Hosting this blog is expensive. And difficult when you pay for it annually in order to save money.

When I was notified that my annual contract renewal was coming up, I decided to look around and see if it was possible to save some cash. I'm really, really trying to save every cent I can so I can afford to finish my home repairs and finish the work I want to do on my yard.

And so tomorrow I'll be moving things over to a new hosting provider. Hopefully it will all go smoothly and I'll see you on the flip-side.

If not, well... I'm not deleting everything off my current host just yet.

UPDATE: Well, that didn't go well.

Could I have persevered and eventually gotten through the move? Sure. But it ended up being far from easy, even after purchasing the tools that I thought would make it a cake walk. Ultimately the time it would have taken wasn't worth the money saved, so I abandoned ship and stuck with my current hosting company (which has been pretty great, all things considered).

Oh well. I had to try.

Well, here it is. The entry where I recap all the things that happened in the year. Except... such a post only really made sense when I was actually doing lots of stuff (meaning prior to 2020). Not that nothing at all happened in 2023. Plenty of stuff happened. It's just that going through it all month-by-month doesn't really work when the notable stuff just isn't a massive list.

And so...

This was the 20th year of Blogography. Which means I've been blogging for 20 years. That's probably ten years longer than was relevant, but I'm nothing if not persistant.

This was also the 3rd year of Ted Lasso, my favorite television show of all time. They say it's the last year, but holy crap I hope not.

The greatest thing to happen all year? Grocery delivery is finally available in my area! As God is my witness, I will never step foot in the bedlam that is a grocery store again. Except when the delivery says that something I need is "OUT OF STOCK." Which, alas, is more often than I ever thought it would be.

The second greatest thing? The Dutch Bitch, one of my oldest blogging friends, visited me here in Redneckistan!

I had a lot of expenses this year, so I tried to save money wherever I could. The one exception was a seriously useless purchase of a Bad Monkey neon sign. It's pretty great...

I also bought new pair of SONOS Era 300 speakers, but those aren't totally useless. I get really awesome sound while watching movies now! And by "now" I meant nine months after I bought them because SONOS had to issue a fix so that Dolby Atmos would play on them without blowing up my SONOS Arc soundbar.

In the not-so-frivolous purchases department... I had to replace my hot water heater. Because of course I did. It was one of the few things that hasn't gone wrong with my house yet. And then I had to replace my HVAC system, because it turns out there were actually two things that hadn't gone wrong with my house yet.

This year was the first time since 2019 that I saw a live concert. And only the second time since 2019 that I saw a movie in a theater. Oddly enough, these were two activities I didn't miss as much as I thought I would. But it turns out I hate people, so being able to watch movies and concerts at home is the best.

I didn't catch COVID again this year. To my knowledge, I've never had it. Though I'm six-times-vaccinated, so it's possible I did contract it but being vaccinated made it so mild that I didn't notice. I am not doing incredibly risky stuff (except going to a concert and a movie) so maybe that helps too. I don't know.

I managed to finish my kitchen renovation after years of working on it. Still want to replace the floor, but that's something I'll likely never be able to afford. I also managed to get half of my yard renovated. In another couple years maybe I'll have the money to do the rest. But first I have to repair my upstairs shower (that was leaking).

Because I have time now that I'm at home all the time and don't travel 1/3 of the year, I ranked all the Pet Shop Boys songs. You're welcome.

Out of all the things I blogged about in 2023, I think the thing I most want to leave you with is this, which I ran across in August...

Hope you had a good 2023. And will have an even better 2024.

I'm trying to stay optimistic.

"What are you gonna do? Complain? And start a massive public fight with someone extremely famous and get smashed into dust by thousands of fans? No thanks. And that was my Uber, too! I paid money to have one of my jokes stolen by a multi-millionaire! When people hit a certain level of celebrity they start to think the world actually revolves around them and they can just take something if they want and say it's theirs." — hbomberguy, Harris Michael Brewis

Blogography has been going on for a while now. Over twenty years, to be exact. And the vast majority of that time I've been posting daily. As you might guess, having twenty years of content on the internet means that you've got loads of stuff for people to steal and claim as their own.

And it does happen. I regularly get people writing to me saying "Did you know this person is taking your stuff?" Usually it's DaveToons or my photos. Sometimes it's my posts. Twice it's been people stealing entire months of my posts and pretending to be living my life. Including the time a person stole my travel posts, including those talking about blogger meets that I had organized!

Back in my early days, I would write to them and ask them to credit where they got the material or take it down. Eventually that was too much effort so... as long as they weren't making money off my work... I just let it be. If they were making money off my work (when I myself am not), I'd usually send them a bill with a usage fee. They'd never pay it, but odds are they would take it down. A notable exception being a very famous blogger (circa 2007) who stole one of my posts (complete with my photos!). I sent them a bill for $2,500. They replied telling me "no" and said that I should be grateful that they were giving me "exposure"... except they weren't, because my name or a link to my blog was nowhere to be found. Rather than risking all-out war, I let it drop. Which is why when they had a spectacular downfall due to a bit of a scandal years later, I chalked it up to karma.

There is an exception to my kindness, however. If you're using my work to promote hate speech or to promote people who promote hate speech, I threaten legal action. At least I do now. Back in the day I was far more crude. Once some hateful "Christian" organization used one of my photos in an article condemning homosexuality. I was furious. But first I was devastated, because it came the day after a young gay man had taken his own life after relentless bullying. My photo was being used to create an atmosphere so toxic that this young man would rather die than have to live in it. And that caused me to become unhinged. So I changed their hotlink to point to a photo of gay oral sex which had "BLOW ME!" written on it. It was like that for at least two weeks before they noticed, at which time they wrote with their intent to sue. I told them to go fuck themselves, and to stop stealing my shit or I would be the one suing them.

On the other end of the spectrum, I also get people writing to me and requesting permission to use my stuff. So long as they are not making money off of it and it's not promoting hate speech, I always agree. And if they keep the copyright intact, I don't require them to credit me. If they're a charity or an educational organization, I even volunteer to make changes if it would be more helpful to what they're using it for.

And, yes, I do realize that there is likely a ton of my content that's been stolen which I will never know about. Especially by video creators, which brings us to the reason for this post. "hbomberguy" (AKA Harris Michael Brewis) whom I have been following for a while, just released an epic 3 hour and 50 minute video which discusses plagiarism on YouTube. And he has some fantastic examples within. I know that this is an incredibly long video, but it's well worth your time to watch. And I hope you do, because it's a treat...

I am confident that YouTube, as a part of Google, has all the tools they need to go after those who plagerize their content. But they won't be proactive like that because videos make them money with ad revenue, and it's not in their best interest to be proactive like that.

Except on behalf of major movie studios and record labels who have the money to seriously sue them if they don't at least search for stolen songs and clips from movies and television shows.

As for blogs like mine? We're entitled to nothing at all. Well, except plagiarism, obviously.

How typical.

But I'm used to it. And have been for a very long time.

Remember back in the mid-2000's when I was having annual Blogiversary contests and creating cool Blogography swag for prizes and purchase?

Pepperidge Farms remembers.

And so do I every time I open my closet. That's because I kept a number of the T-shirts for myself. Most of them I wear only on special occasions because I'm down to my last shirt. But others? I wear to death. They don't look all that great now because the ink is flaking off, but the shirts themselves were quality and are still in good shape so I am happy to wear them anyway because they're darn comfortable.

There is one of my designs from 2006 that actually looks better the more it ages...

So cool. If I could have found a way to print like this when they were new, I would have absolutely done it!

Interesting to note that at the time I designed the shirt, Bad Monkey looked quite different...

And that was when Lil' Dave still had "mitten hands" as well. In-Between when I designed the shirt for the contest and actually printed it, Bad Monkey had changed to his current, thinner version... and Lil' Dave has actual fingers.

Good times. Good times.

Something I need given that there's no new episode of Ted Lasso tomorrow.