Year in Review: Favorite Posts

Here are my favorite blogan.net posts of 2009. I learned a few things from writing this post.

1. Many of my posts are boring, even to me. Before pressing publish I should make sure my eyes are not glazing over. If so, delete it.
2. The posts I like best are long-form blogging about family, food, and vacations, with a few rants thrown in.
3. I like the many of my “link blog” posts, but they’re not my best posts.
4. I posted a lot of family vacation pictures this past year.

Take a quick glance. Do you have a favorite?

Miscellaneous and rants

• Inauguration Day. Posted back when we still felt hopeful. Awesome animated GIF! (I wish I could take credit for creating it.)
• Donating Blood is Easy, I Donated Blood Today, I Sell My Blood For Stickers And Pins, One Gallon of Blood. In which I brag about donating blood and attempt to convince you to do the same. I gave six pints this year and earned my gallon pin.
• Please, Don’t Use Captcha. An experiment using xtranormal. “The traffic you save may be your own.”
• Books on the History of Science and Technology. Three books I like, and why.
• Tabletop Trebuchet. A project Jamison and I built for his science fair.
• Ha! Ha!, Ho! Ho!, and Heh…. Not sure any explanation is necessary (or possible).
• The Stranded Traveler Scam. I learned something that day, something my mother solved old school and faster.
• Trolling, Trolling, Trolling. No one bit, but I still like it.
• A Calorie-Neutral Lunch. In which I attempt to justify my caffeine habit by walking to Starbucks.
• Hypoallergenic Cats, Part II. I’m a cat lover, what can I say? Add a cute kitten picture and I’m hopeless.
• I Need a New Bike. A nostalgic look at the bikes I’ve owned and what I’d like now.
• Good Guys: Les Schwab Tires and Bike N’ Hike. It’s so easy to complain. It’s fun to praise a couple of deserving businesses instead.
• Bullitt Cargobike. The picture accompanying this post is bike pr0n.
• All I Want For Christmas is a donation to your favorite charity. No, not that one.
• Christmas Blobs. My attempts to duplicate Aaron Hockley’s photo. Success?

Social media

• Birthday Wishes. This was an e-mail I received from a friend on Twitter, so I guess I didn’t even write this post. It still makes me happy, so on my favorites list, it goes.
• MyWhiteSite — Real Life, Real Racist. An April Fools’ Day parody post that pushes the limit. The subject of the parody,?GirlsGuideTo.com nee HerHotSpot.com, still uses Facebook Connect to discriminate against males, in violation of Facebook’s terms of service.
• Dear Facebook and Friends, Facebook, We Have a Problem and a Solution Exists, and Facebook, Pretty Please. If you hate those stupid quizzes on Facebook half as much as I do, these will make sense to you.
• Facebook to Sell Targeted Ads in Your News Stream. Paranoid ranting at its best. Checking… checking… Yup, there’s a ;-) lurking in the footnote.
• My Social Media New Year’s Resolutions. Executive summary: less.

Recipes

• Vegetarian Chili. A recipe we’ve enjoyed many times. We enjoyed some last week.
• Gazpacho. Another favorite summertime recipe.
• Pasta Salad. A great picnic food recipe. I’ll try not to notice the snow outside my window while I type this.
• Creamy Red Potato Salad. I’m hungry just thinking about it (and missing summer picnics).
• Vegan Tomato Basil Bisque. It’s not every recipe that mentions Charles’ Gas Law.
• Update: Healthy veggie soup, or is it stew? Okay, I didn’t write this, and it’s not even on my blog, but this soup/stew is wonderful and I want to be able to find it in the future.

Family pictures

Warning: These posts are unlikely to be interesting to outside my family.

• Walla Walla Balloons. Yeah, everyone has hot air balloon pictures. I like mine.
• Congratulations, Willy! Willy graduated from WWU.
• Fathers’ Day. Grandma and Grandpa visit the Northwest.
• Hillsboro Fourth of July Parade. A Logan family tradition.
• Sailboat Dock at BLYC. Big Lake, a dock, and a sailboat. Heaven.
• Happy Birthday, Heather! Does anyone else still make animated GIFs instead of movies?
• Sabbath Walk. I think I’d forget all these good times if I didn’t blog them.
• Oregon Coast Vacation. Another fun family trip.
• Mt. Rainier Camping Trip. More fun, more family. And I finally realize how to spell Mt. Rainier’s spelling.
• Afternoon Trip to Sunset Beach. Actually, more than just an afternoon. We arrive as the tide was coming in.
• Family Fun at the Corn Maze. Success!
• Off to Walla Walla. Delivery Ashley and her stuff to Walla Walla.
• All Moved In. Ashley and Heather survey the scene from their balcony.
• Happy Birthday, Jamison! Another animated GIF.
• Christmas 2009. Visiting Santa at Pioneer Place.
• Our Anniversary Celebration. Our kids treat Suzi and me to a Chez Logan dinner.

I didn’t use a scientific method to create this list. These are simply the posts I like best. Through some quirk of Google, “Where in the World is North Korea?” is my post with the most page views. Although it’s a few years old, it remains the most hit post each and every day. Does that make it my best post ever? I hope not. My post, “Craigslist Buyer Scam E-mail” has the most comments. I don’t think it’s one of my best posts, either. That’s why I went with the unscientific “what I like best” method. :-)