Don’t Confuse My Blog For History

I got in trouble with a friend when I wrote some unflattering things about him because he felt that my friends would think that’s the way he really is. Granted, it can’t feel very good to get slammed in a blog (at the time the blog wasn’t public and it was mostly an exercise in talking to myself out loud), but this does point to a problem with people thinking that what gets written in blogs has something to do with reality. Frankly, that just isn’t the case. There are at least two reasons why blogs rarely reflect reality.My blogging originally was a way to work through a difficult time in my life, so what I wrote about was very much about my emotional state. Someone reading my blog would have thought that all I did day and night was moan about my relationship woes. And quite frankly, at the time, surviving the rest of my life was helped greatly because I was able to off-load the emotional turmoil I was in. So, it was never about creating a written-record of my daily life. And now even though the blog is much more “general” in nature, it’s still very much about stuff that gets to me to the point where I feel the need to write about it. Actually, right now the thing that most effects what I write about is just having the time to write. I don’t know about other bloggers and writers, but it tends to take me several hours, or more to write most of my blogs. I know that the livejournal/blogger crowd tends to have this “record it as it happens” kind of jibe, but that’s just not the case for me. So, the view is skewed and things get left out that are much more important in my life than it would appear to be based on my “blog coverage.” And then there’s stuff that I wasn’t able to write about when it was happening, like the last few twists and turns with my relationship with my former love.

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If It’s Too Good To Be True…

After many, many years on the Internet (I actually had a dial-up CompuServe account in the late 90s) I have finally received a bit of Internet history, the mythical Nigerian email scam. Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy! It amazes me that anyone would actually allow themselves to get tangled up with these “opportunities.” Read and enjoy:

Date: Sun, 17 Sep 2006 09:19:57 -0400 (EDT)

Dear Friend,

I am Mr. Jackson Momoh the project manager with the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC).

I obtained your email from the internet, while searching for a reliable person, who could assist using receiving cash gift from contractors awarded contracts executed under the current budgetary allocation for NDDC.

These bills had been approved for payment by the concerned ministry. The contracts had been executed and commissioned.

What we are about to receive now, is a promised cash gift from the contractors whom we have helped during the process of obtaining the contracts and in the processing of their payments.

On our part, all modalities had been worked out in ensuring a smooth conclusion of the transfer to you within the next twenty one days.

All I want from you is your details to enable these foreign contractors forward the cash gift to you on our behalf, because as government officials we can not collect these cash gift directly from them, neither are we allowed by law to operate/run a foreign accounts.

If you are trustworthy and can assist me in receiving these cash gift, I will like you to provide immediately to me, your full names, address, and telephone number.

Please note that there will be no financial obligation required from you and this transaction is risk free.

For each cash you receive on our behalf, you will be entitled to 10% of that sum. As soon as you indicate your interest, further instructions will be passed on to you on the procedure that we will follow in accomplishing this deal.

Kindly reach me immediately via my confidential e-mail (jacksonmomonddc@netscape.net) furnishing me with your details as stated above. Looking forward to hearing from you.

Best regards,

Mr.Jackson Momoh.

music: dl.tv 97 Sep 21, 2006 from the album “dl.tv iPod video” by Patrick Norton

The Tyranny of Paper

People don’t read off the web. I hear that every time some expert talks about Internet practices and how one should design ones page for spot browsing versus reading long sections of text. Amber MacArthur, formerly of TechTV Canada’s Call-for-Help, says that every times she critiques someone’s homepage. My friend, Holly, gasped when I showed her my blog and how much text I tend to put into my entries. And Steve Krug’s excellent book, ““Don’t Make Me Think” pretty much makes it clear that the web is NOT for reading. So, when I hear that all of the time and then I observe that if the text is of any length my colleagues usually expect or require a printed copy of the text, I have to wonder if it’s not really about the Internet as much as about reading off of computer screens. I used to think that it was a prejudice of my generation that something was not “real” until it was presented in “printed” form. But if the youngsters who grew up with the Internet insist that they get a printed copy of whatever they were looking at, then it must be something else.

I know that there is a whole science and industry built on this one question. Is it biology, the interaction of human eyes reading text off of the reflective light from paper versus words projected with transmissive light off of a computer screen? Is it just habit, that we prefer reading from a medium that we can hold in our hands that is relatively easily to transport? Is it the emergence of a non-linear medium simultaneous to the decline of the practice of long-form reading in general? Or maybe we just don’t want to be stuck sitting at a computer.

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Some Things Are Hard To Explain…

And some things aren’t… JBB

NAS = Not Altogether Sure

Okay, here’s the truth. I’m like my dad, in that it’s never about being done. My dad took that approach to his yard and I have the same attitude about my technology set-up. Like my dad, it all hides behind the veneer of getting work done but the truth is that I love thinking of new ways to “get things done” and my life seems like one giant “beta” test. So, it only made sense that as I was thinking of putting some DVDs on my iPod that i began to think about moving my iTunes from the slow 933MHz G4 to my much faster 2GHz MacBookPro. Only problem with this idea was that I just don’t have the disk space for my whole library (over 60GBs, not counting the growing podcast and video-podcast collection).

So… I’d seen a relatively inexpensive 400GB external hard drive at Costco that had built-in network access (generally called a NAS, network access server). With the NAS I could move my whole iTune library and ripped DVDs to a drive that would be accessible from every computer on the network. The current setup made all four hard drives on the G4 accessible to the mbp but not the PC, and I had to have the G4 up and running iTunes so that the other two computers could share the whole library across the network. I was just thinking, given the mpb’s much greater processing speed that there’d be an advantage to moving everything there so that I could take advantage of the mbp’s power when ripping the DVDs to disk and then when encoding them to play on my iPod. So I set about to clean up my music library and copy the whole thing to the NAS. That took about a week. After going through all of that imagine my disappointment when it seemed to take over 15-minutes for me to sync my iPod every time, when it had previously taken less than two-minutes to sync it from the slower G4. This wasn’t going to work. Shit.

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In … We Trust…

A friend who has been working on her teaching credential, while working full-time as a librarian at a local elementary school sent the following story to me. Somehow it seemed really appropriate to share on the day before the new school begins…

After being interviewed by the school administration, the eager teaching prospect said: “Let me see if I’ve got this right. You want me to go into that room with all those kids, and fill their every waking moment with a love for learning, and I’m supposed to instill a sense of pride in their ethnicity, modify their disruptive behavior, observe them for signs of abuse and even censor their T-shirt messages and dress habits. You want me to wage a war on drugs and sexually transmitted diseases, check their backpacks for weapons of mass destruction, and raise their self esteem. You want me to teach them patriotism, good citizenship, sportsmanship, fair play, how to register to vote, how to balance a checkbook, and how to apply for a job. I am to check their heads for lice, maintain a safe environment, recognize signs of anti-social behavior, and make sure all students pass the state exams, even those who don’t come to school regularly or complete any of their assignments. Plus, I am to make sure that all of the students with handicaps get an equal education regardless of the extent of their mental or physical handicap. I am to communicate regularly with the parents by letter, telephone, newsletter and report card. All of this I am to do with just a piece of chalk, a computer, a few books, a bulletin board, a big smile AND on a starting salary that qualifies my family for food stamps!

You want me to do all of this and then you tell me…

I CAN’T PRAY?”

I hope and pray that we all have a great school year. JBB