Competing Messages: Some Notes

Doc Searls, who is somewhere near the halfway point of a cross-country trek, responded to to the Commerce and Sociality post, to which I may have more to add sometime soon.

In the meantime, I wanted to point to this article in the NY Times before it slides into their commercial archive. It's about people who drive moving billboards. There are some interesting and perhaps relevant observations to be made about technology and commerce here.

Also in the Times was this light piece regarding family gatherings and technology. I don't want to make too much of it, but I think there's a troubling small point to be made there.

With that, I must go make my daily bread.

Update: Got a note from Doc about how to use the Times' permalinks to avoid nasty linkrot. Should remain fresh as the day they were published indefinitely!

Cheese Sandwich: Rockstar Revisited

It's Labor Day weekend, and this is traditionally the "end of summer" marker. I thought it might have been two weeks ago for me, but maybe not. Last night I went out with a neighbor and a friend from work along with her friends from her graduate program. Had a wonderful time, and we were home early since it was a weeknight.

Again, it's something of a pleasant conundrum that I seem to be able socialize well with people two decades younger than me without seeming to be an object of either curiosity or pity. Someone suggested I may have a "young soul." Damn, I thought an "old soul" was the cool thing to have! Or maybe I just never grew up. I don't worry about it much, but I enjoy hanging out with these people. Not sure Diana West would approve, but back when I was a young man, we had a rude thing to say about people who "can't take a joke."

Tonight I'm probably going to take it easy though. No plans at the moment, maybe a movie. But Saturday a neighbor and I are going to the evening Jacksonville Suns game in search of a bobblehead. The subject of this particular artifact is to be Nolan Ryan. The first three thousand fans in the gate get one. So we're going to head downtown early, cruise around the Landing for a while and then line up early enough, hopefully, to ensure successful acquisition, and subsequent extraction, of the subject.

I'm thinking some time by the pool will be in order on Sunday. Maybe some miniature golf, maybe not. Maybe some blogging, maybe not. Lots of music. Definitely some cold beer, some sun, some dog walks, food I probably shouldn't eat, and a run or two.

It's been a great summer. It's going to be a good weekend.

Music: Radio Nowhere

Springsteen's label (or the Boss himself, who knows?) has released a track from his upcoming album, Magic, as a free download. It's available at the iTunes Music Store, and from The Guardian.

Can't say I'm enamored of the track. The vocals seem muddy to me, and everything seems to be splattering all over everything else. I'm not sure what he's going for here, but it's different enough to be a distraction without being different enough to be interesting. Kind of a bootleg recording thing? I like the riff and the refrain, but it's not something I'm inclined to rock out to because it's kind of painful to listen to.

Blasphemy, I know. Lots of other people seem to like it though.

Sorry, Boss.

Cheese Sandwich: Moon walk

I took Bodhi out this morning about 5:15 a.m. and happened to notice the moon was missing a piece! Then I recalled reading something about a total lunar eclipse sometime this month. So we did an about-face and I went up to leave Bodhi in the house and grabbed my camera.

I warmed up the lenses because it was a little steamy out this morning. I'm not sure I did it long enough, because I was having difficulty getting any clear shots. I probably took fifty pictures, but maybe three or four were worth keeping. Part of it was trying to keep up with the changing light values. I was using manual mode and I really don't know enough about photography to get that right the first time. Part of it seemed to be the camera couldn't focus properly on a small target. I tried manual focus, but that was no better. Infinity should have been enough, but it still seemed to manage to fuzz up the picture.

But I got a few worth saving. And I got to watch the moon slide into the earth's shadow. That was pretty cool. Probably worth all the bug bites, maybe!

The shot below is from about 5:35 a.m. The shot of the full moon is from about 9:52 p.m. I've never paid attention to this before, but it looks like the moon has rotated about 90 degrees clockwise. I didn't rotate the camera. I'm sure it's something to do with perspective as the earth rotates, but I've never really noticed it before because I don't think I've ever taken pictures of the moon at night and again in the morning before. It looks like it might be over 100 degrees, and there's 7h 43m difference between the times. The earth would rotate about 115.75 degrees in that time, which looks to be kind of close to the change in the moon's features. Why it would look that way is beyond me, but I'm sure it makes sense. Too early in the morning to be thinking about that now though.

Time to go.

The Eclipse of the Moon

The Moon

Just goofing around with the camera. Bumped up the contrast as much as I could, but otherwise as it came from the camera.

Competing Messages: Commerce and Sociality

The self-interest post has resulted in more feedback than anything I've written this summer. (Okay, three e-mails is kind of a pathetic response, but you have to take what you can get these days.)

Like the Creating Culture post, this is more just an effort to get a few things down in pixels, and maybe return to it in more depth later. Then again, maybe not...

Commerce, at least as practiced in the west, is a competitive enterprise. There are winners and losers, some succeed while others fail. Every player seeks an advantage at all times. It's a dynamic system, so strategies change and evolve over time, and the system presses against all boundaries in its efforts to find advantages to exploit. What presses back?

Well, government presses back, much to the dismay of libertarians. Government, presumably, has the public good as its central focus. We can debate whether or not that's true some other time, but it's true enough for the moment. As a result, we regulate businesses to establish boundaries against some efforts to seek a competitive advantage. These are most clearly observed in regulations governing public health and product safety.

Government is not a competitive enterprise. Politics is, but government is not. At least, not at the same scale that commerce is. Governments compete over longer spans of time, unless a war breaks out. But the Cold War is an example of competing governments. It didn't take Microsoft a generation to defeat all other competitors in the OS wars. I hope the idea is clear. Technology changes this, but that's a topic for another post.

But since politics controls government, and since politics is competitive, political figures are vulnerable to corruptive influences from commercial interests seeking economic advantages. Again, this shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone.

So again, what pushes back against commerce?

Very little, it turns out.

This is the point I tried to convey to Doc Searls in our telephone conversation, with no success. By trying to make commercial "messages" more "human," by trying to make "commerce" more "social," Doc and those who subscribe to his view cede the advantage to commercial interests at the expense of social ones. In my opinion, we need to start defending social and cultural boundaries against commercial efforts to gain a competitive advantage.

What does this have to do with Web 2.0, Davies, Carr and others? Well, everything.

Davies was trying to point out that there are aspects of our lives which are not subject to economic rationalization, though it appears we wish to believe it may be so. For instance, Dave Winer wrote these words today: "The reason Facebook is interesting is that unlike Google it's built on identity, it's built on everyone being identified, and people having one identity (although it's certainly possible to have more than one, it might be hard to get a lot of people to recognize that identity, people with a lot of "friends" may be more trustworthy than people with very few)."

How those words would not give anyone reading them pause is a mystery to me. How anyone could write them, without being given pause, bothers me. "People with a lot of 'friends' may be more trustworthy than people with very few"

So sayeth the man who railed against "the mob" only a few days before. (And he was right.)

This is how commerce corrupts society. How we cede what we value in society to commercial interests. How life becomes more commercial and less social.

Because "markets are conversations." And nothing is pushing back against the opportunity to get rich.

Lenin was right about capitalists and selling the rope with which they would be hanged. He was just wrong about who the hangman would be.

For what it's worth, I'm not a communist or a socialist or a conversationalist. I'm just a guy with an opinion and a computer.

Cheese Sandwich: Morning Reflection

Well, I tried out the blow dryer this morning, and it seemed to do the job. On the other hand, it was supposedly 74 degrees out there this morning, and it probably was, so the camera would already have been a couple of degrees warmer than the air. Anyway, nothing spectacular, but I like it when the water is still and reflects the sky:

Cheese Sandwich: More Pix

A few years ago, there were a lot of Orb Weaver spiders at my kids' house, and I was always taking pictures of them and their impressive webs. Haven't seen as many in recent years, but I saw one the other day that kind of got my attention. The light wasn't good for capturing the web, maybe I if I'd brought a spray bottle, I might have been able to put a little "dew" on it, but I didn't.

I had to kind of frame her against the tree in the background to get the auto focus to grab her. She'd built her web in between to palm trees on the center island in the entrance. It's surrounded by palmettos and high grasses, so I couldn't get very close to her, which is why these little "super-zooms" are nice. Used fill flash too. Anyway, it's just a bug:

As an aside, she's about two inches from top to bottom there. Just about actual size on my 13" MacBook screen.

The next day, after losing the light while waiting for my lens to clear, I grabbed what I expected would be a throw-away shot of the moon after the lens cleared. I kind of like it though:

I used the new "Highlights" adjustment in iPhoto '08 to kind of darken the moon a bit. I suppose I might have done just as well by changing the auto exposure selection setting to the center spot. I may try that next time.

Cheese Sandwich: Camera Accessory

I bought a blow dryer today. I've never used one before because my hair is so short that it dries pretty quickly on its own. Caitie's never asked for one either.

But it's been so hot lately, with high humidity, that it's been nearly impossible to run outside with the camera to grab a shot of something that I happen to like. Yesterday evening we had some clouds blowing up as the sun was going down, and I really liked what I was seeing. But naturally, as soon as I got the camera out the lens fogged over and by the time it was clear again, the light had changed and what I had wanted to capture was gone.

Now I hope to be able to quickly warm up the camera with the blow dryer before I go outside and avoid the fog issue. Here are a couple of shots from last night:

Competing Messages: Creating Culture

This probably won't be a fully developed post. It's mostly to get something down that I thought of while walking the dog, thinking about Carr, Davies, Douglas, Porter, Weinberger and Searls.

I think I recall Doc Searls saying that markets are a place where we "create culture." I've already kind of disputed Doc's idealized vision of markets, but I don't think I've ever addressed this aspect specifically. It came to mind as I was thinking about how my coworker and I talk about music.

The market exploits culture, it doesn't create it. Of course, the market influences culture, but it doesn't create it. People create culture and the market exploits both the people who create it, and their work. Some kid in his bedroom plays a guitar and writes a song, someone else writes a poem, another one paints a picture or develops a video game. Often, creative people get hired by commercial interests to create what we call "commercial art," and I suppose that's part of our culture as well. But we don't rely on the market to create culture. When we do, we get "boy bands."

And I thought of something else I used to read too often, something that Dave Weinberger said about blogging, "We're writing ourselves into existence."

I always objected to that idea too. Partly because I think it's patently false, existence precedes narrative, but also because it seemed to be taken up and accepted so uncritically by legions of adoring followers. Just like that bromide, "markets are conversations."

I think both statements reflect something related to Ulises Mejais' mention of "epistemic enslavement." Doc seems enamored of markets, and Dave enamored of the notion of weblogs. So much so that each artifact takes precedence over other things. Existence precedes narrative, we can't write ourselves into existence. Markets don't create culture. People don't enter the marketplace to create culture. The creative act, the creative drive, precedes commerce. Of course, creative people must often rely on commerce to keep body and soul together, but the point remains:

Creation takes precedence over commerce. Not the other way around.

Doc said something not long ago, "Love is the ultimate lock-in." They each love their respective ideas of markets and blogs, and they're locked into a view that puts the object of their affection ahead of everything else. So we end up trying to embrace and create an ass-backwards world where commerce takes precedence over everything else.

At least, that's the way it seems to me. It's just my opinion. I'm an authority on nothing, I make all this shit up. Do your own thinking.

Competing Messages: Rose Tinted Self Interest

It's the dog days of summer, and by that I mean it's been too damn hot to walk the dog, so I've spent more time online recently. I followed a couple of links Nick Carr offered in a postscript to his comment on William Davies' Register piece. I read some things there that kind of take the place of the mosquito bites I'm not getting not walking Bodhi. They create an itch I have to scratch. This "scratching" presumes you've read the respective pieces.

The first one I wish to discuss is by Joshua Porter at his Bokardo weblog. Porter feels that Davies' and Carr's "arguments are seriously misguided." Davies, you will recall, objects to the notion that a fundamental principle in the study of economics, that people will always act rationally in their own self-interest, can be applied to any other study of social behavior. Porter disdains Davies' objection saying, "The most interesting thing about this argument is that we’re having it at all…there is no question whatever that people act in their own self-interest."

Porter omits are two important words, "always" and "rationally," which Davies seemed careful to include. If one can believe that people "always" act "rationally" in their self-interest, and since rational means having a basis in logic or reason, then one can believe one can make meaningful predictions about how people will behave in response to a particular change in conditions. Logic and reason are "universal," and "self-interest" ought to be common enough as to be nearly universal. In economics, in the aggregate, this principle is true enough to be useful. It is by no means clear that such is the case in a larger, social, context.

Furthermore, Porter seems to equate self-interest with instinctual, evolutionary behaviors, which seem to further the survival of the species, often at the expense of the individual's "self-interest." These are not the same things, and it's interesting that Porter thinks it's something not even worth arguing about. It would be interesting to hear Porter's thoughts regarding the behavior of people in countries with declining birthrates, and how that squares with "how we are programmed at a deep, deep level."

I would also be interested to hear Porter's thoughts on how often people behave "rationally." If people "always" acted "rationally" in their own "self-interest," think I think it's reasonable to say that something like state lotteries wouldn't even exist. Alcoholism wouldn't be a problem. Our murder rate would be miniscule. Obesity would be non-existent, and there wouldn't be a need for psychotherapy or a market for self-help books. We'd all have "maximized" our "happiness" already!

So indeed, I think there is something of a question whether or not people act in their self-interest, and Porter's rather self-satisfied dismissal of Davies' objection as "misguided" seems to indicate that it is Porter himself who is perhaps more than a bit misguided.

Porter is on slightly firmer ground with his second objection, which seems to focus on Nick Carr's emphasis on "efficiency" as a "good" in the marketplace, which doesn't necessarily carry over to society at large. But he undermines his argument with the assertions that "Second, Carr’s dichotomy (the one between 'markets' and our 'social lives') is vaporware," and "Is it not clear that business is society, and society business?" Welcome to Doc Searls' world. It's not the world I happen to live in, but it's the world I may live in one day, if Doc and Porter and all the rest get to have their way.

It is true that the market affects our society and our culture, and it seems to be doing so more every day, partly because some people don't wish to see a difference between the marketplace and society, and partly because some people actually wish to see society and culture become more commercial so as to maximize the opportunity to make money, or "create wealth," if that's more palatable to some.

But Porter seems to wish for something else: "The problem with business is that too many business people see it as somehow outside their moral lives." The problem isn't that too many people see it as "somehow outside their moral lives," but that business, by it's very nature, is often at odds with morality. Business is inherently competitive, and very often a zero-sum game for some of the players. Morality, the principles by which we try to discern right and wrong in the social sphere, does not lend a competitive advantage in the commercial sphere, except perhaps as a novelty used to attract attention or create product "differentiation." As society becomes more commercial, it becomes less moral, because the emphasis is on competitive advantage for material rewards, rather than on social interactions for intangible rewards.

Societies cannot function without a system of commerce, but commerce shouldn't be the reason why societies exist, which is, to my mind, much of what Davies is objecting to in The Cold, Cold Heart of Web 2.0. But this distinction has been blurred almost to the point of obscurity by our hyper-competitive, overly materialistic, highly commercial, consumer culture. Unless and until we recognize that society has intrinsic value that is often incompatible with, although supported by, commercialism, we will surrender more and more of our social values to commercial interests. All the while it will be facilitated by the smiling faces of optimistic beloved "visionaries" cooing soothing little bromides like "markets are conversations" into our ears. I am "hopeful," if not especially "optimistic" that we will one day develop a method of social hygiene to preserve social health, much like we have with sanitation codes to preserve public health. But I'm not holding my breath.

Porter gets a bit gauzy at the end, offering half-hearted objections to this or that, but concludes with an indictment of "efficiency as an intrinsic good," which is pretty far removed from where he started. Indeed, it isn't clear that he objected to the overall content of Davies' piece, so much as his misunderstanding of Davies' mention of rational self-interest. It seems he was mostly objecting to Nick Carr's assertion that efficiency is an intrinsic good in business. In an update, Carr seemed to take the criticism to heart and said he revised his post to "temper that point." I don't think he needed to because in the commercial sphere efficiency is an intrinsic good. But commerce is not always compatible with society, and the two are different things as Carr reaffirms in the update.

The other link Carr noted was a piece by Ian Douglas, which also seems to dismiss Davies' concerns. In my opinion, he focuses on a narrow reading of Davies, and completely misses the larger point. Davies' point is that much of what we find valuable in social interactions resides in their very inefficiency; that talking about music with our friends, classmates, coworkers is a good in itself, it's not a process that needs to be reengineered to be more efficient.

A coworker and I in our office talk about music often. It's not because either of us is seeking the other's input on new music, it's because we enjoy music and we enjoy talking to one another. It's not a "process" that's crying out to be "disintermediated" by Web 2.0. The discovery of new music is not a "product" I need someone to sell me. Douglas seems to totally miss this point, focusing on the discovery of new music as a process that benefits from the new efficiencies of the web. Now, if my purpose in life is to simply consume as much music as I find enjoyable, if I am little more than a "consumer," then Douglas' dismissal is perhaps merited. But I happen to believe that life is more than being a consumer, and I neither require, nor welcome, commercial interests purporting to supplant my social activities with processes that make me merely a more efficient consumer.

Douglas goes on to dismiss Davies' concern that this view that social processes are candidates for reengineering by the Prometheans of Web 2.0 might extend further to more intimate social interactions. Douglas' seeming blindness to Davies' first concern seems to illustrate the validity of the second. Douglas dismisses Davies with an unsubstantiated faith in the ability of people "to be very good at choosing the appropriate medium to suit the message."

It's not clear to me that people are even very good at sending appropriate messages, let alone "choosing the appropriate medium." The proliferation of communications channels is of little value if people are already challenged to be able communicate clearly in any medium. Indeed, it seems to me that it becomes merely another barrier as one has to consider not only what message one wishes to communicate, but also through which channel one wishes to do so. One need do little more than read Davies and Douglas to discern that communication is a problem that hasn't been solved yet. If that isn't compelling, then a casual inspection of virtually any "conversation" between weblogs on any topic ought to be sufficient.

Douglas goes on to assert, "Even if Davies and Carr are right that we’re losing something in adopting other forms of organizing ourselves, we’d be gaining something else. If it does not suit us better, it will die out in the process of cultural evolution that has always been with us." Someone needs to define clearly for me what "suit us better" means. It's not clear to me that what we're talking about is even "forms of organizing ourselves," let alone that whatever "form" wins out does so because it "suits us better." It may suit the dominant interests, but that's hardly "us."

Finally, Douglas closes his dismissal of Davies with something I find maddening. He waves his rhetorical hand and makes a sweeping statement: "Carr is wrong that the online optimists (I count myself among their number) ‘want to believe.’ We’re engaged in an experiment. We don’t know how it will turn out, but I’m hopeful."

We're emphatically not "engaged in an experiment." An experiment is a controlled test of a hypothesis, wherein the experimenter is presumably interested in discovering whether the hypothesis holds or is false. Douglas, Davies, and all the rest of us aren't living in an "experiment." We're living in the real world, where none of this is effectively "controlled," and it's by no means clear that those who call it an experiment are interested so much in the truth as in dismissing criticism or skepticism.

Competing Messages: Epistemic Enslavement

It hasn't been entirely all fun and games around here, though I haven't been worrying too much about how well-intentioned people often end up making the world a less healthy place in which to live. It's kind of like worrying about the weather. One has about as much influence over people as one has over the weather. So, yeah, it's been hot; and yeah, a lot of people who ought to know better are making the world a better place for corporations, not us. Well, except as pieces of corporations. Go us!

But I have been kind keeping an eye on things. I did get a pointer to The Cold, Cold Heart of Web 2.0, and I read Nick Carr's comments about it. I had both of those in mind as I read Ulises A. Mejias' Networks and the quantification of sociality, from which I cribbed the title to this post.

And then I read Robert Scoble's Facebook Hotel post.

Damn, it's been hot lately.

Cheese Sandwich: Partyin' Like Rock Stars

Long, boring, "all about me" post follows. You've been warned.

School starts tomorrow, which always seems to mark the end of summer. It's kind of an irrelevancy since I've been out of school for more years than I was ever in! But it lingers as sort of a reminder that maybe it's time to quit goofing around so much, and get busy with something. Or maybe just to slow down a bit.

This weekend has kind of capped off the summer for me. On Friday night, I went out with one of my neighbors and several of her friends. We went out to dinner at a middle eastern restaurant, The Mediterranean, at about 10:00 p.m., and didn't leave the place until about 1:00 a.m. We had tons of food, did the hookah thing again, and it was marvelous. Met some great people with some interesting stories. Then it was on to a local tavern, The Monkey's Uncle, where they had live music and a huge crowd, even that late. Managed to get in a game of pool before they chased us out of there at 2:00. I don't know which I'm worse at, pool or bowling, but my partner and I managed to win the game. I only sank one of the opposing team's balls, which perhaps accounts for our victory. Then it was back to my neighbor's place for some more, ("Shhhh!") revelry. I finally wandered back to my place a little after 3:00.

Got up and walked Bodhi at 6:30 a.m., because he was kind of like, "I don't care how late you were out last night, or how much you had to drink, you're takin' me outside right now, or I'm going to give you a little unpleasant surprise!" So we did the walk, and then I went back to bed! Got up about ten, and took Bodhi out again.

When we got to the bottom of the stairs, he wandered over in the grass and started sniffing something, which is not unusual at all for any dog. But then he did something every dog owner dreads and tries to prevent: he decided he needed to roll in it. I yanked his leash as soon as I saw him kind of tilt his head and put it to the ground, but I was too late. When he came back up, the whole right side of his face was black. Gah! I'm not sure if he was offering me a little commentary on the notion of getting "shit faced," or what but we headed straight over to the car wash station so I could hose off his face. Quite a way to start the day.

My back had been feeling pretty good all day Friday, so I did four miles on the treadmill at my regular pace (which isn't all that fast, but I hadn't run or worked out in over a week). I was feeling it a bit toward the end, and actually quit about seven minutes before I'd planned. I normally run for about 40 minutes, but wanted to see if I could increase my time to 45 minutes. I hit the four mile mark about 38 minutes into it and decided that was enough. Anyway, no complaints from the back then or later when we were out on the town.

But Saturday morning, oh boy, did it complain! So it's back to stretches and kind of nursing it along. At least it isn't giving me hard spasms. It's just some weakness in the lower back when I bend down. It seemed to improve throughout the day, which is the way it kind of behaved earlier in the week. So I think the pounding from the run was probably just too much too soon.

I spent most of the day trying to catch up on the housework, and made significant progress. I mopped the main floor, though I still need to do both bathrooms. I threw away about a dozen old tennis balls that Bodhi had collected and brought home, which left at least six other ones lying around anyway. But he managed to find two more on our walks yesterday! Sheesh. But I can see most of my kitchen counters now, and the dining room table is almost cleared off. Hopefully I'll finish that today. I've still got the loft to do. I started that last week, going through and getting rid of stuff and trying to get everything better organized. Which probably means I need to just get rid of more crap. It was a pretty productive day, in spite of a late start.

One of my other neighbors mentioned she'd like to do something Saturday night. When I ran into her later on in the day I asked her about it and she said she'd be up for bowling and had talked to another neighbor about coming along as well. I figured life is short, and my back wasn't feeling too bad, so I figured I'd risk it and we all ended up going bowling. We had to wait until our other neighbor's husband got home from work, so we didn't end up going until after ten. The first neighbor, we'll call her "A," (one of my old "Monopoly crew," if you recall) and I had been bowling a few times before, and we went with another couple last time. I hasten to add that "A" and I aren't a couple, we're just good friends. So it was fun to bowl with a new couple. "A" and I are horrible, but our friends weren't bad! We had a good time, and my back doesn't feel any worse this morning than it did yesterday morning. So, call it a win.

I actually like bowling enough that I asked about how much it was to buy your own ball. I can never seem to find one that either has the right span for my fingers, or if I do, the holes are too small. Last night the holes were too small, so I'd try to grip the ball with just the tips of my fingers. This had the predictable comical outcome of me dropping the ball once, and the larger effect of not being able to really control it on the release. Not that I know what I'm doing in any case, but it would always just seem to come off my hand before I was ready and it would often head off in the wrong direction. So the guy at the desk told me that I could get something decent for less than a hundred bucks, and it seems like we may do this enough that it would probably be worth the money to get something that won't hurt my fingers, and may actually allow me to get a little better.

In other (late) bowling-related news, two weeks ago, "A" and I went bowling with another couple on Saturday night, and late Sunday morning we had something of a mini-Lebowski Fest and fish fry. My friend "T" is an avid fisherman, and he'd caught a bunch of them lately and wanted to eat them. He's also a pretty good cook, actually worked as caterer at one point and has some training in the culinary arts. He's a programmer now, so go figure! Anyway, we went over his place about 11:30, he fried some fish and made some hushpuppies, "K" brought macaroni salad, "A" brought cookies, and I brought another one of those Heineken nano-kegs (which is now proudly displayed above my cupboards). So we had a very nice early lunch, and then sat down and watched The Big Lebowski! "A" and "K" hadn't seen it before, so they kind of missed my comment about how "T"'s rug "really tied the room together," but they enjoyed the movie and we all decided that it was a great nucleus for an annual neighborhood thing, the Belleza Lebowski Fest and Fish Fry! We'll see how it goes. Check back with me in a year.

Anyway, it's only Sunday morning, so the weekend isn't over. My neighbor "K" wants to have a brunch at her place about 11:00, but I'll probably have to pass. Another neighbor wants me to take some pictures of her place this morning to help her sell it. This afternoon, one of my co-workers is having a little welcoming party for a Russian graduate student they're hosting this semester, and I plan on attending that. And I've got to get measured for a tux for my brother's wedding in October. So today's going to be a busy day too.

I'm actually a little relieved summer's winding down. I'm not sure I could keep up this pace for much longer! Still, it's been a very fun summer after a pretty sad sort of spring. Now I guess it's time to slow down a bit, hope we make it through hurricane season and kind of get ready for the winter.

People: Happy Birthday Pascale Soleil!

Pascale Soleil has the same birthday as my daughter Caitie, which was yesterday! Again, belated birthday greetings to another online friend!

(This kind of prompts a thought: We actually met in person when I was in D.C. once. So maybe the "online" distinction is irrelevant. I guess I use it mostly to imply that these are people who I consider my friends, whom I've never met in person. They're still great people, and I'm glad to know them. It's conceivable that I may never meet some of them. But the possibility of meeting them always seems to be something important and worth pursuing if the opportunity presents itself. So physically "meeting" seems to remain an important part of friendship. I don't know, that's probably a whole post in itself sometime.)

People: Happy Birthday Hal Rager!

I shot him an e-mail yesterday and it bounced! But I wanted to make public mention of the 52nd anniversary of the birth of Hal Rager, father, husband, archeologist, buddhist monk, fellow editthispage.com alum, and online friend. Happy birthday, Hal! And sincerest wishes for many, many more.

Cheese Sandwich: Busier than a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest

This week kind of flew by. Which is probably a good thing, since it was still plenty hot, significantly above "normal" for this time of year. This morning was pretty nice, it was cooler outdoors than it was in the house for the first time in a long time!

I didn't train at all this week, giving my back a chance to regain its composure or something. It's pretty good, but sometimes when I bend down to pick something up, or if I happen to stand on one leg for some reason, it may start to spasm a little. It's been getting better every day, but I want to be pretty certain it's ready to go before I start training again.

While I was out walking Bodhi the other night, I happened to notice three ospreys roosting in a pine tree on the edge of the property. I believe they might be fledglings from the nest I used to photograph last year. It was occupied again this year, maybe by the same pair of ospreys since they often return to the same nest, and they had more than one offspring. I didn't take as many pictures of it this year for some reason. Anyway, there were three on one night, two on two nights and only one last night, and I don't know where the others have gone. I guess they may be splitting up and heading out on their own. They'd stay all night because I'd see them again in the morning.

In the season finale of John From Cincinnati, there was this Bob Dylan song I'd never heard before. I liked it a lot and looked it up on iTunes, it was Series of Dreams. It's going to get added to the running playlist.

In other good news, I read that Springsteen is releasing a new album with the E Street Band in October. Kind of a return to rock & roll after Devils and Dust and the Seeger Sessions. That's something to look forward to. Perhaps a tour? Maybe Jacksonville? We shall see.

TV: HBO Sucks

Well, that didn't take long. John From Cincinnati has been cancelled by HBO. Apparently, the series "never found its audience."

So, it's even more appropriate that my HBO access has ended.

(Parenthetically, the box is still somewhat hosed. I'm able to get HBO On Demand today, after it being "Not Authorized" last night. So I'm watching more JFC while I can.)

Editor's Note: Technical Difficulties

For some reason, Bloglines doesn't seem to be picking up the full RSS feed, while NetNewsWire Lite still does. It's possible I broke something moving to the MacBook, but it'll take me a while to figure out what it was.

In the meantime, it's not some kind of conscious decision on my part not to offer the full text. It's just a glitch that I have to fix.

Cheese Sandwich: TV Weird

Turns out that the most recent episode of John From Cincinnati was the season finale. Whether or not there will be another season, I'm not sure. In any event, I was using HBO On Demand to watch some of the earlier episodes. After the first two, I received an error code for the third one. It suggested I wait a few minutes and try again.

So I took Bodhi for a walk, came back and tried again. Still no go, but a different error code. So I called the toll-free number on the screen, and managed to fumble the voice navigation feature for selecting my particular error code. Instead, I got transferred to customer service.

While waiting on hold for customer service, I turned the box off and back on again. That seemed to fix the problem. Unfortunately, customer service had come online and asked me for my name and address before that became evident. Wherein ensued a series of delicate questions about why exactly I was having a problem.

Apparently, back in January, when I collected the box from Comcast's business office, nobody actually put through my order. And the box comes fully enabled, so I've been receiving everything Comcast offers without paying for it. It turns out the difference would be something on the order of $70.00 a month! Fortunately, they don't go back and ask you for seven months' worth of extra services!

Needless to say, I wasn't interested in buying the whole package, especially on my new economy kick. Nevertheless, my bill is going to go up about six bucks from what I'm paying now, while my services will be somewhat cut back. Mostly, I'm losing HBO, Cinemax, Showtime and Starz. I'm not sure about the On Demand offerings.

Our dutiful technician wasted little time in getting the correct order punched in, because as soon as the episode ended, I got a terse little "Not Authorized" message on the screen, instead of the HBO On Demand menu.

It won't be much of a loss. I only watched an occasional movie on the movie channels. The movies they offer that I might be interested in I've almost always purchased on DVD. The only one I've watched with any frequency was HBO, for the last season of The Sopranos, and John From Cincinnati, and the occasional fight.

Now, maybe that's not all that weird, but it feels somehow... I don't know... appropriate, that this happens after the season finale of John From Cincinnati, and after I got to watch the two episodes I missed at the beginning. Lots of weird things happen in John From Cincinnati. This just seemed like one of them.

If they decide to make another season of JFC, I may consider subscribing just to HBO. We'll see what happens.

In the meantime, this is an excellent resource for anyone interested in the series.

Cheese Sandwich: End of Weekend

Bummer. The weekend is over.

It cooled off briefly Saturday night, such that when I went outside with Bodhi on Sunday morning, it didn't feel as though we were stepping into a sauna. In fact, it was nice enough to take a quick drive to the dog park and let him have a little swim and socialize off the leash for a bit.

This morning it was back to the steam bath. Blech. Looks like it's going to be hot again all week. I'm going to hate to see my electric bill for this month.

Gave my old iBook G4 to my son for school. He's mainly a Windows guy, but he's interested in the Mac now. He came over and picked it up yesterday, which gave Bodhi somebody new to say hello to. It also gave us an opportunity to speak to his grandparents over iChat, which was nice.

Watched John From Cincinnati again last night. The show remains an enigma, though I love all the characters. It appears that nearly everyone who comes into contact with John is experiencing some sort of resolution to existing problems. Always nice, even if it is just a fantasy. I expect they'll all get run over by a bus any minute now.

Managed to screw up my back the other day, in the typical way - moving a refrigerator at work. Actually, it wasn't even much of a move. We'd moved it out away from the wall to replace an in-line water filter. It sits in a corner, so we moved it away from both walls to get the filter from the back, and to get to the water valve from the left side. Well, the floor is ceramic tile, and we didn't quite get it all the way over to the side when we pushed it back. When we went to shove it over, the wheels caught on the edge of the next tile over, and it wouldn't budge.

A wise man would have pulled it back out and angled the whole thing back over into the corner, but I'm not a wise man. I bent down by the side of the thing, my back to the wall, and with my incredibly strong left arm (just kidding), tried to lift the side of the refrigerator (which was empty, btw), while someone else shoved it toward the wall. It worked, but later in the evening my back started going into spasms every time I bent over. Doh!

It's slowly getting better. I've been doing some stretches, and trying to avoid any heavy lifting, but I haven't worked out or trained at all for the last several days. Next time I'll think twice before trying to do something "the easy way."

Plugged 2GB of RAM into the MacBook on Saturday. Haven't really had a chance to do much of anything with it since then, but hopefully it'll help keep things cool and improve performance.

Made a rotisserie chicken for dinner with Caitie last night. It was pretty good, though I have much to learn about how to truss the legs and wings. I let it cook just a little too long. I took Bodhi for a walk and figured it would be ready to come out by the time we got back. It probably would have been perfect if I'd delayed the walk a few minutes and removed it before we left. Live and learn. It wasn't bad though, just a little dry.

I've got leftovers for lunch too, which is cool. Part of my effort to save money involves bringing my lunch to work. I normally eat out for lunch every day, and with a snack from McDonalds, I probably average between nine and ten dollars on food at work every weekday. So that's about $180.00 to $200.00 a month I could save, minus whatever it costs to bring food from home. I brought salads four out of five days last week. The challenge seems to be incorporating preparing lunch into my daily routine. I'm still working on that. And I should be doing that now instead of writing about it. If you can call this "writing."

So, with that, I'm outa here!

Mac: New iMacs

I haven't seen one yet, other than pictures, so I'm not sure what I think about their appearance. They certainly look nice in pictures.

One thing that is a bit disappointing is that Apple seems to be using a lower cost LCD in the 20" model, with reduced performance as well. Viewing angle seems to be the biggest complaint, though I've read it also can't display "true" 24-bit color, relying on dithering much like the MacBook and the MacBook Pro. The 20" display in my Core Duo is better than the new one.

The 24" seems to be a good value, with an excellent LCD and a strong CPU. People still complain about the graphics coprocessor, but it seems to be adequate for everything but the most demanding games.

All in all, I like the new iMacs. The really good news is that I didn't see anything that made me feel like mine is horribly obsolete now. I need to finish upgrading the RAM from 1.5GB to 2GB, but I think I'm in good shape for a couple more years.

Cheese Sandwich: "Hot 'nuff for ya?"

While I know it's been hotter elsewhere in the country, it's been pretty unpleasant around here the past couple of weeks too, and no relief immediately in sight.

We can usually rely on a sea breeze to kind of keep things bearable, but if there's been one lately, I haven't noticed it. I go out to walk Bodhi in the morning, and it's like stepping into a sauna at 5:00 a.m.! That's really kind of depressing. The high today is supposed to be 95, which is the same as it was yesterday, and yesterday was miserable. August has been running six to ten degrees higher than our seasonal "norm," every day except for the 2nd.

One result is I've been walking Bodhi a lot less. And I haven't been doing the four mile walk at lunch, either. Hopefully, things will get back to normal soon, which will feel wonderful, as opposed to merely "normal."

iPhoto '08: Web Gallery Notes

I received iLife '08 yesterday, which was a day later than I expected. I paid extra for 2-day shipping and received iWork '08 on time, though I had already downloaded it; but iLife didn't arrive at the same time. Go figure.

Be that as it may, I did install it yesterday and I've only had a little time to play around with it. I've uploaded two "web galleries," and that was pretty painless and quick. Sixteen pictures in one, nine in the other. I haven't enabled any of the features in the galleries, like being able to download full-size images, though I likely will soon.

One thing I've noted, which may be a bug, is the "Info" button for an image in the gallery doesn't offer the same information that Get Info does in iPhoto.

For instance, in photo 100_1739, iPhoto reports the shutter speed as 1/25, while the web gallery image reports "1/0." Also, the aperture is reported in iPhoto as f/3.2, though the web gallery reports the aperture as f/3.3. Flash is reported "Off" in iPhoto, and "24" in the gallery shot.

So, a note of caution, don't believe everything you read in the Info pane in web galleries.

Just another observation, in neither iPhoto '06 or iPhoto '08, can you copy the text from the Get Info window. At least, I couldn't find a way.

Mac: Whoops!

I got my increased allocation of disk space at .Mac. I knew this because my HD went from about 20GB free to about 2GB! I turned off iDisk sync and then deleted the local copy and got my free space back.

Hazy Days of Summer

I went to the beach to watch Endeavor leap to orbit. About 6:40 PM I called my mom in upstate New York to see if it had lifted off, because I sure couldn't tell! Indeed, it had. Unfortunately, while it wasn't cloudy this evening, the haze seemed to render the atmosphere opaque.

Cheese Sandwich: Money Can't Buy Happiness

“But a few million doesn’t go as far as it used to. Maybe in the ’70s, a few million bucks meant ‘Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous,’ or Richie Rich living in a big house with a butler. But not anymore.”

My interest in Numbers is more than just my enthusiasm for Apple software. I recently enrolled in my new company's 401(k) program, something I hadn't done with my previous employer. I got a lot of grief from people about "leaving money on the table," and not planning for my retirement.

Frankly, money bores me to tears. I'm conditioned enough that I don't want to abandon this lifestyle I've acquired; so it's not like I can just forget about it, but I don't think about it much. As a result, I'm pretty careless about money much of the time.

The same thing could be said about my health. I've enjoyed good health all my life, but not through any smart choices on my part. Just good genes, I guess. But now that I'm getting ("Sigh.") older , I'm starting to pay more attention to my health too.

But that doesn't mean I care about money as much as I care about my health either. I just realize that it's something of a finite resource, and I probably need to learn to use it more wisely. So I enrolled in the 401(k), which means I take a hit in my short-term cash flow. So I'm breaking out the budget spreadsheet, which kept me somewhat less insolvent back when I was going through my divorce. I'm going to work on identifying ways of saving a little money here and there, and paying off some of my credit cards a little ahead of when I originally thought I might. (Since that never seems to work out according to "plan" anyway.)

With any luck, I can improve my financial condition about as much as I've recently improved my physical condition. But I don't plan to become obsessed about money. No matter how much you have, there's always someone else who has more.

Mac: Numbers

Apple offers a 30-day trial download of iWork '08. My copy should arrive tomorrow, but I downloaded the trial anyway. Numbers is pretty cool. I'm by no means a spreadsheet wizard, so it's possible that it lacks any number of "essential" functions or features a power-user might expect, and I wouldn't know it. But I copied and pasted my fuel data from Mesa to Numbers and had no surprises there.

I went looking for a "smart fill" feature, to populate a column with formulas. Numbers calls it "autofill," and it's pretty cool. Just select the bottom right corner of the cell that contains whatever the fill is supposed to be, and drag it down to the last cell in your column and it fills it in! If you have a series of some kind, you have to select two or three cells so Numbers can determine the pattern. I'm not sure how smart it is, and I didn't try anything else except for a couple of formulas.

I also opened my budget spreadsheet, which is Excel, and it worked like a champ too. So now I'm having fun managing my vast financial empire using Numbers! (Well, "Living from paycheck to paycheck using Numbers!" is more like it. Now that's a sterling endorsement: "Never has living from paycheck to paycheck been so much fun!")

Mac: iLike '08

The new features in iLife '08 and iWork '08 make each of them a compelling upgrade for me. Especially the sharing features in iPhoto with .Mac. I'm kind of curious to see if I can use the Kodak EasyShare One to e-mail photos to .Mac. I seldom use the EasyShare One because it's not very convenient as a camera. And truthfully, the lack of ubiquitous wifi makes its wireless capability rather useless. But it might be fun to play with a little.

The addition of Numbers to iWork was expected and welcome. I recently downloaded the Universal Binary of Mesa to have an intel-native spreadsheet for the MacBook. While I like Mesa, it hasn't received a great deal of support in the last several years, and the Universal Binary came as quite a surprise.

I use the voice memo feature of my Nokia 3660 to capture my fuel consumption data. The other day, I finally got around to entering over two years' worth of data into the computer. I didn't have the license key for Mesa on the MacBook, so I started entering it in a table in Pages. When I found the license for Mesa, I wondered how I was going to get the data I'd already entered into a Pages table into Mesa. On a hunch, I just selected the table as an object in Pages, dragged it into a Mesa sheet and all the cells came over just as they should. I was very pleased, and only a little bit surprised. You gotta love Cocoa apps. I expect I'll be able to do something similar from Mesa to Numbers.

Government employees enjoy a nice discount on both iLife '08 and iWork '08 at the Apple Store. So if you meet the necessary requirements, that's the way to go.

iPod: Griffin iTrip Auto

On the road trip to New York, I brought along my iPod (a 40GB 3G model) and used it with a Griffin iTrip Auto, an FM transmitter and charger. It worked very well, though naturally I had to change stations every now and then. I also had to use it in the "mono" mode, to get the strongest signal in areas where it was hard to find a quiet part of the FM frequency band, and basically, I just left it there.

A couple of months ago, Apple was selling refurb 4GB iPod nanos for $129.00 (retails for $199.00, refurbs normally $149.00), so I bought a blue one. I use that one now on my daily commute, because it's smaller and more durable than the 3G.

But the audio volume from the nano seemed significantly lower than that of the 3G, played through the iTrip. On many songs, I had to crank the stereo all the way up just to hear it at all above ordinary road noise. I looked at the settings for the nano and turned off Sound Check, the feature that kind of equalizes all the audio levels so that one song isn't significantly louder than another, which can be jarring in shuffle mode.

With Sound Check off, I can listen to nearly every song at normal volume settings on the audio amplifier. Every now and then I have to turn it up to hear a "quieter" song, and then turn it back down again, but it's better than sometimes not being able to hear a song at all.

Since the nano has a much smaller capacity than the 3G, I mainly use it to listen to newer music I've downloaded recently, and some select favorites. At some point, I may choose to experiment with listening to podcasts. I'm sure it's shocking, but I haven't really listened to any podcasts, with the exception of Alan Watts and the Battlestar Galactica commentaries.

DVD: Hot Fuzz

I watched Hot Fuzz last night, and it was pretty good. Not exactly what I was expecting, based on the ad campaign. It was, for most of the movie, a very British sort of absurd, but dry - at least in the case of the main character - comedy. The end is where it goes over the top, and it's really a send-up of all American "buddy cop" movies.

Space: Shuttle Launch on Wednesday

Space Shuttle Endeavor is scheduled to launch on Wednesday at 6:37 PM EDT. I'm going to try and see it from the beach up here. Seeing it is usually not a problem, unless it's pretty cloudy. Whether it goes up on time or not is another question.

Mac: Tinderbox 4.0

Downloaded Tinderbox 4.0 last night and haven't had time to play with it very much.

Cheese Sandwich: ... losing it!

The other day I mentioned that I felt as though I'd not suffered any undue effects from my little vacation. That day was Wednesday. The next day was, wait for it... Thursday.

Thursday is sparring day in Krav class.

So Wednesday, I did my four-mile walk at noontime, went to kick-boxing class Wednesday night, and Thursday I went to TKD at noon, where we worked on legs, seemingly for the entire class.

Then I went to Krav Thursday night.

Ugh.

I took a beating. A beating. I'm still feeling it today.

My legs were useless. I could move, but I couldn't bounce, there was no energy, no speed. I saw the punches coming, but couldn't get out of the way.

One thing I've read about aging and fitness is that recovery times get longer as we get older. I think I believe that now.

Part of the problem was that I've been away from sparring for over a month, between vacation and some other conflicts. So my timing was off anyway, and having dead legs just made for a disaster. I took side-kicks to the stomach from my instructor all night. I need to do more ab work. I think that was the message. I don't want to think about the hooks to my head.

Well, next week I'm kind of spacing things out a bit. I'll walk four miles at lunchtime on Monday and do kick-boxing Monday night. That'll be demanding. I'll take the noon TKD class on Tuesday, because that's less intense. Skip Krav Tuesday evening, since I have a conflict anyway, and take all of Wednesday off. Then back in the dojong on Thursday at noon to stretch and kind of guage where I'm at. If I feel good, I'll spar Thursday night.

In between all those things, I'm still walking Bodhi and doing various sets of push-ups and some ab work, but not too much.

While I felt pretty strong on Wednesday evening, Thursday evening reminded me just how mortal, and old, I really am. But I'm not going to quit. I'm just going to try and be a little wiser in how I go about this foolishness!

Cheese Sandwich: Saturday Sunrise

I would have been much better off with the P880, and its 24-140mm lens. It wasn't a spectacular sunrise, but the clouds would have been more interesting in a wider aspect.

I think.

I know nothing about photography, I just take pictures.

Anyway, this one was about the best of the bunch, and it's not great:

Movies: The Bourne Ultimatum

Rocked. Hard.

An excellent movie. An excellent resolution to the trilogy. Excellent cast. Just a great movie experience.

Gotta go. Sun's comin' up.

Cheese Sandwich: Use It or Lose It

Saw this at CNN yesterday and, unsurprisingly perhaps, these types of stories garner more of my attention these days.

I was back in the dojong on Tuesday, and I felt pretty good. About the worst effect from the two-week layoff was reduced flexibility in my lower extremities, particularly my groin and hips, which have been my problem areas from the beginning.

I skipped Krav Maga on Tuesday evening because I had a homeowners association meeting I wanted to attend. I've been appointed to fill a vacancy on the board, and they usually meet on Tuesdays. That conflicts with Krav, so I've decided to go to kick-boxing class on Wednesday nights on the weeks when I have a board meeting.

At lunchtime I managed to get my four-mile walk to the jetties and back in, and it was rather hot today, though my weather widget suggests the high was only 87. Anyway, it seemed to take a lot out of me, and I was trying to rationalize skipping kick-boxing. But I had Caitie and she told me she wants to start going again too, so we went.

I'm here typing this, so obviously it didn't kill me. In fact, I felt pretty good through most of the class, up until the end. It's perhaps more focused on conditioning than Krav, using more basic punching and kicking combinations, but fairly high intensity throughout the class. I started to fade toward the end with the abdominal work, which kind of surprised me because I thought I was pretty strong there. But until then, I was keeping up or exceeding the other students, despite being the oldest by probably a decade. (I will also note, with some pride, that Caitie punches hard.)

Anyway, the point is I really didn't want to go, but kind of made myself and I'm glad I did. I could offer you a catalogue of aches and pains, and it wouldn't be short, but overall I feel pretty damn good.

I'm not happy about being fifty, but I figure I'm going to ignore it as much as I can. There are lots of things I'll never be, but I can be better than I was yesterday, and I try to keep that in mind.

Now, at some point, you have to believe that there's going to come a day when I simply can't be better than I was yesterday. But that's not true. You lose some things, you gain others. In the end, none of us gets out of here alive. But until the end, I'm not going to quit trying to get better.

A little Tennyson for you:

Tho' much is taken, much abides; and though

Music: Paula Cole

I confess I had no idea who Paula Cole was, though when I read a reference to her Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?, I vaguely recalled the song and enjoying the voice that sang it.

Anyway, any album entitled "Courage" kind of gets my attention. I'm not sure it has much to do with the album, but I liked what I heard, so I bought Courage; and then picked up her Greatest Hits - Postcards From East Oceanside. I gather "greatest hits" is perhaps an exaggeration, but I like her voice.

Music: Sara Bareilles

I stumbled on Sara Bareilles through an iTunes Music Store promotional announcement about lesser-known artists whose work was available at something of a discount for the albums.

I liked what I heard, so I bought the only album iTMS offers, Little Voice.

Kind of conventional pop, but she has a pleasing voice and she wears well.

Music: David Dondero

I found David Dondero through NPR's All Songs Considered, which I knew about about never really visited until a young woman at my office recommended it to me.

Now I'm recommending it to you, though I suspect most of you are probably way ahead of me in this regard.

Anyway, I've got South of the South, which is perhaps more of an acquired taste than either M. Ward or David Gray. Check him out, you might like what you hear.

Music: M. Ward

After Chinese Translation, which I briefly noted here, I became an M. Ward fan. And everyone I've introduced his music to has liked him as well.

I've got Post-War and Transfiguration of Vincent. Again, excellent, excellent stuff.

When life knocks you on your ass, music helps you get it back up off the deck. And sometimes, it just makes life better.

Music: David Gray

This is kind of a test post, because it's going to include an iTunes link, and I'm not sure how that's going to work. We shall see.

But I've recently started listening to a number of different artists, some kind of new, some new to me. David Gray is in the latter category, I guess.

I've got White Ladder, and Life in Slow Motion and I don't think there's a song I don't like on either album.

Let's see how this works...

Okay, that seemed to work well enough... if you have iTunes installed. I'm not sure what happens if you don't. I'll find out tomorrow when I test the link from my office computer.

David Gray, well worth checking out.

Dog Diet

My mom mentioned this story to me the other day because it closely parallel's my experience. One of the reviews of the book at Amazon quotes the author: "Dogs make some things harder, but everything better." I think that's true.