I learned a few things in the four months I was in graduate school. One of them was something I’d learn in deed if not word during my five years in student government:

He who acts first dominates the debate, because he has made the debate not be about the problem but about his solution.

That’s a great verity. James Madison knew it, which is why the basic premises of the Virginia Compromise became the framework for the U.S. Constitution. Others in politics [as well as in religion and in other fora of debate] have learned another important lesson: the language that you use in debate is important.

George Lakoff of the Rockridge Institute understands this well, describing how conservatives and their think tanks have learned to frame debate in the last three decades. An excerpt:

You’ve written a lot about “tax relief” as a frame. How does it work?

The phrase “Tax relief” began coming out of the White House starting on the very day of Bush’s inauguration. It got picked up by the newspapers as if it were a neutral term, which it is not. First, you have the frame for “relief.” For there to be relief, there has to be an affliction, an afflicted party, somebody who administers the relief, and an act in which you are relieved of the affliction. The reliever is the hero, and anybody who tries to stop them is the bad guy intent on keeping the affliction going. So, add “tax” to “relief” and you get a metaphor that taxation is an affliction, and anybody against relieving this affliction is a villain.

“Tax relief” has even been picked up by the Democrats. I was asked by the Democratic Caucus in their tax meetings to talk to them, and I told them about the problems of using tax relief. The candidates were on the road. Soon after, Joe Lieberman still used the phrase tax relief in a press conference. You see the Democrats shooting themselves in the foot.

I’ve experienced this in discussing religion, too: those who seek to control debate proof-text from the fore. Those who really seek to be egregious about it do their best to demonize their opposition.

Now, you might freak that Lakoff calls himself a “progressive” when he’s a Berkeley professor, but again … that’s all labels.

I rest.

A List Apart has a great article about writing the Living Web. If you’ve been an introspective logger for some time, I’m sure that you’ve seen some of these points or drawn some of these conclusion on your own, but hey … it’s always worth reading someone else’s take and getting another perspective.

Something that I’ve noticed about my own writing … the comment about “being your own backstory” is something that’s been an interrelated aspect of this site and my biolog. It’s not just length, although length is the dominant function in whether something goes here or there; it also matters as to whether I’m acting or reacting. I prefer to react there and act here.

[Speaking of acting ... soon will be time to act and leave work, actively nap, meet up with Rick, and watch us some hockey. Hooah. Go Chargers!]

I have been sucked into NHL 2004’s Dynasty mode.

So sucked in that, after Ed was over, I turned on the PS2 and played … for the next four hours.

Oi.

I’m glad that I didn’t have anything that I needed to get done tonight …

http://tipthepizzaguy.com/.

Just do it, yo.

Disclaimer: I’ve never delivered pizzas. I used to not tip when I lived on campus … DUMB. When I moved off campus, I realized one day that I should tip.

Nowadays, I get awesome service. I know that because the regular driver who delivers to our apartment complex on weeknights is always smiling before I even open the door, and his “How are you tonight, Mr. Morris?” isn’t fake. I think Leonard tips the guy well, too, because he’s mentioned him favorably, too.

Heck, if we go a couple weeks without ordering a pizza, he’s said, “Man, did y’all go on vacation or something?”

Speaking of pizza, I have five slices in the fridge. Time to head home.

Of course, I didn’t leave well enough alone, so I found myself staring at the computer far too close to 1:00 a.m. for comfort, saying:

“One of these years, I’m going to remember that, well … that I need to leave bloody well enough alone and RTFM sometime.”

I’ve never gotten hot-link protection quite right, and a cursory check of the community photo gallery’s site logs told me this: my photos were being hotlinked. I’d asked folks not to do it, mainly because I was providing the service for-free [and, really, I am ... seeing as no one else is paying for that server but, well, ME!]. Also, even though I get an obscene amount of bandwidth [two terabytes a month], there are some upcoming uses [which I won't detail here ;)] that could, conceivably, soak up a lot of that bandwidth allocation.

And, well, heck … I asked folks not to use it as a place to post photos and then link ‘em from their Weblogs, and … they were doing it.

(more…)

I laid in bed for a while. Despite having told Sarah, “This old white boy needs to go to bed,” I was unable to sleep.

I got up, threw a shirt on, walked into the kitchen, got a glass of water, took a sip, walked back to the room, doffed the shirt, crawled back in bed.

Opened laptop … again. [I've been trying to go to bed since 8:30.]

Pulled up dive into mark.

Goofed around.

Found New Door.

Ran it on gfmorris.com and ijsm.org.

Ctrl-click.

Ctrl-click.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

Scan, scan, scan.

Read a bunch of about pages.

(more…)

It starts last Monday … at Casa de Granades.

G: “Dont mind me, guys … I’m still thinking over this Web problem in my head.”

Stephen: “Oh?”

G: “Yeah, it ended up with me emailing Matt Haughey…”

Soon, the conversation devolves …

S: “Yeah, I used to have lunch with Mark Pilgrim and those guys. They’re lots of fun.”

G: [blank stare]

…

Fast forward to just now, when I’m sitting here looking up the information on and sites of WP developers. I get to Dougal Campbell … and then I go look at Who Are the Gunters? and see …

… “Mike Helba.”

There is a slight pause, and then recognition: “Hey, isn’t Mike that guy who came [with wife] over to Ashley and Jonathan’s that one time? The one I enjoyed talking to?”

I’m pretty sure.

I’m gonna cower in the corner and cry now.

[Oh, and Stephen ... told you I would. ;)]

Got a ton of <br /> tags in your b2/WP?

Run one quick UPDATE in phpMyAdmin or directly from the command line. You’ll need to have the right privs for that database [INSERT and DELETE, I think], but that’s pretty trivial.

As the MySQL manual for UPDATE notes: “If you specify the keyword LOW_PRIORITY, execution of the UPDATE is delayed until no other clients are reading from the table.” If you’ve got a high-traffic site and are worried about messing things up, you might want to slap a LOW_PRIORITY on it, just for fun.

When I get home tonight, I’ll be running this…

On a lark, I fed the following three search terms into ye olde WordPress search function:

• beer
• sex
• hockey

Each returned the same number of results: 10.

Draw from that what you will.

Kottke has a great post on how to focus on message and people instead of ignorance.

He ends the post by saying, “We’re all just yelling at each other, attacking, formulating strategies, so sure of ourselves and our convictions that it isn’t even worth listening to anyone who disagrees. No one cares about learning or understanding and progress is measured in opposing viewpoints that are averaged out into solutions no one wanted or can even understand the value of. What a sad state of affairs.”

This is perhaps greatest in the world of religion, where folks who believe various doctrines under the banner of Christianity toss around the word “heresy” with a seemingly casual disregard.

There’s a reason I don’t participate in online fora discussing such issues: it ends up being more about scoring points than seeking truth. It’s hard to find people willing to disagree but still be civil about it.

The New York Times has hired Daniel Okrent to be an ombudsman, or in their terminology, a “public editor”.

Let me congratulate them on that.

What will be interesting&emdash;and I’m sure that Times-watchers will remain vigilant&emdash;is if Okrent really can blast his employers with impunity when they go overboard in slanting the news. I have concerns, mainly from this quote:

Mr. Keller, who became executive editor on July 30, said he had assumed initially that the public editor would be someone with experience at The Times. But the longer he worked on the selection process — in which applicants included a judge, a politician and a pastor, as well as journalists from The Times and elsewhere — the more he was convinced that the newspaper would benefit from the observations of someone with a fresh eye.

“If this person is going to be a reader representative, why have it complicated by having worked here?” Mr. Keller said in an interview.

Keller, you see, was thinking inside the box, wanting someone familiar to the internal system to be the critic.

That’s hogwash. Someone like this has to be outside the system as much as possible. Okrent fits that bill.

I think, though, that the Times is finally beginning to catch on to what’s needed, though.

Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the publisher of the newspaper and chairman of The New York Times Company, said in an interview that the creation of the public editor’s job and the installation of Mr. Okrent in it were “stepping stones” toward the goal of “making The New York Times less opaque as an institution.”

“It will help make us more attuned to what our readers and our critics, our honorable critics, are saying,” Mr. Sulzberger said. “And it will help explain us to them. Working at its best, it’s a highway with two-way traffic.”

[Emphasis mine.]

A news organization should, at its best, be wholly transparent. That’s the only way that you can build any kind of trust in it&emdash;when there’s no puppeteer behind the scenes, or even the perception of one.

Transparency is what is needed, and this is a small, small step in the correct direction.

This post brought to you by the revelation that sleeping all weekend means that you’re going to be rested up and ready to fire on all cylinders early on Monday morning.

I swore a mild oath when the alarm clock buzzer sounded at 0530, so I just lay in bed until my copy of The Normals’ Coming to Life sounded in my CD alarm clock. I got up before the third song, “Black Dress”, was complete, forced myself to walk straight to the shower, and started my day.

I’ve been at work for thirty minutes now.

This is all rather weird. I guess coming to work early means I don’t have to stay here until 6:00 like I am prone to doing, eh?

I hate to sleep.

I’d rather be doing something&emdash;reading something, writing something, coding something, talking about something.

When I finally got to bed on Friday night&emdash;around 3:00 a.m.&emdash;the body said, “You’re not getting out of here for a while.” I did eventually get up and go to feed Rick and Jessica’s animals, but that was well after noon.

I got back from that and the body said, “Oh, no. None of that cleaning you’d planned. Back to bed with you.” For once, I relented. That saw me do the unthinkable … skip a home hockey game. But I was just feeling all blah.

I’ve slept more this weekend than I probably did last week. Oi.

Everyone knows “that guy”.

At sporting events, he’s the guy that gets there early, has his favorite seat staked out, brings stuff with him to games to throw or wave or whatever, and leads his section in cheers.

He’s the guy that the home team loves and maybe even waves to from time to time.

He’s the guy that the visiting team hates and maybe even waves a middle finger at as they leave the game.

He bleeds his team’s colors.

He knows and sings the fight song.

I am that guy.

Charger Hockey is back. This has been a very, very long seven-month period.

You know what pisses me off?

There’s this whole movement towards the Semantic Web and designing with Web standards. It’s a beautiful thing.

What pisses me off is that every Web programming book I’ve ever perused fails to follow these things. I’ve seen more line-breaks and tables-for-design-positioning hacks in these books than I care to think about.

When the heck are the writers of good Web programming books going to drink the Kool-Aid and start pushing readers to output nice, happy, semantic code?

When, Lord, when?!

At the behest of Rick, I’m going to get IJSM.org [and then GFMorris.com] syndicated on Wondergeeks.

I mean, Rick gave me all the tools that I needed … how can I not get it done?

[Are you happy, Rick? I TB'd you.]

UPDATE: Uh, I would if I hadn’t, somehow, lost Rick’s emails with said information. Oops.

Last night I went to go see my buddy Andy O go play up in Nashvegas. Before the show started, the band decided that they were hungry, so they ordered some Papa John’s. I’d already eaten, but when time came to go get pizza, Andy asked me if I wanted to tag along for the ride. So he, Paul Eckberg, and I hopped in the Osenga-man’s Volvo station wagon and drove over.

As we were driving back, Paul pulled out his cell phone to zip a call to Matthew Perryman Jones, who was back at the church. I began to drool upon seeing the phone … a Handspring Treo 600.

The geek lust has begun.

It will be mine … oh yes, it will be mine.

I found FeedReader today after looking at Chris Pirillo’s RSS Resource.

I use NewsMonster at home, but I don’t run Mozilla at work for a variety of reasons, so it seemed foofy to want to run it here as well.

Now I can consume RSS at work during downtime.

Speaking of downtime, I have to duck back into work … I love updating other people’s busted documents.

Dear Reader:

For whatever reason, you choose to hang on my every word. [Sicko.] I know that you have waited a whole day&emdash;a whole day!&emdash;to hear back from your humble correspondent on what is going on in his life.

But I must note that, like all Tuesdays of late, yesterday was filled with much work, as my Tuesdays are now what I know as “Data Dump Days”, where we fling a bunch of data about our manufacturing status at our customers, presumably so they will read it and know what’s going on inside the manufacturing center.

As you might guess, no one ever really seems to read it, and as such, we get lots of questions that have already been answered by the data. Of course, no data set is ever perfect, and so some of the questions are legitimate. The others are, well, frustrating to answer, especially if you’re the guy that processed the data dump, because it all causes one to think, “You know, I spent a good five or six hours on that yesterday, putting it all in a nice, happy, user-friendly format. Did you read any of it? No. I really fail to see why I should answer your question.”

Ah well. It could be worse. I could always be flipping burgers. Our customer’s inability to keep cost and schedule under control is likely to cause them to lose the re-bid on this contract. TBE is wisely partnered with the other aerospace congLoMerate bidding for cargo mission, so we’ve got a well-hedged bet&emdash;if our team wins, we’re in like Flynn; if we lose, we’ve been saving the old customer’s BacOn for somE tIme Now, and they’ve Got to come back to us if they want to not screw cost and schedule any further.

The sound you just heard was a bunch of evil geniuses laughing.

It’s columns like this from Peter Gammons, who finds a way to both defend and criticize Grady Little, that make one shake the head and wonder at the ability to talk out of both sides of one’s mouth and still be honest and sincere. Two-bit hacks like me are left to just criticize Little for egregious mistakes.

What’s the difference between the two of us? Experience and care of craft. I’ve written columns where I’ve handed out both praise and criticism before, but not quite this skillfully. Also, Gammons recognizes that he can’t just blast Little out of the water in case Little does somehow survive this maelstrom and return for a third season at the helm. Me? I’m just a fan, and I’m not beholden to have to go and interview the guy.

I know what Gammons is doing because I’ve been there; I remember ripping Craig Barnett up at Findlay but doing it in such a way that, when we were on the phone, we’d spend as much time talking about life as we would about hockey.

Gammons, in a time when it’s easy to want Grady’s head, I salute you for being even-handed.

The audacity of Grady Little amazes me.

“A lot of people have the answers after the results come in,” Little said of those criticizing him after the fact.

What about folks criticizing him at the time? I don’t know anybody who was doing just that on his blog:

How does Pedro have this many K’s? Hello, Alfonso Soriano.

Does anyone have the number to the Sox bullpen? I want to call Wake.

Grady, Bill Buckner called. He says, “Thanks … I can move back to Boston now.”

Donruss, presumably in an attempt to bolster its market share, purchased one of three known George Herman “Babe” Ruth jerseys and is cutting it up, putting 1″ squares in random Donruss packs in 2004, 2005, and 2006.

“There’s always going to be controversy,” Donruss president and COO Bill Dully said. “But something like this is just the reality of the free market and the reality of capitalism.”

Read: we’ll do any last dang thing that we can do to make a buck.

Will someone hold my hair while I throw up? Thanks.

Back in July of last year, Amy asked me, “Do you think baseball players are using steroids?” My answer to the “are baseball players jucing up” question then was, “Yeah, they’re juicing up, but it’s probably stuff other than steroids.

Turns out that I could have been wrong, as Barry Bonds and Jason Giambi have been subpoenaed about their involvement with an organization alleged to have provided steroids to its clients.

Oi.

I’ve got some preliminary thoughts on this, but I need to give them more time to simmer before I let fly with them.

I tell you, I don’t understand my body at times.

Last night at church, I was so tired that all I wanted to do was sleep. Therefore, when I got home from church last night, I came in, talked to Leonard and his girlfriend for, oh, 30 seconds, and walked into my room, read for a little, and went to bed. I didn’t go to bed until 10-ish, and, well, you can see what the time-stamp says.

It was a fun, full weekend; the latter part is what makes me groan. Friday, as soon as I left work, I drove down to Tuscaloosa. You see, I had friends in town, and I needed to go see them, even if I didn’t get to stay very long. We stayed up talking and goofing off until around 3:00 a.m., and then the girls retreated to bedrooms while we guys retreated to couches and floors. [Sorry, Brandon, for keeping you up with my snoring. I did warn you guys that I snore when I'm really tired.]

We had a lazy morning, and mid-afternoon had me coming back to Huntsville. You see, I had to teach Sunday school at church, and I needed to do some preparation for that. Saturday night was slow as I spent time studying up for that and, well, not much else.

Yesterday was your typical church day, although the afternoon had me catching the first half of the Bengals’ game [big win!] and the Blue/White game for hockey. I have this weird feeling that it’s going to be a loooooong season. Unlike most Sundays, I didn’t get my nap in, so it was very hard to keep going on Sunday. [Why I have to have this Sunday nap is beyond me, most times.]

And now it’s early Monday morning … I think I’ll get that nap now.

The story starts sometime in late August. For reasons I don’t remember, I find this quirky little site, [caedmonscall.net]. The big reason? It’s probably the song vault.

Though Rick, Stephen, and Sean might not believe it, I haven’t always been this obsessed with CC. What band did I follow in college? Jars of Clay. Jess, Heather, and I have great concert stories [including that ne'er-to-be-forgotten parking deck incident :sigh:] from over the years, and well … I guess I picked the wrong band to follow rabidly. [Seriously ... until the point where CC started to go quasi-pop, they were a killer band; unfortunately, Jars peaked with Much Afraid and backslid for a while, thinking they were Christian music's Beatles, until, well, they got a sense of who they were.] But getting involved with the fans of CC—having joined the Guild but never really been involved with the Guild—I became a rabid, rabid fan, the kind that would seriously consider flying to Seattle to see a show. [I've changed my mind about that one.]

For whatever reason, I saw their message board and decided to create myself an account. I signed up 9/1/02 and started posting 9/3/02 … and was quickly sucked in to the fun. There was a thriving community there, people that were passionate about the things I am and generally wonderful people.

I still don’t think that I’d have ever gotten as involved as I am if I hadn’t had to go on a business trip to New Jersey. On that trip I met my first “.net person”, Sarah Doyle. [I have but one photo of just the two of us, but hey.] Because she was such a wonderfully nice person, well, I got more involved.

That continued into me going to shows in Nashville and meeting this guy named Trey, who’s just the kind of guy that throws a coin in a fountain while wearing a bandana. Yes, Trey is a goofball, but so am I. There’s only one thing wrong with Trey, and that’s the fact that he’s a Baptist. [Misty, you may hit me.]

Then we had a whole dozen people come to Huntsville and create a snazzy great time. That was the watershed moment, the straw that broke the camel’s back.

A couple weeks later, this goofy Bryan Allain guy grabbed me and said, “We need you on our staff to be our tech guy.” Okay, so figuring out technology for these people had a lot to do with that, but I wasn’t trying to become staff&emdash;I was just trying to put something back into a community I cared about very much.

The following months saw me drive 10 hours on a whim to see the band with a bunch of .net people up in Virginia; encounters and interviews with the band, and a lot of craziness in between.

Last night, after dinner in Carla and Alisa’s apartment—roommates living in Tuscaloosa after neither had ever lived there before, and after they’d met on our site and become friends, with Alisa deciding that she just wanted to move to Alabama from California, so she did—Trey and I stood washing [him] and drying [me] dishes in the kitchen. Trey handed me a pot, and as he did so, I softly said, “If you had ever told me a year ago that we’d be standing here, hanging out with people we know only from the Internet, in the apartment of these two roommates, with Scott and Brandon and Sarah here as well, I … well, I don’t know what I would have told you.” Trey replied, “You’d be laughing, just like I would. Now dry that pot, bohunkus!”

Now that I am home—they are still there, but I have to teach Sunday School in the morning—I am wondering just a bit at it all.

I would have never expected this, never sought this … but I’m certainly happy with the blessing.