Getting to Know Me... Co-Host: Jeremy Hawkins

Okay I want to say "Hello" I have been a ghost lurking in the shadows of the Challenge, so I thought to get to know me better by the question you all had a hand in writing. I have been dealing with some "life" issues and sometimes that gets the better of all of us. I thought I might share a photo with my good friend, him and I talk all the time. So on with the show and tell... if you have more questions please ask...

Jeremy [Retro]
AtoZ Challenge Co-Host
Oh No, Let's Go... Crazy


"What rock star would you be?" (The Warrior Muse)
I would be an Alice Cooper type, singing like Cheap Trick meets Rob Zombie with Rush playing background.

"Favorite childhood memory" (Tina)
Meeting Spanky McFarland from The Little Rascals... or meeting Batman at a convenient store he was signing autographs to about 1000 kids.... the good ol' days.

"Would you rather have your own personal sailing ship or spaceship? What would you name your ship?" (L.G. Keltner)
Spaceship... U.S.S. Something... I want to really see what is out there.

"Which is your favorite fictional character and why?" (Mayflow3r)
Oz from the Wizard of Oz... he stood for what we should all stand for, but hidden behind a large curtain.

"Name a movie you watched that exceeded your expectations." (Nicole)
The Avengers... I was able to loose myself for 2hours and 5 minutes.

"Do you know how to 'Gangnam Style?'" (Nicole)
I am still trying to learn the "Macarena" so no and no!

"What is the most unusual thing you have ever given as a gift?" (Matt Conlon)
On my first date with my wife, I gave her a baby pumpkin... she knew then I was the one.

"What makes you cry? (Emotional reasons. Onions don't count.)" (Matt Conlon)
Lately everything from the government to gun violence to being jobless...

"Where do you go to "Get away from it all"?" (Matt Conlon)
Score music, I don't get away too much... I would never find my way back.

"If you could sing any song with the artist who wrote/performed it, what would it be and with whom?" (Tracy Bermeo-A2Z Mommy)
"Love Me" with Elvis... I sang it once at a convention around 30 people who spoke no English, it was the worst/best thing ever.

Thank you for making it to the bottom, if you would like please check out my t-shirt store at "Neatorama"... coming soon some of my newest designs and guess what they are?

The Dreaded Conversation About Word Verification

M.J is back! She's one of Nicole's “friends” that is, administrative assistants. She's a blogging machine and agreed to write the post we dread the most...PLEASE TURN OFF WORD VERIFICATION DURING THE CHALLENGE. I think you'll find her entertaining and encouraging as opposed to how we as co-hosts have come across in the past. Sometimes it just takes a new voice...

by M. J. Joachim  (click to read her bio)

Bang! Bang!

You’re dead!

You spent all that time – wasted time, reading, then writing your comment…

To no avail, I’m afraid.

The jury’s still out – you’re deemed unworthy, scary, even quite possibly –

DEADLY!!!!

Quick! Bar the windows! Lock the doors!

Rampant commenters are on the loose in the A – Z 2013 Challenge!

Check your security! Update your software – only the best virus protectors will do!

Now, go into your blog account and work behind the scenes. That’s right, find each and every security measure you can find and…

ACTIVATE THEM ALL!!!

A – Z Challenge participants will be stopping by in droves, and they want to leave comments on what you shared with the world on your blog!

You simply can’t let it happen! You must stop them at the gate! You must secure your tiny little world in cyberspace and protect your blog from the onslaught!

I mean, if you don’t…

If you don’t…

If you don’t – YOU WILL SURELY BE INVADED BY UNENDING AMOUNTS OF A TO Z TROLLERS, READING YOUR POST AND LEAVING THEIR MARK WHERE THEY HAVE TROD!!!

…and we wouldn’t want that to happen now, would we?

Just post this little ditty instead, and forget I ever said a word!

Thanks!

Best to all and wishing you every success with the A - Z Challenge this year!

M. J. 

Photo credit:  Indoor Firing Session, Sobor, Creative Commons Attribution; Presos Para Sempre, Celso Pinto de Carvalho, Creative Commons Attribution; Captcha Free Blog Badge, Charmaine Clancy.com – permission granted to share and use

©2013 All Rights Reserved

Have You Scheduled Your #atozchallenge Posts Yet?

Sign up to Reveal Your A to Z Theme!

As A to Z Challenge co-hosts, one of the biggest challenges we face is how to keep our own blogs going while taking care of a whole host of behind-the-scenes activity.

Last two years, I've gone with one blog. This year, I'm being brave and have submitted two, Amlokiblogs, and Daily (w)rite. I know of people who have submitted up to five blogs!

Before we know it, April would be here-- we have less than a month left! Where did all that time go? Seems to me we were just announcing the challenge and the co-hosts in January!

So, how many of your AZ posts are done? And how can you get them done in a way that is relatively quick and painless?

The most important thing, imho, is to decide a theme.

This makes it easier to pre-schedule posts.

For those of us doing the challenge, deciding a theme is half the job done, and if you've done this job, you can showcase it too, before the challenge starts: Mina Lobo has announced the "Big Reveal Bloghop" where we all reveal our themes a week before the challenge: March 21st. So go ahead and sign up and get to know/ renew acquaintances with a few other A to Z participants!

If you have all your A to Z posts done and dusted, and I know a lot of you have got just that, stupendous! Just make sure you spread the comment love. As DL Hammons tell us in his post, this is the one good way to make your blog part of the community!

If you haven't got your A to Z posts scheduled yet, what are you waiting for?

The A to Z Challenge Guide to Defining Adult Content

If Disney/Pixar studios called you today and offered to make a film adaptation of your blog, what rating would the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) give the movie? 

Ready. Set. Rate it! 

The answer to this question provides a general idea of whether or not your blog belongs in the Adult Content (AC) category – where participating in the Blogging from A to Z Challenge 2013 is concerned. Blogs that have adult content are REQUIRED to add this category to their blog title on the sign-up list. Like any other category, this should be done when first signing up to the challenge, as Damyanti explained in January. All other categories are optional for participants to add to their blog during the signup process.

The guidelines and enforcement procedures for Adult Content categorization, where necessary, stem from our concerns that there is no age limit on who can participate, so long as they have a blog. So with that in mind, we decided that our definition of what constitutes “Adult Content” is based on whether the blog contains material that would be inappropriate for teens.

Adult Content – The A to Z Challenge Co-Host Dictionary Reference:

We define Adult Content as anything that might be something a teenager shouldn’t be viewing. By “Adult,” this means nudity, frequent use of harsh language, gore, sexual content, and overtly violent content. By “Content,” this includes blog posts, images, graphics and any other related material that is on display at your blog.

Adult Content Checklist - Does your blog contain any of the following material? If the answer is YES, then it should be marked as such with the (AC) category code:

• Nudity
• Frequent use of harsh language
• Gore
• Sexually oriented language
• Explicit Violence

Again, does your Blog contain any of the above material? If the answer is YES, then it should be marked as such with the (AC) category code!

As our guidelines are fairly simple to follow, this is not rocket science; it should be easy to figure out whether your blog fits into the Adult Content category. If your blog contains any of the above listed material, you MUST have your blog labeled with (AC) on the signup list. Otherwise, your blog will be flagged and removed.

Our thought right now is also that a few profane words in some blog posts don’t require the blog to be listed in the (AC) category. Those of you who may be one of the many Non-AC blogs, however, are not out of the woods regarding the nature of the content you publish. That said, if you are among the Non-AC bloggers who do happen to have some harsh language here and there, we urge you to at least put a Disclaimer/Warning at the top of your posts with questionable content. The Disclaimers/Warnings can help to protect you if a teen participant happens to come across your blog during the A to Z Challenge.

Everything You Wanted To Know About Co-Host DL Hammons, But Were Afraid To Ask

Not an envious position, following the Blogfather himself – Alex J. Cavanaugh – but I’m always up for a challenge.  Here are my answers to a few of the questions our A to Z followers submitted.

1) You're house in on fire, assuming your kids, pets, and other living things are safe, what do you grab as you head out the door?  All of our important documents are tucked away in a fireproof lockbox, so I won’t worry about that.  What I will grab is our external hard drive, which holds copies of all our family pictures, and my writing.

2) What's your biggest frustration in blogging?  Unless you’ve written a couple of best sellers and are universally appealing, to be done right blogging takes a lot of time, which is something of a precious commodity these days. I get frustrated when I can’t get around to as many other bloggers as I’d like.

3) What's the most awful thing your mother ever forced you to eat?  Liver, and Peas.  I’m getting body shivers just thinking about them. YUCK!

4) Where do you go to "Get away from it all"?" I don’t really have a “man cave” (though I wish I did), and my ultimate getaway – an Alaskan Cruise -- isn’t really cheap, so I’ll just say my writing.  When I’m in the middle of a story there’s no place I’d rather be.

5) What reason did you have to sign up for the A to Z and what did you expect to gain from entering?  Two reasons. First, the exposure. Second, I decided last year to make it uncomfortable in my comfort zone, and this fit the bill.

6) Where do you hail from?  I’m a military brat, so technically I have no hometown.  I was born in Honolulu, Hawaii but our family was constantly on the move (mostly east coast) up until my high school years.  I went to high school in North Carolina and college at LSU.

7) Have you ever wanted to be a rock star?  In my youth I entered more than a few air guitar contests…so that would be a YES.

8) Cake or pie? I’m torn between German Chocolate CAKE and Pecan PIE.

9) How often do you comment on other blogs? My own personal code is if another blogger comments on my posts fairly consistently, then I’ll add them to my Google Reader and read their blogs faithfully.  That doesn’t mean I’ll comment on every blog post though.  If someone were to post a review of a book I have absolutely no interest in, I won’t comment just to comment.

10) Which is your favorite fictional character and why?  Sherlock Holmes…the iconic example of a 

flawed hero who breeds awe and sympathy.

11) If you were a contestant on the CBS show "Amazon Race" and could pick ANY movie character to be your partner, who would it be and why?  John McClain from the DIE HARD movies.  Yippee Ki-yae!

12) What is the most Underrated letter of the Alphabet?  Actually, there are two of them.  D & L :)

13) Describe the last Halloween costume you wore. You know what they say about pictures.

14) Are you smarter than a 5th Grader?  I’m not “smarter” than anyone, but sometimes I happen to know the right answer.

15) Name an item that you have too much of.  Rejection letters.

16) What items could you typically have in your pockets?  My keys, a flash drive, and a pen

 knife.

If I left out a question/answer you’d really like to know, just leave it in the comments below.  And if you get a chance, drop by my permanent home at Cruising Altitude 2.0.