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HELP! I need a fake last name. Here’s the deal: I don’t use my last name on my blog, which isn’t so unusual. Most bloggers do prefer to keep their last names private. But sometimes it does get frustrating not having a last name to post. E-mail is another good example. For 2 years, I had my e-mail set-up to show messages from “Nathan”. I shudder to think how many people must have thought it was spam when they saw a one worded name in their Inbox. I finally changed it to “Nathan Exposed”, which sounds just as spammy. So I need a name. A fake name. And I’m terrible with fake names. How about Nathan Richards? It’s a dirty joke. “Dick” is a short name for “Richard”, so I could be like Nathan Dicks, only Nathan Richards so it’s not so obvious. No? Okay, how about something European or exotic? How about a strong German last name? I have ancestors from Germany. Nathan Brandt means “fire”. Nathan Faust means “fist”, heh. Freud means “joy”. Nathan Freud, I like that. Nathan Nussbaum means “nut tree”. Again, I like that. It has a nice ring to it. Nathan Lang? Lang means “long” in German, and has just enough similarity to sound like Nathan Lane. I guess I could name myself after my first dog, Nathan Bouncer. Yes, my first dog’s name was Bouncer. I don’t remember why. Any ideas?
I finally started my “Nathan Exposed” book and I’m 15 pages into it. Filling the pages is only half the battle. I’m going to pursue the self-publishing route, which means I also have to design it myself and organize it. That’s a job in itself. I like it so far. But I wrote the pages in plain text without any font formatting because I thought it would be easier to stylize in the printed copy. But when I imported it into my page layout program, there were all types of wild characters. Argh! Anyway, I’ll get the hang of it. Most of you don’t know this, but the whole concept of “Nathan Exposed” started as a book almost 3 years ago. I never intended to have a blog, and didn’t even know what one was until mid-2005. But blogging on a daily basis has really helped me be a better story teller. Well, at least I hope I’m good at it. We will see! I like the self-publishing route because you don’t need an agent or any contracts with big publishers. You just upload the file, have it printed and bound, and it’s yours to sell. The cost is a little high. It’s going to be $7 per book for printing alone. I’ll have to mark the price up to $10 just to make a 30% profit. I’m also going to offer an e-book version at a reduced price, and I will make full profit since there are no printing costs. I know a lot about that side of the market, so I will be able to profit that way, and it’s a growing audience. It’s not even done yet and I already have it all planned out. Actually I’ve known this for years and haven’t wavered from my initial plans. It’s just a matter of finishing the book… oh, and it has to be good, of course.
This meme has been making the rounds and my friend T.J. recently posted it. You simply take a picture of your computer’s desktop and post it. I specifically held out because I knew the newest version of Apple’s operating system, Leopard, was coming out today. At 8:30 this morning, the FedEx guy dropped mine off and I installed it immediately. It’s kind of fun because it doesn’t officially come out until tonight at 6PM, so I felt like one of the early birds. So this is my desktop. Yeah, I know the dock is a mess. This is my personal account. I have a work one that I keep separate, but it has personal info on it so I thought I’d share this instead.
Leopard is a pretty solid release, as I’d expect from Apple. I did have a panic attack when I first upgraded, because my whole system slowed down to a snail’s pace. I put it to sleep and went out for lunch, then came back and it’s just fine. Perhaps it needed a rest after the big changes it had endured. It has a ton of gloss and drop shadows, which can be a bit rough on your average computer. They looked faster on Apple’s demo, which probably had a truckload of RAM installed. But all in all, it’s fast and even more useful than Tiger was. It’s another homerun from Apple. And back to the point of this post, here’s my desktop.
When I subscribe to your blog through RSS, it means I like you. You said something that I connected with, and now I want to hear more. I want to read about your opinions, your feelings, your life. I want to take time out of my day to learn more about yours. It’s the ultimate compliment to add someone’s blog to your RSS reader because it means you care, even though you’re not obligated to. So please explain to me why some bloggers find it amusing to limit their RSS feeds to the first few sentences of a post, expecting their subscribers to click over to the blog to get the full article. That’s just rude. I think that the people who try to do this to their readers might as well just remove the RSS feature completely. I see no point in trying to tease readers into reading a post by clicking over to your website. It tests my patience. I’m already reading the post, you have my attention. Don’t make me click over to your website, thus losing my train of thought and having to find my place in the article again. If I wanted to read that way, I would have went to your site manually, rather than opening it via RSS. I immediately unsubscribe from all blogs that do this. Nobody likes a cock tease. If you’re going to write, make it available for people to read any way they choose. Thank you.
This video is about as exciting as oatmeal, but I wanted to provide a “Welcome” video for the people who read my blog. In fact, I wish everybody provided a video like this, so maybe I’ll start a new trend on blogs. The video below is just a very brief run-down of who I am. Oh, and I lied about my age. I’m actually 25. But I’ll be 26 in a month, so I figured I should say that I’m 26 so this video isn’t immediately outdated.
Borrowed from Rey: Taken a picture completely naked? Made out with someone on your top 8 on MySpace? Danced in front of your mirror naked? Told a lie? Had feelings for someone who didn’t have them back? Been arrested? Made out with someone of the same sex?
Here are the questions and answers from the original post: 1.) When I was younger, I told girls from other schools that I had a twin brother so I could get away with cheating on them. TRUE! I’m terrible, I know. When it came to dating girls, I wasn’t very faithful at all. Sorry, ladies. But by cheating, it was really more of kissing and going on dates. I’ve never had penetrative sex with a female. 2.) When I was on the swim team, I won 1st place in three different competitions. FALSE! I do know how to swim, but I’ve never competed. Perhaps it would be fun to race sometime. Anyone up to the challenge? 3.) I was an extra in the baseball movie “A League of Their Own.” TRUE! 80% of you thought this was a lie. The answer was even buried in the archives. In a post from July 2006, I mentioned that I had seen Madonna in person when she was filming it. It was in the summer of 1991, in Evansville, Indiana. I lived in Illinois, and my parents took me over there so we could be extras in the stands. They liked us, so they moved us onto the set. It was 100 degrees and we were dressed up (people didn’t wear casual clothes to baseball games in the 1940’s). It was soooo hot, and I was an impatient 9-year-old. I really made Penny Marshall mad because I was running around the aisles, causing ruckus. There was one scene where she was doing a close up pan of the crowd and we were the focus. But I wasn’t being very cooperative and she tried to get me to sit still. Hey, whaddya expect from a hot, tired kid? I also started a small riot when Madonna was trying to go for a private bike ride and I started yelling at her, which other people heard and all started chasing her. She gave me a dirty look that I’ve never forgotten. Anyway, my bad behavior on the set got us cut from the film. I’ve often watched it to see if I could spot us in the background, but there are hundreds of different shots and it was filmed with new extras every day. I’ve never been able to pinpoint us, but we have to be there somewhere. Taken from Rey… Two of these statements are true, and one is false. Can you guess which is a lie? 1.) When I was younger, I told girls from other schools that I had a twin brother so I could get away with cheating on them. 2.) When I was on the swim team, I won 1st place in three different competitions. 3.) I was an extra in the baseball movie “A League of Their Own.”
- Waking up to love notes that Rodney e-mails from work. - Talking to a good friend on the phone for hours. - Howard’s weekly roundups. - Accidentally stumbling across a re-run of The Golden Girls. - Nibbling on kitty ears. - The first bowl of soup I eat in the fall. - Counting down the days until Leopard pounces. - A clean desk without anything on it. - Reese’s milk chocolate covered peanut butter Easter eggs. - Looking up at the stars when I walk Petey at night. - Writing really girly posts like this one.
I always see buttons on blogs to subscribe to their RSS feed. But up until last night, I didn’t have one posted on my own blog. Why? Well, I figured if people wanted to subscribe, they would already know how. Just for the sake of it, I added a tiny icon at the top of my blog, which people could click to subscribe. To my surprise, the number of subscribers to my blog’s RSS feed doubled in less than a day! So if you didn’t know, my blog does offer a subscription service, which you can use to read it in your program of choice. Here’s the direct link: http://feeds.feedburner.com/NathanExposed And for all you bloggers out there who don’t have a subscribe icon, go ahead and give it a try. You’ll be surprised with the results!  ©2005-2008 Nathan Exposed . All Rights Reserved Meet the Cast
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