The Blog with No Name

Charlton Heston died yesterday at 84. I may not have enjoyed many of his movies too much, but I always enjoyed seeing him work.

Five weeks ago I started using Twitter. I didn’t know what to really do with it, and I wasn’t sure what to expect from it. After five weeks, I’ve realized that I enjoy Twitter far more than any other social networking site. I always had a strong dislike for MySpace. It seemed pointless and obnoxious. I normally am an advocate for letting consumers do what they want with a product, but I don’t think I go out on a limb too much to say that it was a mistake of MySpace to enable millions of pre-teens, teens, and young adults with zero design sense with the power to control almost all aspects of a site’s color palette and media content. I’m not sure how many eyeballs have melted due to poorly “decorated” MySpace pages, but I’m sure it’s a very high number. Facebook always seemed rather pointless to me but at least it wasn’t obnoxious (until all those bleeding apps started popping up). However, I just never got into Facebook. Fundamentally it was boring. I generate new cyber-connections with people I already know, some of them who I haven’t seen in years, but that’s about it. Beyond the novelty of being discovered by old friends and following status updates, Facebook offers very little for me. Facebook did always have that perplexingly simple feature: the poke. I’m still not entirely sure what the acceptable use of the poke is except to start a poke war with somebody. I’ve been engaged in one poke fight for nearly a year.

I’ve always been skeptical of the longevity and the business model of social networking sites. Sure the big sites are worth lots of money and have a high number of users, but they barely turn a profit. The most mature (in a business sense) site, MySpace, barely made a profit last year, and most people are saying MySpace’s growth is getting cut by Facebook. Which highlights the main problem with making money out of social networking sites: the primary user base is young, fickle consumers with little money. Not only does it take a lot of bandwidth to keep these user’s eyeballs on the page, they are also probably going to be less likely to buy anything and will move on as soon as there is a new hotness to play with (c.f. Facebook’s meteoric rise which most likely comes at MySpace’s expense). The only thing these sites have going for them is they are a marketing gold mine. It’s tens of millions of users telling large corporations exactly what they are doing, what they like to do, what movies they watch, what music they listen to, how old they are, where they live, and at what stage of life they are in. It’s like Google’s AdSense on roids. Maybe this ability to do surgically precise advertising will save the social web behemoths, but I’m skeptical. Anyway, I’ve drifted off topic.

So, back to Twitter. Twitter is actually interesting. Interesting to the point that I go out of my way to somehow get my Twitter fix. Luckily, Twitter makes it easy for me since the main purpose of Twitter, reading and writing tweets, is available to me by nearly every piece of communication technology I use throughout the day: text message, IM, web site, and mobile web site. I have to be completely cut off from technology and wireless signals to not be able to get my Twitter on. The mere fact that Twitter is capable of getting me to adjust to it makes me think it is on to something (I’m not the only one). And though I have a goal of at least one tweet a day, I’m no hardcore Twitter user. Twitter is just so much more engaging (to the point of vowing to use it daily). I come back to the little text blurbs that my followees generate much more often than I go to Facebook, despite Facebook’s much more robust feature set and media capabilities. I generally go to Facebook either out of sheer boredom or because I haven’t updated my status in over a week. With Twitter, I’m constantly either refreshing the page or reading my RSS feed. I may even start having most of the updates sent to me via text. To be fair Twitter is still new to me so maybe my interest will wane, but I was never this interested in Facebook, except for maybe the first day I made my profile. All this being said, there is a critical mass problem with Twitter. Not a lot of people are using it currently, and even fewer are active users. So, most users have difficulty finding an “audience” or people to follow. And it’s not just following people, but finding interesting people to follow. If you don’t have interesting people with whom to interact, then Twitter largely loses its value since it’s significantly less about self-promotion. I personally enjoy following people as they share their thoughts, progress on projects, and life in general. That may make me sound creepy and lonely, but I think the rest of my life demonstrates the opposite.

To read something like this gives me joy and hope for our political process. A self-described “brain-dead liberal” confesses his change in views, embracing a less polemical view of the world (and I’d say much more realistic). It is refreshing, honest, and thought-provoking. Even though I’m sure the author and I would disagree on many things, at least we’d both agree that everything is not “magically wrong” and the government is often not the answer. I especially appreciated his last point. The people we meet in our every day lives, regardless of political persuasions, are the ones with whom we live and on who we depend. Happy election season indeed!

Comment spammers hit my site so hard last Friday that my hosting provider was forced to lock permissions to my blog so as to limit the effect on other sites and services. Think I got things figured out, though I had to turn off all trackbacks (anybody actually use those anymore?). Thank you, spammers.

I also upgraded to Wordpress 2.3.3 to get some new features and enhanced security.

I’m not so keenly interested in politics these days. Not much has changed since 2004. I have to admit though the battle royale between H. Clinton and B. Obama is fairly interesting to watch. And now with Mrs. Clinton winning both Ohio and Texas, it may have put her back in the game. I hope they take it to the convention just so this election season isn’t brutally boring and annoying.

It’s weird to say it, but I think I’m cheering for Mrs. Clinton. There’s something about Mr. Obama that I find vaguely scary. I think it’s the mass hysteria he has seemed to generate because of his considerable charisma. Mr. Obama reminds me of that old Dr. Seuss story about the pale green pants with nobody inside them chasing a poor kid through the woods at night, which I found very creepy when I was young. Mr. Obama is the pale green suit with nothing inside it, chasing after the voters of the US. Of course, at the end of Dr. Seuss’s story the pale green pants and the kid become friends. I’m not so convinced Mr. Obama and the electorate will have such a happy ending.

I recently bought an iPod Touch. My two word assessment is it is a device of perplexing glory. I hope to have a more detailed review soon, but in the meantime I’ll say — and not to be crude — it has revolutionized my time in the WC.

So, my older brother got engaged. He announced this to the fam with a simple email. No details on how he did it, how much he had to drug her, and a ballpark date of when he’d actually Seal the Deal. Pretty typical Drew style. He did make his proposal in Thailand, which is pretty sweet. Rumor has it an elephant was involved and a squadron of F-16s wrote something in the sky with pink smoke. At any rate, congratulations, Drew!

When will you let me meet her?

I know I’m totally late to the micro-blogging party, but I just re-discovered my Twitter account. I think I’ll start using it.

Those who know me are keenly aware of my opinion of Washington drivers. Those who’ve ridden with me are keenly aware of how I drive.

I have a growing concern about the person whom I become when I get behind the wheel of my truck. All the virtues I attempt to cling to and live out in my life get left in the parking lot: patience, selflessness, forgiveness, mercy, and charity for my fellow man. I don’t know what happens, but it’s some type of Hyde-ian transformation into a foul-mouthed heathen hurtling down the highway. It mystifies me how I can make this radical change with barely a conscious thought. I’d like to think the explanation — notice I did not say excuse — is because of my perception that the collective Washington Driver is a failure at being a confident and competent driver. It is very frustrating for me, and to face this collective failure twice a day Monday through Friday may have taken its toll.

But I still want a fast car to drive

This past weekend I was in Detroit.

(more…)

My current web hosting company is shutting down, so I’m in the process of moving to a new host. This will probably involve some downtime and inaccessibility especially as my domains are rerouted and I transfer the databases. Seeing as I’m not posting too much these days, there will probably not be very much disruption of normal steevak.com activity. I hope to have a new home by early next week.

Seattle is a pretty cool town. I love living here, but stupid crap like this makes me a bit itchier to get out of the city limits. Here’s the gist:

All single-family homes in Seattle must sign up for table-scrap recycling in 2009, the City Council decided Monday.

While residents will have to pay for the service, the city will not check whether they are actually dumping food in the new separate bin.

That’s right. Seattle’s city council in all its foresight and wisdom deemed it necessary to force people to pay for food-scrap recycling while not enforcing the law. We’re talking about food-scraps. Last time I checked food-scraps are biodegradable and quite quickly turn into what is essentially dirt, you know, the stuff of which Mother Earth is made. So how are we going to “recycle” table-scraps? One giant community compost pile?

And here’s another rich part:

Recycling food waste will be voluntary for apartments, as well as for businesses, which produce twice as much food waste as residents.

Conlin said he hopes garbage-collection rates can be adjusted to absorb some of the additional cost homeowners will have to pay for food recycling.

So, the real producers of food waste, apartments and businesses, can opt out of this regulatory nitpicking. I’m glad for them, but if food waste was really a problem wouldn’t be smart to try to stop the major source of the problem? This is like plugging a small hole in the dam while ignoring the big gushing hole next to it. Very very smart.

Luckily, I don’t plan on being a homeowner any time soon, and I am seriously considering moving out of the city limits. I’d move out of the county limits if it wasn’t obnoxious to do so.

(via Soundpolitics)

“You always talk about the ending.” He gave a serious look and then reached for the pitcher. The ice cubes chimed softly as he poured another glass.
“Yes, well, the end is what matters the most. It’s where the punchline is. It’s where all the emotion is finally wrapped up for better or for worse. The ending tells you whether it was worthwhile and whether it was meaningful.”
“And what about the whole middle part. The journey to the end. Are you saying that’s pointless?”
“No, not at all. The middle is the necessary steps to get to the ending, where the true meaning lies. The middle, the journey can’t be pointless if it’s the necessary steps to get you to the final point. The point that really matters.”
“So are you saying the end justifies the means?”
“No, I wouldn’t say that. I don’t like that idea. I’m skeptical of it.”
They were quiet for a while both lost in thought.
“Yes, I’m skeptical of it. I wouldn’t say the end justifies the means.”
“What about the beginning? The beginning can have a lot of meaning and emotional content too. It’s the fateful first step that starts it all. Without a beginning you can’t have an end.”
“True, but that’s a boring observation to make. It’s like saying you can’t exhale unless you inhale.”
“Fine, but it’s still true.”
“So perhaps I wouldn’t say the end justifies the means, but I may say that the end justifies the beginning.”
“Interesting. Are you sure about that?”
“No, I’m not sure at all. Maybe I just like endings.”
“Fair enough.”
Both sat quietly again watching the daylight fade and felt the heat dissipate from the air.

I thought Apple, not Apollo, brought us the iPhone, but I was clearly wrong. Fringe blog has the true — and surprisingly entertaining! — story.

Happy Fourth of July!

As we Americans celebrate our country’s independence and history, it’s good to keep certain things in mind. Douglas Wilson at his blog has some wise words about American exceptionalism:

Advocates of the new global neo-conservatism have been pressing heavily on what they call American exceptionalism. There is a trick here, so I want everyone to follow closely. I agree that America’s founders were exceptional men, and they established our form of government on an exceptional document, unlike anything in the history of the world up to that point. So I do believe in a form of American exceptionalism.

But what was exceptional about it? Here is the trick. They knew that Americans were not in the slightest bit exceptional. That’s exceptional. A patriotic pride in your nation being the apex of whatever it is we are doing on this planet — a belief that “we” (whoever “we” might be) are somehow unique — is as ordinary as brown dirt.

Calling yourself exceptional isn’t. Recognizing that we are mortal men just like other mortal men, and that we are vulnerable to all the same temptations, is rare. Boasting in American achievements barely manages to clear that Ozymandian low bar — it is the kind of ordinary hubris nailed in a poem that was written before we defeated the Nazis, landed on the moon, built the space shuttle, and started selling iPhones that could serve as navigation systems for the space shuttle — and when we invite mighty observers to look on our works and despair, we are acting like pretty much everybody else in the history of the world.

Humbling words, especially for somebody like me. America may have accomplished many great things in this world, but it’s not because we are exceptional. And we are not destined to greater things just because we are Americans. Our treacherous path at the top of the world is just as dangerous as it has been for all nations who’ve risen and fallen in centuries past.