The Colonel T Show

I think I’m going to start a new blog over on Square Space. Something funky fresh, and fresh to the funk. I’ll keep you posted. BLOG POSTED. HAH!

Last time on The Colonel T Show, I joined Facebook.

Did you join me there? If so, you’ve enjoyed three solid months of frivolous status updates and photos of many of my children. Tonight, for no reason, I asked myself: “Why did I embrace Facebook and abandon my blog?” I’ve arrived at two possibilities:

1. Facebook friends have no choice but to read my updates. A captive audience in every sense of the word.
2. Posting status updates limited to 200 characters or less is fast and requires virtually no effort. That describes my general approach to life, so it suits me.
3. Picture posting is ridiculously easy.

For a time, I engaged my old pal, fellow blogger and television superstar Scott Sabol, in a friend count battle. That was fun for a few days, but due to his irresistable charm and outstanding grammar, he has now eclipsed me by a factor of 5. Kudos to him. Really. I mean it.

So I’m hooked on Facebook. I’m not ashamed. It’s pretty great. Nevertheless, The Colonel T Show (and Colonel T.com, and Colonel T vs. The World Crime League before it) is my first, best home, and it deserves better than to languish without an update for three months. So I apologize, not only to my readers (who really should be following me on Facebook) but to my dear friend, this website, whom I left all alone for three months on the cold, dark, Internet.

So, to that effect, this week I’m going to tell you about my new podcast, my upcoming children’s album, and the upcoming April 20-ish birth of my son.

Go ahead! Try to decipher it! You can do it! Yes, you can!

Here’s what I’ve abandoned in the last few weeks:

• My Job
• This Blog
• This Blog’s Logo
• Fitness
• Reading
• Gaming
• My Laptop
• My BlackBerry
• Proper Sinus Function

In short — everything’s great!

Actually, I start a new job on Monday, which is the cause for all the abandonment. I had to turn in my Thinkpad, and my new laptop won’t arrive from Dell until the end of the month. Soooooo…no blogging until then. I’m going off the grid. I’m mysterious!

Here’s a Maddy shot and Molly shot, to keep you going until the next update. Cheers until then!

Here’s the short version, because Lost is recording and I’m dying to watch it: Earlier today I decided to abandon Movable Type as my blogging software and transfer everything over to WordPress. Movable Type 4 is hideously complicated, and modifying even the slightest formatting (for example, the font size) was stressful and traumatic.

WordPress is, how do I put this, so much more logical and user-friendly that I’m genuinely angry with myself for not looking into it sooner. The server-side installation took 10 minutes, max. The transfer of the old posts took, no joke, 10 seconds.

There’s much more formatting to be done, but now instead of dreading the work, I’m really looking forward to it.

Off to Lost. I hope it’s as awesome as WordPress. I bet Ben Linus invented WordPress.

…but we’re not there yet. Stop panicking!

It’s reconstruction time! Again!

I’ll let you know when it looks the way it’s supposed to look.

Still recovering, folks, from the New York trip. I hope to have the first of several stories posted sometime tomorrow. In the meantime, please enjoy this charming clip of actor Bruce Boxleitner and wife Melissa Gilbert guesting on Howie Mandel’s short-lived 1998 talk show. The first time I watched it, I dislocated both my shoulders cheering uncontrollably.

Let me be clear: Madeline is going to be just fine.

In the meantime, however…

After two misdiagnoses (a “cold” on Thursday and “bacterial pneumonia” on Saturday), on Sunday a blood test revealed Maddy has contracted RSV, or Respiratory Syncytial Virus. It’s essentially a viral pneumonia, which means there’s no magic pill. Antibiotics are useless against a virus. Only time and professional care will treat this.

A night in the pediatrics ward of one Chicago hospital resulted in no positive progress, and the following morning our doctor recommended we transfer to the Intensive Care Unit of another hospital, where the three of us have been living since Monday morning. Maddy’s twin sister Molly is staying with grandparents, and thankfully, shows no signs of the illness.

Maddy’s on oxygen (two little tubes just inside her nostrils), an IV, and has been receiving nebulizer treatments. She’s having a little trouble breathing, specifically processing pure oxygen. Getting her off the oxygen tubes is the first step in getting her out of the ICU.

She showed some progress today — for the first time she asked for food (apple sauce) and she laughed at some of my hilarious comedy. She’s got a long way to go (recovery from RSV can take as long as two weeks) but seeing her smile again has brought us new energy.

I’ve set up a Twitter site if you’re interested in following her recovery. Her mother and I are updating it regularly. I won’t be updating this site for a while (surprised?) so make sure you bookmark that one.

Thanks for all of your thoughts, prayer, cards, and letters.

Maddy’s Twitter Site: http://twitter.com/maddyrose

Information about RSV: http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvrd/revb/respiratory/rsvfeat.htm

A few of you have emailed that your recent comments haven’t been posted to the site, and today I found out why. Nearly EVERY comment has been going directly into the “Junk Comments” folder — including MY OWN comments.

(Granted, most of what I write is junk, but really, that’s for me to decide, isn’t it?)

Apparently spambots find my subject matter irresistible. I receive close to 200 junk comments a day, and despite endless tweaking, the filter isn’t smart enough to separate the occasional wheat from the voluminous chaff.

This leads me to something of a drastic measure, a procedure that I have dreaded implementing, but short of changing blogging software it’s about the only option I have left.

When you next go to comment, you’ll be asked to register. The process takes all but thirty seconds, and you only have to do it one time. Make sure you click the “Keep Me Logged In” checkbox and you won’t even have to log in every time; the whole thing will basically work the way it did before. 30 seconds of registration pain will save me hundreds of hours of maintenance over time. I’m totally over-exaggerating, but I crave sympathy and pity.

If you have any problems, questions, or suggestions, email me at timspaeth@gmail.com.

Die spambots, die!