Blood Socks

I can’t escape the feeling that no matter how much I may read of senseless tragedy in autobiographies, watch it reported on news, and see the edges of it in my own neighborhood, I am still untouched and naive. I have simply had too easy of a life. Even the one time my apartment was violated by someone desperate and scared, I conversed with the robber, retrieved my things, and calmly let him out the door. No one I know has ever been murdered, or beaten. I have never had anything or anyone that I depended on taken from me that I did not deserve. So, I listen to mostly upbeat music, and believe humans to be fundamentally decent creatures. What the fuck.

About the worst of it was when my friend Phil Sallese passed away in May of 2005. He was an epileptic, and suffered a seizure in the night. Phil was about the nicest guy I have ever known. He was a big guy, would get angry at a moment’s notice, then turn right back to sweetness after another moment. Totally loyal, vulnerable, judged you little, and quietly expected the best out of you (which is the best way to get the best out of you). The fucking last guy who needs to lose his life in the night, discovered by his girlfriend that he lived with, in the apartment above his granddad’s, out in the woods of Palenville.

That was bad – no, that was terrible. I’ve never been more acutely sad. But I got over it, I could measure my loss and at least stand it next to all the churchgoers gone secular that have suffered similar random acts of God. It hasn’t fundamentally altered the course of my life, or my worldview. I’ve left a romantic relationship so bad that I was depressed for a year following, maybe two, but again, those are the kinds of things that most people go through, and you bounce back from—look at me now. That look like someone weighted down by the cruelty of the universe?

Well, I can’t make myself cynical, and after all, we fought for a free and safe country so that no one would have to be. But you read the words of people who have truly suffered, who have succeeded or failed at coming to terms with irrational violence or untreatable disease, and they sure do seem to know something that I don’t. I’m drawn to it, but never close enough for me to go volunteer down at the police station. I remember thinking about doing that before moving to NYC. But no, I’ve stuck with showing up at my job in Soho 5 days a week and catching movies or dinners with MaryBeth on the weekend. I play with my cat in there, pretty much all the time. So here I am, happy music in the headphones and typing on a Macbook my company has given me for as long as I’ll turn my thoughts into code for them. What the fuck.

Recently, I arrived at my usual morning grill/deli/market, my most reliable source of Vault in increasingly sparing Vault times, only to find that Vault was no longer a presence on its shelves. Deeply alarmed, I stopped by my most reliable backup source, the Walgreen’s near Astor Place, at lunch time to find that it, also, had run dry.

There have been signs on the wall for months now.

Read the rest…

Basically all of thoughtbot went to Portland for RailsConf this year, and we had an awesome time. We also took a lot of photos, and put them on Flickr (see mine, Mike’s, and Tammer’s). Portland is an awesome city, thoughtbot is full of awesome people, and the Rails community has some gems of people in it too.

I guess RailsConf was a technical conference, but I don’t remember any of that stuff. The trip turned out to be filled with moments of zen for me. Here are just a few that I acquired in Portland this year:

• At a nearly empty Dante’s on a quiet Thursday night, a DJ plays music that nobody appreciates but a lone undulating man figure in front of the stage. A TV screen above the stage plays Escape From New York for a half an hour before silently switching over to Asian pornography.
• Playing Robotron 2084 at Ground Kontrol while a DJ spins up Judas Priest’s Exciter.
• At Powell’s Technical Books, in response to my question about which books he’s been reading here for fun, my art-history-graduate-turned-web-entrepreneur friend Greg calmly leads me to a book on Erlang.
• At the famous 24-hour donut shop Voodoo Donut, I order a Triple Chocolate Penetration, but am told they’re out, so I settle for a Diablo Rex.
• Wandering with Ben and Greg through the 3-floor parking garage under Whole Foods for over an hour in search of Greg’s 2-door blue Honda Civic.
• A vigorous conversation with Ben and Greg at the Portland City Grill, in full view of the city at night, 30 floors up.
  
• Riding in a cycle rickshaw at midnight, past a forlorn Pete who utters to us “I waited a long time.” without elaboration as he fades into the distance.
• Standing with Josh on the “Steel Bridge” at the river in the middle of the night, above at least 30 sleeping ducks on the riverbanks.
• I listen to Jared tell me that he also attempted to visit Voodoo Donut, but was halted at the door by a sign reading “Marriage in Progress”.
• Inside the Gravitron, I want to capture the bizarre gravity, so I take a photo of whoever is near me. It happens to be an n-teen-year old girl, whose nearby father is none too pleased when I show her the picture after the ride.
• Riding silently and alone on the Light Rail, when suddenly my friends and coworkers all come on board the train at once, surround me, and start laughing and grabbing me and yelling my name.
• Sitting motionless with Tammer for half a minute at the top of The Skyscraper in an open chair, 165 feet above Portland, staring at the nearby buildings and mountains, before beginning a second 75-mph journey through the sky.

Lately I’ve been getting real excited about OpenID. It’s not a new thing, and it’s not a new concept, but at this point I’m convinced that it does everything right, and that it’s hit the point where it will become totally mainstream within the next few years. Also, let me preface this by saying this is not a techy-only post, this is relevant to anybody who’s ever created a username and password.

OpenID lets you have one user account that you can use anywhere [that supports OpenID]. And if you have an AIM or Flickr account, you already have one. If you don’t, you can get one somewhere else, like myOpenID. This is because OpenID isn’t a service, but a protocol, not tied to any one organization. If you have one, then logging in to a site that supports OpenID means entering only your OpenID. In other words, no password. As long as you are logged in to your OpenID-providing account, it’ll log you right in. If you’re not logged in to your OpenID-providing account, then you’ll be redirected there to sign in, then redirected back right where you left off when you’re done.

This is awesome.

Read the rest...

It’s a buzzing.

I just watched an incredible episode of an incredible show. I’ve never been more affected by a TV show. Thanks to my brother Karl for the fervent recommendation. After the show, I sat down to continue checking out unread items from my RSS reader, and after about 2 minutes I couldn’t take it anymore. I could feel the pure emotion and potential seed of inspiration slipping away, muted and diluted by the oncoming buzz. Inside the buzz, I can’t have passion, only curiosity. In the middle of the buzz, I can’t feel sorrow, only a vague dissatisfaction. And in the sound of the buzz, my inner monologue is pushed steadily closer to the word I hate the most: “Meh.”

I show terrible symptoms of the buzz.

Read the rest...

Courtesy of the Emperor of Fuffletonia.

All right, enough delay! In just a little over a week, I’ll be heading up to Boston with my essentials, and spending the next 2 and 1/2 months there working for the Obama campaign’s website, at a company called Blue State Digital. They’re the primary builders and caretakers for the Obama campaign site, and I’ll be joining in the work. This decision comes at a cost – chiefly, I’m apart from my loved ones, and I’ll pay double rent – but that hasn’t stopped me from being ridiculously excited. This is exactly what I want to do, and I will be doing it. It’s a temporary role, but not a temporary decision; one way or another, I intend on continuing to work in government and the public interest. Caution has been thrown to the winds.

The process that got me here began about 6 weeks ago.

Read the rest…

This is awesome: a paper on “single serving sites”, on its own single serving site. The author is Ryan Greenberg, a student of Information Science at UC Berkeley. It’s a cool paper, written in a pleasant tone that takes you around to many oddities of the net, many of which I never knew about. Also interesting is his list of the 130 single serving sites that he used in writing his report. They’re not all YES/NO things – Umbrella Today makes his list, along with the original Hamster Dance.

Since I saw IsItTuesday pop up 6 days after I “launched” IsItChristmas, I’ve been watching all the sites that IIC inspired (and who in some cases just copy/pasted my source code), and there are many. I like to take a little credit for this leading to a paper, and that paper’s site following that model.

And as I am a proud man who enjoys pointing out his accomplishments to others, here is a chart, adapted from Ryan’s data, to back me up:

Read the rest...