Cleaning out the Drafts

You may not believe this, but for all the things I post on robohara.com, there are lots of posts that never see the light of day. Some of those are completely finished posts that for one reason or another never get posted publicly. Sometimes it’s because I could never get the tone right. Some of them become outdated before I finish them. Then there are the articles that never get finished. Occasionally I’ll get halfway done writing one before realizing it’s just not going to work; other times, I’ll only write a sentence or two before dropping an idea.

All of these posts get saved in my WordPress “drafts” folder. Last night, I cleaned out the folder. Here is a list (from most recent to oldest) of some of the posts that never made it to the site, and why they didn’t.

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  • Xbox 720, the Death of Used Games, and Me: This was (yet another) artcicle about my disdain for the current and future state of home console video games. It was a direct response to the news that the next generation of video games (at least Sony and Microsoft) plan on locking down software titles to each console, meaning you won’t be able to let a friend borrow a game, take a game over to a friend’s house to play, or buy or sell used games. I never published it because (a) it’s all based on rumors and (b) people already know I hate the future of digital gaming.
  • Sleep Study Number Three: This was a small recap of my latest sleep study experience. I never published it because it was completely boring. I slept in a small room for 8 hours and got a new CPAP machine. There you go.
  • S Novym Godom: This draft, which I began around New Year’s Eve, was going to be about the New Year’s Eve that Susan and I spent with Russian foreign exchange students. The Russians taught us how to say “S Novym Godom” (Russian for “Happy New Year”) and we taught them to say “goat scrotum” (and didn’t tell them what it meant). I don’t know why I never finished that post. Maybe the goat ate it.
  • Napster: From Dawn to Dusk: This was actually a rather informative post about the life and death of Napster. I think maybe I just forgot to publish this one — although now it’s outdated, maybe I’ll run it later this week.
  • Talkin’ ’bout my Generation: This post was about how back when I started calling BBSes, I was a young and often immature kid dealing with a bunch of adults, and now, on most internet forums, I’m the adult having to deal with a bunch of young and often immature kids. I just re-read this post and, based on the tone, I must’ve been upset with someone or something on some internet forum. It’s not really that good, and not worth publishing.
  • Full Service? This unfinished article was a rant about a local restaurant that recently converted from a “serve yourself” business model to a “full service” model — unfortunately, somebody forgot to train (or maybe even tell) the wait staff, so the result was an experience in which everything had been moved out of the customers’ reach, but there was no one around to get things for us. I never finished it and the tone was pretty negative so into the trash it goes.
  • The Netflix Conundrum: This is another lengthy article that, in retrospect, I’m not sure why I didn’t post. It was written around the time that Netflix split their physical rental and streaming services. It’s a good article but very dated now.
  • My 9/11 Experience: On multiple occasions now I’ve written up what I experienced on 9/11, but (mostly due to where I work) I’ve never publicly posted them.
  • VMWorld 2011: Summary: I think this post got to about 20 pages before I realized I was only halfway done and I was never going to finish it. So I didn’t.
  • Scanning Books: This is the third one I’ve found that I can’t figure out why I didn’t post. Maybe I’ll post this one tomorrow. It’s about scanning in and digitizing books.
  • High School Reunions, Meet Facebook: This was the beginning of an article about how Facebook has essentially usurped the need for high school reunions. The point I was trying to make was that Facebook allows people to experience the good part of reunions (catching up with old friends and showing off pictures of your kids) while avoiding the social awkwardness and travel that comes along with a reunion. Last year was my 20 year reunion (which Susan and I missed due to being out of town) so I’m sure that’s why I started writing it. I don’t know why I never finished it but I still agree with the sentiment.
  • Sony Hacked Again (and Again, and Again: This this was an old one that talked about all the technical aspects of Sony getting hacked. Unfortunately Sony kept getting hacked faster than I could update the article so I finally gave up on it.
  • Random Text Adventure Bits: This was a collection of things I learned while writing my first full-length text adventure, “Hangar 22”. I think I abandoned it because, after looking back at it, I was trying to come off as some sort of authority in regards to text adventures after having written one. That means, if you’ve never written one, I’ve only written one more than you — and that hardly makes me an expert. I’m going to keep this one around for another week or two and maybe retool it; if I can’t figure out an interesting way to repackage the data, I’m going to dump it.
  • Nobody Remembers Darryl: This was an article about the Darryl sandwich that we used to sell only at our Mazzio’s. It was named after one of our delivery drivers, and made just the way he liked it (mustard instead of mayo, hold the tomato). I never finished it because, in retrospect, it didn’t seem all that interesting.
  • Hacking for Fun and Profit: This was a true story about a time that someone offered me money to hack into someone else’s computer (I didn’t accept the offer). I never finished this one because I couldn’t change enough details about the story to protect the innocent and still have it make any sense. Maybe it’ll end up in one of my books someday.
  • A letter to a sixteen-year-old me: I got this idea from another blog, wrote it, and never quite got the right tone out of it. I was going for both funny and introspective, but there are a few parts that sound mean and a few that sound braggadocios. I will eventually finish this one.
  • If I Were Invisible: I started this post two or three years ago after reading Wells’ “The Invisible Man” and never finished it. It might make a better book than blog entry, who knows.

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    So there you have it — the behind the scenes stuff that didn’t make the cut. Making something out of nothing, that’s my motto. Actually I’m more of a “He who dies with the most toys, wins” kind of guy, but you get the point.

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