Blog Watch voting

Got an excellent suggestion from beancounters :

Thought I'd drop you a line and make a suggestion for
Ipso Sacto. Particularly since it seems I am in the
running for next week's column.

I'd recommend that, for every blog post you consider,
you drop a line in the comments or by e-mail,
explaining who you are and that you'd like to consider
the post to be reprinted in the paper. This would give
the blogger the chance to watch for the results, look
for his or her words in print, or on the other end of
the consent spectrum, ask that his or her post be
taken out of consideration.

My mom was very pleased to be included in the column
last Sunday. I mailed her a copy this week. But at
first she was very puzzled as to who you were and why
people were visiting from your site. If she had had
any objection to having her content reprinted for
financial gain, you wouldn't have known in advance.

As I explained in my reply, my general reluctance to be sen as self-promoting is the principal reason I haven't done this already. But, starting next week, I'm going to post a comment after a blog post is nominated, alerting the blogger that if publication in The Bee's Blog Watch column is not their idea of a reward, then they can ask to be left out of the competition.

Anyway, there is a better than even chance that the whole Blog Watch idea will disappear. This month starts my new job, where I get to do my old job and the job of a person who took early retirement. Today, I had to steal a minute here, two minutes there, in order to process the 88 blog posts that filled the Google Reader queue overnight. The backlog wasn't cleared until 12:20 p.m. Thursday and Friday will be the worst so perhaps by Monday and Tuesday I'll be feeling a bit more sanguine about all this.