Don't cross the blogs

Due to, shall we say, constructive criticism, I will no longer be cross-posting all my Gather articles here. I have an RSS feed of my Gather articles in the sidebar to the right, and you can also subscribe to my Gather feed directly if you want to follow. This actually makes sense for a number of reasons.

I will likely cross-post occasional articles of interest here, unlike my recent post on green bean casserole recipes, which drew a whopping 40,000 visitors (!). Talk about keyword selection.

Poor Man's Something...

I found this in my drafts folder. No idea where I was going with this back on 3/14. Just an empty post with the above title, which is awesome. And probably appropriate.

Chez MRhé's First Blog Award!

I'd like to thank the blogosphere...

Susan over at Transient Travels (unique, awesome travel blog) has been kind enough to give me the Honest Scrap award.




The rules of the award are: [1] Choose a minimum of 7 blogs for brilliance in content/design. [2] Show the winners and let ‘em know. [3] List at least 10 honest things about yourself.

About me? How uninteresting. But here we go:

1. If the presidential election had been held in November 2007, I would have voted for John McCain.
2. I love cooking and I'm a really excellent chef. I'm also very humble.
   
3. I've never lived outside of New England (grew up in MA and went to college in NH; never lived abroad).
   
4. Although I love living in Boston and could easily see myself ending up here eventually long term, I want to live somewhere very different for a while before I settle permanently (probably the West Coast, given that the weather here is so uncivilized).
   
5. Traveling is one of my favorite things in the world, and I haven't done anywhere near enough of it.
6. I'm currently enjoying the upside of unemployment.
7. I love dancing and karaoke although I'm not particularly good at either.
8. I once had a guest appearance playing the bongos with "The Astronots" at a performance at the Lone Pine Tavern, Collis Student Center, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, Winter Term '01-'02.
   
9. I haven't been on a date since Bush was in office.
10. I generally don't like internet memes, but I do enjoy being meta, ironic, and self-referential. I also happen to be mainlining social media these days.
    
11. I spent a fair amount of time thinking about this list, and I was prepared to launch into a soul-baring tell-all discussing love, heartbreak, and all the mysteries and vicissitudes of life.
    
12. But I didn't.

I’m passing this award along to…

Nobody Listens to Techno (Because she loves these things even though she hates me.)

The Scottosphere (Brilliant content; minimalist yet effective grayscale design.)

Irish Whiskey Makes Me Frisky (Giving the future magistrate and nobleman an excuse to blog again.)

Foonyor Barzane (For the ex-pat perspective.)

We are not Martha (Amazing food/cooking blog. The two ladies can each do one...or combo...or ignore me. Their choice!)

FiveThirtyEight (I know, I know, but how cool would that be?)

Fire Joe Morgan (Trying to bring them out of retirement. That was one of my favorite blogs! The advent of baseball season brings a tear to my eye.)


Now we return you to our regularly scheduled politics, high f'nance, and travelogue transcription.

Happy Blogoversary to Chez MRhé!

Another year, another several hundred posts of dubious quality and necessity.

Thanks for reading. Cheers!

Fun with Google Analytics!

In lieu of anything more worthwhile, here's a sampling of some recent search keywords, posted without comment:

battle cobia
two grim dudes
why vote for barack obama
nelson aquino de la rosa
silverman damon
bear grylls
potentas
sam adams irish red
"a cook's tour" + bourdain
"adam ried"
"the game is real" "the wire"
"the quick six"
ballin outrageous
barack and chez
batali vs. oliver secret ingredient

Day of Rest

From Blog365:

A message to all members of Blog 365

Tomorrow is your chance to put down the keyboard and act like a normal human being for a day.

Feb. 29th is the official Blog365 day of rest!

Now that blogging is such a habit, can you go a full day without doing it?

Rest up now, we still have a lot of year left ya know.

And no blogging about not blogging either! That's still blogging!

Blog On! (Except Tomorrow!)
-Kamen

This space will be quiet tomorrow. Try to survive until March 1st!

Strong Start in 2008!

This January was the best month yet for Chez MRhé in its year-long existence. In terms of site traffic as well as number of posts, this past month was the tops. 66 posts bested my previous of 47; a significant increase. Certainly the impetus for this increase is due in large part to Blog365, a great idea and great social network on Ning that provides me with a daily deadline to post something. But beyond that, I think in general I am enjoying this little spot for myself here in the Blogosphere, I'm enjoying the readership and commentary, and it's an interesting hobby. It's just an all-out love-fest here at Chez MRhé!

So thanks for reading and keep coming back, because I plan on continuing to astound and delight in 2008!

Cheers,
MRhé

Happy Blogoversary!

To Chez MRhé! On this day a year ago Chez MRhé in its current incarnation made its Blogosphere debut. It's been a long, strange road. The original Chez MRhé was a goofy personal webpage developed during the high school years. Nascent HTML abilities were groomed and developed. My web presence was pretty static through college but picked up with my first blog, Chez MRhé, hosted by Dartblogs. Dartblogs was intended to host blogs specific to Dartmouth students, faculty and alumni, and was a great idea, but it failed due to the fact that it was basically one busy guy running the show. A shame, that. The initial Chez MRhé has all but been lost in the innumerable tubes of the internets. You might still be able to stumble upon a cached Google log, but for all intents and purposes Chez MRhé (II) went the way of the dodo. This was a valuable experience for me, however, because I learned that for some reason, people kept reading whatever drivel I would post up there. Kind of fun!

In the declining months of Chez MRhé (II) I was fortunate enough to co-author the infamous TwoGrimDudes.com. This was, dare I say it, a brilliant collaborative effort that generated incalculable amounts of grim nonsense, and good times were had by all. This was also a great opportunity to develop some basic CSS skills, and I can safely say that my web development aptitude stands at a healthy quasi-competence at present. This was when I really got sucked into the Blogosphere, discovering a lot of quality blogs written by people I didn't actually know, and even making a new friend or two. It was a sad day when 2GD.com shut down, but each of us went on to other projects. I continued blogging, and 0.5 continued being grim.

And that's how I arrived at this here blog, technically Chez MRhé (III). For whatever reason I was in a bit of a blogging funk in the latter months of 2007, but I feel reinvigorated for the new year. This Blog365 provides enough pressure for me to blog daily, but in general I feel like I have a lot to say about a lot of things. This is fun, it's interesting, it's something to do - and for whatever reason, you refuse to stop reading. Keep it up and thanks for humoring me!

Cheers,
MRhé

Hot Topic

Wow. My recent post on the Iron Chef America Batali vs. Oliver Battle: Cobia got no fewer than 21 search hits. These were all some variation on "Batali vs. Oliver," "who won," "sous chef Gennaro," "cobia," "Iron Chef America," etc.

I gotta blog about the Food Network more!

Happy New Year!

Ah, 2007. We hardly knew ye.

Happy 2008 everybody! First order of business is my joining the Blog365 social network on Ning. The idea? Simple - blog at least once a day in 2008. This should be interesting.



The thing is, I had 359 entries in 2007, so volume-wise I'm right on target. Just need to enforce the daily frequency. So we should have a good number and frequency of posts here at Chez MRhé in 2008! (Quality remains to be seen.)

Join us!

Retrospective

They say you should follow the habits of highly successful people. In this case I am following in the footsteps of my favorite celebrity blogette, Mean Rachel, and doing a retrospective of sorts. What follows are excerpts from the first entry of each month in 2007. Why? Mainly because I'm bored at the moment. Click on the month to go to each post, if you're into that sort of thing.

January: "Greetings. If you're reading this post, presumably you came over here from TwoGrimDudes.com...."

February: "I work for a small marketing firm. All of our graphic design work is done on Macs, which until recently were a combination of G4s and G5s. As of a week or so ago, my boss..."

March: "Man, Cheech is looking a little worse for wear these days, isn't he?..."

April: "The Scoreboard has moved to Dunndee's blog. As a member of the Triumvirate..."

May: "Yet another good post from Scotton Johnclair. He's on a roll these days..."

June: "In addition to, among other kick-in-the-nuts things, getting trapped in my bathroom on two separate occasions for a total of about 25 minutes due to a faulty doorknob, the Sox..."

July: "Sharpe's Fury, by Bernard Cornwell. The latest installment in Cornwell's fantastic Sharpe series sees Richard Sharpe, a rifleman in the 95th Regiment of King George's Army during the Napoleonic Wars, and his faithful Sergeant Harper back in Spain in 1811, as the French besiege Cádiz, the last refuge of the Spanish government allied with England...."

August: "I've got a lot of stuff in the blogging queue these days - new roommates, interstate trips, book reviews, Red Sox gushing, live music, guacamole..."

September: "On Sunday I went down to Rhode Island to attend my uncle's clamboil. This is a traditional meal for family gatherings consisting of clams, hot dogs, sausages, potatoes, and onions tossed into a pot, boiled for an hour and simmered for another hour. The veggies get soft and delicious..."

October: "John Lackey did nothing to improve his historically poor numbers against the Red Sox last night in the opening game of the American League Division Series...."

November: "Hanson says it better than I can, but..."

December: "A nice post by Eric over at Keep Your Sox On about whether or not the Sox should push for Santana or wait and see if Haren will be available...."

Must be all the book reviews.

Get a Cash Advance

No surprise there.

Fun with StatCounter!

Although traffic on this blog has gone way, way down over the past few weeks, the number of unique search terms has gone up for some reason. Here's a look at how people get to this particular nook of the internets:

'cupid shuffle - line dance'
peaks island sex pictures
will you meet me in the middle
nelson aquino de la rosa
song: we you meet me in the middle
nelson aquino de la rosa photo
demonstration of the cupid shuffle
5 facts about the whigs and the tories

Looks like line dancing, sex, "Sister Golden Hair," deceased midgets, and historical research are the topics which drive today's web-surfers!

Well then.

I've got a lot of stuff in the blogging queue these days - new roommates, interstate trips, book reviews, Red Sox gushing, live music, guacamole - but haven't really had the time or impetus to post. And tomorrow morning I'm out of this falafel stand to spend a solid week down in lovely Chatham, Cape Cod. My internetsing will be intermittent and/or nonexistent for the foreseeable future.

Try to survive without me.

Pax vobiscum,

-MRhé

Don't Hate Me

For various reasons - mainly because I'm sick of updating it and because there are about 200 unrecorded points floating around, so it defeats the purpose anyway - I'm washing my hands of Scoreboard upkeep. It was an inside joke that for whatever reason caught on and grew exponentially, and it was fun, but I'm done. Sorry. It's clear now after several years that a) nobody will beat the Gipper and b) I am significantly sweeter than everyone else on there. I'll keep the board up for a hot minute and I will save the current standings elsewhere - if anyone would like to take up the reins, be my guest. Let me know and I can send you the file.

And remember, the true virtue of points is in the giving and the getting, not the tallying.

Even though I blew you all away.

Points Admin

Ok, moving forward (this goes for me and Dunndee especially):

No more points to inanimate objects or concepts with rare exception. Case in point: "Gratuitous points" received six points, which is both extremely meta and extremely ridiculous.

That's about it. That will cut out a lot of this nonsense. I just tallied up the points from two "points napkins" (which also received points) of last weekend's hijinks and it's going to take me half an hour to update the damn Scoreboard. But going through these scores was pretty funny, I'll admit.

-The Management

P.S. What is "the Shawl" and why did it receive a point?

P.P.S. Impressive work, Nichole!

The World Wide Interweb

Not that this matters if you're actually reading this entry, ironically, since you got here somehow. But we now have a slightly more official domain name for this here blog:

www.ChezMRhe.com

This fulfills a lifelong dream. Or, to be more accurate, a recent short-term objective.

I would like to give a point here to GoDaddy.com for some cheap internets real estate and some excellent customer service.

Also, where it all started. More or less.

Welcome!

Greetings. If you're reading this post, presumably you came over here from TwoGrimDudes.com. Thanks for stopping by! Watch this space for the best the Blogosphere has to offer.

Cheers,

-MRhé