Tag Archives: blogging community

Blogging

Posted on by
4

I just got home from a nice long visit with my best friend. She brought up all kinds of interesting subjects and we had a really good conversation. We spent 5-6 hours talking about current events, politics, sociology, philosophy, history, religion, sex, etc.

We talked about all the things you’re not supposed to talk about and we still ended the evening as good friends. I drove home tonight thinking how much I miss that.

How about you? Do you ever miss having those kinds of talks? Or are you satisfied just talking about nothing but the usual: sports, kids, weather? Nothing too controversial? I get so bored with that stuff!

I had hoped to get more of that sort of thing going on here. I really enjoy meeting people here from all over the world. I know I’m not always the most punctual on the replies, but I do try to answer every comment as soon as I can.

What I’m curious about here is: what do you all like about this blog? What do you get out of it? What would you like to see more of? I’d really like to make my blog better and be able to get more involved with people, but I’m not really sure why people come here in the first place. I guess that’s probably because I blog about so many different things. 😉

I’ve always meant to make this blog into a place to share things. Things I find interesting and hoped others would too. Things like traveling, boats/ships/sailing/working at sea, good books, movies, music, food, drinks, astronomy, science, history, philosophy, politics, photography, etc.

Is there something someone out there would like to really get into here? Anyone have anything they’d like to share here? I’d like to hear your thoughts.

I appreciate you stopping by. 🙂

Thanks!

Zero to Hero Challenge- Day 12: Inspired by the Fourchon Shuffle

Posted on by
Reply

The assignment for day 12 of the Zero to Hero Challenge builds on the one from the day before. The one for day 11 was to leave comments on 3 blogs you’ve never commented on before. Today’s is to build a post out of one of those comments.

I made a comment on the New England Watermans’ blog yesterday. I really liked his post with the video of Port Fourchon. Here’s the link to my comment again.

His video was a time lapse of his work over the last year. Both offshore and in the port of Fourchon, La.

I liked it because it reminded me of a lot of the same things I see all the time at work. He also mentioned the Global Orion which is one of the vessels I used to work on.

Global Orion

Global Orion

I’ve been in and out of Fourchon more times than I can count. It’s NOT my favorite place! It’s the largest port in the USA for the oil and gas industry and it is VERY busy! Usually it’s a huge pain in the ass to go to Fourchon.

We call it the Fourchon Shuffle. Bring your boat to the dock so you can unload your deck cargo. Oh, your halfway done but there’s another boat that has a higher priority. So, MOVE.

OK, so you go to another dock to get some fuel. Wait, there’s no space there. So, you wait. Wait some more. It’s not like parking a car, you can’t just put a boat in park and walk away (tho some DPOs might think so).

Oh, now they’re calling you back to finish unloading. No time to spare, you have to get back offshore again ASAP.

Oh yeah, you still need fuel so go back over there. This time you can get to the dock. Now you need to go to another dock to load up more deck cargo. You’ve got priority so you make 2 other boats move out of the way for you….

That’s just a short verse, the Fourchon Shuffle goes on and on. They’ve improved it slightly with some additional dock space but it’s still far from ideal.

No one in Fourchon ever gets any peace at the dock. I always just wanted to get the hell out of there and back offshore as soon as possible. At least be able to get some rest again.

Here are a few photos I took in Fourchon recently…

 

Luckily, I don’t spend too much time driving around Fourchon anymore. Lately I’ve been working on a lot of large vessels like drillships and they don’t usually go into port. I only go to Fourchon to fly in or out to the rig. 🙂

 

PS- the orange boats are the ones belonging to the Cajun Navy 😉

Zero to Hero- Days 8-9: About + More Cool Blogs!

Posted on by
Reply

Since I got off the ship the other day, I’ve been busy just trying to get back on schedule. It’s really hard to switch back and forth from working nights for 3 weeks to being up in the daytime like most normal people. I feel like I need to be up days while I’m home, it’s hard to get anything much done at night here.

So, I’m a little caught up on sleep and mail and bills, got some groceries in the house and so ready to take up the Zero to Hero Challenge once again.

I did go over my About page again (day 8’s assignment). I don’t really know how to make it ‘irresistible’, but I did spiff it up a bit. I’ve been thinking about adding some other things there but not sure if it would actually make it any better.

For day 9’s assignment, to find more blogs to follow, I’m having a hard time limiting myself to just 5! I am starting to wonder just how much time can I spend wandering around the blogosphere? 😉

It’s REALLY hard to try and find ‘new’ things, things I’m not already following or new subjects that I don’t already have an interest in. So, I didn’t really follow directions, I did take a look at some things I really have no interest in, like sports, and cars, and fashion, but I don’t really see the point in following things I’m not interested in at all.

So, I looked around some more and found some outliers in subjects I am interested in but don’t follow as much as I would like.

Here are my picks for today…

  1. Human Rights Warrior– I love her tagline “There is some good in this world…and it’s worth fighting for.”
  2. The Official How To Blog– It’s always good to learn how to do things! Laugh while learning is good!! 🙂
  3. Beer & Whiskey Brothers– I always like a good drink, beer was never my favorite, but it’s always available so learned to like it. Learning about more flavors is great!
  4. The Squeaky Robot– This looks like an interesting blog with nice photos. 🙂
  5. Coffee and Irony– I liked the post on the Civil Wars (I LOVE their music!) and lots of variety on this blog, I think it’s worth following for a while.
  6. Austin Music Source-This one’s not a wordpress blog, but it’s one I like and found today while wandering around online. I do love Austin! Lots of good stuff on this one!
  7. Texas Music Scene– Here’s one last one, it’s not a wordpress blog either, but I found it today and really liked the stuff they had on there.

I found all of them interesting and plenty more, but I don’t have enough hours in the day to devote the time and energy they deserve, so limiting myself to these today. 😉

Maybe I’ll find some more in the next few days. 🙂

 

 

Zero to Hero- Day 3: Bypass the Gatekeepers!

Posted on by
Reply

Todays assignment for the Zero to Hero Challenge is to ‘write the post that was on your mind when you decided to start a blog’.

OK, well I didn’t really have any particular ‘post’ on my mind when I decided to start a blog. It was more like a general idea.

I have been trying to find a way to make a living without having to be out on a boat all the time. Yeah, I still like sailing. Yeah, I still like my job (most of the time, most of the things about it). But I’m getting to the point where I’d like to do something a little different. At least for a while.

I’d been hearing for a while about how it’s possible to earn a decent living by working online. Writing, stock photography, copy-writing, etc. I’ve even taken a few short courses/workshops to try and learn how to do it.

I’ve enjoyed going to the workshops. I’ve learned a lot in each one of them. But I’ve never managed to pass muster (yet) and get anything I’ve done accepted for publication.

I admit, I haven’t spent a lot of time trying to ‘sell’ my product; my writing and photography. I tried a couple of times to get some of my photographs accepted onto a couple of the stock photography websites like istock.com.

So far, I haven’t had any luck. My photos were rejected and I had to take a course to even begin to understand what the heck they were talking about when they told me why they rejected them all. 😉

I haven’t even sent in any of my articles to anyone yet, tho I have sent a few queries to a couple of magazines I thought might be interested. One magazine even told me they were interested but they never got back to me and I let it fall by the wayside due to all the other things I’ve been busy with.

FOCUS! I think that’s what I need. I’m pretty sure if I had all the time in the world and no ‘real’ job and wasn’t busy with a dozen other projects, I could find the time to hound the gatekeepers of the publishing world until they let me in. 😉

Too bad I don’t have that kind of schedule right now.

SO……

I decided to start a blog instead.

My plans for the blog have changed a little bit. I’m not focusing so much on putting my magazine type writing on here. Maybe one of these days I’ll post one and see if I can get some feedback from the blog world. I’ve been spending a lot more time just posting about things I find of interest.

I’ve really been posting a lot more about what gets ME going, what interests me, what turns me on, what turns me off. I enjoy catching peoples attention and trying to make them think.

Of course, I am still trying to work on my writing and photography. I still plan to try again to get my photos accepted online and my articles by some magazines. I work on that stuff when I can find time too.

I figured if I started a blog, I could get my work out to people WITHOUT having to go through an editor. Just get it out there and let it stand on it’s own merit. Either people will like it. Or they won’t.

Of course, the original purpose was to find some way to make an income. I’m told you can do that as a blogger too. So far, I haven’t the slightest idea of how to do that, but still hoping to learn. 😉

In the meantime, I’m enjoying myself here. I especially like interacting with people all over the world. It’s really fascinating to me when I look at my blog stats and see people have visited my blog from places like Namibia, or Ghana, or Pakistan, or Ukraine.

I wonder what was it that interested those people and why? I have seen a lot of people online who have so many similar interests. It seems a great community here, even if it’s only ‘virtual’.

It’s great that we can all have blogs now, no need to hold back, just get ourselves out there and the whole world is open to us! 🙂