One of the virtual house cleaning tasks I perform at the end of each year is I go through WordPress and delete mpst of my drafts — posts that I never finished or published. According to WordPress, this year, I had 34. As I delete them I also document what they all were and why I didn’t post them in the first place — so out of 34 unfinished posts, I’ll get at least one.
Title: Karate Tournament
What it was about: I went to a karate tournament one time with a friend and his parents. I won a trophy and he didn’t. It was about how parents can take the fun out of kids’ sporting events
Why it never got posted: I never came up with a good ending for it.
Fate: Saved… for now.
Title: Pirate PlayStation Covers
What it was about: How I used to download/burn PlayStation games and print out covers for them, and how all those CD-R’s no longer work.
Why it never got posted: It made me sound like a filthy pirate.
Fate: Saved… for now.
Title: In Defense of Commodork
What it was about: A post that disputed some of the things people have said about my book on Amazon.
Why it never got posted: Never found good timing.
Fate: Saved… for now.
Title: Weird Al Tour 2013
What it was about: Seeing Weird Al live in concert.
Why it never got posted: Other things got posted and suddenly it was a couple of weeks old and it didn’t seem important any more. It seems silly to post it months late, but my blog is a way I remember events. On the fence on this one.
Fate: Saved… for now.
Title: Lavabit/NSA e-mail
What it was about: How your e-mail is no longer secure.
Why it never got posted: The story hit prime time, making my coverage of it obsolete.
Fate: Deleted.
Title: Random Quotes
What it was about: A post announcing the fact that I had added “random quotes” to the top of robohara.com
Why it never got posted: You can see the quotes up there. There was no real reason to announce it.
Fate: Deleted.
Title: mp3 drive
What it was about: I borrowed an external hard drive from a friend who borrowed it from a friend that was full of mp3 files. It was a long post about how I went through and picked out the music I liked and re-organized it and a bunch of other stuff.
Why it never got posted: It was long and boring. Then I tried editing it down and it became short and boring.
Fate: Deleted.
Title: Everything at once.
What it was about: What having ADD is like and how information is often overwhelming.
Why it never got posted: Never finished it.
Fate: Deleted.
Title: Rumor has it: Sequestration
What it was about: Being furloughed.
Why it never got posted: It wasn’t very nice.
Fate: Deleted.
Title: Movie Marathon
What it was about: How I was going to watch a bunch of movies in 2013 and write about them.
Why it never got posted: I never got organized and decided not to do that.
Fate: Deleted.
Title: RSS Cleanup
What it was about: Cleaning up dead RSS feeds.
Why it never got posted: After writing this I couldn’t imagine this being interesting to anyone else on the planet.
Fate: Deleted.
Title: Three Types of People Guaranteed to Tie Up Any Meeting
What it was about: See above.
Why it never got posted: I tried to make it funny but it came off as snarky and I was afraid people I work with would think it was about them when it wasn’t.
Fate: Deleted.
Title: Setting up a BBS in 2013
What it was about: Setting up a telnet BBS.
Why it never got posted: Too technical and boring.
Fate: Deleted.
Title: White and Nerdy
What it was about: How I wore my Weird Al “White and Nerdy” hat to a place once and was afraid that someone was offended by it.
Why it never got posted: Never finished it.
Fate: Deleted.
Title: Friendly Password Reminder
What it was about: How to pick good passwords.
Why it never got posted: The short version is, I’m not sure how you pick a password much matters anymore.
Fate: Deleted.
Title: If I Were Invisible
What it was about: The oldest draft in my folder. It had to do with how if I were invisible I would do so many more interesting things than the protagonist in H.G. Wells’ book The Invisible Man.
Why it never got posted: Never finished it. After 5 years, guess I’m not going to, either.
Fate: Deleted.
Title: My 9/11 Experience
What it was about: My experience on 9/11.
Why it never got posted: Because of who I work for I did not think it would be appropriate.
Fate: Deleted.
Title: A Letter to a 16 Year Old Me
What it was about: See above.
Why it never got posted: It was a really good post with a few fairly dark comments in it. Might still post this with a fine bit of editing.
Fate: Saved… for now.
A few months ago I imported all of the posts from Review-o-Matic.com into this blog as eventually I plan on shutting that one down. Apparently there were some old reviews from 2008 and 2009 that were left hanging in draft limbo. Here they are and what happened to them.
Alabama Thunderpussy/16/Brothers of Conquest/RPG concert (Published)
Asesino – Corridos De Muerte (Published)
Body Count – Murder 4 Hire (Published)
Bret Michaels — Custom Built (Unfinished/Deleted)
Cheap Trick – Sgt. Pepper Live (Unfinished/Deleted)
Chimaira – Pass out of Existance (Published)
Dio – Evil or Devine DVD (Published)
Evergrey – In Search of Truth (Published)
Lost Horizon – Awakening the World (Published)
I enter 2013 with five posts in my draft folder: the karate tournament one, Pirate PlayStation Covers, In Defense of Commodork, Weird Al 2013, and A Letter to a 16 Year Old Me. Watch for those in 2014… or maybe not. Some of the drafts I deleted today appeared on my 2012 list of drafts as well.
Out of curiosity, did you set up your own telnet BBS? After like ten years it looks like the sysop finally threw in the towel at Utopia Dammit! and I’ve been looking for some other telnet haunts.