Jake’s Life

I love it. Sandro said I wouldn’t, but I do.

I love the fact that I can press one button and be in my mailbox with four accounts coming to it. I love not having to always hit “Send/Receive” to check my mail because of Blackberry’s push e-mail. I love having an intuitive user interface that’s easy to use and smooth. No hiccups, no hunting for things, everything is right there.

It takes better pictures too!

Definitely not the best picture (I was going pretty quick to catch up with this tow truck on my way home from work), but funny.

Yep, looks like State Patrol done broke down!

A while back, probably a year and a half ago or so, I found an ad on Craigslist posted by a 22 year old straight guy named Skip looking for gay friends. Surprisingly enough, the friends didn’t have quotations around it and it was in the Strictly Platonic section. I sent an e-mail, he replied, and two days later we met at the gun range to put some holes in paper. My friends Shelly and Dizzle came along as well (this was the Dizzle-put-five-rounds-through-the-same-hole incident). Skip had never handled a gun before, let alone shot anything, so he didn’t do much of it, but I had a great time. We lost track of each other after that and haven’t spoken since. Maybe I wasn’t gay enough for him to hang out with…

I’ve been looking through the platonic posts once more given recent issues and my feeling the need to look for a few more male friends. (Females are fine, but I don’t get along with flaming guys, and women are usually only a few rungs above that.) I love having straight friends—especially hot straight friends—because I usually challenge their stereotypical view of gay guys, as well as the fact that no matter how hot they are and how good of friends we are, the option of sex just isn’t there. I’ve found a few posts, but not in my immediate area, but I’ll keep trying. I haven’t met quality people off of Craigslist (especially as far as friendships go). Most of the platonic ads I’ve read always include something to the effect of “I’m looking for friends but not opposed to something else,” or people looking for walking partners. I don’t know, maybe that’s code for something. I’m not up on the hip lingo I guess.

What luck have you guys had on CL as far as friendships go? Of course, there’s ass-a-plenty on there for those who are looking for it, but I’ve got a booty already.

Not of my reader’s themselves, although it can mean that.

Last night, while standing out in the 28 degree weather working containment, I thought to myself,”I wonder what the other bloggers are doing right now?” It was about 0400 my time, and with others on the East Coast they were likely just starting their day. I can’t exactly take a photo of what I was doing, but I can find things in my daily like that I can photograph and post.

So here’s the deal: For those of you who read my blog, e-mail me a photo of your daily life, whether it’s at work, on your way to and from, out shopping, working out (locker room pics only!), whatever. I want to see a fractions of the lives my readers live through their eyes. Yes, I read your blogs (for those of you who have them), but I want to be there with you, just for a second. Camera phone, digital camera, kindergarten sketch, whatever. Just do it!

For every single photo I receive from others, I’ll send them a few in return. If you want a photo posted with a link to you, let me know too!

I commented in November how much my blog traffic shot up that month and how my outlook for December was pretty low because of the Holidays. Well, I was right.

It looks like 2008 is off to a good start though, just getting into the last week with about 1300.

I wanted to share a few other things I’ve done to my blog, mainly on your suggestions, to enhance readership and promote more interaction, and in turn more traffic and the opportunity for me to meet more people through my site. I’ve installed a few Wordpress plugins that will help:

• Subscribe to Comments: A very simple plugin that allows those who comment to notify them of follow up comments through e-mail. My blog will send you e-mails of all future comments, and when the post becomes old or you’ve had enough banter, you click the unsubscribe link in the e-mail. Simple! Just check the box in the comment form.
  
• Highlight Author Comments: This plugin is more geared toward me, and basically displays my comments on a post in bold.
  
• Comment Luv: Probably my favorite, and should be yours too. Even though a lot of my readers already read other readers’ blogs (let me know if I lost you there), it creates more traffic for you. When you check this box in the comment form, and you type in your blog’s URL, it grabs the latest post title from your blog and displays it.
  

For those of you who subscribe to my RSS feed, please shoot me an e-mail so that I know about how many of you there are. Feedburner has my count dropped from 30 to between 2 and 3 depending on the day, but its list of feed readers has a lot of types, so I’m not sure what’s going on. I know for a fact that more than 3 subscribe to me just due to comments and the fact that I know more people than that in person who do.

It may have something to do with my we server with the issues with my stats I had, and my e-mail times are all effed up too.

Thanks!

The 25th year to be exact. Well, not for another few hours anyway (I was born at 11:13 am). Everyone always says that it doesn’t feel any different, being a different age. I think it does. I had some major goals planned for when I became 25, and the only one I have done is finishing school. So today I’m a bit down, especially since I was the only person who remembered it. Hrmph. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not one that wants to be showered with gifts, or paid special attention to, but it’s nice to have people in your life that care and say, “Hey, Here’s to another year knowing you.” I’m sure they’ll come later in the day, once people wake up, read my RSS feed, and freak out…