Home for the holidays

Drove from D.C. to MI today. Didn't get nearly as much reading on PHP done as I would have liked, but did just finish installing Apache, MySQL, and PHP on my laptop.

Still have to enable PHP extensions in the config file of the server and set up some virtual hosts. If I remember correctly, that means finding or creating a host file somewhere in my computer. And, er, sacrificing a virgin?

I'm glad to know how to do all this stuff, but I'm thinking perhaps I should learn about sports or something so I can talk to people. :)

Either way, I'm pooped. It's nice to be surrounded by family. Here's hoping T-- gets in okay tomorrow from the West coast.

My oddest impulse purchase to date

I saw this as I was checking out of Best Buy today.

Hi, welcome to my wassailing party. Oh, look, is that mistletoe you're standing under? I guess we should get it on.

Someone had discarded it on a shelf and I picked it up to see what it was. Clearly I couldn't put it down, just in case.

It turns out that most of the songs are delivered pretty straight, although God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen might be my new favorite song ever. With Idol's growl it sounds subversively aggressive.

A remembrance of things buttery

Today for breakfast I enjoyed a large cuppa tea and milk accompanied by two honest-to-God crumpets. The crumpets were vectors for a simply irresponsible quantity of butter and a much more carefully controlled dose of Marmite.

Marmite, for the uninitiated, is a bread-spread made from the yeasty detritus left over after brewing has been done. If I'm honest, it doesn't taste even so palatable as that description might lead you to expect. It's sort of like salty tar. If you grew up on it though, it's heaven.

Marmite's been easy to come by for years in the U.S., but I had no idea how close I lived to proper crumpets. Trader Joe's crumpets are the real thing. The first bite took me right back to my childhood in London and almost erased the trauma I suffered from biting into my first "English" muffin.

Thank you Trader Joe's.

I took the job

<eom />

Drink Britannia!

This is a little out of date, but last week Monday I went with my friend to the British embassy for wine and hors d'oeuvres. It was sort of funny because I met my country's ambassador to my other country (I have dual citizenship). The ambassador and his wife made a very gracious host and hostess, although I found myself unusually baffled about where to put my hands once I was done shaking theirs. I suppose I'm not used to meeting people who are important enough to represent an entire country.

It was a grand do and my friend, whose guest I was, remember, strictly discouraged me from taking photos. Sorry. This was particularly disappointing once Alan Greenspan, Andrea Mitchell and Maureen Dowd all showed up eventually. I joked to the group I was with that I had to go deck Mr. Greenspan (for the economy stupid), because I have no idea when to keep my mouth shut.

It was a just a joke of course, since I quite admire Mr. Greenspan and I understand he has the good grace to consider our soon-to-be-former president an insufferable buffoon (I may be putting words in his mouth). Luckily people did laugh.

Maureen Dowd, who I like also - though in her case for her practical and/or provocative attitude towards both politics and feminism - was shortly surrounded by a number of young gentlemen. I assume they were trying to demonstrate that they were indeed necessary. I didn't get close enough to find out.

Indeed, I didn't say hi to any of the D.C. celebs because I'd have run out of clever things to say once I announced their own identities to them. I'm fairly sure they're all up to date on such news.

I am bummed I didn't get to ask the guy from BBC what he thought of pursuing journalism in the US. Broadcast journalists in the UK, in my humble opinion, are a bit more forceful when it comes to questions and follow-ups. I wonder if he notices cultural differences on that front too, or if I'm making it all up.

Anyway, I was a small fly on a big wall and I got to meet some interesting people and goggle at others. I was very glad to be invited.

Roundup

This guy was the hero of the article and makes me guffaw just about every time I see him.

Yesterday, while preening before the mirror of the Internet, I learned some things . . .

> My article made it to the home page of MSNBC. Yay!

This had a lot to do with my subsequent loss of time and goggled-eyed fascination with things said by others about yours-truly on various message-boards.

> People liked it. Or rather, some did. I'm told it was the most-read article on their site yesterday, and since it's only my second published article that fact leaves me a bit breathless. I gather too that some of the brass at MSNBC really enjoyed it, so that's very good news for me.

> People HATED it! One anonymous hater hated it with such hateful ambition they found this blog and left a post telling me just how much. Hey, it's good to hear so I can improve my writing. It also helped me formulate this theory about why and when people loathed it - and by frequent extension - me.

• If they felt I was critiquing technologies, people got angry. I poked fun at some much-loved and beleaguered gadgets/technologies, so that wasn't a huge surprise. Particularly the fans of underappreciated, minority-market-share technologies got pissed. Makes sense - no one likes to be put in a corner.
  
• If they read it the way I hoped - as a social critique of people who are thoughtless or heedless and use technology to either forgive or enhance that - they generally thought it was funny and cutting.

> No one defends Bluetooth headsets! Man - no joke - even many of the people who were helpfully pointing out that I'm probably poor, stupid, and a Luddite took time out to mention that they still agree with me on those things. One message-boarder referred to the earpiece as an "ear roach" and almost made me spit hot coffee out of both nostrils.

So, it was a fun day yesterday and now, thanks to the time I spent admiring myself in the Internet, now I have to spend all day mucking about with SQL and AJAX.

My second article

Yay, my second article is out. It's supposed to be lighthearted and funny.

My friend at MSNBC.com said that people there were cracking up over it, which is encouraging. I've been looking at it for so long that I couldn't tell any more if it was good, bad, or whatever.

today was a good day

Things are looking up slightly . . .

This coming Monday, it looks like I'll be raising toasts to the season at British embassy thanks to my good friend Farah who has wrangled me an invitation. She's kind of a force of nature when it comes to doing interesting things. Thanks Flail! I have to see if I still fit into my suit. Crap!

Second, my second "interactive" article will go up on MSNBC.com probably later today (it's like 1:00 AM now) thanks to my other good friend and all-around good person, Helen. She's awesome. Yay Helen. I'll post the direct link once it's up.

Third, I just had dinner with my buddy Stan who I got to know while I was in grad school. He's one of those friends you get so tight with that you can pick up years later without skipping a beat. His wife and daughter, who I met for the first time today are great too. I look forward to staying in touch with him better.

Working with computers makes me want to be a builder or painter.
pic by: Andreas Solberg on Flickr

And finally, the most personally relieving, but probably least interesting to the public at large . . . . I got my dev server working on my home computer, and even installed code(s) to diagram my MySQL database and let me play around with AJAX we should have on the website I'm building already.

Update 1 - job?

Where to start, where to start?

On the job front, I guess.
I'm hoping for a reasonable offer from this company I've just had a couple of interviews with. They're called hapax and their natural language processing software is off the bleeding hook - so much so, that it could probably parse this sentence and tell you that I think highly of their software. I don't know how it handles recursion, but I expect it does so well.

The short of it is that you feed the software text and it reads it and tells you things about it. Remarkable things - possibly even where it's easy to confuse the antecedents.

So, your civic Daniel-duty is to cross your fingers and hope that they offer me a job (and that the salary isn't less than what I was making two jobs ago at Consumer Reports).

I ache . . .

And not in a romantic, yearning, Yeatsian way either I'm afraid. Not even in a robust, post-athletic fashion.

No. Instead of pursuing a meaningful social-life or mastering unruly abs, I've been hunched, like some information-age Bartleby, over my monitor and keyboard trying to stay on top of this website I'm building with a couple of friends.

I'm the "project manager" - quotes heavily intended - and html/css monkey. Another friend I know from my last job is very able handling the PHP and databases. Nevertheless, I'm pooped. More than once I've thought "I'd prefer not to," mostly where it concerns error testing.

Anyway, twice recently I've had to turn down interesting, lovely requests from good friends to come visit with them and their children. If anyone reading this feels I'm ignoring them recently (rather than perennially), you've got my sincerest apologies. If you feel I've been ignoring you for longer than three weeks or so, you should call me and shout.

Flu

In addition to providing medical documentation that I'm lean and svelt, going to the doctor reminded me that it's flu-shot season.

Ever since I learned about flu-shots in my epidemiology classes, I've been fascinated by them. I think the facts are fairly cool.

Every year, flus grow in China. Why China? Because it's got the proper mixture of pigs, chickens, and humans living in proximity, and I suspect, a class of people who then get on planes and go elsewhere in the world - thus spreading the flu.

Now, every year I hear people denigrate the flu shot because "I got one last year and then I got the flu". Yes yes. The thing is, you got a flu, not The flu.

Because the other thing that happens each year is that doctors and epidemiologists and immunologists and tinkers and clowns and God-knows-who-else, all get together and try to identify the most virulent and fast-spreading strains of the flus likely to come out of China this year.

Then they put vaccinations to as many of the most dangerous and/or contagious strains as they can in a cocktail and someone else jabs that puppy in your arm and it feels like you overworked your delts yesterday and you get to whine about it all day.

Sometimes they guess wrong about which strain(s) of the flu will do the rounds of the globe, but we continue to hope and believe that they stop the next one that has its eyes on upstaging the strain that affected about 20% of the world's population in 1918 and managed to kill dead about 10-25 percent of those it infected.

So, to sum up:

• Flu isn't a single disease - it has more and less contagious or virulent strains
• The 1918 flu pandemic killed more than twice the number of people that WWI did.
• The point of the vaccine isn't to stop you getting a flu, it's to stop you getting THE flu (and incidentally, to stop you from giving it to your nearest and dearest).
• It's a good idea to get a flu shot this year.
  

Not fat

If I'm being honest, the last couple years of my life have not been the best of the bunch. I won't dwell though, because I'm English and that's not what we do.

However, good news was delivered today. It doesn't really make up for the preceding 30-ish months, but perhaps because of them, this lifted my spirits. I am back to my college weight.

The best part is that I haven't been trying to get back to any weight whatsoever, so it's like an unexpected gift.

I'm living it up in MI

I'm back in EL again to hang with Manny.

So far, I've been working on a website for a friend (hey Eric!), fighting off some cold or something I picked up by previously staying up way too late working on said website, and setting up Skype with a webcam so Manny can chat with his wife (hi Mom!), daughter (hi Janet!) and granddaughters (hi Rowan and Jael) across the Pond.

If you are reading this, use skype (or want some help learning how), and know Manny or me, drop me an email a we'll be video-conferencing toot sweet.

Also, stay tuned because my next humor/tech thing for MSNBC might go up any time and I'll post a link here when it does.

this is a funny "Web 2.0"-ish explanation

of why a web-comic I read (shut your hurtful mouth) wasn't updated this week.

It has some naughty words in it though, so don't click this link if individual words have the power to make you cry.

I call it Web 2.0, because folks like Flickr popularized the use of honest and/or humorous client-facing verbiage in modern web businesses. Also, paradigm and synergy!

http://www.freakangels.com/?p=59

I saw this awesome thing

on Clicked on MSNBC:

going to Boston

I'm tripping up to Boston for a conference:

"Web 2.0 and Your Brand". It sounds like the kind of title I roll my eyes at, but having talked with one of the organizers, I'm expecting good things. I expect my only problem with the name is that using "Web 2.0" is a common symptom of taking yourself too seriously, and I'm allergic to that. Still, it is about branding in the world of social media, so the title's right and it should be fun.

I'm going to split the drive by staying in NYC tonight and then driving up to visit my good buddies Eric and Erica in Boston. Looking forward to seeing them.

Anyway, if you need me, I'll be on the road, so calling will work best.

trying out a widget tool

This is the future of the interwebs . . . perhaps.





But does it work?

Well, I didn't put the code in twice, as far as I know. I wonder if the IE tab add-on for firefox is confusing the JavaScript that decides which version of the widget to show. Hmmm.

Hey, seems to work just fine now. That's encouraging.

my car just got stolen . . .

. . . By the NY police dept.

Apparently it was moved by the movies unit, but after 45 minutes of calling, hand-wringing, & wandering around, we found it. No thanks, I might add, to the goddamn police.

Blinds are making me crazy

I have to install new blinds in my apartment because some of the slats are ugly from the street. Don't get me started.

Unfortunately, the blinds seem to be an abnormal size and - so that I can't just move the brackets - they're installed on a metal door.

At least these blinds and the many trips they call for to Home Depot give me a good excuse not to work on my resume.

Stupid resume. Stupid blinds.

debate follow-up

http://chronicle.com/free/2008/08/4336n.htm

Well, Fort Hays State University fired the debate coach and communications professor shown dropping trow in the previous post. I'm amazed by two things that show up in the follow-up articles.

The first is that the university official said that they heard nothing about this whole incident until it showed up on YouTube. I would have thought the debate league's judges might have had a word or two in the ears of Fort Hays reps. If I was throwing a debate and one team's coach showed up acting the fool like this, I'd certainly ask for some sort of explanation/banning from the participating school.

Second, the school's debate team - apparently a pretty good one - got suspended thanks to their coach's antics. The president of FHSU said this was to give them time to look at debate as a whole and to make sure the FHSU team wasn't disadvantaged in coming debates. I figure not being in a debate greatly disadvantages you, but there you go.

You are the vulgarian, you fuck!

In times of a crappy economy, pointless foreign wars, a starkly divided political landscape (the reasons for which this video might illuminate by the way), waxing fundamentalism and anti-intellectualism on the rise, you take your humor where you can get it - even if it's a debate benchclear (lol):



I personally prefer my humor a bit more, you know, "on purpose" than this, but that doesn't make this case study in irony any less succulent. If debate isn't about shouting down an opposing point of view, then what do you call Congress, smarty pants? It isn't smirkingly known as a deliberative body for nothing you know.

Also, do go ahead and watch the whole thing. It isn't a one-note piece of inadvertent performance art. The rambling ad hoc defense the bearded debate coach slings together for flying off the handle is charmingly instructive.

Enjoy - but don't click play if grown up language makes you cry. Finally, please someone make a joke about re-butt-als in the comments. :)

The post title is a line from A Fish Called Wanda.

Aye! Phone!

Well, I'm compiling a list of things that piss me off about the iPhone. I've signed up for a developer account in hopes of being able to build a GTD application that doesn't make me crazy, but I'm not much of a coder and so I'm not too hopeful.

Among my complaints was the lack of good voice-note software - you know, a dictaphone. I mean, you've got a microphone, a hard drive, and a speaker. What's to stop you from letting me record my spontaneous thoughts?

An early model Zune.

Well, I downloaded the evernote app (for free) and it's good. It's probably great if you really jump into the evernote process, putting a XUL thingydoo on Firefox and downloading the software for your desktop. But jeez, I just want to be able to press a button on my phone and say executive shit like, "remember wife's birthday this year" (for which I acknowledge I'd need both software and a wife), "sell shares in Enron", or "cover vent on death star". You know Vader would have gotten to that if that game of Simon on his chest had been equipped with an MP3 recorder.

Anyway, the real downfall of the iApp for evernote is that it wants to connect to my evernote account somewhere on the Internet. This is a pain in the ass in just enough places to make it a proper pain in the ass. I've got 18 gigs of space on my phone for just these sorts of occasions. I should be able to take annotated video and store it locally.

And actually, what's up with not being able to shoot video? It's a trick question because I know your answer already Apple - "the camera isn't up to it". Ah, well you walked into that one didn't you? What up with the camera?

My flickr account would lead you to believe I developed Parkinsons concurrently with acquiring a new phone. I know, various Apple apologists have pointed out it's a phone before it's a camera, but that's like excusing broken AC in a car by saying it's not a fridge. I know it's not a camera, but it cost me a lot of money and Apple made a lot of noise about all this non-phone stuff it can do. You know what, if the lens or the image-capture chip isn't up to snuff, tilt the lens 45 degrees and sell it as a "spy camera". I'm tired of trying to take discreet pictures while holding the phone perpendicular to the ground.

I may have gotten off point there . . . considering that the point was that I finally downloaded YouNote.

It's awesome so far. It supports picture notes, audio notes, web notes, doodles and text notes. Moreover, I can tag the notes while the phone geotags them - you know, in case all I can remember is that I had a good idea in Santa Fe. It looks as though they're working too on letting you add a contact to the note for easy calling - though it doesn't work yet.

And actually, good luck with that. Despite coming with an operating system, the phone doesn't seem to support developers who want to pass things back and forth between programs. Would it be too much to ask to be able to copy? And perhaps paste? If I find a phone number in an email, I can call it, but I can't easily add it to contacts without actually calling the person.

Anyway, I'm daniel harrison and I approve this YouNote app.

The Olympics

If this Olympic elk were to take a poo, I'd give it a medal for Canada and choose to watch it over Michael Phelps.
This pic found here

I've been watching 'em. Here's my take.

I'm tired of Michael Phelps. He seems like a nice enough guy, but every time he ventures close to something wetter than a damp dishtowel, coverage jumps to him. Sometimes I want to watch gymnastics because, you know, it's interesting - unlike swimming.

Also, while it's cool he's winning like a million billion medals and all, you can only do that in a couple of sports. And those sports are swimming.

Even if you're a talented runner, you only get to run each distance in one direction. If it was like swimming there'd be a different medal for people who ran it backwards, sideways, and bow-legged. Phelps is a sick athlete, but I'd watch the Brazilian volleyball team any day of the week over him bringing another medal home for the U.S. of A.

Softball should be banned. I just don't like the sport. I've never seen players of an Olympic sport look so out of shape. I just watched about 30 seconds of a game and one of our players looks like Babe Ruth. It reminds me of English soccer players before the rest of the world realized that not eating fish and chips or smoking might give you an edge.

Is baseball an Olympic sport? I hope not, and let's keep cricket out of it while we're at it.

And actually, to follow up on the point made above about swimming, I don't only want to watch U.S. medal sports. I know that's an old critique, but if it's a choice between watching paint dry for an American gold and say, Judo (which is part of one of the most rapidly growing sports in the U.S.) then give me China vs. Iran in Judo any day. I didn't shell out all that cash for an HDTV to watch curling or darts. Sheesh.

Oooh, look!

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25852407

iSigh

It's a wonder I didn't get smeared all across Delaware on the way home from NYC this morning.

It's all I can do not to fiddle with my new iPhone. I'd downloaded the Pandora application and I can report that it works nicely. I'm a longtime fan of Pandora since a friend turned me on to it. (Check out Pandora.com now if you'd like an online "radio" station that plays music similar to a song or band you suggest - takes a few seconds to get going after you register).

I assumed it would need WiFi access in order to stream the songs, but as I hurtled along strictly within the speed limit of each of the 4 (?) states I passed through, it managed to play the music I wanted. It even paused when I got a phone call and started up again once I hung up. Radio that waits while you're on the phone is a fancy luxury. The only downside was that as I pulled into Maryland, it started wondering if perhaps by "Gnarls Barkley" I'd meant Dru Hill and some horrifying freestyle crap I most certainly didn't want to hear.

So, Pandora was a success, but now I'm getting frustrated. I'm used to being able to tinker with technology and the iPhone sort of sells on this premise. I'll withhold judgment for a while, but I'd really like to be able to choose on an application-by-application (or even instance-by-instance of an application) basis whether or not the screen was going to lock up after a minute. I guess for drives I could turn that function off entirely.

I'd also like a way to grab a phone number out of an email and turn it into a contact. I can dial it, so the phone knows it's a number. Why can't it let me create a contact? Does anyone know offhand of an app that allows that? While we're at it, is there an app for messing with the camera - which blows. I'd like to affect shutter speed and so forth.

I've got a couple of other wishes on my list - like a good IM client and a way around the stupid texting fees - so I'll probably be jailbreaking my phone eventually. Have to look into that a bit more. Oh, and iTunes makes me just furious.

NYC

I'm spending this week visiting NYC.

I love it. I left back in the day because I got a job in D.C., and I regretted leaving behind all the cool people even as I was packing my stuff.

Now, after revisiting CU and going out with other folks in the city, I'm extra wistful. It was flattering and wonderful walking around CU and seeing everyone. I badly misjudged how much time I'd need to see everyone and had to go back on Wednesday after being there most of the day on Tuesday.

If I missed seeing you, I'm really sorry.

I'm torn between D.C. and NYC now. I guess wherever i get a job first is the place I'll go.

Keeping all that in mind, being back in NYC with some perspective is funny. The fashionistas are still out and about, but now instead of thinking they're cool and hip I'm a little concerned that they're stunted. Riding down Flatbush Ave in Bklynn I saw a guy who had clearly spent way too long in front of the mirror choosing the right pants and shirt to accentuate his sunglasses. That shit was cool and edgy in high school, but come on.

P.S. - I'm older than Adam apparently

stoopid iPhone

I may not be able to stand myself if I buy my new iPhone in NYC's meatpacking district. Phil, if I come home with my collar popped I'm counting on you to fucking kick my ass.

I was visiting As. - who I'm staying with in NYC - at her job in the Chelsea Market and decided I'd go over to the new Apple Store for giggles. I got there and a very nice young lady informed me that they'd just sold out half an hour before.

No! Way! I guess I'll be coming back tomorrow since the feeding frenzy seems to be over and regular mortals can buy iPhones.

Meanwhile, trendy NYC remains kind of preposterous. I was riding a hipster bike in Brooklyn today (don't ask) and wanted to pull over and push myself down for being such a dork.

Offline validation of the online spirit

I totally stole this!
To complete the joke, Dan Walsh should send me a cease and desist letter.

So, "getting it" is a problematic phrase thrown around way too much by folks who work on the web. It's a shorthand way of saying, we're smarter than "they" are because we're all hip and with-it and we have iPods.

Except when used over beers (or in post-meeting bitch sessions after investors have left the room), it's lazy and more than a little arrogant and cliquish. If you're really all that smart, define what "it" is and explain just what "they" don't get about it.

I thought as much.

Moreover, the secret thing about the Web is that it keeps on changing all the time so no one really "gets it" (except of course Kevin Rose).

So, with that qualifier in mind, a lot of people who are tasked with moving non-Web stuff online are slow to understand the differences in how business can or should be done. I'm looking squarely at you, record labels.

So it's nice to see that Jim Davis does in fact get it. Jim Davis is the guy who created the most syndicated comic in the world, Garfield. Dan Walsh, who seems like a net native, is the guy who had the idea to remove the eponymous cat from Davis's strips leaving just a portrait of his crazy, haunted owner Jon Arbuckle. The result is a distressingly funny meditation on lunacy and modern loneliness that makes me want to laugh and cry in about equal parts. It's better than Cats.

Now, in the usual course of affairs (Hasbro, I'm looking at you now, you jackasses) Jim Davis and his publishers would swoop in, shout sort of heedlessly about intellectual property rights, and crap all over everyone's parade. However, Davis did nothing of the sort. He declared that he liked it and with the help of Ballantine books (who publish Garfield) he's doing a joint project with Walsh.

You just have to breathe a sigh of relief. After Hasbro decided that they were going to shut down Scrabulous rather than ask for a percentage of the profits, it's encouraging to see someone coming from an offline medium who freaking gets it.

Finally!

Thank God. I was wondering when someone would step up and show the world this record was only unbreakable in our hearts and minds.

Clicky: Man Breaks Underwater Cycling World Record

I would have done it myself if I'd had scuba equipment, a bike I wanted to ruin, and any previous inkling that such a record existed. Seriously, can you just make up records to break? I currently hold the world record for being made up of the genotype I'm made up of - 34 years.

And counting!

An interesting note from the article, Mr. Vittorio Innocente says he wants to show that you can bike anywhere. Great, now prove it's a good idea. Actually, since he's doing it for charity, it's still a good idea.

My new filing technique is unstoppable

That's not just a reference to this reliable chestnut of Internet humor.

It's also the awesome truth. Or the sad truth if you consider how long it took me to get here.

I'm not terribly organized as a rule. I'm lucky to be smart enough to fake it most of the time, but there's a limit. I passed that limit, if we're going to be honest, in college some time. That's (carry the twelve . . .) a billion years ago now.

So, during my recent ample free time I decided to get my goddamn act together. I picked up a copy of a book recommended by the good folks over at boingboing.net called "Getting Things Done" by David Allen. I'm universally leery of self-help and/or business books - they're all written at the 3rd to 4th grade reading level and tend to be littered with advice that insults most peoples' intelligence - but so far boingboing hasn't steered me wrong.

In tandem with the "Finish Rich Workbook", Getting Things Done provided a context for filing. It sounds daft even as I write it, but let's be honest, the actual process of filing is not that tough if you have a good (or frankly even just consistent) grasp of the alphabet. There are two difficult bits:

1. Creating a place for everything to go;
2. Understanding why you should put things in their places rather than say, on the floor, under the bed, or most usually, in a pile next to (or, good grief, under) other piles.

Once you have a place for everything (Finish Rich Workbook), and an understanding of why things go there (Gettting Things Done), the act of filing is simple. And, and I'm a bit embarrassed to admit this because let's face it I'm geeky enough as is, empowering? I understand now why my stepfather gets so excited about "wizardizing". You feel as though you're getting stuff done.

Unless you've already got your own system of filing, you probably don't understand this post at all. Actually, it may be that you had to be a total disaster like myself to really appreciate the transformation. Some people just seem fantastically organized all the time.

I file those people under "bastard".

I'm totally getting a new iPhone . . .

Just not yet apparently.

I talked to a rather harried-sounding bloke down at the Apple-Store-cum-iPhone-store and he told me that while they had a small number of iPhones left today, there was a line out the door that was clocking in at, hold on let me check, oh a four hour wait.

When I asked if he had any idea when the feeding frenzy was going to stop, he sounded almost as though he was about to cry. "I thought it would be over by now." Poor guy.

I'll get my phone once the lunacy is over. That meshes nicely with my earlier plan of waiting to hear if anything really crappy started to happen with them or if the battery life became a problem.

I like this

Joss Whedon reliably throws good stories together.

You should probably look at this since Joss Whedon seems to have written it and it's got Doogie Howser and Mal in it: http://www.drhorrible.com/

Awesome

This takes me back to two separate portions of my life. The most obvious being when I lived in NYC. The other being when I would do crazy reckless things.

Enjoy:

Back in Reston, back online

Hey Verizon stopped by today and totally hooked me up with broadband and HDTV. On top of all that, the interface for using the cable is just a lot easier than the crap I had to put up with from Comcast.

I'm growing further convinced that interface is the edge these days. Apple broke stirringly into the cell phone market using primarily interface changes. BMW keeps getting hammered for that nonsense iDrive doodly do that no one can use. And Comcast made me suffer through that terrible terrible interface they had to the point where I was happy for any out I could find.

I only watch about 5 hours of TV a week, if that, but I don't want those precious moments marred by frustration. There are still a lot of interfaces to be improved, and I think that players who can fix them in markets where they're broken (DVDs - and frankly anywhere else IP protection gets in the way of ease-of-use - I'm looking at yous) stand to corner the market.

Verizon is, however, bringing yearly contracts to the table. That's an unnecessary frustration, right? I'm sure it's a large investment to send folks out to link houses up (even after laying the cables), but you'd imagine getting more people out of the gate would offset the one-time hook up costs.

Still, it's good to be back online so I won't complain just yet.

small town adventure

Maverick is a bit of a twit.

Today when we went for breakfast (at that restaurant I hate, yes, I know), there was a very eager dog (a shitzu I think) scampering around the parking lot trying to make friends, run under cars, the usual.

One of the folks we were meeting for breakfast is an inveterate animal saver. Last week at breakfast she told us all about the ferret she saved in the woods (MSU has a lot of students, and this time of year is when irresponsible students ditch their unwanted pets). Anyway, Kathy saw the dog and got that unmistakable look in her eye.

More for Kathy than for the dog, I offered the use of our back yard - which is fenced in - for dog storage while we ate breakfast and decided what to do with the pooch. I used my cell phone to call the dog-grooming place right next door to the restaurant, in case it had been boarded there and escaped, but it was 8:15 at this point and no one answered.

Eventually, we hatched the plan to call the animal control people and foist the problem off on them. That's why they're there after all. But this was going to have to wait until Kathy was done with some errands. Meanwhile, I threw a stick for the dog in the back yard. He was not a bright dog. Or he's deaf perhaps. Full of energy, but dumb.

Anyway, speaking of dumb, as I was playing with the pooch it (finally) occurred to me that I could take a picture of him with my phone. After a torturous period getting the little bastard to sit still enough that I could shoot the pic, I called the now-open grooming shop and asked if they boarded dogs. No, no they don't. Okay, well, does this dog sound familiar? Wait a sec, I'll send you a picture.

A few moments later i got a call back and it turns out that Maverick is well known to the ladies of the doggy salon. So, the dog is back in the hands of people who love him, Kathy is very glad to have the weight off her mind, and I'm psyched that my (cheap cheap phone) managed to enable some fancy communication.

Lively?

I just tried out Lively, Google's answer to Second Life.

It's a virtual world that uses your browser as the client software. You can read more about it here on Google's blog.

If you need to hug when you go to blogs, this might be the technology for you. I'm not sure I need the social web quite that much up in my grill, but I've read Stephenson's "Snow Crash", so I understand this might be a step in a potentially fruitful direction.

Still, why Google? For a long time I've resisted the urge to call Google evil just because they have all my data and know everything I've ever done online. Creepy. Now I wonder if they're becoming evil by mistake.

In a world where business plans end with "Step 3: Sell to Google/MS/Yahoo", I think we have to start worrying about how monopolizing audience and/or coding talent limits the creativity of the web.

I'm not sure what the answer is, but we're seeing this disturbing trend of a few major players buying up or co-opting the entire web. So Google, just because you can compete with SecondLife doesn't mean you have to. You're a search engine, remember? How long before they start selling books?

On the other hand, Lively is a pain to use so far. Maybe this is a flash in the pan.

Meanwhile, here's a view of Google through Lively (or not, I don't know. I'm just embedding a Lively room because I can.):

I knew it!

http://www.buffalo.edu/news/9421

This validates men and English people everywhere!

Ups (. . . and downs)

At least today wasn't boring.

I got a follow-up on some ActionScripting work. I've been working on it all day and I think I've got a pretty good start. It should bring in enough money that I can eat this month. Yay for eating!

I also got email from my buddy that we're getting closer to some of my writing going up on MSNBC, which is a big deal for me. Moreover, I may get to write stuff that's more complicated than what I've done so far. I choose to view that as a "promotion". On the other hand, I also choose to believe that I'm hanging out behind the Gas 'n' Sip alone on a Saturday night by choice, so maybe I'm not the best judge (who spotted the reference? Anyone? . . . Okay, anyone other than Helen?).

On the down side, I had to go to a nearby restaurant with M. today and this restaurant is a haunt of the local oldies. It smelled vaguely of urine this afternoon and made me sad, so sad. It's a restaurant where you absolutely order with a whimper rather than a bang. I feel I should get a menu to hang on my mirror to remind me daily of the dangers of aging, to remind me not to go gently into (this eatery whose name I've redacted), but I'll be damned if I'm going back there ever again. Ain't happening.

Finally, I got a CD (I know, how quaint right?) that I ordered through the pony express. It's by a band called Lexicon and contains the song "Rock". It makes me happy just to hear it and the chorus makes this song one that many people love but few know the name to. I'll do you all a favor and point you at their MySpace page. Play "Rock". You'll thank me. (however, it's the only song I like on the album)

The fourth of July

After two mojitos each, M. and I are in a festive spirit. We just ate chips and salsa out back, M. all the while lamenting that if we ate any more we'd spoil dinner. Well, dinner is spoiled and now we're having melon with prosciutto and then corn on the cob.

We're listening to a newly created Pandora station that I seeded with "sousa". M.'s more interested in this application of the Internet than anything else we've seen thus far.

It played a Sousa something or other, followed immediately by the can-can, the theme to Star Wars, and something from the Nutcracker.

It's a totally absurd sound-track to a funny evening.

Happy 4th everyone.

I'm so tired of Chris Anderson

I've altered this whole post because it was kind of an unfocused rant.

My point stands though. Chris Anderson made this daft pronouncement, that the scientific method is "obsolete". In my opinion, Anderson oversimplifies subtle topics (I'm guessing, so he can write popular books about them) and in the process either misses what's important or interesting, or in this case allows himself to stretch his observations beyond their capacity.

And, as long as he's taking advantage of his soap box to go around making blunt pronouncements (that are, I think, way off base), it's worthwhile to make counter-arguments. Or, in this case at least, to point out good ones elsewhere.

This blog doesn't reach more than a couple of you, but I encourage you to read Anderson's misconstrual (as well as the various comments that take him to task), and also the "rebuttals". After all, in an America where science is already being threatened in the schools by creationists, it's probably important to know a bit about how science actually works.

Ars Technica and Kevin Kelley tackle the issue Anderson raises in smarter, more precise terms. I think there's more to be said, and I may do so, perhaps elsewhere.

Jogging

I jogged about a mile a couple of days ago before all my anatomy let me know with crystal clarity that this running crap was not on. I turned around and huffed and puffed back to the house with my tail between my legs.

The next day I felt as though I'd inadvertently put my legs under a steamroller.

Then, yesterday, I ran about two miles. Today I feel fine.

If my math's correct, by the end of next week I should be running 64 miles at a go. I'm looking forward to it. I don't see what all the fuss about marathons is.

In totally unrelated news, I'm fat. I swear, even the air here in Michigan is deep fried.

M. and technology

M. just crushed me at Wii bowling. I'm not even sure what to make of that. He's 83.

On the topic of being 83 and thinking about technology, educating M. about the web and how to access it has been very instructive. It's also been like trying to teach a camel to knit.

I remember my friend Anne telling me about an article she read that talked about how IQ is actually increasing. Apparently, younger generations are taught to do a better job of abstraction - and IQ tests favor that skill set. I'm not sure I buy it, but there's something going on here. An example she repeated is that if you ask someone of my generation to name similarities shared by a dog and a rabbit, we'd tell you about quadrupedia, mammalian attributes, and so on.

Apparently among some older generations, the question is nonsense. You use dogs to kill rabbits, so they're sort of diametrically opposed.

As I say, I'm not sure I take all that as gospel, but I've been trying to explain the Web to M. using first principles. However, he's approaching it very practically. To him, it's not important what programs are open to allow him to see his email. I'm much (much) less interested in getting something done than I am in understanding how it works.

Gorillas, gorillas, report to the mist . . .

Sorry if you arrived here looking for an Ice Cube song.

Following on from my last post, my next interactive is going to be about technologies and gadgets that make you look like a d-bag if you use them. This is a call for suggestions. Anyone got any ideas?

I've got blue tooth headsets outside the car, crackberries, and the Apple Airbook so far. Anyone got other ideas?

I'm a writing machine . . .

This chimp is just one underpaid intern in my brain.

. . . though not like a typewriter. More like a room filled with chimps.

Right now I've got my chimps writing some basic "interactives" for MSNBC.com. The first one is something like "Technologies that signal the end of days". It's supposed to be humorous and perhaps thought-provoking. I'll link to it when and if it goes up.

Unfortunately, I've learned that writing for mass media is hard, you've got to write to all layers of reader. I'm reminded of something my dad once opined, that the best writers in England often worked for the tabloids. They were the only ones who could manage to write about intelligent topics intelligently, and not leave behind the, er, less educated members of the audience. It turns out that writing intelligently for the mass market is tough to do well.

Luckily, the web is a good medium for educating as you go. It's possible to drop in links (like the one I used above) to give readers who want it a little background.

Regent to the good king

I'm hanging out with Good King M. (step dad) these days. I'm not sure if that makes me the regent, but close enough.

It's exciting or amusing work for these reasons:

Cooking
Cooking with/for M. is like being in the kitchen with a lemur. If you're chopping anything he likes, his hand will dart in between knife chops to steal unguarded morsels. He's 83; How can his hands be so swift? I'm the equivalent of a black belt in hand-to-hand combat and I'm powerless to stop him.

Oxygen
M.'s wearing a little oxygen-delivery system. It makes tiny puffs, so he sounds like Darth Vader as interpreted by Hello Kitty.

"I am your stepfather Daniel . . . poof, poof."

Politics
M. is very sweet in apologizing for leaving the world a crappier place than when he found it. I'm not even sure that's accurate, but he's very concerned about this administration's failures vis-a-vis oil, healthcare, education, etc.

Cooking again
Did I mention that the Good King's idea of a great vegetable-side for chicken is honey? Is it sweet and fiberless? Perfecto!

The Interwebs
I'm tutoring M. on how to use the web. He's a good student except he believes using the web will be harder than it is. He's by no means the only person to suffer from this misconception, so no big deal. If you can recommend interesting sites, let me know.

The only downside for me is that when I explain about my successes on the web (like how, for instance I'm probably going to get some freelance work up on MSNBC shortly) he's not suitably impressed. He's never heard of MSNBC, let alone gone there. To be fair, MSNBC isn't that big a deal (sarcasm), and M. knows I went to high school with one of the founders of Google (truth).

Hard to top.

Going home

I'm in bucolic Michigan. I've returned to the old homestead to keep ye old step-dad company while my mom toddles off to England for a while.

I hadn't planned to be unemployed and living at home in my thirties, but here we are. Actually, it'll be a convenient place from which to conduct my job search, I guess. Also, I'm out of Reston for a bit, so that's pretty sweet.

I'm not very connected right now

Comcast and I have had a falling out. It's been a long time coming, and I think we both sort of expected it.

The writing's been on the wall for a while. The first time Comcast came over I knew it was going to be problematic when they tried to install their shit on my computer. I mean, talk about moving too fast. Boundaries, right?

As time went on, when we talked on the phone I felt as though we were speaking different languages. Now, as long as I'm going to be going home to MI for a couple of weeks, I felt like it was time. Besides, I met someone new I'm kind of into - Verizon Fios. Very fast and easy apparently, and I think that's what i'm looking for right now.

Anyway, point is, it may be hard to contact me for a little while. Sorting out the Internet is priority 1 once I'm in Michigan.

So I thought this would be funny

Taking a page from my buddy Mike Elkin's book, I decided it might be funny to translate something from English to Spanish to Swedish to English again and see how it came out. I may have better ideas for source material in the future, but I'm starting with Hamlet's "To be or not to be?" soliloquy.

It probably bears saying that I got the original version from Wikipedia and it probably needs a translation from English to English

Emphasis is all mine . . .

To be vai does not, that is the question:
If 'tis the noble, suffering from Minden
The sling and arrow, outragious Fortune,
Or, to take Armes against the sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them: dye, to sleep
Not any more, and a sleep to say that at the end of
The Heart-AKE, and thousands of Naturall Shock
This meat is too heyra? 'TIS a consummation
Deuoutly is wish'd. To Dye to bed,
Sleep, perchance to dream, I is a bargain,
If you would like us to sleep and death, which may become a Dream,
When haue shuffel'd remove this mortal Coile,
Must Giu vs. Paws. The so-respect
Calamity, that the so-long life:
To be Beare whips and scoria time,
The Evil oppressors, Poore mans contumely,
Changing of the Guard and dispriz'd Loue, the delay in Lawes,
The Spanish: hibris, hybris office (I have just no idea about this), and the Spurn
, That the patients have to be made with vnworthy,
When itself be able to make his quietus
When the bare bodkin? What are these Fardles Beare
In order to grunt and sweat-vnder tired of life,
However, that fear is something after death,
The vndiscouered Countrey, which Borne
Not Traueller return, Puzels will,
And it is facing a Beare Illes, we haue,
Then flye others who do not know.
Thus conscience makes cowards in front of everyone,
And, therefore, that HEW Natiue resolution
Is Sicklied o're, pale cast of thought,
And Enterprize bone marrow, and a great moment,
In this sense, his Currants turn away,
And loose the name of action.

Enjoy

George Orwell and sock puppets

In case you don't watch boingboing.net like I do, this appealed to my geeky sense of the absurd.

Sock puppets deconstructing George Orwell's 1984.

Ugh - an update

Okay, I'm fully back from Kenya.

My body re-entered the country about three weeks ago, but my mind's been taking its sweet time to catch up. I finally feel like I'm back and once again focused on finding a stinking job.

On that front, there have been a couple of nibbles, but nothing concrete yet.

In the meantime, I'm happy to report that I'm making ends meet via dividends from a real-estate investment and some freelance coding. This month I've made a couple of thousand dollars already, so that might bide me for a while. Helen's also working to help me out with writing stuff at MSNBC, but writing isn't something that's thick on my resume, so it's by no means a sure thing. Also, I think that given how quickly I write and the pay rate for coding, coding is much more lucrative.

However, as I predicted with online community, more and more people are lumping community and content together. That means I'd like to get more writing/editing on my resume. It's stuff I've done before, but always interstitially, never as a proper job.

Video

As promised:

Here's a hippo chasing another hippo:








And here's me and Farah with some lions:

Back from Kenya

I look a little fearful here, not so much because I'm a coward as because there's a goddamn lion within pouncing distance of my head.

Also, I'm a huge coward when it comes to being eaten.

So I'm back in the U.S. jet-lagged out of my gourd and suffering from what I'll politely call a case of "persistent indigestion". I'm a bit pissed about that last because I was fine the whole trip until the very end. I think I ate a tomato like a huge git.

I'll write more later about reflections and so forth on going to Kenya and helping to connect the school to the web.

As I say, I'm a bit under the weather today (didn't even go to kali class), so if I was supposed to contact you today, I apologize. I hope you'll forgive me.

Just got bitten by a safari ant

. . . which hurts!

More importantly though, I've managed to help connect Farah's program for street children, Jitegemee, to the Web. I've also downloaded some upgrades to programs and drivers that should make the kids' experience of the Web a lot more like the rest of the worlds'.

I feel like a bit of a thief taking credit for connecting the place though. The computers came from other donors (from MSU I think) and Safaricom makes their service quite simple to sign up for. It's still slow - we got 15 Kbps during the download of the driver (and remember 64K was dial up, right?) - but it's not bad and it works.

I won't write much except to point you at this horrifying little beastie, which I'm told is what crawled up the back of my leg and gave me a thorough biting behind my knee .

Kenya kenya kenya

This will be unadorned with images and web stuff, because i'm sitting in a cybercafe in Nairobi.

Just got back from safari, which was fundamentally awesome. Do you remember the rush you got from going to the zoo for the first time and realizing that the animals you'd read about or seen on TV had physical mass? Well, multiply that times awesome.

Right before heading to safari we also visited a company called Nairo-bits. They teach slum kids computer skills from basic skills up to web development. At each level, the kids open up a new vocational training. Knowledge of Word and formatting allows them to design business cards and format CVs, while those kids who learn enough to create dynamic web pages usually get jobs with the firm they do their final project for.

The whole thing resonates with the idea I had to teach my mentee back in Yonkers how to code. I figured if I was making $55/hour at something I learned in a couple months after I graduated, why shouldn't a "child at risk" be able to deflate some of that financial risk on his own.

Anyway, got to run. I promise pictures and video of wild animals when I'm back.

Update

It's been a while since I wrote anything here. Although I was feeling unemployed, single, bored, and unloved, I didn't want to brag about it to everyone, but now I guess it's time for an update.

And there's a lot of stuff to cover.

Here's what's up with me in the next few weeks:

• Tomorrow I have two nibbles about potential jobs, both seemingly pretty cool ones. I won't jinx it by giving details until I'm offered and take one or other. However, one has the hugely fascinating potential to be 100% remote, meaning I could work from Kenya if I wanted to, where the dollar doesn't yet suck completely.
  
• And speaking of Kenya, forget Norway! Seriously, forget all about it (you'll understand when you click on the link below), because on the 3rd, I'm going to Kenya! My good friend Farah is going there to look in on a school she started for street children while she was working in Machakos as a journalist (because she's frankly superhuman). I'll be there seeing the motherland for the first time and looking out for lions and malaria. In case you want to sing along with me for the next week and a bit, click here: "I'm going to Kenya" (note: there are no tigers in Kenya)
  
• I'm thinking about starting a consultancy up with my friend Eric. I identified an unmet need in the online community world that he and I are particularly suited to work on. If everyone on the Internet would sign an NDA, I'd talk about it more, but some of you have been dragging your feet. You know who you are. Working for myself has become a dream ever since I started working for the investors who last "downsized" me.
• I'm a writer! Look Ma, no talent! What I do have is a close friend at MSNBC who's helping me to get a first article published there. Helen is the genius snark behind their Netiquette column. I've helped her with a few articles there by hashing out ideas with her and now she's returning the favor and editing my writing to suck less. She's well suited to editing me, since she's super kind-hearted and effervescently, scintillatingly, and hilariously mean.
  

Yay for Santa Fe

I'm in Santa Fe this week for an online community conference.

I flew into Albuquerque and got a rental car. I brought my Garmin along, so I wouldn't have to think for myself very much at all. One of the benefits of having a GPS system in this part of the world is that you know, in real-time, and so can exclaim loudly if you're inclined, that you must have just taken a wrong turn in Albuquerque. Simple pleasures.

I thought Reston looked manufactured. Albuquerque doesn't seem to suffer from a great deal of authenticity. I could be wrong. Perhaps all these adobe buildings were manufactured by real live Southwest Amerindians. Apparently though, most of the boutiques selling authentic Southwest art are owned by Iranians (and let's all welcome the SigInt folks from the NSA to the blog for the first time. Welcome!)

In other news, you ever have that nagging feeling that you've forgotten something. I often have it, but now it's like the boy who cried wolf, because usually I'm good. This time however, I have to go to Target tomorrow to buy underwear. Good grief.

Pictures later, if I get to take any. There's a good Georgia O'Keefe museum here, so I can see the original pictures of flowers (genitals) and skulls (also genitals?) tomorrow if I'm lucky. I'm psyched to see the mysterious stairs built by St. Francis (or some such nonsense). As I say, pics to follow - as well as explanation I hope.

Sad phone

I came across this on BoingBoing.net.

If you read the comments, you'll notice a theme.

It is interesting how hearing the voice of a dead loved one can have such an effect. I'll hazard a guess though that it's not just the voice, but the context too. After all, the recording is one half of a conversation that was recorded entirely without reference to the sad facts. It's hopeful and bittersweet.

If you ask me, it's also a little indulgent and self-tormenting.

Beard experiment

Like most guys who get laid off, I took the opportunity to grow a beard. It was a failure. After working out that it was growing in like I had a pre-existing case of chemo-therapy, I decided to try some new looks as I shaved it off. Most were hampered by the mange look - although I really like the biker look. Maybe one day after I finish the whole cremaster cycle.

beard
I cannot grow a beard. I look mangy.

Tidied
Amazing what a tiny bit of shaving will do.
Engage Number One!

Goatee
Like the mullet, you can't wear this ironically any longer, so I just looked like a dick.

Biker /Handlebar
Nickel mustache rides anyone? Wow this is awesome (in my head!).

Stepdad?
Not sure why I think of this as a "stepdad" look, but I do. It conjures earnestness with a twist of dickiness.

Interestingly, my actual stepdad is a lovely fellow, but then he's grown a simply fantastic beard and mustache.

Awesome
Back to normal. Best, I find, not to wear your shortfallings on your face in full display. I can't grow a beard, and now only the Internet knows.

It's hard to believe someone so commandingly attractive can be both single and unemployed! Oh, wait.

A better system of punishment

If you read this article (link), you'll read a story about a judge in Pennsylvania who gave a bunch of drug dealers the choice between a full 2 year stint in prison and 1 year followed by parole if they learned English in the first year.

I read a while back that the number one predictor of recidivism is whether or not the convict learned something while in prison. You're much less likely to show up back in the dock if you pick up your GED or an Associates while in prison.

At the time I was in grad school, and sort of loathing it. I thought then that it would be a good idea to have sentences measured by degrees instead of years. If you get brought up on minor charges, you have to learn a new skill; felonies require an associates, bachelor's, masters or PhD depending on the severity. As long as you're planning to let people out at the end, you could match the current sentencing with how long it takes to get a degree.

You'd just have to find a way to provide education and then stop numskulls who want an education and can't afford it from committing crimes to get into college. I think, though, that if even a good school like UM had a serious risk of bum-rape on campus, I would have declined to go, so perhaps you wouldn't need a lot of discouragement to keep it from seeming as though crime was being rewarded.

I guess the wisdom of this plan hinges primarily on whether the criminal system is primarily designed to rehabilitate or punish. Actually, this does both, so maybe not.

Ow

I just got finished being manhandled by a much smaller dude. Granted, he's my martial arts instructor, but still, wow.

I was the only one who showed up for class today so we did some trapping. It's a very particular range of fighting that you use to bridge the gap between punching and either grappling or more punching. It's elegant and artistic and doesn't work very well if the other guy is throwing boxing punches.

However, it transitions really well to take-downs, so we did some of those. Well, once you take a guy down a few times, as any male friend will tell you, you have to wrestle. Those are the rules made up in the time of Adam or Jesus or someone and there's no way around them unless someone gets hurt. Even then there'd better be some blood.

Anyway, wrestling at a dojo quickly becomes ju-jitsu.

I'm not very good at ju-jitsu.

I'm a fair wrestler because of all the time Dad spent throwing me and my sisters around during our youth, but I have talent rather than skill. I countered a couple of his maneuvers thanks to being about 8 inches taller and 30 pounds heavier, but now my ribs have bruised ribs and portions of my lower back seem to have seceded. Seriously, is it possible to prolapse your spine?

Man I miss being young and made of Nerf.

Fired!

Or more accurately, "let go", though semantics seem a bit thin at present.

I actually wasn't fired, because it wasn't like I was doing a crap job. The funding is just thin and they needed to tighten the belt, so to speak.

Anyway, I'm looking for a new gig and if you're reading this blog, you probably know me and know people who are looking to hire. I'll move as far as England if the opportunity is right, but I'm looking mostly in the NYC area.

I'm not bummed, so don't worry about me. The job was beginning to get on my nerves. I don't regret it, because I learned a lot about how not to run a business as well as a good deal about how to. This turn of events just lights a fire under a job search that was already under way.

Aetna can suck it too

Funny story, the caduceus pictured above in the hand of Hermes - god of trickters, thieves and commerce - is occasionally confused with the rod of Asclepius, which represents medicine.
It's simply impossible to figure out why.

I've been trying to deal with Aetna, and the frustration is palpable. I've made the terrible error of signing up for the HMO my company offers. No I don't know why. It was a mistake. Leave me alone.

I wish someone had caught me. I was looking at the deductible for the pharmacy visits which is marginally less on the HMO than the PPO. I didn't realize that an HMO requires a referral from a primary caregiver for any non-emergency trip to a specialist. So I'm late in getting round to this, but frankly in the last 10 years of my life my endocrinologist hasn't really done much for me except to prescribe insulin and hassle me.

Anyway, back to the topic at hand. I called Aetna to see if they'd waive the referral for me since they've covered my diabetes for the 8 years I was at Consumer Reports. I surmise that demanding a referral is a safety measure for them so that people don't abuse access to specialists for crazy reasons. If that's the case (maybe it's not?) then as long as I can demonstrate to Aetna that I'm not just making this whole diabetes thing up, they can save money and I can save money and time by waiving this referral necessity one time.

No. No they most certainly cannot. I called and got nowhere with a customer service rep who clearly had as much latitude to make executive decisions about, you know, customer service as I do about Pakistani parliamentary procedure. I asked to talk to her boss and got this wonderful dialog out of her (paraphrased from poor memory, but the gist is right):

Me: So it saves money for me and you both if you can waive this referral. If you look at your records it'll show you that you've been paying for my diabetes treatment for years.

Her: Yes, but it's a new company and a new policy.

Me: Yes, of course, but do you think I was making up the diabetes at the other job for almost a decade?

Her: No sir (she did seem apologetic), but those are the rules.

Me: So, am I just a rule-bound number in your database or a real person with medical needs?

Her: (pause . . .) Yes. Those are the rules.

It must be nice to be in a business where your "customers" can't go anywhere and your clients' representatives don't really care how you treat their employees. At this point I'd vote for a candidate who would just legislate that health insurers have to do a passable job being sensible human beings - or perhaps letting their employees be sensible human beings.

Human cockfighting

I'm going to Columbus, Ohio on Saturday to see UFC 82 and I'm psyched. Some friends and family might be confused that I'm driving 12-14 hours round-trip to watch a 3-4 hour fight event. Here's my point of view:

Rocky encouraged us to think of boxing as a contest of bloody-mindedness where two guys stood toe-to-toe bludgeoning each other until one fell down. Visceral, but also kind of mindless and barbaric.

That's how I thought of it until I got in the ring and started training and sparring (I've never fought a real fight thank Christ). As with many sports, and frankly other things too, you don't really appreciate what's going on until you start doing it yourself. Boxing requires strategy and brains as well as "heart" and muscles.

When you throw in grappling, kicking and trapping, well now it's calculus. The UFC is trying more and more to appeal to everyone, which I feel is a bit of a shame. The average Joe off the street who's going to watch this stuff isn't training in it. He wants to see the human cockfight, complete with stunning knockout. I'm not against knockouts, but I hate to hear boo-ing when the fighters go to the mat for grappling. Ju-jitsu is like chess more than any other part of the game, after all.

Anyway, I'm going to watch grown men beat each other up in friendly, regulated competition and it's going to be fantastic.

Thank you mom.

Shut up, I'm awesome!

I got this picture from my mom in the mail today with the note:
"Well, I guess there's one in every family."

I believe I'm wearing a funnel as a hat. This is why children always run around. They intuit that you want to take embarrassing photos of them for later. Thanks Mom!

I think she's decided that as long as I'm not bringing home girlfriends she can show these pics to directly, I'd better show them around.

I had some coffee. It was the same.

Starbucks shut down yesterday for a couple of hours to take it offline and get their heads together (or whatever people do in business these days). They took the time to put up some signs about how important espresso is.

I just had a coffee today and it was the same as the coffee I got a few days ago. Well done.

Was anyone blown away by the sweeping winds of change? Did they do this in Europe as well?

God loves a black woman president

I'm getting tired of the on-again-off-again debate about whether race or gender is more astonishing in the democratic primary. The only upside to it will be if the thrill of voting in a potentially "history making" election gets democrats out to vote.

Here are my arguments against:

• It's only historic because we're backwards. Blacks and women have been elected to leadership positions for years abroad. We're not forging new ground; we're (as usual) showing up to the party late, drunk, and announcing that the party can now begin. Utterly bloody heedless.
• It's irrelevant. If you're voting based on race or gender, you're a fucking nitwit. If I were hiring someone and the HR rep who's supposed to be researching the candidates came and said, "we've got these two candidates. One's Black and the other's a woman. Which one do you want?", I'd fire my HR rep on the spot. The press is the HR rep in this labored analogy. Anyway, point is, I'm not voting for McCain, despite being male and white. It's racist and insulting for the media to keep presuming that Blacks and women are tunnel-vision, single-issue voters.

Now what would really be an amazing historic turning point for the U.S. (though again not so much for the rest of the world) would be an avowed atheist getting the nod. And frankly, that's more and more important, since candidates are now making promises and policy based on religious doctrine. The debates on abortion, gay marriage, and even for the love of all that is good, education, are now being affected by religion.

And if it's frightening to some people that the president might not have naughty bits the same shape or color as their own, it should be catastrophically terror-inducing that he or she might make policy based on dicta handed down by an imaginary being in the sky.

By comparison with that, race or gender shouldn't matter a damn, but you notice we don't hear a lot about that.

Will this week never end? (plus, Art)

This week's gone on for-bloody-ever. Mostly it's been work. I keep trying to get out of the office at lunch or before 5 to post packages at the post office. If you're expecting a package from me and you're reading this, I got it in the mail today. Finally.

Work this week has been a goddamn doldrum as well. Today was a lot better, but it's a constant struggle to find a reason to try these days. Every decision is countermanded or belayed and morale is low. We'll fight through it, but good lord.

In related news, I think I'm going to start posting theories (I'll start with a management theory I got distracted by something shiny and went with my theory on art). I'd love anyone reading this to do either or both of the following:

1. Tell me what you think of the theories I post
2. Send me your theories to post as well (to here). [my rules are that 1) you have to back your theory up with some observations/facts, 2) it's got to be interesting, 3) it's got to be insightful (none of this, I think water is wet or doing heroin is a bad idea), 4) if it's about God it better be fucking outstanding because I don't believe God exists.
   

Here's the idea: As you grow up you build a model of the world in your head. You start with a pretty crappy one, but as you experiment and observe, your model gains refinement, qualifications, and/or elegance. At some point you start to feel that in certain areas, you have insights. Those are the insights I want to hear.

So, here's my first one (some of you may have heard it):

What is good art?

Stupid War. Now we can't enjoy art (but can we still profit?)

Although it may be impossible to measure, I think there's a simple formula for deciding if one piece of art is better than another. Art quality = (transmitted information)/(amount of signal).

So, if you can increase the information you transmit while keeping the effort of doing so the same, or reduce the effort while keeping the meaning, you've produced better art. An example:

Say I write 300 words trying to describe a flower. If I do a good job, you'll get a solid understanding of that flower. Now, if I can do the same in 150 words, it's a better piece of writing. What if I write a haiku that evokes a picture of the same flower along with the same emotions conjured in my 150 words? Better yet right? Even if I lose some of the ideas, that's a hell of a haiku.

So far, we're talking about fairly prosaic communication. The better you communicate, the better the art. But I didn't study Comparative Literature in college for naught (I don't want to hear it Mom). Let's take a look at post-modern deconstructionalist literary theory and phenomenology (like one does).

I reread Catcher in the Rye recently, and like most people who do that, I found the second reading to be a wholly different experience from the first. First time through it's about a hip guy who said goddamn and sonovabtich a lot. Awesome!

Second time, it's about the anguish of a kind of pathetic kid who's largely unable to reconcile the way he's been lead to believe the world should operate with the facts he's coming face to face with. Also, if you've taken a lit class in between you start to notice literary structures where none were before. You appreciate that his epiphany in the museum (where he's face to face with the ancient artifacts of a people who were obsessed with age) represents a coming-to-grips with growing up.

Look, up in the sky, an overt reference to Jesus!

This is where art becomes interesting. With good art, there's plenty hiding under the surface to add meaning if the audience knows to look for it and catches the allusions.

For instance, if you've never heard of Christ, you're going to miss a lot of what's going on in Children of Men, Return of Superman, Hamlet, and on and on. So, the strength of the art isn't realized until the artist creates it and the audience opens it up and receives the meaning from it.

I don't like a lot of modern art because someone pooping in a box in the middle of an austere room doesn't do much for me. Some avenues of art are only accessible to people who are able to appreciate that art as a piece in an ongoing conversation. Drawing a mustache on the Mona Lisa, for instance (as the Dadaists did) only has meaning if you know the Mona Lisa is a cherished and vaunted work of art from the old academy and can appreciate the nihilism hiding behind the absurd mask of that pomp. I don't like it, precisely because it only really works at the rarefied conceptual level (i.e. it's smart, but it sacrifices message by adding signal - as you're encouraged not to appreciate the beauty of the original).

So, to restate: Good art works at a lot of different levels of meaning without spelling each message out for you separately. And one piece of art is better than another if the same amount of signal (lines, words, notes, etc.) connects with you (intellectually, emotionally, viscerally) in more ways and with more effect.

Thoughts? Theories? Please do tell.

Links for Laura . . .

who has a whack job and needs amusement.

• B3ta.com - often funny, also often puerile
• Pictures of walls - Do you like graffiti? This site seems to.
• Important safety tips - Not actually
• Fighting techniques - This is digging way back, but if you haven't seen it, it's hilarious.
• Ditto the Filing Technique ones
• Ditto Get Your War On
• An anti-USA amuse bouche
• Dinosaurs - It turns out I like stupid clip-art comics
• Lol - stupid
• A classic research source for all things wrong - The uncyclopedia (this is my favorite article)
• Red meat - as seen at the Onion

Whacked

The observant browser will have noticed that I have no idea what purpose this blog serves any longer. It started as a means for keeping friends and family up to date on what the heck I'm doing here in faraway D.C./Reston. Along the way it morphed into sort of a clumsy effort to practice posting my opinions about things and stuff in anticipation of freelance gigs writing for MSNBC (which, thank God, hasn't managed to scarf up Yahoo! just yet).

However, I think we can all agree that no matter what the purpose of a blog is, it's always entertaining to learn about how completely and thoroughly I've been whacked in the arm during a kali class. We were practicing a particular drill that includes throwing an elbow at your partner's head. They evade/block and meanwhile bust up the arm you're throwing the elbow with.

In retrospect, I should have tried harder earlier in the class to keep from banging my partner's hand with a stick. Turnabout's fair play, I guess.

However, it was the practicing with the instructor that really beat me up.

I don't know why I like getting whacked during martial arts classes, but boy it gets the blood pumping (interstitially that is). Perhaps it's like when Samuel Johnson's responded to Bishop Berkeley's solipsistic view of the universe. Berkeley suggested that empiricism was fundamentally problematic because all you could know of the world was through your perceptions and so nothing existed but in your mind. Johnson gamely kicked a stone and cried, "I refute it thus."

The same sentiment was echoed more recently toward the end of Drugstore Cowboy when Matt Dillon announces that "there's nothing more life affirming than getting the shit kicked out of you". Perhaps it's true.

Stupid weather!

The wise and humble King Canute once dragged his throne out to the shore to command the tide not to come in. He did this to demonstrate the limits of his kingly powers to his courtiers, showing that God's power greatly outmatched that of any king.

Not being religious, I'm just pissed at Jesus for screwing up the weather this weekend for skiing. Wait, that doesn't make any sense.

Anyone hiring?

If anyone's keeping their ear to the ground about jobs I might be able to do, please forward leads.

Pre-chewed T.V.

This concerned member of the audience would very much like to know what the hell's going on. Also, he doesn't remember anything that happened yesterday.
pic by: Duchamp

So this is an interesting side effect of the writers' strike:

I'm watching Lost. Well, I suppose that's an interesting side-effect too, but the one I'm talking about is the crap at the bottom of the screen.

ABC is providing Cliff's notes for T.V. - probably because they figure it's been such a long time since we last saw this episode that we've forgotten a) what's going on and b) how to parse basic T.V.

In college I felt Cliff's notes were less a disservice to professors and more to those who used them. I avoided them because I felt that, you know, the point is not to get the right answer on the test, but to learn how to parse a narrative for its themes.

Call me pointy-headed, but I cling to the hope that a story can be more than either a delicious vector for otherwise insulting commercials or even a convenient space of time during which you may stare slack-jawed into the middle distance.

Now I've known people (generally not liberal arts majors) who won't allow me to watch T.V. with them. It's partially because I'm processing the meta-data of a show (like the foreshadowing, the thematic tone, which members of the away-team are wearing red shirts, which guest actors are known stars, etc.) and partially because I'm a dick. I can tell you within a fairly short amount of time which "suspect" on CSI did it, and I will (It's the person the bug-guy picks or the person who at any time went to an adult book store for any reason other than to expostulate on how sad an adult book store is).

However, even those folks who think I'm a dick because I'll watch the first 10 minutes of Law and Order before surmising what's up can look at a scene on T.V. and work out which of the dozen T.V. tropes is being executed. Is that Hobbit on Lost closing himself in an airlock as the music swells and the slow-mo kicks in? I guess, as if his hell-for-leather emoting isn't giving it away, that he's sacrificing himself for someone. If I'd missed that though, there's now a little snarky bit of text at the bottom to tell me.

Chee-rist! Seriously?

What's going on here? Does the network think I'm a complete fucking git? I resent that. Do the writers think their work here on T.V. is so subtle I'm likely to miss the meaning of it? Get over yourselves. Shakespeare didn't footnote his own plays you jackasses (by the way, it's a pun on phallus if you're wondering); where do you get off?

Did I seriously write a whole post about how T.V. may not be a smart medium? Actually no. I wrote a post about the end of days. If we're getting to the point in our culture's decline that someone's decided most of our country can't process T.V. shows unassisted, we've become the Eloi.

ZING! DANIEL JUST LIT INTO ABC. HIS POINT IS THAT DESPITE CATERING TO THE LOWEST COMMON DENOMINATOR, ABC STILL THINKS IT'S SHOOTING OVER THE HEADS OF A SIGNIFICANT PROPORTION OF ITS VIEWERS (See. Insulting isn't it?)

Hi Mike!

If you're still reading, this is for you.

Hi Karen as well (his wife).

I dig these photos

While some of my recent posts are either practicing for future freelance writing or just sort of personal stuff that I don't care if other people look at, this is for friends and family.

I came across this artist, Julie Blackmon's, site and I really like her photographs.

You should look at them.

Private? Public? no idea.

It's sort of old news now, but here are some thoughts on the changing face of digital privacy. I would have posted this last week but I fell asleep and then I forgot and so on and so forth.

So recently there's been all this mishagos about folks whose previous jobs have gotten them in trouble at their current jobs. First, and most delightfully, there's the story of "Militia" who is an American Gladiator. P.S.: He also did gay porn (I should mention here that I take the controversial stance that gay people are no more or less awful than straight folk, but the gayness of the porn is probably of material interest to the ostensibly family friendly NBC - and in the interest of full disclosure I should add that I hope one day to freelance for NBC and that while I'm straight, I have to admit that Johnny Depp's a pretty good looking chick for a dude).

The easy joke here is that the real tragedy for that guy is that now he's been outed as a Gladiator he probably won't be able to get back to the relatively highbrow fields of gay porn. And after all, how much life does American Gladiator really have in it? It's only up to #2 because of the writers' strike. No way it'll make it to American Gladiator 14.

The other story is of Ms. Greene, an English teacher (she's in England. I don't know about teaching English) who - before becoming a teacher - acted in a risqué, but award winning, ad for work clothing.

Now the standard advice offered by parents everywhere and my buddy Helen here, is not to put your stupid shit up on the Internet in the first place, Dumbass! However, in these cases that advice doesn't apply well. In both cases it wasn't them who put stuff on the Internet (I don't know if it was or wasn't with the Gladiator (which, in a parenthetical comment inside a parenthetical comment is a pretty gay name to begin with), but that's immaterial since porn is always posted on the Internet and whether Militia (Good grief!) did or not, it would have gotten there eventually).

There are lots of issues in play here. First, is sex shameful, de facto? It certainly is in America, but I was surprised by the case of Ms. Greene because European ads have always flirted with the naughty and no one gives a rat's ass. Over there they recollect that lots of people have a bit of a slap and a tickle now and then and somehow find their way to enjoying it without becoming . . . . I'm honestly not sure what the moral majority is worried will happen if the public acknowledges that folks have sex for fun. You'd think that Ms. Greene, employed at an English school, would get off with a serious tsk-ing and be back to her adoring students in no time flat. It was them who found the vid on YouTube in the first place.

And actually, that's a handy second issue. Just who is in danger here? Her students weren't over on GodTube searching for "Jesus loves me" when they found her video. The parents are making some noise about dismissing her, but it's totally beyond me. She wasn't doing anything illegal or even naked. As a rep from the clothing company that made the ad said, she was just doing her job as a model and actress. As for the gay porn. Man, that just makes me laugh. Actually, it appears that NBC is taking the high road and not firing him. After a little revisionist history (they're saying that Alex Castro, a.k.a. Militia, only posed nude for a few shots - but anyone with an internet and a passing knowledge of Google can learn otherwise) they're going to let the whole thing blow over.

The facts of all this are that stuff on the Internet has a half-life of forever and it knows where you live - or more accurately work. And what's on the Internet? Everything. Or close enough. Have you ever done anything you're not proud of? It could show up.

I think we may be seeing the beginning of a change in the fabric of public life. It turns out that Paris Hilton was sort of a visionary - and believe me I don't throw praise for Paris Hilton around just willy nilly. When she got caught on tape in flagrente delicto, her response was "Yeah? And?" Now at the time she thought she was a sure bet for the gazillions of her grandpa so her livelihood wasn't on the line. But as parents everywhere will tell you, only you have power over you. If you refuse to be embarrassed (particularly by doing a job that society condones enough to pay you for it and buy the proceeds - porn - or the advertised wears - you know, advertising) no one can embarrass you.

I think, and sort of hope, that we will have to start talking our walk. Do you ever go to the men's bathroom in a Minnesota airport and look for gay sex? You probably shouldn't publicly condemn gays then. Have you watched risqué ads on T.V. without exploding and/or calling your elected officials full of outrage? Stop being a hypocrite about Ms. Green then. Your laundry is potentially out there as well.

There's a lot more to be said about the fading line between public and private lives, but I'm lazy for the time being.