Square Galaxy

It took me quite a while to decide what to call this new blog of mine. I kind of felt like I was playing a game of “Blog Name Survivor.” Here are some of the loosers, and why they were voted off the island:

http://0.02dollars.com - This was suppose to be a reference to “my two cents” but it didn’t catch on with the people I asked about it.

Frenzied Fruit - A few people thought it was catchy, but in the end it was better as a name for a smoothie than for a blog.

Organic Words - This one didn’t catch on very well.

Better if used by - There were too many other variations of this phrase: best if used by, better when used by… I felt that this name would be better if used by someone else. It also just didn’t look very good typographically.

Ladder of Jacob - I don’t even own a ladder, why would I name my blog after one? In the end, it just didn’t feel like something I wanted to name my blog.

Solar Blueberry - I loved this name, but it didn’t stick with other people.

Questions are Welcome - Too long!

Feet ahead of me - This one escaped from me.

Black Hole Escape - I really liked this one, but it escaped from the island before it could win. I personally didn’t like the two e characters in a row. I also think it was too nerdy for a lot of people.

Smashed Sunshine - It sounded too morbid, drug related, or otherwise kind of weird to be used. Although it was a cool name, it didn’t have any special significance to me.

See Reverse Side - This would have been good for a political blog, but it didn’t have enough jazz to win.

Green Paper Pad - I really liked the reference to a green pad of engineering paper, but in the end, it sounded too environmental.

Most of these names are avaailable as a .COM domain name. If you want to use one of these names for your own blog name or website name, feel free. I would appreciate a note so I can feel good about being inspirational.

From the national archives exhibit, “Powers of Persuasion,” comes this government publication to promote car-pooling.  

Source: archives.gov

Last spring I set a goal to review all the most recent LDS general conference talks before the October conferece, which is scheduled to occur this weekend. Yesterday, I finished that goal.

I probably would not have been successful with out a site I created called ScriptureCast.net. This site allows anyone to create a custom-rate podcast of general conference. Last April, I created a ScriptureCast podcast which would feed out general conference talks at just the right rate so I would finish by the end of September.

For those who are not familiar with what a podcast is, you should educate yourself by reading “What is Podcasting? ” over on the LDS Media Talk blog. Be sure to watch the short three minute video, Podcasting in Plain English, posted there, but also available on YouTube.

I subscribe to my ScriptureCast podcast through Google Reader. Every few days, a new general conference talk comes up in my unread list, along with an embedded audio player. When I have time, I listen to the talk right from Google Reader.

Because this has been so successful for me personally, I plan to add the October conference to ScriptureCast.net, just as soon as the individual talk audio files and texts are available on the LDS.org website.

I’ve taken all my old blogs and have migrated them to a new blog here at SquareGalaxy.com. It is still a work in progress, and I haven’t yet forwarded all my old pages yet, but all the old posts are moved and recategorized, and there will be no more posts to the old blogs.

I got a letter in the mail which read:

Your student loans serviced by UHEAA have been paid in full… Congratulations on paying off your student loans.

I actually paid it off a couple of months ago, I’m not sure why it took them so long to figure it out. It always feels good to be debt free.