Oh Well Reboot

No, you are not seeing things here--talking to the five people who probably read this blog now. When I started this blog about five years ago, I thought I would write solely on news, economic, and political issues. And I've written quite a bit on the issues of the day. But last year, I just got burnt out on writing about politics and trying to report on every single political issue and story that came up day in and day out. Some of the issues were especially complex, health care as a huge example, that I felt like I didn't have the time to research or think about--much less originally comment on. For that, it was time to step away from Oh Well, and focus on other things. That is not to say that I never lost my interest in news and politics.

For even as I stepped away from Oh Well, I was still thinking of tweaking the site into something more than just a news and politics blog. I have other items that I wondered how to publish--essays from political science and economics classes, short sarcastic stories, and even some photo work that has accumulated on my computer hard drives. For a while, I did have a separate website that I published some of my essays on, but they were never incorporated with my blog as a single portfolio of my work. That was always in the back of my mind. So with a new year, I thought it was time to come back and reboot Oh Well into something new--a combined blog and portfolio of written and photography work that I've accumulated over the years. That is what you're looking at right now.

To start off, the Home page will be my blog. I'll certainly be back writing about news and politics, now that we're in an election year and there has been some fascinating dynamics taking place--especially with the Massachusetts U.S. Senate special election, where GOP state senator Scott Brown trounced Attorney General Martha Coakley (D) for Ted Kennedy's seat. More on that later. I will also be adding more page links of my portfolio. The Essays page will have links to a number of SJSU political science and economic essays that I've written. Some of these essays are over ten years old, but I think they are interesting in showing some of my thinking on political and economic thought. The Fun Essays and Stories link are just that--links to fun essays and stories that I've written, but have never published. I still have a couple of other items to add, but I'll need to go through my files to find them. The Photography page will show some photo work that I've done. For the moment, I've included a link to a photo blog showcasing some work for a Photoshop class that I've taken at West Valley College last fall. But I've got some other photo stuff I want to include--old black-and-white photojournalism work for the West Valley College Norseman, abortion protest photos when Operation Rescue came to San Jose, UCSF bike racing photography, and possibly some newer stuff. Of course, I'm working old school here with 35mm manual focus Canon equipment. But it still works. The Links page will show all my blog links. I'm thinking I want to clean up my front page, and remove a number of the web and blog links that I rarely used. But I do not want to completely delete the links. Instead, I'm going to simplify and clean the links to my front page, showing only the most common links that I regularly go to. The full set of links will be found in the Links page. I'll also probably remove some of the junk, advertising, feeds, and other stuff to be placed on the Links Page--I'm still working on that aspect. I'm definitely getting rid of all the advertising on my blog--I never made any money from Google AdSense, or Amazon.com ads. And I probably never will. So I'm going to simplify the page.

I hope you enjoy this new reboot of Oh Well. I'm still in the process of tweaking my site. If you have any comments, please post them.

Enjoy.