The 2014 TSM Year in Review

And this may be the last one of these.

Posting in 2014 was the lightest ever.  In 2003 when I started this thing, 697 posts, and I didn't get started until MAY.  Highest year ever, 2008, 818 posts.  2014, just 223.  (Ha!  223.  I see what I did there....)

I have to say, after eleven years of blogging, the Blogger interface is much, much better, its reliability is excellent, and it's still free.  Not bad.  But like most things in the modern world, culture is passing blogging by.

So, The Year In Review.  January had 22 posts.  I still like this one best.  We had a Central Arizona Blog Shoot the first weekend in January, but now that The Other Kevin has moved to parts East, looks like I'll need to set this year's up myself, unless someone volunteers.  Longtime reader and outstanding commenter GOF lost his home to a fire and his mother to illness.  And in the comments to this post, reader Matt set him up with a new (to him) computer.

I'll keep saying it:  I have the best damned readers in the world, and I'm honored that you spend your time here.  Thank you.  (Especially you, John Hardin, for recovering lost comment threads!)

February also saw 22 posts.  I bought my first firearm of the year, a Mossberg 930 JM Pro.  To be completely honest, I still haven't put a single round down the barrel.  In the best post of the month, I put up Bill Whittle's Afterburner entitled "The Unmarked Matt-Gray Crown Vic."  It pretty much anticipates events of later in the year, and it inspired commentary you might want to look back at.

March brought only 17 posts.  Not a lot to choose from.  I was spending a lot of time over at Quora.com - a target-rich environment.  I put up a couple of cross-posts and if you really want to read them, the archive is over there on the left sidebar near the bottom. I did do one überpost that month, R·S·P·E·C·T for and the Rule of Law, in part inspired by that Bill Whittle piece from February. That one drew some excellent commentary and a few links.

April?  Eleven posts.   Lots of time spent over at Quora, so most of April's content is cross-posts from there.  And I got stalked by Markaphasia who just seems fixated on me, my readers and this blog.  If I had to pick a best post from the month, it would have to be I Got Called RACIST™ Again!

May, the anniversary month for this blog, generated fourteen posts, one of which was The Secret to Happiness wherein I announced my semi-retirement from blogging.  To wit:

I'm not completely hanging it up here. I'll still post from time to time - mostly in the near future I suspect about the upcoming Rendezvous - but I doubt seriously that there will be any more überposts.

I'm convinced I made the right decision.  I have spent more time with my wife. I've read a BUNCH of books.  I've fixed a couple of things around the house but have lots more that needs work.  I've not made it to the range anywhere near as much as I'd like (see February).  My mom's still with us, but not doing well at the moment and now Dad is having some issues with his heart.  I helped Mr. Completely organize the 9th Annual Gun Blogger Rendezvous (which may have been the last one, no thanks to me.) 

June brought 21 posts, so I obviously didn't retire immediately.  As previously mentioned, I DID read a lot more - the entire Dresden Files collection in 15 days.  Highly recommended.  Helps explain the mere 14 posts in May.  Presidential candidate shoo-in Hillary Clinton opened her mouth, and I had something to say about it.  Remember her words when she starts campaigning for real in a couple of months.  One thing I've noticed about this year is that I've promoted a LOT of Bill Whittle's work in lieu of writing something myself.  Four of those 21 posts are his videos.

In July the post count edged up to 25.  I was still playing over at Quora, which gave me the Quote of the Month.  Savor that one.  My parents (mentioned above) celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary.  Still a fine looking couple, though mom's short a head of hair these days.  Lots of Bill Whittle content, some good QotDs, and I started hawking the Rendezvous.

August saw another bump in the post count to 30, with a lot of Whittle content.  The Quote of the Month was another example of why I'm so bummed out that the GeekWithA.45 stopped blogging.  Robin Williams took his last bows in August, and spurred a lot of discussion over whether people should be able to end their own lives when they decide they've had enough.  There was also a lot of retrospection over Robin's career, and I was struck by an excerpt from a speech he gave in the 1996 film Jack.  Give that a read, if you haven't already.

Reader GOF (remember GOF, the guy whose house burned down and one of my readers got him a new computer?) used his new computer to excellent effect in the aftermath of the Ferguson MO debacle.  Can I get an "AMEN!"?

September brought the Rendezvous and fourteen posts.  Wait, what?  Perhaps I was shocked to inactivity by the threat of Tam hanging up her Empress of Snark crown.  The cat my wife and I ended up with when her daughter moved out passed after almost twenty years.  Still miss that furball.  At least he waited until I was home.

October saw posting dwindle back to eleven pieces, and Bill Whittle represented three of them.  One of those was about the film Fury, and I posted an email from my favorite Merchant O'Death in that piece.  Finally, more than eighteen months after I ordered it, my 8# jug of Unique came in. 

November brought us another election and I generated a whopping 15 posts (Bill Whittle starring in five of them).  My wife and I went to the Tucson ComiCon where I apparently contracted Ebola, and some dimwitted SOB hit my Mustang in the parking lot, causing $2k worth of damage.  The big news was that some undocumented journalist went through a lot of footage and found Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber talking about the stupidity of the American voter.  I don't believe that to this day ABCNNBCBS has given this story more than about ten minutes, tops, but it made the rounds of the internets.  And I wrote a short follow-on to March's überpost that drew some comments.

And, finally, December.  Twenty-one posts for a grand total of 223 for the year.  Quote of the Month goes to Non Sequitur of the Day.  Read that again and savor the crazy. 

And that's all I've got for you.  Hope your New Year's Eve was everything you hoped it would be, and that 2015 is better than last year.