I'm back!

Back from where, you ask? Well, it seems that as soon as I finally made the effort to start my blog, I was confronted by Murphy's law. A couple of nights ago, I came online to make my second post, but upon logging in, I was greeted by none other than...

...an error message, telling me that my blog had been locked for a possible violation of the site's terms of service -_-

I was a bit baffled by this at first, to say the least. I looked into some of the links that had been provided in place of my normal user interface, and it turns out that my blog had been mislabeled as a spam blog.

Thankfully, the links gave me a convenient place to send a request for a manual evaluation of my blog. I used these links to my advantage, and it only took them a couple of days to review my blog and reactivate it.

It was a bit frustrating at the time, but honestly, I'm not too upset about the whole ordeal. I perfectly understand the need to deal with spammers in any online environment, and unfortunately, spam detection is not flawless. Indeed, I'm quite thankful that they were able to resolve the issues in such a timely manner. Some sites out there will suspend your account, and then take forever to address the problem, or just ignore it altogether and lock you out permanently. So here I am, after a relatively painless process, ready to start blogging again :)

Starting the new year with a new blog :)

I've been meaning to start a blog for quite some time, now, and eventually decided that I should make it my resolution for the new year to finally get this thing off the ground. The result? A completely meaningless post such as this, entirely devoid of any true significance. I debated whether or not I should have even bothered with such a lame post for my blogging debut, but, after some consideration, concluded it to be for the best. After all, the hardest part of accomplishing anything oftentimes seems to be finding the motivation to take the first step. So here it is: my first step :)

I'm hoping that the upkeep of this blog will have a positive influence on my life. Since I will not be taking any English courses this semester, blogging should serve as a good form of writing practice, and will hopefully ensure that my work maintains a certain level of academic integrity. It will also offer me opportunities to exercise my mind, on those occasions when I choose to explore more philosophical and complex topics. Will I actually take advantage of these opportunities when they present themselves? I certainly hope so, but only time will tell...

Happy new year to all!