I am determined to get it together this year. (Yeah, just like every other year.) One of the things I need to do is decide what to do with this blog. The last couple of days, while researching stuff for work, I added a whole bunch of posts, and circulation took a nosedive. I choose to believe this is because you all are just not interested in so much technical stuff, rather than believing it's just that you are not interested in what I have to say. (Hey, you're reading this, aren't you?) So while I try and figure out the direction this thing should take, here is a list of 41 ways to market your blog in 2007.
Over at Backstop Media, the four of us are pretty much equal. We reach consensus on decisions, and so on. I like it. We're all motivated to make things a success. Apparently it can work in large organizations as well. Witness How do you run a business without managers.
Here something to think about, from Seth Godin:
It's easy to get the two confused, but if you do, you'll probably regret it.
To be marketable, you must be remarkable. Marketing isn't about getting more than 50% market share, it's about spreading your idea to enough people to be glad you did it... 3% of a market may be more than enough, especially if you have a local business or an expensive service.
The temptation of the marketer is to try to get elected. To be beloved by everyone.
I would like to think that I opt for the door number one, but business is a little slow right now, so I know I am airing on the side of caution.
But I know that's the wrong strategy.
At the end of the year, I always get a little philosophical. I think about where I've been and where I'm going. I especially think about it when I've got a lot of work to do and I'm really tired -- so I'm thinking about it right now. I'm not really thinking of making any radical changes right now, because I already love what I do. But Bob Parsons' When You Love Something makes me think about fine tuning a bit...
Yes, yes, I've been gone all summer. Amazing how things can get away from you! So where have we been? Let's just say it's been really busy. What have we been up to?
Well, aside from personal issues, let's see.
My company, Backstop Media, has been outrageously busy. We do tutorials and articles and such for places like IBM developerWorks, and in addition to writing more pieces than I can possibly remember, I've been working with a lot of great writers on some terrific stuff. In fact, I've just finished a really cool series on building a semantic web mashup. I'm particularly proud of part 3. It's an indepth introduction to the Resource Description Framework (RDF) and (I think, at least) it really makes it understandable. (And it's currently featured on the developerWorks home page, woo hoo!)
The hiatus actually started when, after almost 10 years, I finally decided to change hosting companies. There were lots of reasons, but mostly it was the fact that by switching to GoDaddy.com Hosting, I was able to get almost two years of hosting for what I had been paying for a single QUARTER. The process was pretty painless, actually, especially because I already use GoDaddy for my domain name registration. (It's cool, because you get all kinds of freebies. It doesn't have the advanced capabilities that I need, but they even give you free hosting with registration!)
Also, my parents have decided to take the leap and sell their vitamins online, so in addition to setting up an online order page -- if you take vitamins, it's a darn good deal, actually -- I will be setting up some content pages for them eventually.
I was going to set up a site for Star Wars gifts, but I never really got around to it.
What I did get around to, though, was helping Sarah start selling on EBay, and that's been a real riot! We've been going to auctions, and picking up some cool stuff. Sarah's got an eye for dishes, and I've been enjoying oddities. Here's hoping that continues to do well.
In any case, Chaos Magnet is once again up and running. Here's to a great year for all of us!
Well, it was bound to happen. For years, my mother has been saying that she doesn't understand what I do, and there's no point explaining it to her. When I was a teenager, I had to stick pieces of masking tape with numbers on them to the computer so my parents could figure out how to turn it on. But she always listens patiently as I talk, with the occasional "is that good?" thrown in so I know she's listening.
Occasionally, I think about whether or not to blog something, and I think "would I want my mother to see this?" Then I think, hey, my mother will never be a blogger. She's never gonna read this.
Well, the time has come. My mother's a smart cookie, and this afternoon I spent some time talking her through what a blog is and setting her up with her own, Ramblings by Judy.
So the question is, when your mother starts blogging, does it somehow become less cool, like if she likes your music? Do I have to pretend that I don't like blogging now? Will anybody see it if I roll my eyes and put a safety pin in my keyboard?
Actually, she does seem to have at least some sense of what this is all about. Her first post is about the difference in people's brains before and after morning coffee, and I definitely should not be surprised. Let me tell you, when she says that she's a bear before that morning coffee, she means it. I'm not sure about that hypothesis of hers, though:
I wonder if anyone has done a study on morning personality. When coffee drinkers are grouchy in the morning and they have their coffee they are fine. Non-coffee drinkers that are grouchy in the morning are grouchy all day.
She's just got the basic setup right now, while she gets used to it. Later, I'll introduce her to blogrolls, RSS feeds, and all of that stuff.
But not until she's had her morning coffee.
I've been doing a lot of thinking lately about blogging, and about how to do it better. I've come to the very obvious (in retrospect) conclusion that in order to have a good blog, you have two choices.
You either have to write interesting, deep commentary, or link to items that are interesting in their own right, no matter what you say about them.
So I wonder: which is better, and do you have to choose? Can a blog be effective with entries that are either one or the other, as long as each entry fits into one of these two categories?
I received this on one of the author mailing lists. [NOTE: Please check out the site for the latest instructions. I've seen other messages asking people to have their own book sales and send the money instead.]
===========================
The New Orleans Public Library Needs Books
===========================
New Orleans Public Library is asking for any and all hardcover and paperback books to restock the shelves after Katrina. The library staff will assess which titles will be designated for the shelves. The rest will be distributed to destitute families or sold for library fundraising.
The books can be sent to:
Rica A Trigs, Public Relations
New Orleans Public Library
219 Loyola Avenue
New Orleans, LA 70112
If you tell the post office that the books are for the library in New Orleans, they will give you the library rate that is less than book rate.
Can you please share this information with the education staff and students? It is a great opportunity to help.
Oh sure, everybody TALKS about the week from hell. But this has got to be it. Reality check:
Sunday: The father of the two children my wife and I care for is rushed back to the hospital from the nursing home.
Monday: My son Sean announces that it looks like he's going to Iraq.
Tuesday: Our Yorkie coughs up blood. An emergency trip to the vet confirms that he's fine.
Wednesday: Both children have a fever. After confirming that despite our best efforts to get the Florida social services system moving, they STILL don't have insurance, take them to their old doctor, 50 miles away.
Thursday: Discover that my computer is loaded with viruses, worms, and other malware. Spend the entire day (and most of the next day) trying to get it cleaned up.
Friday: Take the girls down to the hospital to see their dad, who decides it's time to level with them about the seriousness of his illness.
Saturday: Walk out to the barn to discover that the German Shepherd has eaten half a box of rat poison. An emergency trip to the vet confirms that she's also fine.
Could it have been worse? Of course it could.
But I agree with Sarah, who says she doesn't want to get up tomorrow ...
Well, I'm back from South Carolina and Sean's graduation from Basic Combat Training. After all those years of official school papers coming home and talking about "your child" it was a bit jarring, to say the least, to receive a packet of information talking about "your Soldier".
In fact, it seems to me that the two days we spent with Sean -- Thursday on the base, and Friday, after graduation, off the base in the hotel, where all he wanted to do is relax -- seemed almost geared just as much at easing parents into the idea that their children belong to the Army now as anything else.
I'm still not used to it, not really.
I don't write for magazines, but it's not because I don't want to. It'sy mostly because I'm too occupied writing for online publications and doing other corporate writing. But every once in awhile, I think about it, so I found Robert McGarvey's Twenty-Five Writing Secrets very interesting. Perhaps the biggest secret he lets out of the bag is the one hardest for people to accept: this is a job. If you want to make a living, treat it that way.
Despite my antiwar stance, I've always had a great deal of respect for the US Armed Forces. They do very difficult job under less than ideal circumstances that were not of their making.
Recruiters on the other hand, I have no use for. Yes, there are certainly exceptions, recruiters who do have more morals than a cockroach, and I have even met one or two. On the other hand, the recruiter who suckered my son into signing up for the Army before he even graduated from high school was eventually fired because he'd gone too far for even by recruiters' standards. (Of course, that doesn't change the fact that my son is currently in basic training.)
So it was with little surprise and great amusement that I read about Grandmothers arrested at an Iraq War protest. Apparently the grandmothers, members of the Anti-War Grandmothers, a coalition of Grandmothers Against the War, the Gray Panthers, and the New York City Raging Grannies, had gathered outside the recruiting station and claimed to want to enlist. But that's not the best part. The best part, in my view, is the reaction of the recruiters inside the booth:
"We tried to ring the bell at the booth, but no one answered," [Joan Wile, 74,] said. "I saw a head poke up from behind the counter every once in a while and then duck back down. I don't know what they were afraid of. Maybe they don't know how to deal with a bunch of grannies."
Technorati tags: war | antiwar | anti-war | Iraq | grandmothers | antiwar grannies | Antiwar Grandmothers | Anti-war Grandmothers | military | humor | recruiters
My son just called from the old neighborhood. He's leaving for the Army today. We've known this was coming for some time now. We fought, when he first signed up, but not because I didn't want him to go -- though I didn't -- but because I wanted him to wait until he graduated from high school to make his decision. But we've come to terms now.
He took us out to dinner last week. (Or rather, he invited us to dinner and I paid for it.) He waited until we were in a restaurant to tell us that his unit was shipping out to the Middle East next spring. I'm sure he expected some kind of scene. There was, of course, none. My wife and I have resigned ourselves. Before he left -- just before he left, from the sound coming through the phone of the car telling him the keys were in the ignition and the door was open -- I told him that no matter what, I was proud of him. I meant it.
I sit and I think about all of those recruiters who target children. And they are children, whether they've reached the age of majority or not. I remember so clearly what I was like at 19, raising a family, thinking I knew everything, really knowing nothing. I think that recruiters have to do that. Because very few people would take on the very necessary job of becoming a soldier if they knew what it really meant.
Our baby is gone. Please G-d, let him come back in one piece. Physically and mentally. But even if he does -- no, when he does -- he still won't be our baby any more.
Recruiters aren't the only ones who get them young. It's no accident that you have children before you know any better. Because if you knew what that really meant, you wouldn't do that either.
Be safe, Sean. We love you.
Sorry for the delay, I know it's been awhile since I updated over here. My web host wrote to tell me that my Movable Type database user was occupying 60 locked connections and that if I didn't want to be forced to upgrade to a dedicated server, I was going to have to dig through the software and figure out where it wasn't closing database connections.
Yeah, right.
So I disabled the user temporarily instead, and it took me a little while, but I finally have gotten around to upgrading to Movable Type 3. There was that little mishap in which I forgot to on comment the database driver in the configuration file, but that's all taken care of now. I'll let you know how it goes.
On the bright side, the dictation system is working out much better than I expected it to. Recognition has gotten noticeably better, although I've discovered that I do have certain speech patterns that I never suspected. For example, I apparently pronounce "will" and "we'll” exactly the same. And when I'm really tired, I apparently mumble more than I thought I do. I just have to remember to proof carefully, something I didn't generally have to do when I was typing. But overall, it's going very well. I was able to dictate this post without wanting to throw the computer out the window, so that's an improvement.
Which is good, because the arthritis is really getting bad. Hopefully I'll get to a doctor soon.
Anyway, things should be getting back on an even keel now. Or at least as even a keel as a chaos magnet can be on.
My arthritis is getting really really bad. It's not that I'm old. I'm not. In fact, my sister's three years younger than me and she's got worse arthritis than me. (Added later: I'm only in my thirties.) But I really can't type much anymore, and so today, and in fact with this blog post, I am starting to use Dragon NaturallySpeaking. I am in fact dictating this post. This is going to be interesting. Check out what the computer originally thought I said:
My arthritis is getting really really bad. It's not a mauled a knot, in fact, my sisters three years younger than me and she's got worse arthritis than me. But really can't type much anymore, and so today and in fact at this blog post. I am starting to use Dragon NaturallySpeaking. I am in fact dictating this post, this is going to be interesting.
Technorati tags: arthritis
I'm sitting here filling out my resume for a new online job site I've been invited to review -- it's still in beta, so email me if you want details -- and I've frankly forgotten how much it is that I've actually done. But more importantly, I'm sitting here and realizing that dammit, I'm good at what I do. And what I do is take complex nonsense and turn it into intelligible information that anybody can understand.
But it's hard, and I mean really hard to find other people who can do that, or who even want to try. I've been working with a bunch of writers lately, and a few of them are good at this. They bust their butts to really do a good job, and when they hit a roadblock they bust through it or they find a way to go around it but they don't just sit there and say "it can't be done."
The rest of them are making me nuts.
I'm realizing with a great deal of horror that the people who just sit down and quit and say "it's too hard, I can't do that" are the norm, and not the tragic exception.
So this piece from marketing guru Perry Marshall, Escape the Institutional Straightjacket, has infuriated me with a brilliant explanation of just how the hell this is happening. Starting on page five or so he's talking about business and marketing and such, but the first few pages are a must read. Let me give you the beginning. I don't think Perry will mind:
John Taylor Gatto received the New York State Teacher of the Year award in 1990 and was named New York City Teacher of the Year in 1991. When the appointed evening arrived, Mr. Gatto appeared in the hotel ballroom before an audience of well-fed administrators and principals, and delivered his acceptance speech.
It was that night that he publicly turned on them like a mongrel dog.
"The only reason I received this award the only reason I've been a great teacher for my students is because I didn't do a single thing you told me to. I ignored your standards,' I thwarted your bureaucracy and I taught unauthorized material. I filled out those forms that said the students were in their desks, when they were really taking horizon-expanding study trips. I had them read real books instead of those inane, dumbed-down textbooks of yours, I taught them real history instead of the porridge of revisionist pabulum you call 'social studies'.
"Your bureaucracy is a mill that grinds up human beings and turns them into consumer fertilizer for a planned economy. Human potential erodes as hungry minds sit in listless boredom, and teachers operate without the tools they need, just so you guys can fill your administration buildings with cushy jobs and give contracts to your cherished vendors.
That's why most of our students can't read after 12 years of education yes, even though it only takes 3 months to learn how to read. That's why most kids follow the herd into a bleak future instead of thinking for themselves.
I am officially turning in my resignation as of today.
For the record, I wasn't home schooled, but did I work for my parents' business from the time I was 12 until I got my first paying job at 16. (That'll make sense if you read the piece.) I was certified as a high school teacher, but couldn't get a job partly because of economic conditions and partly because I was just too unconventional.
Now I'm a professional trainer and I also teach people through writing you can actually read rather than the unreadable gobbledygook that is unfortunately so common. But why the hell does that seem so hard to find these days?
OK, now this is very, very cool. I'm still working (very hard) on getting the old house totally cleared out, and I've got to have a ton of books to get rid of. Now I've got a great place to send them. Check out Give Books: Redistributing Reading. They're distributing books, magazines, whatever kind of reading material to the troops in the Middle East. And Fedex will ship them for you FREE. No excuse now, people, get packing!
Technorati tags: books
Someday soon (meaning in the next few years) I'm going to go back to school. I never did get that Ph.D. in Physics, after all. :) Anyway, I've found an archive of recent scientific papers on all kinds of branches of physics, mathematics, non-linear science, computer science, biology, all kinds of things. Man, I wish I had more time...
Technorati tags: physics | quantum physics | time travel | mathematics | computer science | biology | science | research
I know, I know, it's been a month since I've said anything signficant here. It's been a month since I've said anything significant anywhere. I have moved. No, not the site, the site's exactly where it's always been. I have physically picked up my family and moved to a new location, and it's been quite an adjustment. To get some idea, we've moved from here to here. I can't even get dial-up faster than 37.2K. That's right, the phone company's not equipped to handle 56K.
It's been quite an adjustment for me, but my wife, farmer girl that she is, is really, really happy in a way that I haven't seen from her in ... well, I don't know that I've ever seen her this happy. Our friends are joking that it's like Green Acres, but with her as Eddie Albert and me as Zsa Zsa Gabor. Eventually, you'll hear way more about it as I finally get around to writing up all of this material I've been gathering about what it's like for a city mouse out in the country, but in the meantime, I thought I'd update you and let you know that I'm just about back into the swing of things, so as soon as I catch up on things, they'll be back to normal.
Technorati tags: moving | personal | Green Acres
I just realized how long it's been since I posted here. My goodness, weeks! Well, I've sold the house, thank goodness, and moved out to a farm in the country. I'll explain more later, when I have time, but in the meantime, take a good look at some relevant advice from Steve Jobs.
It's a weekend for closure after Ray's crossing, and I think I've pretty much settled things in my own head. Let me warn you that this is a long post -- at least for me -- and that unlike most entries, it's very personal. I'm recording it here only because I don't keep a journal; feel free to skip it. I won't be offended.
First let me tell you that we were unbelievably fortunate in that Ray was a veteran, having served in the Phillipines in World War II. For the rest if his life, the VA took care of him, and I want to take a moment to express our undying gratitude. The last ten years or so he's not been in good health, and they have done everything for him, and for us.
One reason is the VA hospital's gratitude of the fact that we didn't simply drop him off and not see him again until the funeral, as far too many people do. No, we have practically been overprotective parents. Sarah, especially, with her medical background, has always rode herd over his doctors, and after a rocky start in which she explained to the doctor that he had lots of patients, but she just had one father, there's been nothing but cooperation.
In fact, I don't know whether it was subliminal based on the fact that we were always there seeing him (when he was an inpatient) or just his personality, but the staff was always as protective of Ray as we were. In fact, one staff member is planning to write a book about her experiences, and says she'll be including a chapter about him. He was always so happy -- especially when he was the president of the patient advocate committee -- that whenever she had a prospective patient that was reluctant to enter the nursing him, she would take him (or her) for a tour and "happen" to run into Ray. He never failed her. The patient always decided that it must be an OK place, if Ray was so happy.
But he was always happy. Even when his Alzheimer's-based dementia became signficant, he never got nasty, or crabby, the way that some people do. He was always happy, always trying to make other people happy.
But he's gone now, and the pain of losing him is lessened somewhat by the understanding that the infection in the bones of his foot couldn't be treated because he was no longer a candidate for surgery; we were coming to the time where the only choices were to allow him to be in agonizing pain or drug him into oblivion. We were spared that choice because he was spared the pain.
And in the end, particularly since he crossed in the VA Medical Center, the veterans took care of virtually everything. We buried him at Florida National Cemetary -- think Arlington, but in Florida -- where the VA provided the plot, opening, closing, the concrete vault, and the headstone. The VA covered the funeral home's costs in getting him from the hospital to the funeral home, and from the funeral home to the cemetary. We just had to take care of the casket , the honor guard, and a relatively small fee from the funeral home. It was, frankly, the difference between having the burial we felt he deserved, and having to cremate him.
Because of scheduling issues -- Sarah's sister Debbie couldn't make it until Thursday night, and had to leave on Monday -- we had to have the viewing at the hospital (we weren't having him embalmed) and the funeral on Friday, because the cemetary doesn't do internments on the weekend, or on Monday because of the Memorial Day holiday. Everyone was able to get everything done, just in time. We had an honor guard, which made all of the difference; we didn't even have to arrange for a priest.
(A side note; honor guards are sadly lacking in membership. If you're a veteran, which is required, please, please, please consider joining a local group. If you'e not a veteral, please, please, please consider finding a way to assist a local group. The WWII generation is dying off at a furious rate; the need for these volunteers is enormous.)
When we went to see him, we brought his artificial leg. Ray had lost his right leg below the knee about 10 years ago, and he was always very ... particular about how it went on. We'd even had problems when he was in the nursing him for his twice-annual respite sessions, in which he stayed over for two weeks so we could get a break. Because the leg was old, the nurses frequently couldn't figure out how to put it on, and Ray's dementia had long past the point where he could do it himself. But he knew how he liked it, and if it wasn't exactly right, he wouldn't go anywhere, even if it was just from the bed to his wheelchair.
So I decided that as my last act, I would go ahead and put his leg on for him. I would even tuck the strap under the way he liked it, even though it drove me crazy when he did it. And so I did.
And I came to a revelation.
I unzipped the body bag, and I saw him there. There wasn't anything I hadn't already seen; I've been changing his diapers for years, and we'd gone to see him just after he passed on Wednesday morning. But as I pulled on the stump sock and adjusted the strap, I realized something.
Some people may be really creeped out right now because they've realized that in the previous paragraph I was "touching a dead body". But I realized that no, I was just doing what we've always done; taking care of someone we loved.
What's more, I realized that really, there is no death. Now, please check your religious preferences at the door; I'm philosophising here.
A short time ago I came to a scientific realization. The universe is really just one "entity" with various parts, all describable via statistical analysis. I won't go into the details here -- that's for my Ph.D. thesis, if I ever find the time to go back to school -- but it comes down to this: everything you see, everything you here, everything you know, near, far, and unimaginably distant, they're all one entity.
If there is a soul, and I believe that there is, it is part of that one entity. When we die, we leave the physical body, but the soul doesn't change. It's just as much with us as it was before. Maybe we don't see it, maybe we don't hear it, but sometimes we don't even do that when the person is alive. Is death really that much different?
A friend of mine pointed out the "Mourn them not, miss them not" Yoda gives in "Revenge of the Sith" and how I'd said at the time that it seems easy until you get to the ones you really love. For example, I can console myself that Ray is no longer in pain, that he's no longer confused, isolated, limited in what he can do.
The thought of losing Sarah, on the other hand, was more than I could bear.
But we talked today, for a long time. We realized that if one of us were to lose the other, we wouldn't be missing them, because spiritually, we'd always be there. Instead, we'd be missing being physically with the other person. Me holding Sarah's hand. Sarah stroking my back.
I realize that the world isn't as random and arbitrary as I thought it was.
And I'm no longer afraid.
Just got home from the theater and I can say with absolute joy that Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith does not suck. In fact, it's wonderful!!!
Gotta get up early -- Wolf has a doctor's appointment for the severed tendon in his hand (long story) so I'm off to bed.
A complete review after I see the digital version tomorrow evening...
Well, I've got my tickets -- went and picked them up at the theater a couple of days ago -- and I'm ready. I've finally managed to get excited, instead of nervous. Keeping my fingers crossed...
Technorati tags: Star Wars | StarWars | ROTS | Revenge of the Sith | Episode III | Darth Tater
I do have a few affiliate links on my site, but I'm not a marketer, and I don't really emphasise them much. So I was really surprised to get an email yesterday evening from the person who runs Write A Book Now, a program that shows you how to write a book in 14 days. I took the free course oh, a year ago, and I found it to be very useful, so I added a link to my page. But the last time I redid the home page, I took it off, but apparently I didn't take it off the individual archive template. So yesterday, Steve Manning writes to let me know that he's got $89 in affilliate fees for me, and where should he send them.
I'm bringing this up because yes, the free email course is really handy, so you ought to go ahead and sign up for it. Even if you don't buy the full course, it's time well spent. Plus, it's nice to see that someone's honest; it would have been really easy for Steve to just hold the money. I'm sure he could see that I hadn't logged into the affilliate system in a while. But he contacted me anyway, and that's just great.
So do yourself a favor and check out this course.
Technorati tags: Writing
You know the old saying, "If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is"? Unfortunately, it's probably true. I've taken to checking out anybody who wants me to give them money with the Better Business Bureau. You can search by name (with or without location), phone number -- so far the most reliable key, I've found -- and website URL. Amazing how many complaints a company can rack up in a 36 month period.
OK, I took a leap and called the theater where I saw AOTC, and they are showing Revenge of the Sith in digital, but the midnight show is sold out. I bought tickets for the 19th, but now, so I go and see the midnight show locally, in analog, or do I wait and see it for the first time in digital? (Update: I could have saved myself a lot of trouble and checked out TheForce.Net's list of all the digital theaters in the US.)
Yes, I'm obsessing. I know I am. I'll get over it.
Anyway, if you are in the Florida region and you want to see it in digital, you can try AMC Pleasure Island. Supposedly on their website, you can see "DP" or "DLP" after the name of the movie, but I couldn't find it. If you're interested, the following shows on the 19th are in digital, and currently have seats available: 10:30am, 2pm, 5:25pm, and 9:00pm.
I'll be in the 5:25pm audience. If you're going then, drop me a note. Maybe we can meet up!
Technorati tags: StarWars | Star Wars | ROTS | movies | personal
OK, I did it. I bought tickets for the midnight premiere of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. Or should I say, I bought my BACKUP tickets. The tickets I bought are for the nearest theater with stadium seating. Nice theater, not too far away.
But it's not digital.
I saw Attack of the Clones in digital that first night. Had to drive 2 hours to Downtown Disney, because it was the closest theater showing it in digital, and afterwards, I found out they were showing it digitally about 45 minutes away, in Pinellas Park. But this time I can't find ANYWHERE that's showing it in digital!
This is more than just me trying to see it in the best possible quality. After AOTC, I found out that because prints have to be produced early, the digital version was actually slightly DIFFERENT from the non-digital version. (Notably, you don't see Anakin's mechanical hand in the analog version. It's there in the DVD, of course.)
So I'll be checking and checking and checking and hopefully, I'll catch them when they go on sale and find a theater SOMEWHERE in Florida that's showing it in digital and catch midnight tickets.
And if I do, somebody can have these. Otherwise... at least I'm covered.
I need to sell my house. I just can't do this any more. I want out. I want to have a nice little farm with horses and ducks and most of all, QUIET. But first I need to sell my house. I'm thinking I need a professional stager, like on those tv shows where they take a house that's not selling, change a few things, and put it back on the market. Yeah, that's what I need.
The onslaught has begun. The Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith merchandise is in stores, which means that if I want to make it to the movie unspoiled, I will have to be very careful in Wal*mart. When The Phantom Menace was pending, I found out that Padme was the queen masquerading as a handmaiden by carelessly reading a plastic cup. When Attack of the Clones was on its way, I knew better than to do that, but was still spoiled by a poster that showed Palpatine and Dooku with the legend "The Order of the Sith". ARG!
But this time it's worse. After averting my eyes at Wal*Mart -- though Sarah did show me Darth Tater, a Darth Vader version of Mr. Potato Head that cracked me up -- I went to a bookstore and discovered that the novelization of Revenge of the Sith is already in the stores!
You know what that means, right? That means that there are, at this moment, just hours after it hit the stores, people who have already read it and know exactly what's going to happen. GAH. I was raving about it as we left the bookstore and the clerk said, "But you already know what's going to happen."
"Sure," I said, "ultimately we all knew what was going to happen in 1977, but still..."
And then he said something that, while seemingly innoccuous, WAS A FREAKIN' SPOILER!!! Not five minutes after I saw the FREAKIN' BOOK!
Yes, I know I'm being irrational. I know I'm being obsessive. But here's the thing: I saw the first movie at the age of eight. My whole life has been a matter of waiting for the next Star Wars movie. Now there will BE no next Star Wars movie.
In some ways, I feel like my life changed in major ways with that first film, and somewhere in my head there's this nagging thought that after I see the final installment, I'm somehow going to have to grow up.
And I don't want to.
Technorati Tags: Star Wars | Revenge Of The Sith | ROTS | movies | Mr. Potato Head |
I said it in a comment, but I just wanted to come out here and thank everybody who's been holding good thoughts for my wife's dad, Ray. He's still got pneumonia, and he's not out of the woods yet, but he's been taken out of isolation and he's doing much better.
Thank you so much!
Sarah's dad has been ill since before Thanksgiving, and we just received word that he's been moved from the nursing home part of the VA to the hospital because he has pneumonia. We're on our way over there now. Please pray for him.
Thank you.
Technorati tag: Personal
I've been thinking for a while -- especially after being reminded by a post of Bruce Sterling's -- that soon, if it hasn't happened already, there will be more Chinese speakers online than English speakers. (Which might explain all the Chinese-language spam I keep getting.) Scott Nance brings up the point again in a commentary on the rising Chinese juggernaught. He also reminds us of all the Chinese slang in Firefly, which as you know I loved. Interesting, I was just re-watching it this weekend, so I wish that I'd had Scott's pointer to the Firefly Chinese Pinyinary beforehand. It translates all of the Chinese in the series, which is pretty cool.
But seriously, I need to find me a good Chinese audio course for the car. I took German in high school and Russian in college, but I don't remember much of either. I've done the audio-tape route for Spanish more recently, and if I go to Mexico I'm probably at the level that I won't think everyone around me is plotting against me, but that's about it.
But if I'm going to stay competitive in this market, I suspect Chinese is the way to go...
My nephew, Jake, is four years old, and he's so smart that the pediatrician can't even measure his intelligence because the scale only goes up to age seven. He lives 1000 miles away from me, but I met him for the first time a couple of years ago during the big Northeast blackout, when I got stranded in New York. He was really sweet, and I could see from his personality a lot of why people said he was just like me at that age. Given his obvious intelligence -- he was spelling multisyllabic words at two -- I took it as a compliment.
Today I had lunch with my mother, who informed me that Jake has been diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, a form of autism.
Jake's fortunate, though. Apparently, the doctor said, he has all of the "good" qualities that come with that diagnosis, and none of the "bad" ones. Unsure of what that meant, I went off in search of information on Asperger's. [Update: what it actually meant is that my mother mis-interpreted what my sister said. Jake was tested for Asperger's, but because he only scored high on the cognitive portion -- he is, as I said, extraordinarily intelligent -- and not on the negative areas, such as interpersonal relationships, he is offically NOT diagnosed with Asperger's. But the rest of this post still stands.]
I'm a little shaken by what I've found.
If you live in Silicon Valley, you probably already know this, but apparently there has been a huge spike in the number of children diagnosed with autism, especially in areas with high concentrations of, well, geeks. Why? Well, an article in Wired, The Geek Syndrome, points to a potential reason.
Let's put it this way. If you're a programmer or an engineer and you work with a large number of other programmers or engineers, you know someone with autism. Period. They may not even know it. It might even be you.
But apparently those "good" qualities the pediatrician was talking about are closely related to the creativity and focus that make us good at what we do. A few of the necessary genes, apparently, is a Good Thing.
Too many, though, is a Bad Thing.
Thing is, where people who are borderline autistic, or who have Asperger's, used to gravitate towards professions (and attitudes) in which they were unlikely to reproduce (such as monks and "strange old aunts"), they are now becoming programmers and engineers and starting to wind up in the same profession, where they meet each other, get married, and ... well ... produce children.
It's been a running joke for some time that autism runs rampant in the tech industry. As the Wired article points out, Bill Gates is regularly rumored to have it. Think I'm overestimating? There's a screening test, the Autism Quotient (AQ) linked from the article. Pass the URL around your office and see what you come up with.
I don't even want to tell you what my score was.
So here's my question: if the genes that give us the ability to succeed and change the world ultimately cause problems when they become too concentrated, could it lead to a breakdown in society? Autism rates are rising around the world. Are we just a generation or two from an intellectual armageddon?
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Technorati tags: autism, intelligence, evolution
I got my first tech job off Usenet. I remember lots of conversations in rec.arts.starwars, back when you could actually HAVE a conversation. Ah, it's sad to see the decline of Usenet. I hope Molly's right, and that the departure of AOL will make it less desireable for spammers so the rest of us can come back and enjoy our little town.
I'm a little bit frustrated to realize that Long Way Round is almost a DVD. That is, Ewan MacGregor and Charlie Boorman's bike trip around the world has been released in Europe, but not here in the states. This series was just absolutely captivating, and I don't even like motorcycles. Please, please, go to the above link and tell Amazon you want to know when the disc will be released. You don't have to buy it, but Amazon will use it to tell the production company approximately how many people are waiting for it. In the meantime, though, if you did see the show, Ewan and Charlie (Like how I use their first names? Sorry, guys, I just feel like I know you after this. Don't worry, I know I really don't. :) ) wrote a book about it, Long Way Round : Chasing Shadows Across the World. Reviews hint that if you didn't see the show, you might not appreciate the book, but if you did, like me, it seems like a great reminder of how life changing that trip must have been for them.
And if you didn't see it, all the more reason to tell Amazon you want the DVD! (And for anybody who's got a PAL TV, you don't have to wait to buy the Long Way Round DVD!)
I majored in Physics in college and not Computer Science, so when I got my first job as a programmer, about 4 years after I graduated, and my boss, a couple of years younger than me, started talking about "design patterns," I was sure that I had missed out on a lot by skipping computers in college. Later, when I started to encounter Unified Modeling Language (UML), I was once again hit with this feeling of inadequacy. Now, I'm on a "find out what I've been missing" kick, because I've discovered that I didn't know about design patterns when I was in college is because they didn't freakin' exist yet! Ditto for UML, but I'm picking them both up pretty quick.
When will people learn that blogs are not private? I mean, when I'm tempted to write something about my personal life, or about work, I think very, very hard about it. I know you think the person you're talking about would never in a million years read your blog. Guess what. You're wrong. If you can't get over the deep seated need to write about your deepest, most private thoughts, save yourself some heartache and get one of those diaries with a lock on it.
I'm thinking about my plans for the next year, and part of it includes what new content I'm going to write. Simon St. Laurent has given me an interesting thought, in Starting Small. He points out that most resources about J2ME and its counterpart, the .NET Compact Framework, focus on what's missing -- what you can do in "regular" Java and .NET, but not on the smaller systems. Why not teach them from scratch, as though they're all there is? Hm.
What a way to start a new year. Check out The Command Post for links to places where you can help victims of the tsunami. Last night the body count reached 150,000. My God.
I'll freely admit that I've been obsessed with Star Wars since I saw the first movie at the age of nine. I can tell you just about anything about it (as long as it involves the movies; unfortunately I haven't had time to keep up with the gazillion books, hard as I've tried). I find the Force a reasonable allegory for religion and faith. And I'm terrified that the last movie is going to suck.
And of course I'm not alone. This is a film that literally transformed not only filmmaking, but also an entire generation of kids who saw it. It made its way into popular culture in a way that has rarely, if ever, been seen.
Even George Lucas will tell you it's not even science fiction, it's space opera. If you look at the plot of that first film as an adult, it's almost embarrassingly simple. In fact, that's why those who didn't like it have such an easy time looking down their nose at it, and at those who love it.
So why was it such effective storytelling?
For my birthday, my wife got me the DVD set of the first Star Wars trilogy, and this week I've finally gotten a chance to sit down and watch it with the commentary. I've always known that Lucas was inspired by Japanese movies such as "The Seven Samurai", and that he had done a lot of research into Joseph Campbell's writings on heroes and such. But what I discovered is that not only had he done WAY more research than I'd thought, but he'd intentionally structured the story around these basic archetypes that have been in storytelling for thousands of years.
So what looks, on the surface, like a simple story is really tied to basic, deep-rooted psychological threads that most of us don't even know are pulling at us. That's why it was so deeply affecting for so many millions of people -- even though most didn't know why.
I'm sure that there are writers who can happen on something so profound without having a conscious understanding of what they're doing. But knowing precisely what you're going for makes it so much easier, and so much more effective.
My head is spinning thinking about it, and what this means for my own writing, both fiction and non-fiction.
Been pretty busy lately, which is, frankly, par for the course, but it's been a little bit worse than usual lately. My father-in-law, Ray, lives with us, and in addition to being a double amputee (half his left foot, right leg below the knee) and diabetes, he's also in the final stages of Alzheimer's disease. We made the mistake of watching a documentary on the disease, so we know that eventually, he'll just get to the point where he's catatonic, and then he'll stop breathing.
But right now, aside from swallowing difficulties -- everything he eats or drinks has to be the consistency of honey -- our big problem is dementia. Dementia can be simple, such as forgetting where he is at that moment, or that we've asked him to do something (or not do something, like take his diaper off) but sometimes it's more serious.
A few weeks ago, I had a big problem because he wouldn't let me change his diaper because of the other five people in the room. No, there was nobody there but me and him. So I asked the "other people" to leave, and that was fine, except for the other two, who were looking down at him through the ceiling. I asked them to stop, and he was satisfied with that, but yesterday we had an even bigger problem.
To keep him from falling