Author: admin

I knew going into this review that it would be focused more at the computer geeks and those of us who have been around the internet for a while. I knew this because the author calls his site a GeekLog and I just had this feeling that it wouldn’t be targeted at other forms of geeks (star wars, star trek, convention going people).

When the page first loaded I was greeted with a post from September. This scared me as I thought I was reviewing a site that hadn’t been updated since then. This post actually serves as a welcome post than anything else. After reading the entire site, I am not sure if this post is warranted to be at the very front. But I will discuss more on that later.

The design of the site is a three column layout with a lot of info on the sidebars. All of the info is your standard blog info; polls, recently posted, things of this nature. When I got to the bottom of the site I noticed that this blog was powered by geeklog. Now I find out that geeklog is actually blogging software and not some creative name for the site. I liked it better when I thought Mr. Maggoo was being creative with the naming of his blog.

The posts are of a technical sort. But they are also of a personal nature. Recent posts talk about a program he has been working on at work that is unfortunately not going to get patented and the process that has been working up to this. Other posts talk about security issues and things going on at the university he works at. The frequency of these posts is not often unfortunately. I wish he would update more often, but I am sure he is busy. I know this site used to have more posts, but a server crash caused the author to lose a lot of posts.

Overall this site is pretty average. With a higher frequency of posts I am sure that this site could blossom. I think Mr Maggoo is trying to figure out where he wants to take his blog and thus his postings are happening less often. There is potential for this site to become a really good read. If this is a goal the author has, then I hope he flexes his blogging muscles and focuses on his blog.

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I love sports, and it’s very rare that I stumble upon a really good sports weblog that I want to check one very day. When I saw a site called “Chicago Sports” on the list of sites waiting to be reviewed, I was definitely excited. My excitement soon came to an end when the site loaded with only three posts having been written.

Out of the many Chicago sports teams, the author, listing himself as Pioneertom2, has only written about the Cubs and the Bears so far. The author definitely knows what he’s talking about, and is able to easily justify his opinions on players and teams a like. For a site like this, credibility is a key component and the author unquestionably possesses that.

The layout is a very simple two-column layout. The three entries (two about the Cubs, one about the Bears) are written in black text on a white background. There is no list of archives, because the site doesn’t have any yet. While the design doesn’t add anything to the site, it doesn’t take anything away from it either, which is the main thing.

This Chicago Sports weblog is still in its infancy, but it has the potential to be something big. With so many Chicago sports teams, there’s blogging material year ‘round. Once some time goes by, I think this site will definitely see it’s potential skyrocket. Until the collection of entries grows, though, I’m afraid there’s no much to see here.
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To be up front with this review, I don’t do very well reviewing weblogs of teenagers. I have nothing in common with the majority of them, and their lack of care for punctuation and spelling is enough to drive me crazy. Unfortunately, this weblog, called “Southern Comfort”, was no different.

The layout of the site is very nice. It’s hosted by WordPress, and I believe the template was one that is features on WordPress’s site as one of their contest entrants. I only know this because I look at them constantly for ideas on my own site. The light green background surrounding the white box that’s used for all the text is a very nice color, and matches well with the watermelon graphics used throughout the site. The author does a nice job of not cluttering up the sidebar with a bunch of links to every single site she’s ever visited, and that’s much appreciated by reviewers and random visitors to the site.

This is the author’s second go around with a weblog. In the first post of Southern Comfort, she mentions this, along with some brief autobiographical information. I enjoyed getting to know more about the person who runs this weblog. The background specifics always helps give readers an idea about the author that they may not gather on their own from just reading through entries.

The author, who is going through her mid-teenage years, shares her day-to-day experiences with her audience. She writes typical teen fodder: dreams and nightmares she has or forgetting her book at home and being unable to do that night’s homework. From time to time, she also fills is on her favorites in the music industry by celebrating an artist’s return or letting us know about her current favorite music album.

The apostrophe key seemed to be missing in action for a good part of this site, and I often had trouble translating a sentence or two that was full of spelling errors or slang I didn’t quite understand. These two things can really distract from the content of a weblog.

I’m less than ten years out of my own teenage years, but that doesn’t seem to matter. It’s still too large of an age gap for me to enjoy a site that is written in the same manner Southern Comfort.

This is a site that will probably only be enjoyed by those people that know more about the author of the site than a random reader does.

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Hooah Wife is an interesting name for this blog. I wasn’t quiet sure what to make of the name other than I knew I would be reading about a wife. Then I thought about the word Hooah some more and the only thing I could think of was that chant that people in the military say and then yell back “Hooah”. I was right – she is a wife of someone in the military.

Most blogs should be read starting with today and moving backwards to get the story then you read forwards again to keep up with this blog. While reading this blog I was a little confused but I kept telling myself I would get around this. After 2 months worth of surfing, I decided that this wasn’t really going to happen so I decided to read it from the very first post onward.

Before I get into the details, I must say that Greta’s story really moved me. It has been a while since I thought about the war in Iraq, other than I wish it was over. I am like most Americans (and people all over the world) in thinking that it is done, time to bring the troops home. With that said, this is a story of one wife and how she deals with being a spouse of someone in the army.

The very first post on the site sets the tone. She talks about how her husband is set to go to Iraq in two weeks for at least 6 months. She mentions that he has also just handed her his last will and testament and that they have 3 kids. Right there all the emotions I had about the war came back. Not knowing anyone personally who went over, my feelings cannot compare to what she must have been going through. Oh one more thing, this all took place about 3 weeks prior to the 2004 election so there was that thrown into the mix.

The next couple of months are mostly political updates with some funny stuff thrown in. Every now and then she gives a self interview and posts stuff about her husband. I was just started to get over the emotional hump from the first month when she posted how she was in charge of a program at the school called “Adopt a platoon” and due to certain rules, she had to read every letter that was going to be sent. These letters were written by kids in the school and she said how most of them said they were proud of what they were doing. Again, I started to get choked up.

I finally hit my breaking point with this blog in April. I read a post that said Hubby is home and I was overjoyed for Greta. Having her husband home after 6 months was such a relief. Then a couple of posts later there was the video of his arriving home and surprising her. I honestly cried.

I could go into all the things that have happened since then, but I don’t want to ruin the story for you. I truly enjoyed this blog and will be keeping tabs on it to see where it goes to now. My only complaint about this site has to do with the layout and how long it takes to load due to all of the included content from other sites. Other than that, this is one heck of a blog. I can’t encourage you enough to go read this blog, even if you only read from October 2004-April of 2005. This has been one journey that I will not forget, and I am glad that there are people like Greta posting about the things that really matter: family.
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If by now you don’t know, the first thing I do when I go to review a site is think of how the blog will be based on the name. A name of American Drifter to me says that there is someone (male or female, though probably male) who is off traveling the world for whatever reason and now we get the chance to see what its like. I was kind of right, but mostly wrong.

I am a creature of habit and I always take a quick glance at an entire page before reading anything just to get a feel for what is there. This site is a two column layout with all the important non-blog-post stuff on the right. As I went down the column I found out more about the author, his links, and of course his archives which were interesting. Then I noticed something I rarely see on a blog a lot of advertisements other than Google. There are thirteen of them to be exact if you just count the spots and not the ads (Google and eBay have multiple listings). This threw me for a loop.

So with this quandary, I decided to start reading. The author immediately tells us that he isn’t a really a drifter, but he travels around the world for his job. In this year alone he has been in two different states and two different countries; all because of his job. We then quickly learn that his job is at a construction and engineering firm who helps pharmaceutical companies bring new drugs to the market. Of course this isn’t in his blog, this is all in his sidebar.

The blog itself has posts about different aspects of his life. Some are related to his job (about coming home) or the friendships he makes at each location. Other posts are more about him. An interesting post in July of 05 really came out to me. His site was reviewed and they said his site was “Dribble”. This site is hardly anything close to dribble.

It was in this post that I learned the true meaning of all the advertising. He makes a boat load of money off of it. He apparently has good rankings with certain keywords in Google for stuff that you can only find on eBay. And thus he found that eBay has an affiliate program and bam, affiliate programs galore on his site. Since they don’t really take away from the blog itself, and that he is making good money off of them, who am I to say they shouldn’t be there?

One thing that really disappointed me was the infrequency of posting. His archives go July 04, Sept 04, March 05 and then to the present (each month has posts from then on). The author writes well, and writes long posts. This isn’t a “I need something to read in the next minute while I finish my break” type of site. It is in fact a “I need something to read during my entire break” type of site. This site is good and has some gems to it. Take the time and sit down with this blog because I am sure you will find it worth your time.
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