Category: Just Shelley

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Just Shelley

Free as a bird

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

In addition to storing away most of my worldly goods — except my computers, clothes, cameras, telescope, home made recipe book, CDs, books, and kites — I’m also closing down The Burning Bird Corporation.

I started Burning Bird under the name of YASD in 1996, primarily because companies had a problem employing independents; they feared that they would be stuck with the federal tax liability if the contractor didn’t pay the bill. The issue was further confused by the IRS’s infamous 20 question rule. If you’re not familiar with this rule, don’t worry about it. It’s really nothing more than typical paranoid IRS/government BS.

I managed to move the corporation from Oregon to Vermont to Massachusetts and finally to California. Not as easy as it sounds because you have to close down the corporation in the state you leave, and then re-start it in your new home. This requires filing Articles of Incorporation in the new state, along with giving said state copious amounts of money and an occasional sacrificed chicken or goat.

I was kidding about the money.

The need for an independent to be incorporated isn’t as much of an issue today. Combining this fact with not having either the energy or the funds to move the company, I’ve decided to close it down. Pull the plug. Absorb both the assets (too small) as well as liabilities (too large). File my final corporate dissolution.

I realized this afternoon while exchanging emails with Allan (he of the Dizzy fame) that for the first time in many years, I’m basically unencumbered by business, family, or belongings. I can travel the world — or not — writing and selling books and articles and doing an occasional contract.

When faced with two roads in the wood, the only thing stopping me from taking one road over another is my own inclination and interest.

Free As A Bird,
It’s the next best thing to be
Free as a bird.
Home
Home and dry
Like a homing bird I fly,
As a bird on wing

Free as a Bird — The guys who used to be known as the Beatles

Categories
Just Shelley

Bird’s on the move

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Today is a lovely, stormy day in Northern California, with enough rain to clean the air and the streets. Dark, forbidding clouds obscure the shore across the Bay, and the sun is just now starting to fight its way through the overcast; glints of gold melting into the pewter pools of water on the street.

Days such as today are built for introspection and reflection.

I am leaving San Francisco. On June 20th, movers will come to my apartment and grab my carefully packed belongings, moving them to a storage unit near my home. Home. At that point this place will no longer be my home.

I will then get in Golden Girl, my trusty metal steed, and ride her into the sunrise; riding into the sunset would put me into the Pacific Ocean and though Golden Girl is a dream on the road, she’ll sink like a brick in the water.

When I leave I will spend several weeks on the road, visiting friends in the Pacific Northwest, in New England, and in points between. When the urge to stop finally hits I’ll make my temporary residence in St. Louis, staying with my closest friend who also happens to be my ex-husband.

Not many people count on their ex-spouses to help them in time of need. That I can speaks of a relationship that started in love and ended in deep friendship. Though the friendship wasn’t enough to sustain a marriage, it is enough to sustain our closeness.

In St. Louis I will continue to write, look for work, and search for new adventures. I think I’ll try tornado chasing.

I’ll also focus on implementing the technologies I’ve been dreaming of this last year, but haven’t completed; being too caught up in life and this weblog and various other assorted things of interest only to myself.

I leave most of my belongings behind me in Bagdad-by-the-Bay. A woman marking her territory; a statement saying, “I will return”.

Categories
Weblogging Writing

Dizzy’s back!

Allan heard my whining and undignified pleading and created another installment in the Dizzy the Cat saga: Dizzy goes pub crawling.

Among the tidbits Allan provides:

The chef, a tough tattooed ex-Hell’s Angel, soon got tired of requests for a “special extra bit for Dizzy”, but it didn’t take long for Dizzy to realise it paid to go to the source.

Categories
Writing

Writing update

I just finished the final pre-review draft of my chapters for O’Reilly’s weblogging book, Essential Blogging.

Once the chapters from all the authors have been gently messaged by the wonderous editing talents of Nat Torkington (first rule of thumb — always suck up to the editors until the book is in production), the book is going online, hopefully sometime this week, for public review at the O’Reilly Network.

During the review, I’m pushing to finish Unix Power Tools 3rd edition. To help in this effort — UPT is an extremely large book — we just added a new author: Steven Champeon. If you’re a fan of DHTML, CSS, JavaScript, and so on you’ll most likely recognize Steven’s name.

I’m particularly glad Steven’s come onboard because he shares my interest and excitement about Apple’s incorporation of Unix (Darwin) into Mac OS X. A key difference between the third edition of UPT and the previous two editions is the new coverage of personal computer-based Unix flavors such as Linux, FreeBSD, and Darwin.

If I’m good, meaning I don’t spend too much time with this weblog, I should be finished with the rest of my writing for UPT by end of May and can then concentrate on finishing my beloved RDF book — Practical RDF. The review draft for this book should be completed by end of June.

I’m adding new material to Practical RDF specifically related to my weblogging experiences. In particular, I take on the Google Weblogging Effect, as well as syndication with RSS. I’ll have to send an autographed copy of the book to Dave, see what he thinks 😉

To test out the book code and examples, I’m incorporating material from it into my management of this weblog as well as my other web sites. Fun stuff, though the sites might get a bit hacked in the next month or so as I play around.

Three books for O’Reilly this year. Not bad. And with half a year to go, maybe I can add a couple more.

Categories
Diversity Writing

Of kitchen things

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

I love reading about everyday things.

Allan talks about a new Sushi restaurant opening in town that uses trolleys to deliver the food. I’m still trying to figure out how this system of food delivery is going to work. I’m visualizing this little trolley racing by, and having to grab food out of it, quickly, before it goes out of reach. However, we’re talking about food — sushi — that doesn’t necessarily grab that easily. In my mind I see nori and rice as well as bits of fish flying hither and yon.

Justin takes a sentimental journey through town and through memory as he prepares for a move. Speaking as one who has lived all over this country, it’s the small things — our barbers, favorite restaurants, and walks — you miss most when you move.

Everyday things.

My interest in reading about everyday things is especially heightened after I read one of Jonathon’s posts about Japanese women’s writing — books by eleventh century women authors. Today he writes about how women’s writing was considered inferior, joryu bungaku:

I would not understand until years later that, consciously or not, Rimer was following a long tradition in Japanese literary criticism which—using terms such as “joryu sakka” (woman writer) and “joryu bungaku” (women’s literature)—places most women writers in a separate (and implicitly inferior) category

A low opinion of women’s writing wasn’t limited to the Japanese; Western civilization also considered women’s writing to be inferior. For instance, Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote:

“American is now wholly given over to a d____d mob of scribbling women, and I have no chance of success while the public taste is occupied with their trash — and should be ashamed of myself if I did succeed.”

Though Western women didn’t write in a separate language, as the Japanese women did long ago, they wrote of subjects considered of “lesser importance” — of life and love and everyday things. An indirect reference to this is made in Jury of her Peers, by Susan Glaspell. She wrote:

Nothing here but kitchen things,” he said, with a little laugh for the insignificance of kitchen things.”

Introducing my new weblog tag line: Nothing here but kitchen things…