During it’s initial incarnations, the blogs and websites served mostly as diary-like posts that my friends and family would see and it would doubly server as a play-ground for me to try out some new piece of technology, of which I have seen many. I have dabbled in DotNetNuke, .Text, CommunityServer and I am sure others that I am missing. It turned out that the blogs would end up containing a tad too much personal information…becoming a bit problematic to keep up-to-date. It’s always that delicate line that one must balance when dealing with professional and personal content and where the two meet, where the two overlap and where the two should probably not mix. How much do you expose of yourself through a blog? Do you really want everyone to know about that? Who will judge you? “If your girlfriend reads that, she’s gonna be pissed!” “What do you mean you don’t like my cooking!”

At some point in 2007, I discovered Tumblr and the concept really appealed to me. Adequately described as the intersection of Twitter and Blogger, it seemed to be just what I needed to communicate some thoughts, links, photos, videos and not have to put anything else behind it – and therefore stay in the clear. I retied my older blogs and began fresh with Tumblr, turning a new leaf. I also made a point not to put my last name anywhere, just so that neither anything I write nor anything that people may leave will come to bite me in the ass. I could post some stuff, and some personal things here and there and since anonymity was maintained, the harm was much less. Though, I must admit, I do have some social networking sites pointing back to this URL. If I will keep it this way will have to be seen in time.

Back on topic.. being the geek that I am, Tumblr was not enough. I had to find a way to host it and tweak it myself and this had brought me to the Chyrp platform. Using the Chyrp tools I was able to migrate to Chyrp without loosing any of the Tumblr posts. I was very happy with it for quite a long time, but let’s just say that there were irresolvable differences between us, and it was decided best to part ways.

Which brings me to present time. This year, as part of my own little goal initiatives, I have decided to pay a bit more attention to my Blog and attempt to monetize a bit upon it (before you ask, I only have low or no expectations). I have decided to install and configure WordPress on this domain for my new blogging platform. For all the same reason that just about everyone else in the world uses WordPress, now, so do I. I am in the midst of the migration… I will be bringing over posts that go all the way back to 2007 and my Tumblr days. Unfortunately, I have lost the Chyrp comments, cest-la-vie. I do still have a couple of tasks to complete though:

• Migrate over tags from Chyrp
• Categorize
• Convert image and link feathers to posts
• Route feedburner to new wordpress URL
• Setup a non-default WordPress Theme
• Update this post with links
• Configure WordPress (I know, it never actually ends)
• Setting up Ads
• Setting up Analytics
• SEO
• Anything else I can think of until then…

Happy New Year to everyone!

I am very happy to be home, in the sense that I can see my friends and family again. The timezones is not all that I am adjusting to. I hate to admit it, as it makes me feel very conceited, but since coming back, it feels that everything is sprinkled with the flavor of insignificance. I guess it’s just something I have to learn to adjust with now that i am back in the “real world” of work, bills and responsibilities. Though it does make me really wonder about the necessity for a lot of things, living on so little for so long.

I have just under 1000 pictures on flickr. I’ve gone through a good number of them already and given them captions and/or descriptions and will continue to do so in the coming week. Going through them is something I am enjoying very much. Reliving all of these great memories of a trip that seems so close, and at the same time so far away.

I’ve gone ahead and reactivated my old blog, but I am seriously considering boarding it up and closing it down. I think it might be a good idea for me to put that part of my life behind me. I’ve also spent a bit of time considering not blogging any more. At all. But since I’ve enjoyed my dabblings in Tumblr, I am gonna go ahead and give it a try.

I am going to keep the title “Awkward Silence”, though for different reasons than why I chose it in the first place. I’ve also registered the domain awkward-silence.com and should be live sometime this week.

I will try to remain a bit more focused with the content on this blog. I will try to talk a bit more about my experiences volunteering, traveling, and maybe the misc item here or there.

I am looking forward to this new chapter in my life and I hope not to bore anyone who happens to tag along

I’ve been feeling very melancholy as of late. So much has happened in the past year. I feel as if so much is always out of my control. I have no grasp in my own life.

I am trying to fix things. I am. I just feel very weak sometimes, which is probably a result of “lack of control”.

I felt a bit inspired to write something, anything down while listening to the song “Night on Earth” by the Bouncing souls.

One thing i have learned, I mean, really learned, is that things can always be worse. They really can – and be very careful with what you wish for. You may end up getting it and then regretting it.

/end bullshit.

The topic in question is Che Guevara, the person and what he stood for. Specifically, what gets to me is how people are so quick to connect Che Guevara with communist dictatorship and all the evils that come with the governments that wave “red flags”.

The person, who so innocently threw a wrench into the inner workings of my ideals, had very recently watched “The Motorcycle Diaries”, which, in my humble opinion, does a very good job at taking Che the person away from everything that he is so commonly associated with, which makes me wonder even more – that the preconceived thoughts and ideas about said subject were so great that the mind was closed to any new ideas.

To me, Che IS a great man. He wanted to see not only the people of his own country, and not only people of his own continent, but everyone be free from oppression and have freedoms and he wanted people to be treated equally. Jesus fucking Christ, this is what the great American Revolutionaries wanted. They fought back from oppression and for freedom. You put Che and Jefferson in the same room and you would see that they agree that people should have freedoms, people should not be oppressed and that people should be treated equally. Where they would differ is in economic principals.

My sister, busy with work, asked me if I could take care of Kailly on Saturday. This quickly expanded to be Friday evening through Sunday morning. No complaints here.

Truth be told, I should spend more time with Kailly, along with a lot of other things I should be doing. This was to be our first weekend together.

Kailly is about two and a half and from what i can tell from experience, she is just about your typical two and a half-year old. We played together and watched more Disney movies than any human being should be exposed to, but all in all, I had a good time with my niece. The only time that she cried was during bed time when she missed her mother. oh, and when uncle accidentally let some soap fall in her eyes during bath time.