Hope you enjoy my new direction

When I first started this blog, I'd recently had a birthday and had made it a goal to figure out where I was spiritually by my next birthday. That next birthday has come and gone, and I've come across some interesting developments. I still have a lot of questions about things, but I've found a great community that supports me in my search, which may be more important than any conclusions I reach (I'll expand on this in a future post).

While I'll continue to post my thoughts on these matters, I'm not inspired to write about religious or spiritual topics as frequently as before. So I'd like to expand the scope of this little blog and talk more about other aspects of my life. This will probably include a lot about technology and my experiences in graduate school. I'll still post spiritually-themed articles occasionally; they just won't be the main focus anymore.

In the next day or two, I'll post something about the official beginning of my second attempt at graduate school (including an explanation of why it's my second attempt). Even at a seemingly inconsequential event like a department orientation, important lessons can reveal themselves. Stay tuned!

That's how I roll

This blog has been added to the blogrolls of:

• Friendly Atheist
• The Out Campaign

Yes, I realize that I didn't do anything special to merit this, but every bit helps! Thanks, guys!

Coming soon: why is this atheist blog different from all other atheist blogs?

We've reached a milestone

Apparently this blog is now officially spam-worthy. Not only that, it was spammed in a foreign language (Chinese characters, I think). Since this blog is not a democracy, I have already deleted the offending comment. If you want to advertise here, pay Google like everyone else.

I'm not going to post a long, impassioned plea for spam-free comments, since I imagine there is almost no overlap between the people likely to spam this blog and the people who actually read it. I'll just say I hope it doesn't get to the point where I have to start moderating the comments.

Actually, I'm more amused than anything. I can't imagine that this site gets enough traffic to drive a lot of revenue for the offending sites. Also, I assume that all you readers are far too intelligent to click on that sort of thing, yes? ;-)

An announcement

I had an epiphany the other day. No, I haven't had a vision from Ganesha (although, as visions from deities go, I could do worse--Ganesha's adorable!), but an important realization, nonetheless.

On my Facebook profile, my observations about everyday life seem to get more of a response than when I try to be profound. So I'm going to widen the scope and lighten the tone of this blog. It occurred to me that people who talk almost exclusively about their religion (or lack of it) tend to be incredibly dull. My attempts at philosophical ramblings have been good practice for me, but perhaps not as interesting for the reader.

I'll still talk about religious and philosophical issues, but I hope to do it in a more lighthearted manner, and in the context of other topics. For example, I'll post some stuff about freethought and dating soon, possibly even later today. After all, what good is a religion or philosophy if it has no applications to your everyday life?