Personal

The stuff about me and my life. The “diary” side of blogging.

Three Years

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Today marks my three-year anniversary of weblogging. Technically, I’ve actually been at this for a bit longer than that — since sometime in 1998 or 1999 — but at that point I was just updating a static HTML page by hand, and much to my dismay, I lost my archives of those pages some time ago. So, for all practical purposes, I’m just dating back to my first archived post, from Nov. 25 2000.

I’ve been slowly working on moving all of my old archives over into my TypePad account for the past couple months, with a goal of having them all online by today. Thankfully, that happened, and I now have all three years of archives — 1,949 individual posts (an average of 1.78 posts per day) — online and available for perusing.

As I’ve worked my way through them all, I’ve highlighted a few at the top of my archives page as “Greatest Hits”. These aren’t necessarily the most-visited posts on the site. Rather, they’re posts that I find notable or especially worth visiting for one reason or another. Here’s a rundown of what I consider the highlights of the past three years:

1/9/2001: Words of Wisdom
One of the few pieces of forwarded e-mail that I’ve ever liked enough not just to keep, but to post. Just a good list of advice and observations worth keeping in mind.
1/17/2001: Things to remember while e-mailing
Another forward that I found worth saving. A good list of things that everyone should keep solidly in mind before passing on the latest virus warning, plea for help, or urban legend that lands in their e-mail inbox.
4/20/2001: About my tattoo
Some fairly bad pictures of me, but decent pictures of my tattoo. I’ve never been much of one for body modification — no piercings, and this is my only tattoo — but after finding the design years ago and giving it roughly five years of consideration, I decided that I’d found something worth permanently adding to my body.
5/24/2001: Mars needs a facelift!
Pure, unadulterated silliness. After finding some new pictures of the famous “face” on Mars, I decided to go all-out and see how well I could do at coming across as a flaming loony conspiracy theory nut. Apparently I did fairly well, as when I originally posted this on another discussion board, a few people commented that until the end of the post when I admitted that I was just fooling around, they actually believed that I was frightfully serious about what I was writing. There’s not much higher praise than that.
2/28/2002: Where were you?
A list of important historical dates, and my recollections of where I was when they happened and how they affected me. Some dates weren’t overly clearly remembered, most of the ones that really stuck with me range from the Challenger explosion to the Sept. 11 attacks.
3/2/2002: Hippies on Mars!
Another bout of Mars-inspired silliness. A false-color image of the Martian poles that reminded me of tye-dyed clothing patterns inspired this “press release” about Grateful Dead fans traveling across the plains of Mars. As far as I know it’s purely coincidental that I had two Mars-inspired bits of creative writing.
7/20/2002: Best of times, worst of times
Looking back at my experiences with people who went from being friends of mine to being roommates from hell. It’s always an odd time of my past to look back on, as it’s a strong combination of fond memories and things that at times I’d rather be able to forget.
10/28/2002: George
Much as I love cats, my brother’s cat George is the only cat I’ve ever met that I just couldn’t get along with. Completely and utterly psychotic. This is one of George’s more amusing moments in life.
3/2/2003: Sleep — from the painting by Salvadore Dali
A piece I wrote during my junior year of high school, inspired by a Salvadore Dali painting. As can be expected from something written around thirteen years ago, there are definitely things that I would do differently were I writing it now, but I’ve always liked what I came up with enough to leave it unaltered since its original inception.
3/3/2003: Just hang up
I’m not a fan of cell phones at all. I’ll only have one if required and paid for by my job, which has only happened once. One of the things that drives me up the wall is how incredibly rude many people can be when it comes to cell phones, and this rant was born from that frustration.
5/6/2003: Cynicism reigns supreme\
5/8/2003: Darwin has left the building
A pair of posts exploring one of my more cynical beliefs — that the human race is essentially throwing evolution out the window and breeding itself into oblivion. Some very interesting discussion arose out of these posts.
5/29/2003: Glitch
So far, my first foray into ‘fanfic’. Initially inspired by a dream I had after watching “Matrix: Reloaded”, it explores what might happen if someone accidentally tapped into a debugging routine in the Matrix without really realizing what was going on.
6/1/2003: Newly Digital (Back in the Day Redux)
My contribution to Adam Kalsey’s ‘Newly Digital’ project, looking back on my early experiences with computers, technology, and the internet, and some of the wierd and wonderful things I’ve seen over the years since these glowing screens first caught my attention.
7/9/2003: The Purity Test
I first discovered the Purity Tests on a BBS while I was in High School, and have always found them to be quite entertaining. Download the test (100, 500, 1000, and 2000 question versions) and find out just how morally, ethically, and sexually pure you are.
7/31/2003: Blogstop
Wordgame fun. Construct a post from the letters of the last word in the immediately preceeding post. It’s easier just to take a look and figure it out as you go.
10/29/2003: Fifteen Minutes of Fame
I look back on the first day or two of notoriety after news of my brush with Microsoft exploded across the ‘net.

I’m sure there are more goodies buried in my archives that are also worth dredging up from time to time. Some may be of more interest than these, most will be of less. These are just the ones that I find to be most worthy of calling attention to. If you’ve read any of them before, feel free to either just move along or take another look. If any of these are new to you, I just hope you like what you find.

Here’s hoping I’ve got another three years of this — or more — left in me.

Just when things were starting to settle down

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Earlier this week, I started noticing something odd. It had finally been long enough since my fifteen minutes of fame that traffic was starting to come back down to a more normal level. Oddly, though, for the past few days I’d been getting a lot of hits from the article in the Seattle P-I about my situation. Obviously, it had been linked somewhere with a decent amount of traffic — but where?

Today, the mystery was solved, thanks to an e-mail from Mike: It turns out that Blogger has posted a new tech support article entitled “How Not to Get Fired Because of Your Blog” which links to the Seattle P-I article.

Do you blog at work? Do you check your referrer logs and surf the blogosphere all day from your office? Do you think it might be funny to mock your co-workers publicly, or that it could be a good idea to post photos of sensitive corporate information on your blog? If only Blogger Support could have reached this unfortunate Blogger sooner. Folks, this doesn’t have to happen to you.

These days, many companies are blog-friendly because they recognize a valuable tool for communication and the sharing of ideas when they see it. However, as with any public medium, care should be exercised from time to time. Here at Blogger, we want you to keep your job and as always, ending your blog should be a last resort reserved only for woeful situations. Fret not gentle blogger, we’ve put together this document to help you keep those paychecks rolling in.

So, apparently I’ve been immortalized by Blogger’s tech support crew, which is resulting in a fair amount of traffic moving from Blogger to the Seattle P-I, and then from their article back to me. Well, hey, any traffic is good traffic, right? ;)

Additionally, I got this in my e-mail today:

From: sinta
Subject: Your blog on CNN
Date: November 22, 2003 11:53:20 PST
To: Michael Hanscom

Hiya Michael

Just want to point out to you that your blog was shown on CNN Global Business just today at 7:30 Swiss time :) It just finished a few minutes ago. They talked about that Microsoft incident you had a while back :)

Just thought you’d like to know ^_^

Bestest regards from Switzerland,
Sinta~

http://www.lockload.com
The one and only He Says, She says double blog.

Apparently, my story is (for the moment) the Energizer Bunny of blogging stories — it just keeps going, and going, and going, and going…

Update: Many thanks to Sudheer from in Beijing for sending me a link to the online version of the CNN piece: The Budding Blogs of Business! Here’s the relevant bit:

Microsoft has taken a benevolent attitude to blogging. But it balked when an employee revealed on his blog how the company had taken delivery of a shipment of Apple computers. He was quickly relieved of his duties.

Human Stupidity

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The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity, by Carlo M. Cipolla:

  1. Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation.
  2. The probability that a certain person will be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person.
  3. A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses.
  4. Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals. In particular non-stupid people constantly forget that at all times and places and under any circumstances to deal and/or associate with stupid people always turns out to be a costly mistake.
  5. A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person.
    • Corrolary: A stupid person is more dangerous than a bandit.

(via Jerry Kindall)

Back from the Meetup

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Just got back a bit ago from this month’s Seattle weblogger Meetup. Saw and chatted with quite a few people there (most of whom I have to admit I can’t remember names/sites of), including Anita, Scoble, and dayment, who was kind enough to give me a couple CDs (Tones on Tail’s “Night Music” and The Faint’s “Danse Macabre”)! All in all, a quite pleasant evening.

November Weblog Meetup

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For the first (and quite likely only) time, I’m going to be able to attend one of the local Weblogger’s Meetup events, as my training schedule for this Wednesday has me off work at 6pm. Once I start my 1pm-9:30pm schedule I’ll be missing them again, but at least I can make this month’s.

So, for any local Seattle bloggers, looks like I’ll be seeing some of you at Uptown Espresso, Wednesday evening at 7pm!

(via Anita)

Because I suck at remembering names

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Vogue regulars I met tonight that I should remember the names of:

Ron: spoke with him up in the DJ booth for a while, on everything from the Vogue to Seattle weather.

Rhonda: friends with and works with Trish.

Sylvie: had the cute purple knit hat with fur trim to match her coat (because they both had fur trim, not because the colors matched). Has a boyfriend whose name I didn’t catch.

Christina: great 40’s (?) style hat. I complimented her on her hat, then Sylvie introduced us. Sylvie then proceeded to embarrass Christina by remarking that she had “great tits” (I certainly wasn’t about to argue, but rather than agree and make an ass out of myself, I merely kept my mouth shut), encouraging me to talk to Christina, and then declaring that I should be taken home by Christina and Josh, who was also talking to Christina.

Josh: the aforementioned person also talking to Christina, who wearing a top hat. Apparently this was a good night for good hats.

None of this will mean anything to anyone else. It’s mostly here for my own reference, in a (probably futile) effort to drill the names into my head for more than a few hours.

Random encounters

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I’ve had my first week of training at a branch of the business on Broadway, the main thoroughfare of Capitol Hill. That’s not where I’ll be once training is over with, but it’s been an entertaining week, and in some ways, I’m going to miss being able to wander up and down Broadway on my breaks. Some of the random encounters that go on can be fun.

Walking along the street during lunch, I’m approached by one of the many street denizens. He opens his spiel for money with, “Hey there, sir — you look like a fellow American.” “Yes, I am,” I reply, and walk past him and across the intersection.

A ten minute conversation with another person about my leather trenchcoat. His was cooler, of course, up until it got stolen out of his closet at a party. But mine was still pretty cool.

Passing one guy as I walked along, he asked if I could spare some change. “Sorry, man.” The next guy along, just a few feet over, heard the exchange. As I passed him — “Spare an apology?”

Watching a woman walk up to a pay phone and make call. “Hey, Jen? Yeah, it’s Kerry. I just got out of jail!”

Theodicy survey

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Dad sent me a link to an interesting survey asking how Christians deal with the question of theodicy.

In its simplest form Theodicy asks the question, “If there is a being, God, who is all powerful, everywhere present, all knowing, all good and loving, why is there so much evil, suffering and pain in the world.” The answers range from, “the existence of evil is proof that such a being does not exist,” to “there is no such thing as real evil.” The discussion fills the halls of academia, the corridors of seminaries and is occasionally addressed from the pulpit, particularly in response to tragedy.

Long-time readers of this site (yeah — all ten of you) will know that while I’m not very active in the church, and certainly have my own fair share of doubts and questions, my core beliefs stem from being brought up in the Episcopal church. While I’d not heard the term theodicy before this (or at least didn’t remember hearing it), the question has come up on occasion over the years, often during conversations when people have expressed surprise that a black-wearing, industrial-music-listening, goth-culture-loving, (ex-)drug-using, GLBT-supporting, open-minded person such as myself would still count their base beliefs as Christian.

Admittedly, the question of theodicy is one of the most difficult out there, and often one of the most difficult to counter when someone tosses it out as one reason that they can’t/don’t/won’t believe in God. As for myself, I’m a firm believer in free will (and, thus, no big fan of predestination theories), and have never believed that God (or the Devil, for that matter) intentionally causes tragedies to happen to people as any form of test. There’s a level of sadism to that belief that has never jibed with my notions of what God — should s/he exist (which as I mentioned above, I do sometimes struggle with) — would be like.

Rather, I believe that there’s a lot of things that happen in this world, both good and bad, natural and man-made, and how we deal with them is what’s important. From natural disasters to people doing horrid things, they don’t happen because “God willed it”, but (as trite as it sounds) simply because these things happen at times. And, in a certain sense, the bad things need to happen for us to appreciate the good, just as much as the good needs to happen for us to cope with and get through the bad. No light without dark, yadda yadda…I’m not explaining it well, and I’m afraid I’m veering frighteningly close to new-age mystic claptrap, but I think you get my overall point.

I’m often reminded of three stories I’ve come across over the years.

The first is one my dad tells about a priest and family friend in Alaska, Fr. Mark Boesser, who would be drawn into conversations with someone either expressing doubts in their faith, or lambasting him about his. At some point he would ask them what sort of God they didn’t believe in, and they would go off, describing a God that constantly wreaks havoc on the world, causes earthquakes that kill off thousands of people, kills babies in their cribs, tears families apart in accidents, gives people debilitating illnesses, and so on. After they wound down, Fr. Boesser would almost always in complete honesty be able to look at them and say, “I don’t blame you — I couldn’t believe in that sort of God either.”

The second is from a book I read a long time ago — unfortunately, I can’t remember which. Someone who has just lost someone close to them (a child, I believe) goes to a priest and demands to know why God would allow such a thing to happen. The priest says something along the lines of, “It is my belief that when your child died, the first tears to fall were God’s.”

The third — well, for the third, you’ll just have to bear with my sense of humor. In James Morrow’s book Only Begotten Daughter, Julie Katz (the daughter of God) is being taken on a tour of hell by Satan. They start debating the question of theodicy, and eventually Satan turns to Julie and says, “Well, just think about it this way. All power corrupts. And absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

Traditional Christian marriage

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The consecration of Gene Robison as bishop of the New Hampshire Diocese of the Episcopal Church is an affront to Christians everywhere. I am just thankful that the church’s founder, Henry VIII, and his wife Catherine of Aragon, and his wife Anne Boleyn, and his wife Jane Seymour, and his wife Anne of Cleves, and his wife Katherine Howard, and his wife Catherine Parr are no longer here to suffer through this assault on traditional Christian marriage.

— Paul Emmons, West Chester University

(via Dori Smith)

Employment is a good thing

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Oh, by the way…starting Tuesday, I’m working again.

Actually, I’ll be working tomorrow, too, on a one-day assignment from my temp agency. But Tuesday I start training for my new position.

It’s nothing overly glamourous — no dream job, no mind-bogglingly cool opportunities were dropped into my lap during my week of notoriety — but it’s a good steady job, which I’m quite satisfied with. I don’t want to get into too many details (for hopefully obvious reasons), but it’s another quick-print shop, running copiers, dealing with customers, etc. It will do quite nicely for the foreseeable future as I continue to work on getting enough bills paid to be able to investigate loans and grants to get me back into school, which I hope to accomplish in the coming year or so.

In any case, the main thing is that I only had to deal with two weeks of stressing about unemployment. I’m making a bit less than I was before, but not so much so that I have to worry overly much. I just won’t be able to splurge on another new computer anytime soon. ;)

Thanks again to everyone who provided support, through comments, e-mails, messages, phone calls, and everything else.