After years of just posting pics on flickr, I figured it was time to start a blog – mainly for my own information, since I can’t remember from one week to the next where we rode the week before!

So, I’m innocently wandering the web, finding out what blog hosts are better, and after reading a ton of info, decided to just open blogs on blogger.com (a google company), Livejournal, and WordPress.

Initially, blogger seemed to be the answer.  I use (and love) other Google products, so blogger’s gotta be good, right?

Well, I signed up, did a basic post, just some general ramblings about the Alaska plans, added a few pictures to see how easy it was, then linked to our Flickr page, and published. 

It looked good, it was easy, I thought I’d found a blog home.

Until a few hours later, when I recieved this message:

    Your blog, at http://falcioni.blogspot.com/, has been identified as a potential spam blog.  For an explanation of what spam blogs are, please see Blogger Help: http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=42577
 
    You will not be able to publish posts to your blog until we review your site and confirm that it is not a spam blog.  To request a review, please fill out the form found here: (removed)
    We will take a look at your blog and unlock it within four business days. Please note that if we do not hear from you within 20 days, we will remove your blog.  If this blog does not belong to you, then you do not have to do anything.  Any other blogs you may have will not be affected.

Wha?????  I have a decent idea of what spam-bots look for, and I re-read my text to see what, if anything, was there that would be easily tagged as spam.  Nothing!  I checked all my image tags, they’re all correct, nothing owned by anyone else, and all linked back to the source. 

I clicked their link to be reviewed by a human – that was two days ago.  Yep, the blog is still locked.

What a way to welcome new members to the community!

So, after that nazi-esque experience, I decided to test drive Livejournal and WordPress.  Livejournal was okay, but basic.  WordPress allows me the greatest ability to modify the look and feel of everything, and I love that!  So buh-bye Blogger, hellllllllo WordPress!