Following Edge

> *Hey, my first blog entry! Welcome fellow bloggers and blog readers!*
> *Blog doggers and blog loggers...*

That's how Michael Moore started [his first blog entry](http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/diary/index.php?id=7), but I am not **that** Michael Moore, and can enjoy having a smaller set of friends, family and co-workers to keep in touch with through this web log. Hopefully, none of you will become "blog doggers", but I do hope you'll participate, contribute and communicate with me by leaving "comments" on my web log entries whenever you have something to say. Just click "Leave a Comment" above the text of the entry and you'll be taken to the form so you can add your comment. My goal in sharing my observations about my work and home life are to increase my communication with you, so I do hope you'll contribute by leaving a comment whenever you have a comment to spare.

As you can see from the "Categories" to the right (Home, Family, Technology and Work), I don't expect to have a significant amount of political content in my blog as you might expect from the better-known Michael Moore's blog or from the [blogs you may have heard about](http://politics.feedster.com/) surrounding the Democratic National Convention. However, since this is such a significant year in politics with a [presidential election](http://blog.johnkerry.com/) and [other issues of great importance to me](http://www.basicrights.org/news/newsitem.asp?ID=70), you may see some political entries, which I will try to restrict to the "Family" category.

Why blog now? Blogging has been around for some time now, so I am definately not on the leading edge here (well reflected by the name of my blog). However, there are a couple of pragmatic reasons now for me to begin now.

It was recently pointed out by a co-worker that, since I work from home, others aren't aware what I'm concerned with at work and forget to include me in discussions of new technical initiatives at [CSNW](http://www.corp.csnw.com). My hope is that I will help keep those of you interested in my work more informed through some of my blog entries, which I will try to restrict to the "Work" category.

Once upon a time, when my daughter Lauren was first born, I kept up a [web page of pictures and videos of Lauren](http://www.nomorebedpans.com/lauren/). I discovered that after Lauren started talking and moving about more, the most interesting part of living with Lauren became my stories and observations more than pictures of her. I haven't been able to figure out how to share those, so I also hope to share those with you through blog entries, which I will try to restrict to the "Family" category.

Since I have had a dedicated interest in technology since I was young and since I do now live on a small farm in Elmira, Oregon and since both of these are a constant source for insightful observations, you'll be likely to see some blog entries in the "Farm" and "Technology" categories as well.

If you don't have experience with blogs (uhh, "Hi Family!", despite what my co-workers may think, I was not raised by robots, but by your usual technically-challenged parents), let me suggest that the best way to keep up to date is to use an "RSS Aggregator" which will automatically show you new entries in this blog or other blogs you might like to follow whenever you start up the program. No need to check web pages looking for updates. I use [NetNewsWire Lite](http://ranchero.com/netnewswire/) for the Macintosh, [David](http://hr.uoregon.edu/davidrl/) (my best friend) uses [PulpFiction](http://freshsqueeze.com/products/pulpfiction/) for the Macintosh. There's even a number of web-based RSS Aggregators including [MyWireService](http://mywireservice.com/). If you use an RSS reader, just click the "RSS 2.0" icon at the top-right corner of this page to copy the location of the RSS feed for my blog and enter it as a subscription in your RSS reader.

Now it's sounding like I'm a System Administrator providing support. Sheesh. Time to get off my soapbox and let you participate. Click "Leave a Comment" to let me know what you think about my blog launch.