February a "slow" month for blogging

February was a slow month for blogging. That's surprising because it didn't feel like a slow month. Indeed there were days when I published 3 or even 4 blogs a day. The numbers don't lie, though. On a daily average basis February was my slowest month in 9 months.



"Slow" is a relative term, of course. In January I posted more than 2.0 blogs/day on average. At the end of January I mused that I might not even hit 1.5/day in February. Instead I posted just over 1.8 blogs/day on average.

That compares favorably with the goals I set several years ago. At a minimum I'd write at least 1/day; at target I'd write 1.5/day; and as a stretch goal I'd post 2/day. Indeed in the past 14 months I've met or exceeded even my stretch goal 9 times. Maybe I should increase my goals.

I could have written more in February. I've still got a few blogs in the backlog from our trip to Las Vegas two weeks ago. Add in a few other blog ideas I've been meaning to write about, and I could have surpassed the 2/day level again. I just didn't have the time or energy to squeeze in those last several blogs late in the month. And I'm not forcing myself. I blog because I want to, not because I have to.

What do I expect for March? Honestly, "slow" again. At the moment I don't have any travel planned, business or leisure. Travel drives a lot of my writing topics. So maybe March will be 1.5/day or a bit lower. But I do intend to write at least something every day.

Scott Adams Canceled. I Stopped Reading Years Ago Anyway.

This past weekend the comic strip "Dilbert" was canceled, and its author, Scott Adams, effectively was, too. As I mentioned in a brief blog yesterday, these were consequences of Adams publishing video of himself going on a racist tirade.

Do I care that "Dilbert" got canceled? No. I stopped reading the comic strip over 10 years ago. It had ceased being funny years before that. That's a harsh thing to say because for years it was funny, enormously funny, especially to me as a software engineer and person in IT. You see, the main character in Dilbert is/was a software engineer, and the comic was about the foolishness that goes on particularly in the corporate world of software and IT. ...At least it used to be. Adams started rehashing old material and gradually folded in too much right wing politics.

Even after the comic strip became tedious and stupidly political I continued reading Adams' blog for a while. Back in 2015-2016 he shared a number of trenchant observations about Donald Trump's rising political campaign. Adams has studied techniques of persuasion and recognized Trump as being a master of these techniques. His blog was, for a while, an excellent "inside baseball" type explanation of what Trump was doing and why it was working.

I specify for a while because after a few months of sharing insight on Trump's techniques, Adams shifted to actively using those techniques to argue Trump's White nationalism cause. For the first week or so I wondered if it was a test for his readers; could we spot the techniques? But it wasn't a test. Adams had gone full MAGA. I stopped following him.

One of the many problems with going full MAGA is that it rots your brain. MAGA-heads wall themselves off in echo chambers of the like minded. Gradually they believe that everything they believe is normal. Thus Adams shameless posted an overtly racist screed, figuring since he was such a master of persuasive arts he'd show us all how smart he is. Well, I'm sure the 30% or so who are MAGA see his brilliance. The rest of us say Good riddance.