83 thoughts on “Digging in the Dirt”

  1. OK, three quick things off the cuff…

    1. That you did this is AMAZING. (How the hell DID you do this? I can still barely manage to italicize things.)

    2. I commented here in 2009? Huh. I have no memory of having been here back then, and no memory of that comment.

    3. Koz’s 416 has got to be wrong, right?Report

    1. Eh, it’s possible. Koz doesn’t tend to get involved in the pure philosophy blogs as much as others do and he tends to only make three or four posts even on blogs where he does get involved. You’re not going to see him much in the multi-nested threads that some of us get overly involved in. 🙂

      Plus, he does a lot on responding to stuff on Elia’s subblog so that stuff wouldn’t count according to Patrick.

      So, while 416 still seems low considering he started back in ’09, it’s not completely out of the realm of possibility given the standards Patrick has listed.Report

    2. 1) All things are possible with access to the Admin interface. Go to the Comments section and use the search box.

      2) You have mebbe a dozen comments in 2009? That one was in 23-Feb, but then you have a big dead zone until September.

      3) That still seems weird to me, too. I have to ask Erik if I can have a dump of the backend database; since the comments are reference by who they are in response to, I’d love to see if I can tease out who are the commenting pairs who are most likely to engage in back-n-forths…Report

      1. Patrick, I am jealous of the access to the database. Now can you do a select * from blah where foobar=fubar?
        Did the Google link I gave you on the other thread give you any ideas for coding (if possible) on the core engine?

        Does switching modes like this make my post look like a ransom note?
        Report

    3. Yeah, that’s a real surprise to me too, I would have thought I have quite a bit more. I don’t do a whole lot on the subblogs, and Elias only started his subblog six months or so ago.Report

    4. Tod this is your comment:

      Freddie:

      I think that you are confusing two separate issues with one. The first, with which you are of course right on the money, is that when you buy into a large corporation’s marketing message that you will be a true rebel by buying into their marketing message is by definition absurd. Though in a world of Nikes, overproduced “edgy” music, “cool” magazines owned by Time Warner, Volkswagens, and a gazzilion others, it seems a little unfair to single out only the Mac users that fall into this infantile advertisement-created tribalism.

      However, as a current user of both PCs and a Mac, I can tell you that the issue of quality is a separate issue altogether.

      My wife bought me a Powerbook to use with work, where I must also use a PC. (Some things I work on have security issues, and can only be worked on with a computer fully owned by my employer). My PC needs assistance from the IT guys to re-integrate into our PC network about once a month. My Mac, even though its going into a PC network, never has issues. In addition, doing anything complicated and memory intensive, such as creating workshop notebooks on Publisher, means at least one rebooting of my PC during a project to fix the screen freezing. And then there’s the issue of having to wait 10 minutes for my PC to fully start up in a way that won’t freeze up when I start working with it first thing in the morning. In fact, I can tell you that since I have started using my Mac, using my PC reminds me of the day, way back when, that my employer got its first internet DSL hook up. Using phone dial up at home, which had always felt just fine, suddenly was so annoying after being able to use the much faster system at work that I was eager to fork over an extra $50 a month to my cable provider.

      In short, these are not differences that one can chalk up to wanting to be the cool kid.

      The Mac just works better.

      -RTod

      That not you?Report

    1. Yeah, man, this was like walking up to a Pac-Man machine back when I was a kid and saying, “I can beat the high score on this one, too” and seeing 3,333,360 with JYB as the top score.

      You’re the shizzle.Report

  3. Seriously awesome, Pat.

    A few names from the early days (one of whom still pokes her head around from time to time) that may have big numbers would be Katherine and Roque Nuevo.

    And I could have sworn that Michael Drew didn’t show up until around May/June of 09 (which would still make him an old-timer)!Report

            1. The other readily usable search string for North (www.thecommonsccd.com) gives 427 results instead of 464. Obviously “North” is going to give skewed results.Report

  7. I guess you can tell where you rate on this blog by seeing which update your name gets included in. I’m keeping my fingers crossed for inclusion in the “re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-edited” section.Report

  8. I didn’t realize I started when I was still in Afghanistan, I thought it was later than that. (I also can’t remember if I ever used a fake email address in the early).

    I do think that I have spent a lot more time trolling^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H conducting constructive discussions on the sub-blogs.Report

  10. I originally came for the SSM, here, following Freddie deBoer. (717 comments total, since January 28, 2009, not counting this one.)

    As I recall, other places kept coming back here, including Sullivan, Will Truman’s blog, and a bunch of other people bemoaning the collapse of Culture11. I lurked for a while, and realized that this had become the place to be. I found writers here linking back to my blogspot blog, got a mutual-link-admiration society going as I kept on coming back, recognizing kindred spirits looking for intelligence, context, analysis, and something better than partisan bickering.

    It’s a pleasure to be here still.Report

        1. No, I mean, it’s just weird that in the 25 or so pages of comments I picked randomly to get names to search for, you didn’t show up once.  For somebody with > 700 comments that’s just a bit unusual.Report

    2. Quite well put, Burt. I’ve been going back through the database and thinking about what to say in the comments about this, but I see you’ve said what I wanted to say better than I could have.

      I came here from Sullivan as well to share my ideas and absorb the ideas of others, and I found that rare combination of charity and due criticism which I think is most characteristic of the League.Report

        1. I figured you wouldn’t be able to resist the effort to get ahead of me. In a way, I take it as a complement. Thank you. Still haven’t read Marx, he hated his children!Report

  12. Slow day at work, Pat? 😉

    I’m pleased to see that in my first post I managed to take a shot at both liberals and Woodrow Wilson. In hindsight, that pretty neatly sums up my contributions here (other than my gratuitous but personally amusing trolling of a certain conservative poster).Report

  13. I should have used a more unique user-name. Finding the posts from “Jeff” while weeding out any posts about a “Jeff” (Bezos, Davis, et al) would not be easy.

    I’ve used the same e-mail address, so a “core dump” could count my posts, I reckon (under 50, I’m sure — possibly under 20).Report

    1. Dude, that link–like so many others here–goes to my first post.  What is up with that?

      Like the new comment system, though it confused the fish out of me when it first popped up.  I couldn’t figure out how I kept getting this strange new thing.Report

      1. Yes, it’s the same back-end edit that was always there, it goes to the admin page. No editing right here.

        Sorry if that was confusing for you; I thought maybe I was able to see it if you could not.Report

  18. Kewl! Except that the font I type my comment in is about 6 point. A little tough on these old eyeballs.

    Here’s trying an img src placement (yes was saving for occupy thread):

    Occupados!

     

     Report

  19. Some sites have conversations that go by pretty fast, so once in awhile I’ll search sites I’ve commented on to see if I missed a reply. Google gives 157 results (including this one) for here, but it double-counts mentions in the sidebars.Report

  21. @Patrick,

    Are Kim, Kimmi, Kimsie and others beginning with K not named Koz all the same person?

    There’s another Google trick we could do. When you type in the site:ordinary-gentlemen.com [userid] in the lower left (off frame) there’s a link that says, “more search tools”. When you click on /that/ there’s a choice called “Reading level”. I find it refreshing that most of the ordinary gentleperson’s (even Kimmi!_) show up as intermediate.

    Of course I like Kimmi much better after her guest post on mindless diversions.Report

  22. I’m sort of overwhelmed by this post & thread & combox & whatnot.  All I can say is that I think I’d be mortified for people to see the majority of my early comments (not nthat they’re not public record, but I’m doubting anyone will go find them for the heck of it), and that I’m glad my first wasn’t the one I thought it was going to be.

    Anyways, this is all awesome and amazing, Pat.  Tip O’ The Hat!Report

  25. Nice job Patrick,

    BTW, can someone please tell me how to change my avatar? I’m sure it must be something simple that I just overlooked.Report

    1. I think you have to register with something or other. I used to have an elegant little fractal pattern. My new monster logo is making me seriously consider registering too.Report

      1. I mean seriously, is that some kind of boa? I am kindof stoked with the three eyes… serious 360 degree vision potential is awsome but a boa? I couldn’t be seen in public with such a thing. Also my legs are in far better shape than those sticks.

        … I could probably work the blue tan tho.Report

        1. Problem with Gravatar is that it may conflict with the username you already have, since the League’s WordPress allows us to use whatever but Gravatar requires a unique one. North, for example, probably would need a new username, I do, too.Report

          1. Gravatar, IIRC, links your gravatar to your email address, not to your “username”. You might have to have a different gravatar username than you use here, but the image is pulled based upon the email address you use when you post.

            At least, when I post to other blogs that have gravatar plugins enabled, my gravatar shows up no matter what I use as a username at those blogs, as long as I use my gravatar-registered email address to post the comment.Report

            1. Thanks all. This answers both my question and my concern when I went to Gravitar’s site and they rejected all my names. To clarify though… I can sign up for Gravitar, get my desired avitar AND continue to use my real name on this forum?Report

  26. Incidentally, what do BlaiseP’s stats look like? I know he doesn’t post here anymore but I remember him being very active.Report

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