Southwest Virginia Blogs

The most recent “Goer” appears to be Ken Lammers, and his blog “CrimLaw,” with archives dating back to January, 2003.

Ken, however, is not completely closing the door on blogging. His new project is “The Direction,” which appears to be a videocast about Virginia politics.

The “Comers” list is probably longer and not as easily obtainable, since they are popping up left and right.

Looks like another Christmas has passed. As usual, I ate too much and gained a few dozen extra pounds.

I hope everyone had a great Christmas!

After an extended hiatus from this blog, I think I am finally ready to get things rolling again. Over the past month, I have been incredibly busy.

As has been alluded to in the comments, on November 4, 2006, Jayne and I were married. She is, without a doubt, the best friend I have ever had and I am very lucky to have her. She and I had been dating for over four years, and were engaged last Christmas. We had not set an official date because we kept waiting to see if we would have a place to live. In February, I bought the house, which to put it slightly, “needed a little work.”

At that time, we agreed that we would get married once the house was complete, which we had hoped would take a few of months. This was the first house I had ever remodeled. She will tell you that she knew all along that we were in for a lot of stress and it would take closer to a year. I will now tell you that she was right.

Projects that I expected would take days ended up taking weeks. Weeks quickly turned into months. Everything that could go wrong, always did, and sometimes more than once. We ourselves worked, with only a couple of exceptions, every weekend on the house. We were always sanding, removing paint, painting, moving supplies (from one side of the house to the other), or something else that I was too stingy (and too broke) to pay a contractor to do. During most weeks, we had one and sometimes more contractors working on things around the house, such as the plaster, wiring, cabinets, heat pump, insulation, etc. Not to mention being over our budget, which we surpassed five times.

Sometime around mid-October we started seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. The house was nearly to a point where it could be lived in, so we set the wedding date. The date, November 4th, was prior to Election Day and just before Congressman Boucher’s annual rally in Clintwood, the weekend before the election. Jayne eventually, somewhat hesitantly, agreed to let me cut short the honeymoon so we could get back in time for the rally. I guess going in she knew I would always have a mistress named “Politics.”

Since the wedding was a small ceremony, with just our families, we planned a small reception here at the house to celebrate with friends. The first real deadline was now set. The house had to be at least presentable, if not completely done, if we were going to be inviting our friends over to see it.

This leads up to why I have not blogged in weeks. The contractors had mostly finished their part of the work, which meant all that was left were tasks we were responsible for. The bulk of those tasks being paint removal, sanding, and staining. Why people would have painted over the wood trim in my kitchen and bathroom is beyond me. Anyway, the day before the guests were to arrive, I was still sanding and staining the kitchen windows. But, I think we have just about everything done now, except for some more trim work, and we are ready to enjoy life a little.

For the last ten months we have, for the most part, done nothing but work on the house and it will be a real vacation to just sit around and get enjoy married life.

Just got back from Martinsville…..

As you may have guessed from the lack of updates here, I have “stepped away from the blog.”

I spent Friday and Saturday in Charlottesville for the Sorensen Institute’s Blogging Summit. It was a great conference. As always, the best part was putting blog names with faces. I met a lot of great new bloggers and enjoyed talking to those that I met last year.

Since I am still on the road (took a detour through Harrisonburg) and heading home today, you will have to wait on my hard-hitting, in-depth analysis of the conference. Actually, this is probably about it, unless something hits me on the five hour drive home.

Waldo has “leaked” that on June 16, 2006, the Sorensen Institute will once again host a Blogging Summit in Charlottesville. And the Summit now has its own website.

Last year’s event was very informative, but most of all, it was great to finally put faces with names.

Waldo has this photo up, which includes the Southwest Virginia blogging crew (Chad, Steve, and me) in the background.

The downside of this year’s event is that they are stretching it to be a two-day event, including a Friday. If they were going to put it on a weekday, the least they could have done is offer CLE credit.

The upside is that they are starting it late enough (3:30 PM) on Friday that us folks from down this way will not have to drive up the night before.

Another law school professor has banned the use of laptops in her classes. Professor June Entrman, from the University of Memphis, “nixed the computers in March because she felt they were turning her students into stenographers and inhibiting classroom debate. The full AP report is available here.

During my first year of law school, ONU did not have wireless in each room and I hung on every word the professors said. By my second and third years, however, we had a wireless connection in each room and I spent more time than I should have on blogging, IM’ing, and general surfing.

These distractions of having internet were outweighed, though, by the benefits of having an internet connection in class. First, more times than I can count, I was able to pull up cases via Lexis that were being referred to and skim along with the lecture. Second, by having a searchable version of codes, statutes, regulations, etc., I was able to find them much faster than people flipping through the index of a code book. An added bonus of this was not having to carry the huge code book around too. Finally, by typing my notes during class, when I got ready to do make outlines, I could copy and paste a substantial portion of the information.

For me, having a laptop during class was certainly more of a benefit than a distraction, although I can see how it could go both ways.

Looks like those krazy kids over at Raising Kaine have a new blogging platform up and running. Head on over and check it out.

www.raisingkaine.com

Republitarian has compiled his list of the “25 Most Influential Bloggers in VA.” The first time I looked, I was at number 13. Then by the next time I looked, I was down to 15.

If by the time you head over there to see who made his list, don’t be surprised if am down in the 20s and dropping.

P.S. What is up with everyone wanting to rank the Virginia blogosphere these days? When I see one of these kind of posts, I get that same feeling every kid gets in elementary school when its down to two people left to be picked and only one spot left on the team.

Shaun Kenney seems to think so and says “[t]here’s a bubble, and you get the feeling (at least in the Virginia Blogosphere) that it’s about to burst.”

I think he may be right, but I love seeing all the new Virginia blogs. During the gubernatorial campaign, it seemed like a new Virginia-based blog was popping up every day. Some of those have stuck around and others have faded away.

I guess this blog will stick around until (1) I run out of money to pay the hosting fees, (2) Y2K hits (a few years late), or (3) [insert act of God that prevents me from blogging]. Hopefully, none of those three will occur and I will keep plugging along.

I never used the “Ask Jeeves” search engine, but the few people who still do have probably noticed the search engine company dropped Jeeves.

It is now just “ask.com.”

The company said:

Ousting Jeeves represents a bit of a risk because his genteel figure has been so synonymous with Ask.com, thanks to past marketing efforts that included the butler’s appearance in Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade.

“If some people are upset about the butler going away, so be it,” said Steve Berkowitz, Ask.com’s chief executive. “As more people come to our site and are satisfied with the results they get, they are going to forget the butler.”

The funny part, though, is that I heard about this somewhere else and used Google to find the full article.

The Jaded JD hints here that he will soon be rejoining the Virginia Blogosphere - finally.

I wonder if there is any chance he will be dropping the pseudonym?

I know it has been a while since I last blogged, but I just received an email asking if I was still alive so decided I needed to get back at it.

Something I have not shared yet is that I recently bought an old house and have been putting all my spare time into fixing it up.

Anyway, look for more posts.

The Bristol Herald Courier has a new blog called “BristolViews.” The blog is being maintained by the BHC’s editorial board.

In their first post, they introduce the blog and talk about what they hope to do with it.

Welcome to BristolViews – the Bristol Herald Courier editorial board’s blog. We want this to be Bristol’s virtual town square … a place where we can talk about the important issues of the day. We’re new to this, but we know what we hope will happen. We want to have a conversation; feel free to ask questions and make suggestions. We want to learn. We want to give you a voice.

It is always nice seeing a new media-blog and especially one devoted to Southwest Virginia (and Northeast Tennessee). I have added its feed to the ever-popular Southwest Virginia Blogs site too.

Not to be criticized for waiting too long to announce a potential candidacy, J.C. has already taken care of that step and agreed to be my campaign manager in a run for the Mansion.

Go check out his blog sometime. If I had to limit myself to just reading a few blogs every day, “The Richmond Democrat” would certainly be on that list.

The best part is this cool picture of J.C., me, and an unsuspecting Greg Kallen in the background. (Photo by Corey)

I just found a new Virginia blog, although, I am not sure where in Virginia the author is from.

Check out “perseverando” sometime.

The first thing I noticed over there was this photoshopped image of Virgil Goode.

Not to mention this one-liner: “Congressman Goode has taken his $90,000 in tainted campaign money and “bought” almost two hundred press releases about his generosity.”