continue to be the tangled up ball of goofiness you’ll expect if you’ve read anything here before. Hopefully I will find new and interesting things to say and do. More hopefully, I will stop saying and doing things that are not new or interesting. We’ll see how that goes.