Lou Pickney's Online Commentary
Fresh Content
Sunday
November 30, 2008
"The truth begins again
The truth is not that comfortable, no"
-Mission of Burma "That's When I Reach For My Revolver"
Regular readers of this site have been rather vocal with me in their displeasure with the lack of new content on here in recent months. I appreciate the concern, though there are a few reasons for it:
• The hosting company that I've used for LouPickney.com since my purchase of that domain name in March 2002 redid their file management system earlier this year. The result is that using the company's .html editor (or .shtml, which I use to allow for server-side includes) is not nearly as user-friendly, and just logging in can be a challenge. I'm writing this in Notepad, the most basic of writing tools includes in Microsoft XP and Vista. Despite its archaic nature, it works much better than my web hosting company's comparable writing tool.
Eventually I plan to move this site to the company that I use to host all of my other websites, from Draft King to Variety Hits. There is no need for large bandwidth or storage for this website, and the $166 or so per year I pay for hosting it separate from my other sites is not only wasteful, it's stupid.
It will be somewhat of a pain to make the move, and the piggy-backing webhosting trick that my friend Zach Collier taught me in 2003 (which I will forever be grateful to him for) won't necessarily work without doing some crazy retrofitting. But, whatever it requires, it will be well worth it for multiple reasons.
• It's hasn't been as easy to be honest about things on here compared with my time in Tampa. In Tampa it was me against the world, sometimes quite literally, though I had the capacity to write about my daily trials and tribulations with it only having a minimal impact on my direct surroundings.
Now? I have two roommates. If Matt or Dustin piss me off and I write about it on here, the situation can be slammed right back in my grill. For example, Dustin broke the towel rack in the bathroom that we share in August. Here it is 3+ months later, and he hasn't fixed it. I've asked him to do it, and I've asked Matt (who owns the place and who I pay rent to, thus making him the landlord) to fix it, and guess what? It hasn't been fixed.
It's a little thing (if it was that important I'd fix the damned thing myself), and Matt and Dustin are generally good people to have as roommates (and, to be sure, I'm not always the easiest person to deal with). But if I lived in an apartment and the management took longer than three months to repair something, believe me that I'd be going crazy on here about it. I have to be judicious in my criticism, which isn't something I particularly like but which I really need to do to avoid unnecessary provocation.
Moreover, being back in the Nashville area has me in closer contact with people I know. That is great, but it also creates the problem of too many people knowing what I'm up to at any given time. Perhaps not only friends of mine read this, but the friends' girlfriends may read it, and I promise you that can only cause problems. If I'm going to write around something, it will be to cover my own ass. If I have to start worrying about covering others, that certainly creates extra work -- which I don't need.
• This may be a disappointment to some, but there haven't been as many adventures for me since I left Florida. Money has been tight since budget cuts bumped me out at  Perhaps you thought I left to do Draft King full-time of my own volition? Certainly I didn't write anything in this article to make you think otherwise. That didn't happen by accident. Re-read the previous paragraph if I'm not being clear to you.
• The time I spend writing on here is time that I'm *not* spending working on my other websites. This page has never been much of a moneymaker at all for me (at least not directly), but two hours on here vs. two hours creating a new mock draft for Draft King is no comparison. But on here I have free reign to write about almost anything and everything, and there is a thrill that comes with that which has kept me going with this for so long.
So now what? Beginning after this posting, I'm going to starting writing for the webpage with Macromedia HomeSite 5 and using FTP to upload material to the site. That should make for as seamless a transition as possible when the time comes to move it to the new hosting spot.
Keep in mind that, by doing this and recommitting to my writing, I'm going to do it the right way. With maybe a few exceptions (like not excessive bitching about my living situation), it will be all out. It may get brutal at times. I fully expect people to get pissed off by this. If I'm going to write on here and put energy into it, I will do so full tilt.
I suppose that will re-introduce the great intro of "Don't write about this on your website, but..." that I used to hear quite often, particularly prefacing juicy stories. I don't betray confidences, and if someone asks me not to write about it on here, I won't.
So why am I giving this another go? Because, ultimately, writing is a passion of mine. There was a time where I might have been afraid of writing something that might cost me a job, and I imagine that I've lost out on job opportunities because of this site. To point, a stand-alone webpage (on one of those free hosting sites) that I put up as a rib on one of my fraternity brothers nearly cost me the WTSP job that brought me to Tampa in early 2001 (former Channel 10 assistant news director Dave Clegern admitted as much to me shortly after I debuted at the station).
At the same time, this site has provided me with everything from freelance sports producing work to the genesis of what became Draft King to landing a job with radio legend Bubba the Love Sponge ®. I can't complain about any of that.
I made the decision several years ago to not hold back with what I write, and I'm going back to that philosophy on here. Life is too short to be timid. So, if I'm going to do this, I'll do my best to give my unfettered outlook, for better or worse. Buckle up.
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