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Welcome to Live Wire!

I’ve said it before — in the text over there to the right — but I want to say it again: Please feel free to pose questions to Live Wire. You can do it here at the blog, by replying to this post. Or you can e-mail livewire@fayobserver.com. You can also call the Live Wire line — 486-3516 — and leave a message.

You can also respond to other posters here if you know the answer to a question or if you have a comment or suggestion. Please chime in! Greg and I will keep an eye on the blog and we’ll try to answer your questions here or in the column itself.

As you may know, the six-day-a-week Live Wire column is now authored by both me (Catherine Pritchard) and Greg Phillips. (He’s on the left — if you couldn’t guess. 😉 ) I now sign my answers C.P. and he signs his, well, G.P.

Besides Live Wire, we share responsibility for the Fay to Z breaking news blog and we both do other work for the paper as well.

If you’re new to Live Wire, the column tackles anything we consider to be of general interest or consumer interest — or both. Anything, as I have said, that’s outside of scary Dear Abby territory. Ask us something. We’ll see if we can answer — or if another poster can. If you’re not sure how to post or what’s involved in that, check here. Again, welcome. — c.p.

🙂

How do you post on this thing?

Larry e-mailed to say he checked out the blog but couldn’t figure out how to ask a question here or post a comment.

“Doesn’t a blog have a way to ask?” he asks. “Somehow, I thought a blog was a two-way deal, like a forum.”

It is indeed. While could-be, would-be and should-be commentators/questioners/ etcetera-ers can’t create new entries on this blog, they can and should post their thoughts in comments beneath an existing entry. For example, under this particular entry, where it (currently) says “no comments” (sob!), you’d click on that link. (Much after-the-fact note: Comments have now been added. So just click on the “comments” link. The rest of the process is as follows below.)

You’d then open a page in which you could write a comment or question. In order to post that, though, you’d have to give a name — Larry, for example. Or maybe L.J. Or even something like Mr. Question Man, if you were feeling a bit superheroish but with a penchant for anonymity. So that’s the name part.

You’d also have to give your e-mail address. But! Not to fear. It wouldn’t be published. Promise.

You could also give a Web site if you wanted. That’s up to you.

Then you could write your message and hit “submit” and, ta da!, it would appear.

So you can ask questions or make comments like that. Or you can e-mail me. (To e-mail me, click on the “me” link that you just read past a second ago; you know, back in the second sentence of this paragraph. Or type in my e-mail address — livewire@fayobserver.com.) It’s all good. 🙂

Meanwhile, to find an item that was previously published on the blog — or to see if there’s been any mention of a particular topic — just plug a keyword into the search box and click on “search.” For example, if you search for “recycle,” you turn up three previous posts that contain that word (as of May 29, when I’m adding this update). But note: If you search for “recycling,” you turn up five posts (including the previous three). So if there are permutations of a particular word, you might want to search them all.

Also, if you encounter “Error 404” and “Not Found” when you click on the “previous entries” link at the bottom of the blog page, then click on a date in the calendar over there on the right side or on the name of the month. Those are other ways to get to previous entries on the blog.