Occasionally Wright

Happy Webiversary To Me

I was giving some serious thought to pulling the plug on this blog (which turned 4 years old yesterday) and then I went home and had half a dozen people mention that they kept tabs on me through the site. Who knew? They couldn't have learned too much over the last year given how infrequently I've been posting, but I swear I'm going to give it another go and see if I can get back into the swing of things. You may or may not have noticed that I've now posted something for four straight days for the first time since just about never. Well done me.

What got me thinking about killing Occasionally Wright? Facebook. I was finally convinced to open an account, and though it was addictive for the first week or so the luster has worn off, even if it did get me back in touch with some dear old friends. But no more thoughts of giving up this habit. At least not at the moment.

New Blogs To Me

In the last couple of months I've gotten hooked on two great blogs about everyday life. One is Lifehacker, and it's heavy on computer and tech tips but still has plenty of other solid nuggets that can make life easier for you. For example, it's where I learned that if you carry a certain combination of ten coins in your pocket when you go out you'll always have exact change for anything between one and 99 cents (the combination is three quarters, one dime, two nickels and four pennies). It's a handy tip if you like to have exact change, or spend loose change.

The other side is Wisebread. Again, it has lots of daily living tips and suggestions but it's much less techy and is more in-depth. My personal favorites are their video posts on common carnival cons and bar tricks that you can use to win free drinks in bar bets. I've never used them, but the videos are well done and entertaining, and if you like messing with your friends you might be able to teach yourself a couple of the tricks.

Enjoy.

Sorry I Can't Help

Based on this search query that somehow brought someone here, I'd say they're having some difficulty with the arena scoreboard in Cole Harbour, NS. I'd help if I could...

Wright? Wrong.

For the people who are finding this site through Google searches for "how to wright a job reference" and "how to wright an apply for a job", my first suggestion would be to learn how to spell 'write'. The person from Norway that made the second search query at 7:47 am has an excuse. The person from Australia that made the first- not so much.

Pictures Anyone?

Back in the day I used to re-design the look of this place every few weeks, or at least months. Now I'm pretty sure I've had the same color scheme and banner for at least 18 months, if not longer.

Over the last ten months or so I've developed my Photoshop skills enough that I could probably come up with a more creative banner, and one that reflects where I amd and what I'm doing now, but I haven't been able to find any good pictures to use.

One of these days I need to get a digital camera to snap some pictures down here...

Bloggers Hit The Big Time

It's nice to see that I'm not the only blogger out there who is being recognized by the people they write about.

After about a year of sports blogging and 2 years of writing here, I landed my job, thanks in large part to my blogging background. Around the same time I launched Occasionally Wright (it'll be three years on August 7) John Campea started The Movie Blog, which began on Typepad, just like this place. Now The Movie Blog is one of the biggest and most respected fan-run movie sites on the internet. John is now recognized as a critic worthy of receiving invitations to film screenings and he recently got his first chance to interview a Holywood personality, and it happened to be Oliver stone. His post about it brought back a lot of memories of my first time in the Thrashers locker room and my first player interview (I interview Andy Sutton). So congrat to John for all of his success.

Then there's Paul Kukla, who runs the Kukla's Korner hockey blog. He's been going since about February of 2005 and in June he was a guest writer on NHL.com. Now they've given him a regular spot on the site, making him the first fan blogger that I know of to have a gig on one of the league websites. Nicely done Paul.

It's good to see that the hard work of fans in being recognized, whether they're movie geeks or sports nuts.

Occasionally Wright, Staying Alive

I thought about pulling the plug on this whole blog thingy, since I've already stopped writing my sports blog (The Net Files) but something happened about two weeks ago that made me change my mind.

I got an email from an old friend that I'd lost touch with. I've lost track of how many times this has happened, but it's one of the things that motivates me to keep this thing up and running. Having lived in three provinces and two states over the past seven years I've met a lot of people and lost touched with a lot of people. Every once in a while one of them tracks me down through this blog thanks to the fact that it's the third or fourth thing that shows up if you Google my name.

So last week I heard from an old friend from my days at ABU who I'd tried to track down recently with little success. Weird, huh? For those who are curious, Catharine is doing well and has been married for close to four years. As long as things like this keep happening, I'll keep up the site.

By the way, how are you all doing, and who's still reading this thing? Ami? Brandie? ODGC folks? Peacock? Janice?

You Never Know

It's funny how you never know who is reading your blog.

Today I went to my old barber in Sandy Hill for a haircut and as I was sitting in his old-school chair I noticed that he had a new framed article up on the wall beside an old newspaper article about his shop. 'Service With an Opinion', it was called. Hmm... that sounded familiar. Then I realized where it had come from. I wrote it back in June 2004.I didn't say anything about it until I was about to leave, then I awkwardly asked him if he liked it (duh... he had it on his wall). He just nodded and smiled and then I told him I wrote it. Boy, you should have seen his face light up. "Thank-you, thank-you so much" he said in his thick Italian accent.

Nope, you never know who's reading.

Ads

You may have noticed that there are now ads to the left of these posts. Feel free to click on them once in a while as they will help me pay for this service. If you do it too often it'll look suspicious to the people that track the ads but once or twice a week would be great, or more often if you use multiple computers. Thank you kindly.

The Management

Happy Webiversary to Me

It's been a whole two years now since I set up this blog. I never really knew where it was going to lead and that still hasn't changed but I don't think I expected to write 692 (now 693) posts in 731 days (we had a leap year in there, didn't we?) and that's not counting my sports site which includes another 313 posts. Things have been kind of quiet here lately as I focused more on writing about hockey but I have to say I've enjoyed this whole blogging experience thus far. Over the last two years I've:

• Received 1334 comments on this site (over 250 of them have been responses to the Crash Holly post).
• Been the top result in Google for topics like Sidney Crosby, Crash Holly, The Joe Schmo Show and the phrase 'pretty stupid'.
• Made myself ridiculously easy to find and have thus been contacted by at least 6 old friends who I'd lost ouch with.
• Been contacted by members of at least four bands, three of which I've written about, two of which are local to Ottawa, the other being California based.
• Met one other blogger in person (Steve at The Sporting Life) and have corresponded with numerous others who I would now call friends (Alan at Genx40, Eric at Offwing Opinion, Mark at This Guy Falls Down and Heather at So Very Obsessed to name a few, as well as many others).
• Made multiple connections that have come in handy in my job search. None have panned out yet but one of these days...
• Been asked to write for other sites as result of my writing here or at The Net Files.

In the end it's all been worthwhile and I have no plans to stop doing what I've been doing. Thanks for stopping by folks and I hope you keep coming back. Oh, and feel free to click on one of the new ads from time to time.