Blog Entry Count

I read at MagicSmoke how our Journals Editor Joe has written 821 entries in his main blog since he first began writing journals here at AOL journals in May, 2005. Wow! That's a lot of journal entires. There are 365 days in a year, 730 in two years... he's written, on average, more than one entry a day.

I could be blithe and make light of this if I thought only "But he does get paid for it. That is his job, after all." But I won't because I've got a feeling that is only part of his job as Journals Editor. His main job (I think) is programming the AOL journals main page. That much I found out just by reading his sidebar.

However, I know from my own personal experience that he has to handle lots of complaints when the journals start acting weird and people don't get their alerts, or entries start disappearing, or if we can't even access our journals. And he's always telling us when there is going to be a journal outage due to working on the database so people won't freak in the middle of making an entry.

He highlights blogplugs every Friday (and even explains what they are and how you can tag a blogplug), and what I like best about Joe's journal is his technical tips, his directions for doing things, always with pictures and step-by-step instructions for just about anything a new aol journaler might need to know. Just check out the sidebar on the right of his journal for a list of "how to's" in his Favorite Sites column.

So if you are new to AOL, and you haven't learned how to do pictures in your journal (using web file manager), or how to fix your hit counter numbers (because if you've been here awhile, you know that the hit counter will disappear and start back at zero without a moment's notice, and do it more than once), how to embed YouTube video, or how to do any number of things you've wondered about as you've browsed other people's journals, MagicSmoke is the journal to go to when you need advice and direction. You can email him too (journalseditor@aol.com). He will respond to your email.

Now my journal, this one, called Wanderer, has a mere 423 entries since I created it in August 2, 2005 (now 424).

                            My first entry was about ants. 

                          

I had embarked on a journey with about 25 Harvester Ants, and had decided to write about it, kind of like a scientist recording her observations. I didn't realize that as I watched and wrote about those tough little Harvester Ants during their short life span that I would also learn how to be an aol journaler.

            

Most people haven't read my ant journals, though. In the beginning I had named my journal Ant Farm Analogies because I was making connections with the life of the tunneling ant.

                            

Within a month, I had noticed the ants were dying off one by one, and eventually (two months passing) the entire "colony" died. It was expected. Ants don't live long without their queen. Before the ants died, I thought it made no sense to continuethat Journal name any longer. I could see the writing on the tunnel walls.

Besides, no one knew me (at aoljournals) back then, and wouldn't be confused or bothered if I changed my journal name midstream like that. School had started, so on August 28, I changed my journal to it's present name. It went without notice.

In September, I wrote an entry about my ants, how it had been two months since I first brought them into my home and classroom, and how they were nearly all dead. It had depressed me. Ants! Never again would I capture and hold captive a living creature.

Until that big green caterpillar squirmed into my life (October 2005). But he was never captive.

                        

                         As soon as it came out of its cocoon (six months later),

                                   

                                                       I let it go.

             

                           A beautiful Polyphemus (giant silk moth).

I haven't been able to keep up with Joe's pace of writing more than one entry a day... lately it's been more like one a week. That's all the journaling I can handle write now... before I added pictures, journal entries were quick and without much effort. Uploading pictures to AOL Pictures or, if I want to use the motion graphics, uploading them to the Hometown File Manager... that's what takes so long.

Like tonight's entry. It took a long time, and now it's time to go to bed.

Goodnight all.

 

BTW, Joe tells you how to find out how many entries you have in your count. Leave your link here so we can read your entry about this topic, and leave it at Magic Smoke as well.

Tags: Blog Entry count, Magic Smoke, ants, caterpillars, Ant Farm Analogies