Category: Burningbird

Categories
Internet Just Shelley

Cornered

Tuesday I called Charter Communications to see if I can continue the high speed internet but cancel the basic television lineup. I was informed that I could, but it would cost 10.00 more a month. Since I’m already paying twice as much for Internet access as Charter advertises at the company site and on TV, I wasn’t interested in being further penalized and said that I’ll just cancel both, then.

Only to be informed that to get the ‘good deal’ I have with my current internet service, I supposedly signed a contract in November to carry both television channels and internet for a year; if I don’t, I’ll be penalized 150.00. I don’t remember being told about $150.00 penalty for canceling my account. I asked where it said I had agreed to these terms. The Charter person said that when I signed the work order, I signed the agreement.

Tonight, the roommate and I thought we’d take in the free music concert at the Botanical Gardens. When we got there, I was surprised to find several parking attendants–big, burly, unsmiling, sun-glassed, parking attendants. Not the friendly, khaki clothed Park volunteers. No, these guys all looked like the type of people you would expect to come out of the woods from the movie, “Deliverance”–except wearing blue shirts, tan shorts, and wraparounds. They all had mullet hair cuts. It was surreal.

Following the signals, we found ourselves down one row where we were faced with two attendants, one of whom signaled me to pull into a slot between two cars. I signaled back that I couldn’t park between the cars–one was a very large Cadillac that stuck out in the back, and straddeled the parking line and I knew I couldn’t swing my car around enough to pull in. I pointed to the spot on the other side of the furthest car. The guy just looked at me, shook his head, and pointed at that one spot.

Now, the parking lot was about 70% empty. Still I started to reverse my car to see if I could angle it into the spot. About that time, a family had gotten out of their car and started walking behind me. So there I was, stuck between a couple of cute little kids, and two big, burly, unsmiling, black-mullet-haired, sun-glassed parking attendants.

I put my car back in drive, and started moving forward, yelling at the attendant to get out of my way, I was leaving.

And that’s exactly what I’m telling Charter Communications.

Categories
Burningbird

How many emails?

If I’m part of the squids, at least I’m a Giant Squid if my email popularity has anything to do with it. I woke up this morning to find 56,770 emails in my general email account. It would seem a host of hackers used ‘burningbird.net’ to send both phishing and virus emails throughout the world. Most of the entries back were those misbegotten, stupid automated replies that say something like, “Your email has a virus and therefore you’re trashed with us, Bud. Have a nice day”.

It wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t in Japanese. And Korean. And Russian. French, too. And German…

Which is my way of saying, if you’ve expected a reply from me and haven’t received one, I would suggest sending the email to my gmail account, listed in the header bar.

Categories
Weblogging Writing

Wincing words

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

There are certain words and phrases popular among webloggers that I’ve grown to dislike over time. Well some I disliked from the start; others I’ve come to dislike only after many repetitions. Whether people continue to use these phrases or not, I don’t care–to each their own. But if we are ever to meet someday and you use one of these words and I wince, you’ll at least know it’s because of the word, not your bad breath or the spinach stuck in your teeth.

The first is blogosphere. What kind of word is blogosphere? Haven’t we done enough damage with ‘blog’ that we have to tag on ‘osphere’?

To me, blogosphere implies that those who weblog live within a bubble isolated from the rest of the known universe. Every time I hear the term, I get a mental image of a huge beach ball floating on the water at the beach: drifting without purpose and soon to be lost. Except that in my visualization, there are millions of tiny little faces looking out at me from within the ball.

Brrrr! Gives me the cauld grue.

If we sail, do we use sailosphere? If we volunteer to help at the library, do we use the term bookosphere in reference to our activities in this environment? Why, then, blogosphere?

The second word isn’t a word, it’s an acronym: MSM. In case you don’t know the term–and goodness sake, how can you not know this term, it litters our pages like candy-shelled chocolate spilled from a bag–it means mainstream media.

First, what is MSM? Seemingly it has to do with professional journalism, but I look around at the people who use it, disparagingly, and notice that many of them are professional journalists–a contradiction leaving me going, “Well, huh.” Do we differentiate between us and this MSM by whether we get paid or not for our efforts? If I remember correctly, some of the more popular webloggers make a great deal of money from their weblogs.

If MSM is specifically professional journalism done by people who don’t blog, do we include all forms of journalism in this classification? If so, then if a newspaper gets a blog, does it stop being MSM? Or is it now, MSM…but with a blog?

How about movies? Are these MSM? They are media. They are main stream. Since most people who use the term MSM do so with a sneer, we have to assume that the ultimate hope is to replace this MSM. Are we saying that today there are podcasts to replace radio; tomorrow there will be vidcasts to replace movies? Look out Tom Cruise, move aside Cameron Diaz: here comes Adam Curry and Dave Winer starring in that blogosphere favorite, “The Odd Couple”?

It’s an Us and Them word, and Us and Them words never lead to anything useful. Besides, every time I hear MSM, I get hungry for Chinese food.

Blogosphere makes me wince, MSM gives me gas, but the phrase I dislike most of all is citizen journalist. I’ll apologize upfront to all of you who love this phrase, but I think it’s the most pretentious piece of twaddle to ever spill out of our brains.

If we’re citizen journalists, does this mean that the reporters down at my local paper aren’t citizens? Do I need to call the Department of Homeland Security on them? Could be fun, true; but I think I’ll pass.

Additionally, how is having a weblog so different from a ‘journalistic’ perspective that we need to have such specialized terms? After all, in this country at least, there’s long been a tradition of personal publications: flyers, underground newspapers, letters exchanged between a network of writers, even Joe the Wacko giving out his mimeographed opinions, printed on bright pink paper. A weblog is just medium, really. Less finger cramping than writing; not as pretty, though, as the bright pink mimeographed sheets.

Some would say that this form of journalism is different, because weblogging gives us a much broader audience. As to this, anyone with a box and a street corner can broadcast. Writing a letter to an editor is broadcasting. Joe the Wacko standing out in front of City Hall is broadcasting. It’s the will to have an opinion and make it heard that’s essential to broadcasting. And who is to say which broadcasting approach has more and lasting influence?

Listen to the phrase, too: citizen journalist. It’s a spooky phrase, and should make your spine tingle in warning. Replace ‘journalist’ with ‘copjustice’ and you have vigilantes; replace ‘citizen’ with ‘patriot’ and you have fascism. Replace both with ‘weblogger’, and you have me.

Categories
Writing

The words we use

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Robert Scoble changes his opinion about the China/MSN Spaces issue, and decides since his wife, son, best friend, Dan Gillmor, Rebecca MacKinnon, and several Chinese webloggers say he’s wrong, he must be wrong.

I don’t know why this irritated me so much, but it has. Perhaps it’s the idea that opinions have a critical mass, and once it’s reached, the opinion must be ‘wrong’. Maybe its because all the people congratulating Scoble on being ‘man’ enough to admit his mistake are doing so because he now supports their viewpoint.

Regardless, it’s nice to be an environment where there are no restrictions on the words we use when we write. That is, after all, the essence of being free to speak: the words we use.

Categories
Just Shelley

Kicking funk

Today’s a really nice day–warm, but with a cool breeze and low humidity. The clouds are nice, fat, and fluffy white, against a dark blue sky and people smile at you without you even having to ask for it; even the birds seem to be singing more. This is good because I’ve been in a funk lately, and just haven’t been feeling up to challenging trails (or even sidewalks).

The run of good weather will last through the weekend, so this will probably be my last post for a few days, as I am turning this titanium dominatrix off and spending time outside. In the outdoors. Away from computer. Away from my cellphone. Maybe even away from the camera, though I’m not sure I know how to walk without the camera bag on my back.

First though I had errands to run. I got my hair cut by Ramona, who did a really great job. It’s now a mass of short, wavy curls, with a flirty little flip at the bottom. I feel so hip and fun–not bad for one of those inexpensive walk-in places. Not bad for an older woman with the funk.

Then it was to Petsmart to pick up grass to give to my chlorophyll-junkie cat, and to spend time petting and patting the pups that people bring in. Today, one of the women who works at the store had her 12-week old west highland terrier puppy with her, and that little sweetie just stole my heart.

After extended puppy therapy, I stopped by the market and picked up fresh fruit: bananas, white nectarines, pluots (plum-apricot hybrid), and cherries. The cherries are really nice firm, dark bings–sweet and juicy. And the rest of the fruit seems equally luscious, though it cost an outrageous amount of money. It’s not easy or cheap to eat healthy, but I felt needed the fresh produce, for medicinal reasons.

I also picked up some homemade spinach fettuccine noodles, as well as some unusual new small, but larger than cherry-sized tomatoes, artichokes in seasoned oil, black olives, garlic, onion, cream, and cheese to make a vegetarian Alfredo. It’s simple — just cut the tomatoes and olives up into the artichoke oil to marinade for a time (then drain), cook the sauce (with the garlic and onion) and the noodles and then toss all of together . That’s it — no salad, no bread. And fresh fruit and sorbet for desert.

If this doesn’t kick the funk, nothing will.

Coming back, I passed an intersection where firemen will hold their boots out to collect for charities, and one of the local churches collects for its mission downtown. Today, though, a young man was standing on it, holding up a sign that read, simply, “Down on my luck”. Just standing there, stiff backed, holding that sign. Not approaching the cars, or extending containers to the drivers. Just standing there, looking straight ahead.

I guess it goes to show that no matter how put upon you’re feeling, someone else has it worse. If the sight of him didn’t kick me in the funk, it definitely kicked me in the butt.

Life is good. I have fresh cherries to eat, so life is good.