Muddled Ramblings and Half-Baked Ideas will soon have its 10,000th comment.

That’s a big deal. All those comments represent a huge amount of content and, well, intelligence that this little media empire would not have had otherwise. The comments are the second layer, the extra reward for those who choose to dig a little deeper.

How should we reward comment 10,000? Certainly it should not go unmarked. My first thought is to offer the same prize I did in a previous contest: the winner provides the opening sentence and I write a silly story based on that. It was a fun prize, especially since Bob (Bill Bob’s brother’s brother) came up with an excellent opening that resulted in Elephants of Doom.

Is there a better prize? Leave your ideas in the comments!

Well, as you might guess by the title of this episode, there is a nascent tradition here at MR&HBI — Beer Blogging Thursday. Rather than go straight home from work, I take a detour for a couple of hours to a local sports bar and knock out a couple of episodes. I’m shooting for a new installment of serial fiction every other week, along with the usual blather.

At this very moment, I’m taking a little break from work and thinking about what I’ll be producing this evening. Two short book reviews, for sure (one a wrap-up of my thoughts on that damn epic I mentioned previously, the other a review of a novel by an undisputed master). I’ll take some time out after those to play with Allison a bit, but unless a miracle happens you won’t see the fruits of that labor until next week. Later tonight there might be some commentary on hockey, as well. Who knows?

I know there were several other things I had planned to tackle today, but at the moment I can’t think of them. I probably won’t publish all my output today, but instead spread it out over a few days.

One thing for sure: the site loads a hell of a lot faster now, and there are still things I can do to make it better yet. Average load time is about 10% of what it was before. That is unbelievably huge.

I’ll be posting a pretty darn geeky episode once I get the last issues ironed out, for people looking for answers to the same questions I had. In the meantime:

I’d link to the song I just quoted (and tell you who wrote it), but that will have to wait.

Of course most of you have already passed the fateful line (and naturally those familiar with the Muddled Calendar have already invoked the magic incantation), but if you haven’t actually said anything yet today, it’s not too late! With me:

Elevator! Ocelot! Rutabaga!

I’ll have more Road Trip Day stories tomorrow! Have a great year, everyone!

To get things right I need to see what it looks like when someone besides me has voted for an episode. Can someone out there click the “sweet” button at the top of this episode? Thanks!

The day forms a nice partner with January twoth, a deadline to measure progress on the new year’s projects. (I really should have mentioned it back then.) My list of ought-to’s is a long one this year, starting with kick-starting the writing and reading more. Wouldn’t hurt to get a blog episode up now and then as well. I really need to get the muddled calendar displaying correctly as well, and get the sweet voting working again, and do something about Jer’s Software Hut…

What ought you to do today?

This morning I thought it would be nice to post a short episode here and to spend a little time getting my own year started on a positive note. Then I noticed that January twoth was yesterday. Huh.