Don't Back Down

Once we arrived in Bonaire, it would have seemed that the hard work was done. Not the case. We found a taxi from the airport easily enough, but as I mentioned previously, the operator of our chosen lodging had already left for the night! Luckily he left his cell phone number posted on the door, and the cab driver was kind enough to both call him for us and then wait until he arrived to let us in. Finally, approaching 10pm, we were able to check into The Friar's Inn (now called Hotel-Bonaire Inn).

Read "Bonaire, Netherlands Antilles" »

Like most people, I have accounts everywhere. Unlike most people, I am hoping to do something about that. And no, it's not anything like some super single-signon system. Please. I'm just going to try and consolidate things.

I started with email. I think I have a webmail account just about everywhere. Certainly all of the biggies. But I never check them. I logged into Yahoo Mail today and had 3000 messages. I actually read through them (not the messages, just the headers) and maybe a half-dozen were things I had subscribed to at one point or another. So I unsubscribed those, just to be nice, and deleted everything else. If all goes as planned, I won't log into that mailbox again. Hopefully by the time I have, the account will be deactivated.

I logged into Hotmail, only to find that I've already been deactivated (yippee!). Same with Excite. My account is still active with MyWay, but I rarely even remember that I have it, so I think I'll just forget about it. I have a Netscape account, too, but for some reason was having problems with their signon mechanism, so I blew it off for now.

Then I moved onto IM. I run Trillian, like any good little Windows geek (that's an oxymoron for you), but rarely use anything other than AIM. What to do? I just removed my ICQ account - I haven't heard from anyone on ICQ in ages. I don't think I've even noticed anyone with an ICQ address for a while.

I decided to remove my MSN account as well, because I really hate it that I have to use an email address. Much nicer to use an alias of some sort, with the email address set in preferences. Two down, two to go. I then actually installed the Yahoo! Messenger to try it out. First time I've done that, I think. The program is okay, but I hate that it won't stop reminding me about email. It's gone.

I then installed AIM (again, think that's the first time for me), which isn't bad, but I just couldn't get into the look. Too busy and clunky for me. So it's back to Trillian for a client, at least for the time being. But what to do about the last two IM accounts?

Turns out that Trillian also continuously updates the Yahoo! Mail status, and that gets under my skin because the account is just full of spam, and I hate seeing an envelope there, knowing I just have to clean it out. Seems like a waste of time. So I removed my Yahoo! IM account too. That means it's AIM from here on out. Unless something changes, of course.

As you all should know, I'm in the process of redesigning things. It must be something in the air, at least for people named David (1, 2). Though my name isn't David, I'm still working on mine. Anyway, I haven't changed much in the last month or so, while trying to determine if I like the new look or not. I think I do, which means I can't really use that as an excuse anymore. Now the problem is the rest of the site.

Specifically, the monthly, daily, category and individual archives. I'm not sure what to do with them. Rather, I'm sure what to do with them (that is to say that I'd like to keep them), but I'm not sure of the best way to rework them. So I'm wondering about reading habits.

Looking at my stats, I see that nearly 50% of my traffic comes through an RSS reader. Which is great. I use one too, and I don't have a problem with that at all. It's just that none of that traffic can see the site itself. So if you read through an aggregator, you can safely ignore the rest (or visit the site to let me know your thoughts).

Jeremy talked about losing his blogroll the other day, which I think I'll do. I removed it from the front page, and I think I like the look. Moreover, I haven't updated it for a while, and I generally seem to link to things I like, so if you keep up, you'll be able to tell who I read. So that was easy enough. I think where I'm stuck is on the formatting of the pages - namely the monthly and category archives, which can get pretty big. The daily archives and individual ones aren't generally too bad, since they have maybe 5 entries at most.

Those larger archives are the ones that really pile up the entries, especially over time, and thus result in these incredibly unwieldy pages that just don't seem to work quite right. So while I'm tossing ideas around, feel free to add a comment and let me know your thoughts - on the new design, on the old design, or on any design at all. What I'd especially like to know is how you read through entries if you visit the site.

That is to say, do you like to have a list of entries on the side that you can click through? A list at the top? Simple next entry/previous entry links on the entry itself? How do you determine what you will read? Do you even visit the archives, or do you simply scroll the main page to see what you've missed? Do you like to read backwards (from the most recent back) or forwards (from the oldest forward)? Any insight you can add to the process would be great. Thanks for your help.

A new entry in the wish list category is the Home Depot. I actually like their list - they have my address in my account, so people can send me things without needing to know where I live - but I don't like their implementation. Mainly, the only way to get someone to your list is to send it to them. I'd love to be able to link to it here on the blog, so if people don't want to send a book or a DVD, they can pick something different.

I must say that they are responsive. I wrote customer support about the idea last night, and within minutes had a reply. Unfortunately, the reply was that they don't allow that. So that means another wish list makes it onto the trash pile.

I don't understand why people can't get it. Let me set up a name for my wish list. Using jayseae would be nice, but I'll use my real name. I simply don't want to use an email address. Store my address so that I don't have to give it out to the entire world. Let me link to it so I can point to it here on my blog. Give me a decent selection. So far, the only list I've found that gives me all of those is Amazon. Maybe someone else will figure it out. In the meantime, if you see something, let me know.