Over the past decade I’ve been a youth worker, an English teacher and a high school principal. I left teaching (before I did something that might land me in jail) to pursue a Master’s Degree in Pastoral Counselling. That didn’t quite work out, and in a moment of insanity I applied for a job at Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com. For some obscure reason they decided to give it to me, so now I call myself a Happiness Engineer by day and help people to hammer their WordPress.com sites into shape.
I presume to call myself a writer, though I’ve yet to publish anything outside this blog (which requires me to actually finish something worth publishing first…it’s a vicious circle, I tell you). I’m also the founder and president of several secret societies, but I can’t tell you any more about that as the other members would be forced to kill me. Once I manage to recruit some members, that is. You wanna join? We have cool robes the wife sewed and you’ll get your own hammer. No? It was worth a shot.
I live on the north-east coast of South Africa in a region called Zululand, a place where bananas and mangoes grow wild, where the windows in your house are as likely to be broken by a monkey as by a burglar, and where in two months I’ve had more snake encounters than in my entire life up to now. I have palm trees in my garden and am five minutes away from the beach. I can learn to deal with the snakes.
I’m married to a wonderful woman who encourages my delusions of grandeur, buys me Legos for my birthday, and geeks out over Terry Pratchett, Harry Dresden and Doctor Who with me. Her mother’s pet name for her is Kokkelien. Do you believe in destiny?
She also illustrates my blog for me. You can find more of her work over on Squiggles and Scribbles.
We have the most adorable toddler on Earth, called Squishy *, though I like to refer to her as the Minion as I’m grooming her to take over my evil empire one day and enslave all humanity. Hang on. Did I say that out loud?
What else? I love the outdoors, especially hiking, and I go running once a year when the mood strikes me. I’m a fairly accomplished puppeteer and a decent baker. I own way too many books, but I can stop buying them anytime I want to. I don’t want to stop buying books.
Anything else you want to know? Leave a comment, or better yet, take a walk through the archives. My 100th post is a good place to start.
If you do the social media thing, look me up. I use KokkieH wherever I go, so I should be easy to find. In fact, scroll down just a little to follow my Facebook and Twitter pages without even leaving this screen.
Introduce yourself, throw around some hammers, and have fun.
* Not her real name
if all else fails...use a hammer 
We have loads of snakes everywhere in Australia – even in the toilet bowl when they sneak in the house.
Luckily here in Italy, I haven’t seen any yet but I’m told there are around in the bush.
I haven’t been to South Africa since I solo-backpacked around the world for 12 months back in 1985. I suspect it’s changed loads. Will get around to writing about those 12 months one day…
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You know, the snake in the toilet bowl thing is one of my greatest fears. Thus far we haven’t had any in the house, though. I’ve spotted a few, both dead (electrocuted over the electric fence) and alive (like the little brown house snake that enjoyed the heat generated by the pool pump.
SA has changed a bit since 1985, yes 😀 I would not recommend solo-backbacking any more, for example. It’s still beautiful, though, and I can’t imagine living anywhere else.
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Ha, ha I even hitched around SA for 3 weeks but with another female backpacker. A couple of hairy rides but all OK.
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The inspiration behind me wanting to update my about page, great read!
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Haha. Always happy if I can inspire others to reach for greater heights 😀
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Thanks for stopping at and following my blog. I bet your youth group meetings were a barrel of laughs!
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I tried to make them fun, but I think I sometimes got too serious for them. I miss it though. I wish there were a way to work with young people in the church without having to get past the politics of the adults.
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I wish there were a way to work with anyone in the church without having to get past the politics. I retired after a brutal year of defending our pastor’s vision – I wish I had left a year earlier. However, I remind myself that Jesus went through much more!
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Comment deleted as per the comments policy.
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Please see the link above.
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Hey, Herman – I know you’re something of a WordPress boffin, so maybe you can advise me. I started signing up for CoPromote and then backed off when they apparently wanted permission to take over my entire site. Do you know anything about this? Is it safe to use? Is there any benefit to using it, given that I do not have, and do not ever intend to have, any other social media sites? (I don’t do FB, Twitter, or any of that stuff.) Please advise!
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Boffin? Ha! You give me too much credit. What I know is only thanks to people like Timethief et. al. and a very inquisitive mind – I like to find out how stuff works. Oh, the number of electronic toys that got disassembled over the years…
They probably only require access to your RSS feed, not the dashboard itself. This is normal practice, as everything from the Reader to Publicize to a host of blog directories that list your blog without you even knowing it use your public feed. I see you can also log in using your WordPress.com credentials, so you give them access to your WP.com account, but this is usually very limited and they shouldn’t be able to see your login details themselves, nor be able to change anything on your account. Of course, if you’re part of the tinfoil-hat brigade, stay away 😉
I did a quick forum search and it appears the CoPromote was supported by WordPress.com until some time last year (I recall having previously seen it in a support doc), but not anymore. I don’t think WP.com would have partnered with them if their service was in any way dodgy, so there’s that.
But I can’t find any info on what the free trial entails, so it’s either temporary or very limited, which means you have to be a paid subscriber to get the full worth of using it. Unless one is monetising one’s blog through advertising, I don’t see the point in using any service where one has to pay for traffic. But that’s just my opinion.
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Thank you so much. It sounds as though they’re *probably* safe but will add little value in the context of my blogging goal – which is largely self-indulgent. Obviously I love when I get a new follower, but I’m still counting my followers in ones, and will probably continue to do so for a long time… 🙂
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You can always join Bloglovin if you haven’t yet. It’s free and can potentially get a few more eyes on your blog. There’s a post on The Daily Post that explains how.
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Sterkte met jou Pastoral Counselling. Ekself het dit baie interessant gevind en is vandag betrokke by verskillende vrouekampe oor Emosionele Intelligensie.
Hoop jy vind jou ware roeping op die regte plek! Daar is baie stukkende mense buite …
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Baie dankie. Dit gaan op die punt maar broekskeur – dat ek nie weet wat ek eintlik met die kwalifikasie gaan doen nie maak dit moeilik om deur die teorie te kom. Toe ek begin het, het ek geweet, maar herhaalde terugslae i.t.v. werk het my nou op ‘n punt wat ek bevraagteken of ek hoegenaamd nog in die bediening moet/wil wees. Ek ploeter nou maar voort in die hoop dat daar iewers ‘n lig sal aangaan.
Dankie vir die inloer.
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My husband believes: the bigger the problem, the bigger the hammer!
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It’s a philosophy that have proven to be effective
every…most of the…at least once in a blue moon. Thanks for joining 😉LikeLike
Can I just say your title to your blog made me laugh! Love it x
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Thanks. I’m actually thinking of doing a post about the title. Though it would be after the fact – I picked it simply because I needed something and it sounded different.
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