10.  I learned a lot about php, mysql, SEO, html, java, web design, social networking, webtraffic, and a lot of other geeky stuff that’s come in handy in my job and in my personal life.  Sometimes, just doing things is the best learning tool.

9.  When my dad passed, a college friend of his emailed me and said he liked my dad and was sad to learn about his death.  This guy didn’t know me, and I didn’t know him, but I like to think we helped each other heal there too.  He probably felt like he got his message across and got to say good bye, and I got a picture of my dad that I didn’t have before.  Good stuff.

8.  Can you believe people have asked me to give stuff away on my blog?  Heck ya!  I love free stuff.  I love giving away free stuff even more!

7.  When Kallie and I got married, I started doing a genealogy of her family.  After one her relatives found my blog doing a search for “Sealock”, he found my site and we ended up matching our family trees together.  Fun!

6.  This has been a journal and diary for me in a lot of ways.  I’ve gotten lots of entertainment looking at past blog posts and not remember saying those things.  Dreams, rants, or even saying things that other people said is a lot of fun to revisit.

5.  Back in the fall of 2007, I got asked if I knew of a LEGO artist in Pittsburgh.  I said no, but asked if I could help for what they were looking for.  Long story short, I was asked to teach a after school program to some 20 elementary kids.  I’ve taught the 6 week sessions twice and I love it and am so grateful for that opportunity!

4.  When I first started blogging, there weren’t many people out there blogging about their personal lives.  As it caught on, pittsburgh area bloggers started networking with one another.  I certainly have not gotten as close as many of the others have gotten to each other, and that’s largely my own fault, but I still feel connected to them and have gone to some meet ups to socialize.  ONLINE FRIENDS TURNED 3D ZOMG.

3.  Separate from just seeing the history of my thoughts, just being able to express myself, or type out my ideas is therapeutic and calming.  As the blogging platform gets better, it becomes easier for me to type up ideas instead of mulling them over in my head or possibly forgetting them.  I’m able to create drafts, schedule posts, and it’s no longer a chore, but an outlet that I’m able to make work for me.

2.  I’ve lost contact with friends over the years.  Sometimes, those people find me again through my blog after not knowing how to get in contact with me.  Even people that I was only acquaintances with in the first place has stumbled upon my blog and sent me a message letting me know about the small world scenario.  It’s funny when it happens.

1.  You reading this.  Honestly, it’s nice to be able to share my thoughts openly, and then people know how or what I’m thinking and respond back.  It’s kind of like an open invitation to a conversation with me; something I’m not good at anyway.  I’m not afraid of people who know too much about me because they stalked me on my blog.  If that’s how they like to spend their time, who am I to judge?  It’s creating the real world connections that make this blog so fruitful, for me.

I am officially converted over to wordpress 3.0 now. The old site is still operational at http://joshuadhall.com/nukeindex.php, but wordpress is handling all the traffic by default now.  I’ll work on getting polls back up and the download section converted.  I’m a little sad to see the statistics reset…but what are ya going to do?  If you’re reading this on facebook, check out http://sixf00t4.com and tell me what you think!

So, I’m going to leave the phpnuke system and convert from ravennuke to wordpress.   I’ve had this blog running on phpnuke for a long time, and I loved having the flexibility of editing the code and writing my own modules and having a very full featured site, but I think it’s time to shave it down to what is useful and also maintainable.  I’ve written a php script to convert all the stories from ravennuke to a fresh install of wordpress and I’ll be messing with templates and features in the next month or so.  The demo site is http://joshuadhall.com/wordpress and I’ll eventually switch it over to the main URL once I’m done playing and find something I’m satisfied with.  RavenNuke is still a great product, don’t misunderstand me, but it’s not the best system for blogging.  I’ve made my concerns known to the community for a long time, and have even contributed code that it lacked, but there were projects that kept getting delayed that are already available in wordpress, so that’s tipped me over to the switch.

Here’s the link to the script – http://sixf00t4.com/downloads/?did=65