Well, I’m back

I’m back, baby.

After more than seven months in the blogospheric wilderness, living off social-media crumbs (primarily FriendFeed and Facebook) and resisting the everpresent Call of the Blog, I’ve decided to get back in the saddle (or off the wagon, depending on how you look at it). I’ve accomplished what I wanted to accomplish by taking a break, and now it’s time for a fresh start. So here I am. (I’m guessing many of you didn’t think I’d stay away this long, eh?)

I’ve named this new blog after my old middle-school and high-school newspaper, The Living Room Times — and I’m launching it on the 10th anniversary of the final issue of its namesake. (Holy cow. That means it’s been ten years since I graduated high school. Wow.) I’ll have more to say about that later this morning.

I’ll also have more to say about the structure and features of the new blog, its odd subtitle, my plans for it, and so forth. But, for now, just a couple of quick points:

• This blog is best viewed in Firefox or Safari. There are some CSS layout problems in Internet Explorer, which I intend to fix eventually if possible, but for now, I’d recommend using a different browser.

• Here are the blog rules. The big change from my previous blogs is that I’m requiring commenters to register. This is an anti-spam and anti-troll measure, which I hope won’t have too much of a chilling effect on the 99% of you whose commentary I welcome with open arms.

You can register with a pseudonym if you like, just so long as you provide a valid e-mail address (which won’t be made public). Or you can log in using your existing Facebook, Google, OpenID, Twitter, AOL or Yahoo account.

Please let me know if you have any technical difficulties registering or logging in, or any other problems with the new site. I’m sure there will be a few kinks to work out in these initial days. You can e-mail me at irishtrojan [at] gmail.com.

Meanwhile, whether logged in or not, for the next little while, you can “comment” on this post — and on the launch of this blog — using the “live chat” window below, which was also present on the countdown page that I had on my homepage for the last 24 hours. I’m going to shut down the chat window before I go to bed, though.

Anyway, welcome, and stay tuned for more introductory posts and other new blog content throughout the day.

P.S. Oh, and for those watching the relaunch live, I promised fireworks, so here you go…

Pay no attention to the “2008,” or the people speaking Chinese 🙂