Eh, it wasn’t that bad. We had our picnic dinner in the park with Shannon and Simone, at the farmer’s market. I’m rethinking this whole “blogger meetup” thing though since only Shannon, Simone, and myself ever get together… if someone else wants to organize a blogger deal, I’ll come, but I’m done trying to put something together. For now, anyway.

The blogworthy part of the evening (the part Shannon didn’t want to read… or maybe she did, I’m not sure) was Shannon’s skirt. She’s wearing a just-above-the-knee orange skirt and we’re all sitting on the grass (my family’s there, too), and what happens when you’re wearing a short skirt and sitting on the ground? Yah, it rides up and every time you shift you have to make sure you’re not flashing the person sitting across from you. Which was me.

Do you know how hard it is to not see up someone’s skirt in that situation? Well, I didn’t see anything—I almost did, once or twice—but at some point Shannon realized that I was studiously looking elsewhere whenever she’d start shifting around and caught herself just in time. It turned into the joke afterward, but no, I wasn’t trying to see if she was going commando or not.

See what kind of fun y’all miss out on? :)

Update: No, Shannon wasn’t doing anything on purpose… it was just an unfortunate arrangement. See, this is why I don’t wear skirts…

Busy busy busy weekend, that’s why I haven’t been posting. And I’m getting hammered at work with things, but I needed to jump on to post this bit, lest I forget again:

There’s finally another Bend blogger meetup this week! Wednesday (July 27) at the Farmer’s Market downtown, at six o’clock. Basically we’ll have a picnic in Drake Park. (Buy your own dinner at the Farmer’s Market.) We’ll be meeting near the booth selling fish, though Shannon said if anyone gets there late, look for her and an orange blanket. So if you see a group of people sitting by an orange blanket in the park near the Farmer’s Market, odds are it’s us.

Maybe we could get a roll call in the comments here, so we know who all can make it?

Jeremy Zawodny wonders When will blogging peak? I don’t think it will, anytime soon or maybe even at all. Why? Because, like I wrote last month, it ain’t even mainstream yet. Plus, it’s too compelling. It will likely evolve, but it isn’t even close to peaking, if it ever will.

Dave Winer mostly agrees with this assessment, but then writes this:

Blogs with ads, like their print counterparts, strive to be as broad as possible, to reach as many people, and in doing so, lose their value as an ad for the author.

No, I don’t think that’s true at all. Blogs with ads don’t automatically lose their value. I do think blogs that try to be as broad as possible and make money with ads largely won’t work; it’s the niche blogging that works. Blogs that do this the right way are making money. Otherwise Jason Calacanis‘ Weblogs, Inc. wouldn’t have just made over $2,000 in a single day with AdSense.

You’ll note that I have AdSense on both of my blogs (this and The Brew Site). This blog is broad in scope, and has wildly varying ads; if I was relying on it to make money (rather than just running the ads as a nice extra), well, I’d have to keep my day job. The Brew Site, being much more focused/niched, doesn’t make as much as this site but does have a higher quality of ads and click rates. If I were to get the kind of traffic there that I get here, I’d see some nice figures, I think.

Finally, in other blog news, Scoble today tries to downplay being a A-list blogger. Get this: “Forget the A-listers. They don’t matter anymore. Well, they don’t matter as much.” Yeah, right. Sorry, but being an A-list blogger is better than ever, period. Doubt it? In the same post, Scoble mentions that he “was talking to Chris Pirillo [another A-list blogger] the other day about the ‘long tail’ metaphor and while we were flying over mountains in the Boeing plane….” This refers to the fact that himself and several other prominent (A-list) bloggers were invited on an exclusive test flight featuring Boeing’s new in-flight WiFi service… they all got flown to Walla Walla for wine. And buzzed some mountains.

Man, don’t try to tell me that the A-listers don’t matter anymore. Jeez.

Hmm. Anyone else notice the irony of this post? I’m pointing to the A-listers. Must be sour grapes or something.

Yep, a new Bend blogger: Rhysently. First saw this today show up linking to me in Technorati, and ORblogs has it listed as a new addition tonight. Only two entries so far, but I found them quotable:

Anybody who doesn’t live in Central Oregon is a sucker. This is the most amazing, beautiful place on earth. I’m never leaving, ever. It’s so unbelievable that this place and someplace like Florida—that miserable swampy armpit with the most roaches and serial killers than any other place in the world—could exist on the same planet, let alone the same country.

And:

I paused to reflect on something that deeply bothered me in the past: the NASCAR fried chicken bucket series….

What kind of white trash CEO thought this one up? And let me tell you, I’m not using that term loosely. I grew up in a town with 23 bars and no library. I lived in a trailer for part of my youth. I have relatives with more tattoos than teeth. I KNOW from white trash, okay? And still, I can’t think of anyone tacky enough—not even my mulleted cousin Dwayne who’s spent more than half his life in jail and gets conjugal visits from a beer-swilling hottie who can braid her own armpit hair—to actually SAVE THEIR NASTY GREASY CHICKEN BUCKET. Arggh. Seriously, do you display them on the mantel, or what?

Okay, we seriously need to have another blogger meetup and get all these new bloggers to come.

I’ll post about the Bend SummerFest tomorrow I think, but I just wanted to get something out there tonight, and I note that ORblogs is reporting another Bend weblog: under the ponderosas. Right on.

Shannon did a lurker day on her blog a couple of weeks ago and said I should do one, too. Okay!

Since it’s nearly midnight, let’s call Friday “Lurker Day” on chuggnutt.com! If you lurk on my site, make a comment! I’d love to hear from you. Even if you’ve made comments before :). And, I’ll shamelessly steal Shannon’s Lurker Day questions for myself:

1. Who are you?
2. How did you find this blog?
3. Why do you come back?

Forgot to mention this when I saw it the other day, but there appears to be another blogger here in Bend: e n | x | e n d u b. Did anyone else catch this?

Either way, welcome!

monkeyinabox: “Are blogs really as mainstream, as some of us thought?”

No. No they’re not. That’s easy to forget for those of us “on the inside,” but blogs really are still a fringe phenomenon.

They’re getting there, though. The Journal of Accountancy just ran an article called “Would You, Could You, Should You Blog?” which is a decent introduction to blogs for accountants. Now that’s getting mainstream.