Monday, January 10, 2011

State of the Ramblings

Saturday marked the sixth anniversary of Sean’s Ramblings. If my blog was a kid, she would be in kindergarten. Therefore, in honor of my sixth anniversary, I present to you a picture of number six himself, Bubby Brister!



Actually, for my blog anniversary I’d like to share my annual State of the Ramblings. Before we go forward, let’s take a look back at the past year. I hosted the second annual Pittsburgh Sports Blog Tournament in February 2010 and plan to have the third annual event next month. While Trivia Tuesday continues to be a weekly staple, TMI Thursdays slowly have become more and more infrequent. Over the past year, I became a “CSN Preferred Blogger” where CSN Stores has provided gift certificates to their websites as giveaways. I plan to have another giveaway in the next few weeks.

I haven’t had as many collaborative posts this past year as I did in previous years, but I did have a few including predictions for the Pittsburgh Pirates season; thoughts on the Winter Classic; and tweeting of the airing of game seven of the 1960 World Series.

I shared my experiences from several fantastic events such as my hockey road trip to Boston and Long Island (where I met Tec of PSAMP); Stephen Strasburg’s first major league game; traveling to South Florida for the Steelers-Dolphins game; and running my first 5K.


(I'm the middle person in the picture)

Over the past year, I announced my retirement from blogging. It took until late into the day (including a call from my mom wondering if I was serious) for people to realize that it was an April’s Fools joke. My not so serious blogging tone also came through when I encouraged LeBron James to come to Pittsburgh even though the city does not have an NBA team. I originally published this post on BlogCritics where they certainly did not get the joke. I should mention that I started writing on BlogCritics last year. I wrote about ten posts and reviews but I’ve come to realize that I don’t have time to write there as well as here. Even though I still need to write a few book reviews, I’ve made a decision that I’d much rather spend my writing time writing Sean’s Ramblings.

Last summer, I made a decision about this blog that I regret. A company offered to pay me money to write a post to promote their website. I accepted, put a disclaimer on the post explaining that it was written to someone else and didn’t allow for comments. It was a terrible post that is hopefully lost in the archives. Yes, I got paid, but I’m not going to allow this to happen again.

Sadly, the most popular way people found Sean’s Ramblings over the past year was by searching for Erica Blasberg, the late LPGA golfer who was a favorite of mine. Conversely, I was amused by the number of people who found my blog by finding the pictures of Lady Gaga with a Terrible Towel.



Other highlights of the past year:

After Express indicated that Kennywood is located in Philadelphia and refused to issue a correction, I started to highlight all of their errors. This really could become its own blog.

I may or may not be a star in Kittanning, PA after my second appearance on Rizzo Sports Weekly.

I only had one interview over the past year, but I enjoyed the experience of “talking” with Tim Gleason, author of From Black to Gold.

I had a great idea to start a series called “Found In My Basement” where I posted pictures of items I found from years ago. This didn’t last long as our digital camera broke, but I hope that this returns in the coming year.

I learned that Yuengling can be dangerous when the grocery store cashier got her hand caught in my beer.

This leads me to the upcoming year. Last month I posted a major announcement that my wife and I are expecting our first child. This will change my life significantly, even if I have no idea yet of how this will change my life significantly. I expect to get less sleep but this could benefit you. You see being awake in the middle of the night could lead to some interesting new posts. They may not be coherent, but really, is that much different than what I write now?

Thanks again to everyone for reading and commenting. I really appreciate all of your support!

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