An Eclectic Mind

I’m wondering what brings you here.

When I spun off the computer-specific content from my original site to the Maria’s Guides blog-based site, a bunch of regular blog readers were spun off with it. Those are people who came to visit my site specifically to learn more about using their computers and software.

The people that remain here are obviously interested in other topics. The question is, which ones?

So I’ve created a new poll to query visitors. I hope you’ll take a moment to let me know what you like to read about here. I’ll do my best to deliver the content people want to read about, so having your say is a good way to ensure that I keep writing what you want to read about.

Here’s the poll. It’ll also be in the rightmost sidebar, at least for a while.

Last month’s results, this month’s poll.

Last month, I put up a poll to get your opinions on the U.S. presidential candidates. Here are the results:

I watched the results change from day to day as people voted. Clinton started out in the lead, then Obama took a strong lead. That lead melted somewhat to get to the March 6 results. Similarly, McCain and Huckabee took turns leading the Republican race (although neither had more votes than the top Democrat at any time). I admit the Huckabee results surprised me. I really didn’t think he had such a following, especially with the kinds of people who might read this blog.

Earlier this week, the deck was shuffled slightly when Huckabee dropped out and McCain cinched the Republican nomination — well, with delegate votes, anyway. I decided to refresh the poll accordingly. Here it is, for your voting pleasure.

Please don’t get POed because I took Ron Paul and Mike Gravel off the poll. I did it for practical reasons. Neither of them will get the Republican nomination, so neither of them are seriously in the running.

As for Ralph Nader — get real. This guy runs every four years and the only thing he manages to do is take votes away from the Democrats. He didn’t even get 1% of the popular vote the last time around. GlassBooth.org doesn’t list him; I can’t see why I should. If you feel that strongly for him, choose Someone Else in the poll.

Many people have been asking me who I prefer. It’s a tossup between Clinton and Obama. (I can’t, in good conscience, vote to put a 70+ year-old-republican in the White House; we really do need a change.) If you’d like to debate this, I created a post just for commentary: 2008 Presidential Election: State Your Case.

Meanwhile, cast your simple vote here. And if you do choose Someone Else, take a moment to let us know who (and possibly why) in the Comments for this post.

And yes, you can expect this poll to be revised when the Democrats finally choose a final candidate.

February 12, 2008 Poll.

May as well conduct our own poll here. There are currently 6 official candidates. Tell us which one you’d vote for if the election were held today.

I’ll release a new poll each time a candidate drops out or is added, so if you vote on this poll and then see that you can vote again one day in the future, it’s likely that I’ve released a new poll on this topic.

As usual, you can use the Comments link or form for this post to share your comments with other readers. No bashing anyone, please! Let’s keep it civil.

Share your thoughts on this poll.

It’s that time of year again: time to think about the things you can do next year to make your life a little better. In other words: time to make a New Year’s resolution.

Have you made one? Please take this poll.

I put “Lose weight” as the top item on the poll because that’s the resolution made my most people in the U.S. Personally, I’ve made it every year for the past three years. But my weight continues to climb. The way I see it, I still “owe” that resolution to myself.

This year, I’ve also decided to stop using the word fuck as an adjective. While it might seem surprising to you that a “lady” would use a word like that in conversation, you need to understand that where I’m originally from — the New York metropolitan area — it isn’t that unusual. That doesn’t mean it’s “ladylike.” It’s not. And that’s why I’m going to stop using it. Not only is it unladylike (which really doesn’t bother me in the least), but it’s crude and makes the speaker sound uneducated.

I’m also thinking about going off all alcohol for a year. Wow. That would be a tall order indeed. I really enjoy a nice glass of wine with dinner. But since I don’t like to put an unfinished bottle away, that usually means a half a bottle at dinner. Since I don’t drink cheap wine, this can get expensive. The martinis, which I enjoy a few times a week, would have to go, too. This would seriously impact my olive consumption. But I’m interested in seeing if getting off alcohol completely would (1) make me feel better mentally and physically and (2) help me lose weight. So it would be an experiment. I think I’ll try it for at least a month. That should be enough to show me if there are tangible benefits other than to my bank account.

What about you? What can you add about New Year’s resolutions? Use the Comments link or form below to share your thoughts.

A poll for the holiday season.

As the holidays draw near, I thought I’d add a new poll to the site.

If you have any comments, don’t hesitate to use the Comments link or form below to add them.