Yes, the title of this post is correct. Not “who” but “what” taught me English.

I was born and raised in the USA, and learned American English. With its faults and easy abuse of the mother tongue, American English is easy to speak when you learn it as a native, but difficult to spell some words or worse, write with proper grammar.

It makes me cringe sometimes to read other blogs where writers do not proofread their work, and post blog articles that are riddled with misspellings and have many grammatical errors. Yes, then, I admit, I am a stickler for proper written English.

So if it were not “who,” then what taught me English?
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I hate to have to do this, but I knew it would happen sometime. I am taking a one-week break from posting on this blog.

Why?
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I have set up the comment section on this blog to be run through a rigorous spam filter, and if they pass that, then force all comments to go into moderation. That means before they appear, I see them first and evaluate whether to post them.

I do that mostly for your protection. Say what?
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You may have noticed that I updated the photo banner at the top of this blog. Over the years, I have had several different banners. What you see now…
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Someone sent me a message through this blog last week to give me his perspective on this blog. Apparently he has been reading my blog for years, but only now took some time to write to me. He said:
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This message was found in my spam folder for attempted comments on this blog:

naturally like your web site but you have to check the spelling on several of your posts. Several of them are rife with spelling issues and I find it very bothersome to tell the truth.

The message went on with some more babble that did not make any sense, and closed with the usual embedded link to some nefarious website that would probably introduce malware if I clicked on it or allowed it to be posted. No worries, I didn’t. (That is one reason why I never accept comments that have embedded links. The only links you see on this website are links that I have personally checked out and know that they’re safe!)

I find this spam comment hilarious and roared with laughter when I read it, before deleting it permanently.

I pride myself in my spelling and grammar. I sometimes spot a typo after one of my posts has gone live, and go back in and edit it. I can’t stand the reflection that poor spelling, grammar, and typographical errors on blogs make upon the author. Poor grammar and spelling indicates the author is poorly educated or just sloppy — he does not proofread his work.

Remember, the world can see your writing — be proud of it and proof your writing! I read some other blogs regularly and shake my head when I see frequent typos and misspellings. (You know who you are.)

Anyway, join me in a bit of Monday humor — some silly spammer claiming that I have frequent spelling errors. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

Life is short: write well — the details of quality writing reflects on the author.

This blog is on hold while I am away… up bear… that is, near da ‘Burgh. I am driving my mother-in-law and spouse “up bear” to bring the MIL back to her home after a week’s visit with us which included a lot of eating, watching too much television, eating, and not much else….

My mother-in-law does not have internet service at her home. I do not have a smartphone or any mobile device that would get me an internet connection while I am at the mother-in-law’s house, and I’m not a coffee-swilling guppie who hangs out at coffee shops that provide free wifi, so I will be gleefully untethered.

Only downfall to not having an internet connection while I’m gone is that this blog will have to go “on hold” until I get back. Unfortunately, there is some failure with WordPress which no longer will post blog posts that are scheduled for future posting. Each morning, I have been reading “missed schedule” on future-scheduled posts and I have no idea why that is happening. I’ll figure it out sometime. Meanwhile, since I cannot have posts appear automatically while I am away, the blog will just have to wait until I return home.

Be safe, be well, and remember…

Life is short: enjoy being untethered to the Internet!

There are several blogging platforms out there — the most frequently used and popular is Blogger, owned by Google. I blogged on Blogger for 4-1/2 years until they changed the Graphic User Interface (GUI) — the web-based platform from which a blog author manages his blog and writes his posts. In April, 2012, the GUI changed to be much more difficult to use and totally non-intuitive.

I had been thinking about switching my blog to its own domain — what some people erroneously call a website — for a while before that, but it was easy and comfortable to remain with Blogger which was working fine until “they” changed it. I like it so much when “they” make changes that “they” think are better. Not.

Anyway, those changes to Blogger’s GUI were the tipping point for me to buy the domain bootedmanblog.com, put it on a web host, install WordPress, and start blogging there. I reviewed various blog engines or platforms that would allow me to write and create my blog and decided to use WordPress. How has it been going? What have I learned?
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