Crash and burn

Well, I really blew it. I was messing with my blog and somehow, somewhere I changed something that caused just a blank screen to display. No header, no body, no footer, no sidebar, no nothing! Actually, I know what I did but pride prevents me from committing it to blog. But last night I spent 2 hours recreating this blog. Fortunately it isn’t too long right now so I could easily rebuild it manually. And of course, I had no backup! My bad.

And so it begins…

I started at the gym yesterday and went again today. 20 minutes on the treadmill and upper body conditioning on Nautilus and Cybex equipment. I think I’ll put up a page to track my training.

Awaiting Moderation

I love the awaiting moderation feature in this version of WordPress. No more comment spam!!! Today I was able to dispense with 8 “poker” comment spams with a couple of flicks of the mouse. I am a happy person (mostly).

There a few people for whom I would like to be abe to defer conversations to “awaiting moderation”. I would be able to would hear what they had to say and then have the option of marking it as spam… all without their knowing or being offended… kind of a way to clean out my personal air space.

Carry that Weight

Right now I weigh in at 250 lbs. It is the heaviest I have ever been. I am putting this to blog to help me resolve to do something about it. Although, since no one reads this blog so there won’t be much pressure to stick with this resolution. Anyway, I need to trim at least 50 lbs from my person. I plan to chronicle this person improvement adventure on this blog. If anyone is reading this I would appreciate any helpful hints about weight and self control.

Upgrade

I started the upgrade at 6:19. it is now 6:29 and I’m done. Most of the time was taken downloading, unzipping, deleting old folders and files, and updating new folders and files. The actual upgrade took less than a minute.

Blogging

Blogging is evolving in many different ways. Posting something to a blog
by send an email to a “secret” email address is fascinating.

Comment Spam

This blog has been up for less than a month and already I got hit with comment spam. I remember on my last (now defunct) blog I was surprised to see several comments on each of my postings one day. I was, however, dismayed to find that the comments were all spam. Really annoying. These people should find a different way to market their less than desirable products.

WordPress 1.5 gamma

How exciting. I’ve been doing catch-up on how to manage and customize WordPress and stumbled across the 1.5 gamma release. I downloaded it and ran the updgrade. It took me all of 20 minutes from download to finish. These guys are doing an excellent job of releasing solid products that are friendly too. I like this new theme very much. It is a good palet to start with. Now… on to the customizing.

Who is Musyoka?

That would be me. I am an African-American who has been searching for his roots a long time. My search hasn’t been exhaustive by any means. More like a wish, or a desire to know more about my ancestors.

My Name is Ronald Denby. I have been involved in missionary work for a number of years now. Just last summer (2004) I had an opportunity to go to Kenya as a missionary with members of my church. That was quite an experience. A highlight for me was that I received a name while I was there. I was assisting with pastoral training one day. I can’t remember exactly the context in which it came up but I was telling the Kenyan pastors how much it meant to be to be in Africa. I explained to them that even though I don’t know what part of Africa my ancestors came from I am certain with a high degree of confidence that they were from Africa. It had always been a dream of mine to come to Africa and I felt as if I had finally come home. One of the Pastors said to me “we will call you Musyoka”. I asked why and he said it was KiKamba for the one had gone away and has now returned. It was a moving experience for me. I have a KiKamba name that puts me more in touch with my roots. So, Musyoka is me. I thought too it was and appropriate name for a blog. – visitors will leave and (hopefully) return to the site.

Why?

I don’t like blogging. Or more specifically I don’t have enough to say that I think would be interesting enough to others to want to read. Personal journaling is one thing but putting it on-line for all to read is another. Topic specific blogs are interesting enough. But, I find it very difficult to think of something to say frequently enough to make blogging worthwhile for me and useful to others. So, I’m going to try my hand at this and see if I can make something worthwhile out of it. To do this I need to make some committments.

1. Blog daily (is blog a word yet? and what part of speach is it? noun, verb?)
2. Keep away from the self-aggrandizing entrys.
3. Be honest.
4. Post about stuff that interests me.

There may be more later on.