I love having a hand-coded blog. I love the fact that I'm not using Wordpress or Typepad or Blogger software. I'm using stuff I wrote myself in notepad. Designed the database myself, wrote up the stylesheets myself, coded the rss feeds myself, even coded my own wishlist.
I'm not wallowing in my own ego here; I swear I'm not. But I really like being able to add a sidebar with the books I'm reading and the games I'm playing and update them in 30 seconds anytime they need updating. I enjoy sharing my interests.
I like being able to code my own spam filters when I need to. And the latest, I added favatars to my site. Now, when you comment, if you leave a URL with a favicon, that will appear next to your comment. In theory. It doesn't always work perfectly because sometimes the request times out before the icon is found. But I don't care. I still like being able to make changes like that.