This is a vacation?

K -- I haven't been really absent here over the last month, but I've hardly been blogging in an all-out frenzy in the last 30 days. And, given circumstances at work, I'm not likely to be back here "full time" until about Turkey Day. So the Sidekicks have re-upped and they'll be manning the blog with the requisite "best of me" posts on Wednesday because, as you know, I can't hear you because of the sound of how awesome I am. That graphic kills me -- I need that poster for my office.

Coupla things on my mind this morning that I wanted to blog. The first is an e-mail I got from CafePress about the Pawn Shop -- they think the name of my shop isn't very creative and doesn't cause people to find my shop when using search engines. In all seriousness, they want me to rename it something like the t-shirt and mug shop in which you can buy TeamPyro gear and all kind of "homeboy" apparel, not to mention t-shirts which make fun of trends in American Christianity and Christian t-shirts in general. That seems a little wordy, and it also seems less like a joke when you put it that way. I think they hate me because I've been a "Top Shop" two months in a row right now, and all of it has been on the backs of the Protestant heroes of the faith.

The other thing I wanted to blog about was Stand to Reason -- Greg Koukl's podcast/website/blog. You know -- I love those guys. I was listening to an old STR podcast with John Mark Reynolds, and he was talking with Koukl about the GodBlogCon. He was promoting it, and ironically it happened last weekend in California.

I'm posting that here because, as I look at the people being featured at GodBlogCon, I see a lot of "blog" and a lot of "con", but no so much "God". Here is the list of speakers.

There are some good ones there -- LaShawn Barber, Joe Carter, um, Mark D. Roberts, ... um, did I mention Joe Carter? People who are actually blogging about God (the Christian God -- Jesus, Son of Man, Lion of Judah, King of Kings; you may have heard about him at this blog). But it makes me a little punchy that we list political activists who are (allegedly) Christian in the blog ranks, and that somehow Hugh Hewitt gets to be a "God Blogger", or that (coff coff) Jimmy Akin is a featured guest at this little shin-dig.

You know -- it's not about his Catholicism, either. It's about his luke-warm ability to read others' works and write about them. This is a guy who's been an (allegedly) professional apologist for more than a decade -- and he still can't read something written contra his views without either bias or ignorance creeping in.

There are an army of far better bloggers than these people who have leveraged their pre-existing day jobs into blog readership. I mean, how much contemplation did it take to figure out that the key people at the Family Research council ought to be blogging to "get the word out" on thier social agenda? Most of the rest of these people -- I get more hits than them in any average week, and my technorati rank is stellar compared to them. When you compare them to TeamPyro, fuggedaboudit.

If we want to have a GodBlogCon, let's have one right here -- I'll start later this week, and I'll explain to you how this thing works and how to improve your blog, and we can even have breakout sessions in the meta. And you know what? I'll do it for free, and you won't have to leave your kitchen or office or whatever.

I am also upgrading (read: making simple so IE6 readers can view all the stuff) the blog template. It makes me sick that the template is taking a beating in IE, but I knew eventually Microsoft would not be a real competitor in the browser marketplace. They're not tenacious enough. Until then, please do yourself a favor and get Firefox, and you'll see that I'm not kidding -- it renders better. See the sidebar to the right (or to the botton in IE) for details.

Last thing: Lunch with the Philster today. I may call him "Hoss" just to see how he takes it.

Back to the sidekicks.