Two month anniversary comments

Two months ago today, I became -- like millions of others before me -- a blogger. Inspired by some friends who had their own blogs (which I read assiduously) as well as motivated by a need to do such as record certain thoughts and recollections which I thought worthy before they faded from my memory, I decided to write some words and then, after a few weeks had gone by, to go about seeing whether there was a receptive audience for them.

First, some happy news: i.e., that today saw this blog's daily visitors exceeding 100 -- and for the record, the last time I checked (which was a few minutes ago!), the exact number was 137 -- and the total number of page views in a single day exceed 200 for the first time ever. And to add to the cheer is my being able to report that the healthy number of comments that have thus far appeared in the comments sections of the forty-four Webs of Significance entries I had written as of yesterday have largely been of the non-spam -- and, in fact, often nicely complimentary and pretty much always interesting or helpful in -- nature.

Unfortunately though, as the American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow famously put it, "Into each life a little rain must fall". And as far as my experiences as a blogger goes, there have been two kinds of rain in particular which have irritated, frustrated and even got me feeling downright irate.

Part of me -- in particular the part of me that really does want to be able to look on the bright side of things rather than the dark or downright bad -- doesn't want to dwell nor devote too much time and space to discussing them. And I won't about one of my major blogging annoyances beyond stating that I despise spam, regardless of whether it comes into my e-mail in box, as s.m.s. (AKA text) messages on my mobile (AKA cel) phone, in the form of mechanized or real human voice messages over the phone or are logged onto the comments sections of my blog.

However, I feel a need to vent and report more lengthily that yesterday, I discovered that some of this blog's contents -- in particular, the evidently quite popular recent entry on "10 "kick ass women" movies" -- have been stolen by some other bloggers. Now I know that one wag has memorably suggested that "Imitation is the best form of flattery" and that may be well and true as far as some people are concerned.

But believe you me when I assert that that's not how I feel about what, in fact, is actually more outright theft than flattering imitation (or even generous -- for the borrower that is! -- borrowing). And it of course only feels like salt getting rubbed on my wounds when a few of these errant bloggers -- all of whom I really hope will get their just desserts at some point in their future and miserable lives -- turn out to have blogs which are most definitely of the X-rated variety. >:

Should you think otherwise however, let me hasten to assure you that I'm not thinking of bring my blogging to a halt or close anytime soon. For, in all sincerity, I do feel that my blogging experiences have been pretty happy and satisfying for the most part.

This is not least because my blogging -- as I have largely done -- about what I like and even love has gotten me thinking good and happy thoughts for hours on end. Then there is my actually coming to feel like I have found not only a fair amount of willing plus valued readers, many of whom have become repeat visitors to the blog, but also some people -- from a whole bunch of different places to boot! -- to share my passions, interests, ideas, etc. with. Oh, and finding out that this blog currently tops Google Blog Search search results for "Brigitte Lin", "Lin Ching-Hsia" and "Winki Pinki" -- though, alas, not "Hello Kitty", "Totoro" nor "Arsenal", etc.! -- can strike me as being pretty cool too... ;b

In fact, rather than get cowed by the bad apples and consider limiting access to my writings (like my web host actually offers as an option), what I'd like to do is to explicitly request that those of you who have enjoyed your visits to this blog thus far go ahead and spread the word about it to those who you think might also like what it offers up. (And this especially if you haven't done so already!) Oh, and keep on visiting yourselves, of course (plus rest assured that you have my sincere thanks for doing so)! :)