I took some time at lunch and watched/listened to Clay Shirky’s talk about the cognitive surplus, which I’d seen linked a lot of places, but today by Jeremy Zawodny.

I was reminded of a pledge to use time-shifting for awesome. I then sent myself to the penalty box for a ten-minute misconduct.

Okay, off to watch some Law & Order. :sigh:

Watching the comments on Andy Baio’s post on Infocom is endlessly fascinating for me, as I’m the Web host for the Interactive Fiction Competition, which is organized by my good friend Stephen Granade. Just earlier this week [or was it last week? They're running together], I had been telling Dr. Boom at lunch that he needed to check out Waxy. Heh.

I think my favorite thing is how Stephen just matter-of-factly points to Baio’s entry, too … me, I wouldn’t have been able to resist discussing how I would be freaking out if internal emails were getting posted on the Internet. Of course, I realized long ago that I was only one forward away from any of my emails being read by the one person I least wanted to see them, privacy disclaimers I might make to the contrary.

An aside, because I think it’s worth considering: email from 25 years ago was far more likely to be for-the-record, memo-style stuff than what you typically see today in business. There certainly was a lot less of it sent [as we were less used to it as a communication medium], and so everything was more focused—and, sometimes, strident. I think this accounts for some of the tone you see in some of the emails that Andy reproduced, and I think the following quotation makes my point:

I just wanted to clarify in writing what we discussed about “Restaurant” last Tuesday — what I will and will not agree to.

I will not sign a blank sheet of paper: I refuse to take responsibility for “Restaurant” in the state it presently is in — not knowing who is creatively in charge, how much thinking has actually been done, or how much of a script is written. …

– Amy Briggs

Consider the difference between this opening and most of the business email you send and receive. Do you write stuff like this from time to time? Sure, we all do. But those are the emails that we stay after hours to write—or, better, sleep on and write first thing the next morning. But it would be a mistake to not recognize that many of these emails were of a for-the-record nature, the kinds of things that make positional statements, and as such sound more assertive than we’re used to.

In the drive-thru line at Hardee’s this morning [I know, I know], I was behind a large Toyota SUV with a “Paul Finley for Mayor” set of stickers. So I whipped out the iPhone and pulled up the URL to see if this was a Madison thing or not. It is.

Made me realize that, other than incumbent Sandy Kirkindall, I had no idea who was even running for mayor, and I have no idea what any of them really stand for. Oh, there’s Finley’s “A Fresh Approach”, and I’m sure that Kirkindall’s slogan will be “Proven Leadership” like any good incumbent. But it occurs to me that I maybe should get involved and blog about this, because it means something to us here in the L:35758.

Would this be interesting to any of the locals?

When you perform
It’s so intense
When the critics pan
I write in your defense

I understand I am just a fan
I’m just a fan

Wilco, “The Lonely 1“, Being There

Andrew wrote about going to see Sixpence None the Richer play on Sunday night in Nashville, and a good chunk of what he wrote resonated with me.

I’ve lived here for eleven years and I’ve had the real honor of working with just about everybody I listened to in high school who’s not dead or in U2, Pink Floyd or the Beatles. It’s shocking and amazing at first, but it wears off and you realize they’re just dudes like you, and the magic fades away a little bit.

Except for this band Sixpence. I don’t care. I just freaking love them. They’re one of my favorites. They always have been and they always will be. I’ve played a few things with Matt, mostly at Andy P’s Christmas shows, and Leigh sang on the first Normals record. But somehow, they never faded to me. I’m a fan. And I love it.

Despite it all, Caedmon’s Call is still that way for me. [Derek or Andy solo? Not so much. Both of those are very much old hat, to the point that if either asked me to sing BGVs or something during a show, I wouldn't be intimidated.] Every show is still pretty special for me, because the music takes me back to a far more formative period of my life. I connect to it in ways that really only I know about, because I’ve never talked about with anyone in the band. [Unlike, say, some of Andrew's stuff.]

Another thing I want to note here: I try to maintain a certain distance with Over the Rhine. I freaking love them, and while I guess there are chances for me to get to know them—and they’re certainly inviting of those opportunities—I really just want to remain a fan. Unlike most of the shows of bands I attend whenever they’re in my area, I go to those shows, make my recording, take my photos, and go the hell home. No waiting for two hours after the show to talk to the band [because we want to talk to each other, but I'm willing to wait out the other fans] or anything. I just watch the show, capture it, go home, and revel in the remembrance later. I like that.

I think I set the trend with OtR when, at the first show I attended, Rick and I sat right along the walkway from the green room to the stage. Didn’t talk to them then … probably won’t in the future.

If I believe NPR’s David Kestenbaum—and I generally do—then Barack Obama’s views on manned spaceflight have cost him my vote. I recommend listening to the entire story, but the blurb listed on NPR.org is very telling:

Advocates of NASA’s plan to return to the moon are concerned that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has said he will raid NASA’s budget to fund education. While the issue of space exploration hasn’t gotten much attention this campaign season, it is a topic on which the candidates do differ.

Raiding NASA’s budget to fund education is like sponsoring the US Olympic Team but then not sending them to Beijing this summer. Admittedly, I’m quite biased as someone who works in manned spaceflight, but space science is one of the few endeavors that mankind has left that is, on the whole, quite positive. Sure, there are negatives—one reason NASA will continue to get funding is fear over the Chinese space program, and the International Space Station largely has justified a jobs program to keep Russian rocket scientists from going to work for Iran, North Korea, and China—but that we’ve gotten the world’s nations to push together for this quite lofty goal is impressive. That we won’t let the Chinese be a part is sad, to be sure, but that’s something that talk-with-your-enemies Obama would support, right?

When I posted about voting in Alabama’s primaries last month, I was leaning Obama. Hillary’s desperate tactics in the face of Obamamania have pushed me further in his direction. But just as I did in 2004, I’ll vote with my job, even if that’s “fucking idiotic” to some. Admittedly, part of the reason that I like both Obama and McCain is that they don’t seem to fall into the “you’re stupid because you disagree with me” argument. I’m fairly convinced that either candidate would make a good President; I hope you’ll understand why I’m likely to make the choice to vote with my job.

[I mean, I guess that, now that I'm management, my skills are portable, but ... I do kinda like this shit. I mean, I did get one of NASA's highest honors last year. ]

[This post is a shameless attempt to keep GFMorris.net from having only Whiskerino photos. But I also wanted to spend more than 255 characters on each of these.]

Link the first: Bemidji State and WCHA announce scheduling agreement:

Bemidji State hopes to play an annual 12-game, non-conference schedule against members of the WCHA with an even split of home and road contests. However, no specific details regarding the scheduling agreement have been finalized at this time.

“The WCHA congratulates the City of Bemidji and Bemidji State University on their commitment to build a new ice hockey facility,” WCHA officials said in a statement released Friday. “[The WCHA] looks forward to helping showcase the sport at the highest level to the citizens of Bemidji, Minn.”

[Emphasis mine.]

That’s the key thing: BSU gets WCHA home games. They’ve had some, but not enough.

For those who don’t know: BSU’s current conference is that of my alma mater, Alabama-Huntsville. Our league has a team in northern Minnesota [BSU], north Alabama, Detroit, Buffalo, and Pittsburgh. Ummmmm … we’re not exactly centrally located. The Detroit team folds at the end of the season, meaning that no team is within an afternoon’s drive of the other. [You could do Det-Pitt okay, or Det-Niagara if you went through Canada.] The WCHA, rather, has several teams in the state of Minnesota, plus North Dakota [a few hours from Bemidji], Wisconsin, Michigan Tech, two schools on the Front Range, and Alaska. Only the last three would be fly dates for Bemidji, whereas all four of our schools are for them.

Why not just accept them into the WCHA formally? Well, the WCHA doesn’t want to kill our league, College Hockey America, because it’s the only easy place for western schools to expand into. Of course, being a geographic hodgepodge has made it hard for teams to stick in the league because of the travel costs. That’s a function of western collegiate hockey, though; when “west” starts somewhere around Harrisburg, PA, yeah, you’ve got bigger geographic problems in the west.

I think the only way for the CHA to be a viable conference is for the WCHA and the CCHA to sign scheduling agreements with all our member schools. Bemidji has been a natural fit for WCHA schools because of proximity. If the two big western conferences are serious about western expansion, well, they’ve got to give us games with their teams in our barns to make us viable. Why does that make us viable? It’s not so much us as other teams that might come up—you’ll get a lot more push to go varsity at Penn State, or Illinois, or whoever if you know you can get Michigan or Wisconsin or Denver to come to your barn every so often.

Link the second: Merlin Mann’s feeling that .Mac is a future sleeping giant:

Think about it: a new lightweight laptop with a small hard drive; an iPhone that’s getting dangerously close to becoming a remote for your home and life; an Apple TV that doesn’t even require a computer; an iPod Touch that (rather mysteriously) now needs your credit card info and a login to get new apps onto the device. Then, fold in a couple big spoonfuls of the company’s clearly increasing interest in becoming the people who sell or rent you the entertainment media that goes on all the machines you bought from them. I dunno.

I suppose it’s my (still congealing) contention that right now, Apple deliberately keeps .Mac a dim-witted, sleeping giant. It’s so unsexy, broken, and behind-the-times right now as to seem like a product out of a less forward-thinking company.

But what happens when that giant wakes up, stretches, and then starts standing in the middle of every single product Apple (and its partners) have to sell? It’s so mind-boggling to consider the implications, especially given that it stands as one of the few persuasive explanations for why such a smart company would stay so quiet for so long about allowing a premium pay service go to seed this badly.

I think something is up. Big time.

I think it’s wishcasting, but that’s because I’m condition to think that .Mac is always going to disappoint us. It could totally rock, but it never seems to rock. [I think it just solidifies the fact that Apple is a hardware company first and foremost; running this service is out of its core competency.]

Link the third: Merlin on the Amazon Gift Organizer:

Now, the cool part of all this — even if you don’t use Amazon very much — is that Amazon.com is friggin huge. Which means that they (or their “Marketplace” partners) carry a ridiculously high percentage of the purchasable, shippable items available in the consumer universe. So, if you start using the Gift Organizer today — even for stuff you have no intention of buying from Amazon — your life is going to be much easier the next time a gift-giving occasion rolls around; you’ve capitalized on several months of passive, half-assed attention to actually do something useful.

Absofuckinlutely.

[And not just because he used the term "Amazon Prime dork", because ... hello. I am one.]

Andy Baio leaving Yahoo! deserves more than 255 characters.

First: it took me a while to get into it, but I freakin’ love Upcoming. If nothing else, it’s a way for me to point where I’m going to be. I began professing my love for Upcoming about a year ago, and Andy taking a personal interest in my issues really helped me come to love it more. I use it a lot, if for nothing else than tour data publishing for Andy Osenga, Caedmon’s Call, Derek Webb, and the rest of the Square Peg Alliance. In fact, were I in my own band, I would totally leverage Upcoming to announce all my tour dates. So, all that Andy did to build Upcoming … well, dude, thank you. You rock.

Second: as Andy notes, Waxy.org took a nosedive when he started Upcoming and it really gathered steam:

In case you haven’t noticed, Waxy.org went into cryogenic sleep shortly after we were acquired as all my energy went into building and growing Upcoming. I’ve missed writing and coding here badly, so I’m thrilled to make a second announcement:

Next year, I’m focusing exclusively on Waxy.org and related coding projects. What does that mean? Yes, more links, but also the same flavor of original research and investigative journalism I’ve done in the past, though on a daily basis instead of the quarterly (ack!) schedule I maintained this year.

I’m going to be taking some time off for the rest of the year to travel and get things in order (e.g. I’m long due for a redesign), so don’t expect things to really get moving until the first week of January. Stay tuned to the feed for details.

Let’s put it this way: there are few Weblogs I read where I stop everything I’m doing, shut down all my continuous partial attention devices, and focus on the writing. Rands in Repose is one; Waxy is another. Examplia gratis: Waxy on sex baiting on Craigslist.

So Andy: thanks. Rest up. Cheers. I owe you several beers on general principles.

Y’know, despite the fact that I throw a crapload of links at you most every day, I find that I’m probably not doing the best I can for you, dear reader. Last night, whilst talking with them about many other things in this really wide-ranging conversation that is typical of us, because they have learned to take my detours in stride, the Granades mentioned that they’re far more likely to look at links if, you know, I leave some context for them. Makes sense: if I’ve taken time to do more than leave a breadcrumb, it’s probably worth you doing. [And many times, all I'm doing is leaving a breadcrumb for myself, Internet. After all, 3500 of the 4750 or so links I've tagged as of this writing are me breadcrumbing my comments in other locations. 3500 comments is nothin' ... I run a forum where I've got 80,000+ posts over the last four-ish years. ]

So I’m gonna try to leave you better context more often. I’ll probably fail; I mean, I do crappy entries like 20 Oct’s pretty often. But hey, I write for an audience that is larger than myself and Mom [hi, Mom!], so I owe it to you to leave more context. And maybe I can guilt Alex into reviving the fine context that made Around the web a must-read, even if it’s slipped a bit lately. [I know, dude, I know. Huge glass house I have here.]

And if I don’t, you can totally give me crap about it. And I will take it, and I will eat my words. Lotsa practice.