Please Update Your Bookmark

This blog is now living at http://www.andylien.com.

It originally started as Shifting Piles then diversified into various subject-specific blogs under AndyLien.com as an umbrella.  I thought it would be a good move to make it seem like a cohesive website with multiple pages–each with its own blog–but it really just diluted everything.  By spreading it out, it got really ugly on the back end.  Convoluted.  Daunting.

So, now it’s all living together again on one page…and, finally, with me.  It’s no longer hosted on WordPress, but on my own server.

Mine, mine, mine.

Please make the move with me and update your bookmarks.  I appreciate your readership so…and I promise to never change my domain name again.  Even if I should marry a Rockefeller or someone with a fantastic last name that would go perfectly with “Andy,” I will keep the blog at www.andylien.com so as to never make you do this again.

Yours,

Andy

December Header Photo Rejects

Photo shoots aren’t pretty.  Photo shoots of myself are particularly gruesome.  Being that hand held self-portraits are rather–well–obvious, I had to recruit friends to take my picture for the new December blog header.  Here are a few that didn’t quite make the cut, but were close.

Photographer: Joy. Location: Joy's Pad. Just a little bit blurry. I like the shot, even with the crazed expression. What I won't like are the shots she took "behind the scenes."

Photographer:Aisha. Location: Joy's Pad. I was doing my "Master of Disguise" impression.

Photographer: Self-Portrait. Location: Joy's Pad. Joy made the crack that it looked like the hand of God was reaching down for me. Nah, just the chandelier.

Photographer: Self-Portrait. Location: Jeep. I call it "The Michelin Man is Driving My Jeep." (By the way, I apologize to all of St. Paul for pulling this stunt on Cretin Avenue. Unfortunately, this is only one of many pictures.)

Photographer: Sherry. Location: Michael's. Sherry said something like, "I like my SLR better...it takes pictures one after another with just one click."

Umm...Sherry?

I think that you got the gist of...

...the "one-after-another" thing just fine.

And there you have it.

January’s header had better be easier.

A New Web Presence – Part 2: Site v. Blog

As you can see, I have a cluster of blogs that comprise a website presence.  This was not an easy decision to come by–it took quite a time of discernment.  What did I want in my new web presence?  What was I capable of doing by myself?  What would be considered “reinventing the wheel?”

I thought to myself, “Andy…you are smart and able.  You design websites for others.  Why don’t you design your own?”

I’ve been really good at dragging my feet at coming up with this answer.  Now, I have no qualms in saying that the sites I design are quick, good-looking, and absolutely no-frills.  If I had static copy and few photos, I would be a perfect and cheap website designer for myself. But, there’s a laundry list of capabilities that I knew I wanted for myself:

• Dynamic content – if the reader wants to read about one particular category over others, blogs are already set up to be searchable.  I can list categories and tag entries automatically.
• Publicity – the WordPress world has breadth and depth; it can publicize for me.  I can use it to comment on other peoples’ blogs and cross-cite my own.
• Templates – yes, I’m a designer.  No, I don’t want to design my own site right now.  WordPress has thousands of templates from which to choose.  Amen.
• Widgets – I’m not a web developer.  I do not know how to integrate fancy things into the websites I build.  I don’t want to know how to.  I like letting WordPress do it for me…such as doing RSS feeds, my Twitter updates, linking to my other pages.
• Photo Galleries – When I design my own sites, the easy galleries are not fabulous.  I’m not a fan of them.  The WordPress ones are fine.  I’m going with it.

So, looking at the list of things I want but can’t do, it seemed fairly obvious that I would go with a blog over a site.  But, what about things it can’t do but I want?  This was a very big issue.  I’m not sure if I pulled off the answer or not.  You see, I wanted every page of my website to be a blog.  Look around at your favorites…I did.  I looked at the award winners…the BlogHer conference speakers…the up-and-comers.  They had one page of blog, but the rest were static pages.  They had content, but were not dynamic and update-able on a moment-to-moment basis like a blog.  That was a problem.

(The exceptions here are the bloggers who have their own websites that have been developed by professionals.  The Pioneer Woman has a blog per page.  The Bloggess does not.  See the distinction?  I’m not prepared for the money or attention required to have my own website developed for my writing.  Yet.  But, I’m not a fan of finding the additional blog pages by The Bloggess via her static pages…at least that’s my way of making sense of bloggers without multiple blog pages.)

Anyhow, it was a problem I didn’t want.  So, I thought I would cheat it.  Consistent with my “ugly on the back end but good looking in front” philosophy of marketing, I figured I could have one blog per topic on the back end but make them look like a cohesive website on the front.  It’s still in the works, but I chose to make this happen in the following ways:

• Have a consistent name for the “website,” really collection of blogs: AndyLien.com.  AndyLien.com is what I would be branding and that would be my home page at which I would have an ongoing blog of each of the new posts on the other pages (blogs).  Readers would just go to AndyLien.com to see the latest and greatest for the “website.”
• Have a consistent image for each “page,” really each blog.  Though I’ll have to update each page (blog) each month with a new image, I chose to have it include “AndyLien.com,” the month, and a seasonal picture of me.  This way, as a person scrolls through the “website” (collection of blogs), the eye will be trained to think it’s a cohesive unit.  You’ll know you’re still where you should be by the header and my smiling face.
• Have a consistent navigational bar for each “page,” really each blog.  For every blog, I would exclude a blogroll for Links and put in the same list the blog names/address for the other “pages” of AndyLien.com.  Like with the header, the eye would be trained to see the same navigational structure on every “page” (blog) and click along quite swimmingly.

Take a look.  See what you think.  If it appears to be good looking in front, I’m happy.  It’s an ugly mess in back, but it works.  For now.

Next, the fun business of choosing names for the pages/blogs…and the hunt for available domain names.

A New Web Presence – Part 1

My blog was about to hit its first half-birthday.  How’s that?  Yes, it turned six months old on October 29.  I’d read plenty of material about how people who write on the internet choose to develop their web presence and had decided that six months and 63 posts later, it was time to grow up a little.  Shifting Piles had drawn over 4,500 hits in six months and that was with very little publicity.  In fact, I was hesitant to publicize it too soon as I had to figure out what was the important part of the branding process: Me or the site?

Shifting Piles was a great name.  I found it resonated well with people.  We all tend to shove things here or there when we need to.  Heck, even some of my favorite bloggers speak of shifting piles when donning slimming undergarments such as Spanx.  The Drunk-Mommy-Bloggers-Turned-Rehab-Bloggers shifted angst to Vodka to steps.  DIY bloggers shift messy mudrooms into Goodwill piles.  Everyone shifts piles.  So, I’m keeping that.  But, I have so much more to say…I worried about pigeon-holing myself.

I meet people and find them so terribly interesting.  The ex-con named Chainsaw (for his snoring) on the Amtrak from Seattle to San Francisco…he was a trip.  The swimsuit calendar model who saved my hair as a soon-to-graduate beauty school student at the Aveda Institute…I owe Alyssa a write-up.  The retired Wisconsi Department of Transportation fleet supervisor who decided to become a Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness outfitter on the Gunflint Trail who dropped us off at our entry point this past fall…there’s a story there.  Those weren’t piles to shift–they’re people to meet.

Besides people, recipes and reviews started popping up on Piles.  Whenever I wrote of Metablogging (blogging about blogging), it was really my Inner Marketing Geek screaming for attention.  And, I’d been meaning to put up a design website for quite some time, but the cobbler’s children often go without shoes.

So, Shifting Piles had to diversify.  That was clear.  But, how?

Ask Away

This post is about me using you.  Again.  It is out of need, not laziness.  I’ve got five irons in the fire that have my attention this week and one of them requires your assistance.  A few posts ago, I mentioned that I’m putting together a new website and doing a whole lot of research in order to do it.  It’s because I’m a marketing geek. I was researching social networking and its efficacy rates at 4:45am when I couldn’t sleep this morning.  Nerd Alert.

When I asked for verbs from you fine people in order to make a framework for a new website, I got wonderful responses.  I can pretty much fly with most of what you gave me, but what I can’t do is pre-fill my new website with a Q&A section.  I can’t answer questions that haven’t been asked.

So…and here’s where it gets weird*…what would you like to ask me?

Questions** can be serious or silly…if I don’t know an answer, I’m not afraid to look until I find it.  I’m very resourceful.

Best,

Andy

_______________

*There’s a certain amount of ego required to not only assume that one is qualified to provide answers, but also to ask people to ask questions.  I’m not sure this is comfortable, yet.  But, from another perspective, there is also a certain amount of ego required to be a writer and ask people to read what one writes.  Okay.  I’m starting to get it.

**If you’d rather not post it as a comment, feel free to email me at shiftingpiles@gmail.com.

It's Show and Tell Time

I’m heading up to Northern Minnesota tomorrow to visit Marcella, my eighty-eight year old Finn-ma.  Also in the mix will be meeting the baby girl of my youngest cousin, Heather, which I’m sure will put my Therapy Thursday dollars to work being that I’m 32 and she’s 23…with a handsome husband named Mike and a darling daughter named Avery.

As I just don’t have any time to post much more than a few sentences, I’ll look to you for guidance again.  What are your favorite blogs or websites?  Which ones really get you to go back again and again? I thank you for your assistance in this time of market research.

Back on Saturday…with or without an overwhelming desire to procreate immediately.

The Beauty in Blogging

I just finished my third lunch course…jumbo black olives.  The first course began the distracted feed about 12:30 when I loaded a plate with bagel chips from my local Crossroads Delicatessen and a couple wedges of lite Swiss cheese by The Laughing Cow.  About an hour ago, I polished off a half a cup of Sweet Cajun trail mix by Target’s Archer Farms store brand.  Only to add to the trail mix stuck in my dental work and black olive essence, I will relish my dessert of sugar-sprinkled gel orange slices.  It’s trash and I love it.

It’s called working over lunch.  At home.

I have barely left the Dorm Room office to do anything more than grab the food equivalent of what I would pick up at someone else’s cocktail party.  I should’ve used toothpicks with the olives to class it up a bit, but why?

My business today has been blog business.  A true marketing and communications person to the bitter death, I have a complusion to research.  I want to know what other people are doing…how they’re doing it…and how successful they are at what they’ve done.  Where better to go than the Speaker roster for the recent BlogHer conferences?  BlogHer is a site like WordPress or Blogger where bloggers can host their work.  The BlogHer conference cherrypicked some of the best and brightest bloggers to come speak to how they do what they do…and though I didn’t attend, I knew I’d be perusing some mighty fine work if I were to visit the speakers’ blogs.

So, that’s what I spent the morning doing…first the food conference then the big conference.  The food conference had a long list of speakers and I was really curious to follow the links to their blogs.  I wouldn’t let myself spend too much time at any of them and simply took a screen grab to save as a Jpeg for later reference.  I wanted first impressions.  Looks and feels.  Logos, colors, photography, and simplicity.  I wanted gut reactions.

Then, when I went to the list of speakers for the big conference, I wanted to cry.

Holy cow.  The roster was loaded.  It was full and impressive.  I salivated as I read the biographies.  I clicked links and I wore myself out by maintaining my professional research and simply doing the screen grabs and saving them.  I noticed when blogs were more text-conscious or more graphics-conscious…and when there were the harmonious few that balanced both art and word.  Amen.

So, consider the heavy lifting done.  I found them, you can type in their names and find them on your own or go to the conference links above to click on through to the good stuff.  Devour them.  I thought of many of my readers when I caught the synopses of these blogs.  I found a diversity in topics and demographics…but that my voice wasn’t represented.  That excited me.  No, blogging isn’t original…but our thoughts and takes are.  And that is downright barnraising.

Please take a look a the galleries of blogs I scampered across today.  I’d love to hear your impressions.*

Here are all of the blogs…I wanted to lick the screen more than a few times.

Now, I’m on to finish my afternoon with a little studying.  First came the research, next comes the analysis.  How good is the photography?  What names do they use for themselves and their blogs?  Are they on Twitter?  Do they use BlogHer, Blogger, or WordPress?  Do they host their own?  Who designed their sites?  Do they have ads?  Are they self-sustaining?  What are their stats?  How can I be as successful?

Then, after studying the sites for a while, I will do what I do best: I will bloat from all the sodium I just consumed.

Have a great afternoon.

____________________

*If you’re in the mood for a little Background Voyeurism, take a look at ALL THE FRICKING TABS I HAVE OPEN as evidenced in my screen grabs.  I will leave you one opportunity to catch me at my own game.  Pay close attention to some of the screen grabs.  They are very telling as far as what I thought of midday and searched for following an evening of catching up with some of my Catholic friends in Saint Paul last night.  If you are the first to find my indiscretion (which I haven’t even found yet, myself, I just know it’s in one of them), I’ll send you a gourmet chocolate bar by Vosges.  Really, I’d be embarrassed if I weren’t me.

No Idea is a Bad Idea

I can be a real nitwit.  Often.  I’ve been working on my new website this week thinking that I want to do some sort of Grand Reveal.  That I don’t want to show anything of it until it’s done. Here’s where my nitwiticism comes in: Like me, the website may never be “done.”  There might be a timer ticking, but there’ll never really be a “Ding!”  I’m always going to be a work-in-progress, as are websites, and who better to consult than you…the ones who’ve been following me for the past half-year (or longer, pre-Shifting Piles).

So, please help me brainstorm.  I’m heading to the cabin in a matter of moments.  I have an air of fluster about me as I’ve been wracking my feeble mind the past few days to work up a look and feel for the new AndyLien.com.  You see, in the realm of website design, there’s a cart and there’s a horse.  It’s very difficult for me to mock up not only a website look and feel but also pick even a font without knowing how my website will be organized.  My need for organization is a bit flighty at best, but this is an area where I have to put a navigational structure in place before I can start piecing together the visual puzzle.

Is this making any sense?

My goal is to design three mock ups of what my website will look like and present them to you for voting next week.  Before that, I need to work on the navigational structure of the site.  That is–at its most basic–what simply can be what the pages are called.  A simple site is: HOME, ABOUT US, PRODUCTS, CONTACT.  Easy.  Well, thinking about what I like to write about, my structure could be as simple as four pages or as complex as a skyscraper.

Rather than tell too much of what I’m already thinking, I’ll leave you with the assignment.  I will have a page for Shifting Piles, the “Inner Andy” blog, as well as a page of my projects that I will consider doing for others on a project or contract basis such as websites, weddings I coordinate, parties I throw, Christmas cards I design, and the like.  Those are the only two “must haves.”  Other than those two pages, I am aiming to name the others according to verbs.

Yes, verbs.

Examples: Eat. Taste. See. Visit. Experience. Hear. Meet.

Eat would be restaurant reviews.  Taste would be a recipe I’ve concocted. See might be an announcement and history of an upcoming meteor shower. Visit could be a travelogue of a trip to  New Ulm.  Experience would encompass so many of the previous…  Hear would be an invitation to my annual performance of “The Messiah”.  Meet would profile an interesting person who I believe is worthy of an online introduction.

Get the gist?

You know what I have written.  You may know what I want to write.  You also know what you find to be interesting.  Help me.  I need more verbs.  Heck, “Help” could be another one of ‘em.  See?  In brainstorming, there are no bad ideas.

Shifting Treasures

Today’s post is going to be a pictorial.  I’m working to update a second website and clean up my area to be able to leave mid-afternoon and get going on CSA Tuesday this evening.  No time to blather.

I do not portend to be a great photographer…especially when I’m furtively photographing items at my desk on what will probably be my last day at the office.

With that, I present to you the Treasures of My Desk.

"Why yes, I am overqualified." Laura gave me these long, long ago and I never used them...because what it said is true. No need to rub it in, right?

My nameplate. I'll let them keep it, but I'm taking the two extra sets of stickers to do some guerilla marketing of my own.

Copies of my former business cards...both companies. I don't know--I'm keeping them. I don't think I'm a packrat, but being that I designed corporate identities for both companies practically from scratch, these aren't just my cards, they're part of my portfolio.

Ah, my dusty charging iTouch. This is a trophy that was given prematurely...before the end of the race. My boss gave a few of us these that were free through an incentive program in appreciation that we were still trucking with him as the company's economic situation tanked further and further. I might have to hock it.

A lint roller for all the Grendel Hair and a bunny for morale. Bless you, dear bunny. I didn't have the heart to kill it, given its mission.

My Sigg and my Starbucks...one for water the other for coffee. I don't think I've washed either one, ever...and I stole the Starbucks kettle from Aisha when we lived at the Highland Home for Wayward Girls in 1999. Blessed vessels.

The pièce de résistance: My CrackBerry. Oh, mouthpiece to the world, I will miss you. Your blinking red light--now dead--lit up my life. My social networking will never be the same.

I hope you enjoyed the snippets.  I did.  All but the last, I’m taking with me.

Things I've Learned in the Construction Industry

I’m waxing poetic here at the office.  Finishing up a website, looking through old emails, making a list of my usernames and passwords…and thinking back on over four years in a foreign industry.  My learning curve was steep, but within a year’s time I was able to rattle off the specs of a luxury home along side the builder and architect.  My love of architecture and aesthetic made this a perfect job for me.  Touching the surfaces, looking inside the walls, poo-pooing choices in artwork…there was always something catching my attention.  And, there was also always something I was learning:

1.)  A Finnish carpenter and a finish carpenter can be one in the same, but they’re still essentially two different concepts.

2.)  What a Lien Waiver is.  Yes, my last name is Lien.  I’ve always been a Lien.  Waiving is not an option.

3.)  Construction drawings should be rolled with the print facing outward, then the unrolled plans won’t curl up as they’re being read.

4a.)  Urine helps copper get its patina faster, especially when arced off a deck at the end of a fancy party.

4b.)  What patina is…other than a funky store of frip-frappery and novelties.

5.)  High heels are not appropriate footwear out in the field.  Ever.  High-heeled sandals are the kiss of death.

6.)  Money does not buy taste.  Actual selection.

7.)  What can separate a good builder from a great one is whether or not all floor transitions are flush, regardless of material or location.

8.)  Even the roughest, gruffest of construction guys tend to be really sweet to the receptionist.  Sometimes it’s best not to let them in on the fact that the receptionist can swear like a sailor, too.

9.)  A Camry on construction sites during Minnesota winters tends to be made the butt of many a joke.

10.)  The cost of a house is directly related to how many different tech systems and remote controls are contained within…as is the chance for those systems running amok.  Sometimes a toilet should just be a toilet…I’d rather mine didn’t wash and dry.

So, before I write a book about it, I will return to my afternoon of tweaking and cleaning.  If you ever want to goon out over architecture and construction, let me know.  I’ll be in withdrawal, I’m sure.