Oct 20, 2011

Of Marines and Bracelets

My younger son bought me a bumper sticker the day he graduated from boot camp at Parris Island - DANGER - Retired Opinionated Marine on Board.  Yep, that would be me.

There was a big to-do in the news the other day about Marines wearing unauthorized bracelets while in uniform. I jumped on it and wrote a quick commentary news article and submitted it several hours before the Yahoo! Contributor Network news desk opened in Denver. It was delivered to Yahoo! News a few hours later, but not published.


The article shows up now as being published on Oct 18 - the day submitted - but it really didn't show up until the following evening (after my repeated questions as to its status).  I'm a bit miffed (ok, more than a bit), because it was a hot topic at the time I wrote it, but shortly after it was delivered for publication, there was a major update.  Too late for me to amend that article, and I didn't want to write another until I could link to the one already submitted.

Because it’s old news now, I probably won’t write a follow-up.  I’m ticked because there was probably a 24-36 hour window where that topic could have done really well, and the door shut behind me, through no fault of my own.   Leaves a bit of a bad taste in your mouth, you know?

You can help make me feel better by reading the article, perhaps print it out to wrap fish in or start a fire - Bracelets Honoring KIA Marines Raising Ruckus.

Maybe I should have titled this post:  Retired Marine Writing About Marine Bracelets Raises a Ruckus?

Wouldn't you know, I’ve finally got myself motivated to write lately and of course that’s the time that there are plenty of glitches with the YCN platform.

Suck it up, Marine. 

Yes, ma'am!

5 comments:

  1. Many congrats to you and your son! Completing Marine boot camp is an amazing accomplishment. We went to my son's graduation in San Diego, attended all the events and information films and I was just blown away at what he did for those 8 long weeks he was there.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Wow, that's frustrating. I'm off to read your article.

    ReplyDelete
  3. It's definitely frustrating. I found out last week that the links on my RSS Feeds for YCN are also broken, which explains why in all the sites I have added my article feed, I don't seem to get any page views at all. Yahoo just seems to generate more problems than they are fixing lately. I wonder if things are going from bad to worse and just when they will pull the plug. If you write a timely news article, you want it published right away, otherwise you lose the traffic associated with it.

    ReplyDelete
  4. You probably don't want to know, but... I clicked to read your article and it read, "Page not found"...ugh!

    ReplyDelete