Personal

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

Thank you!

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First things first — many, many thanks to the many people who have passed on words of encouragement to me in my time of trial. With a normal readership of about ten people that I know of, I wasn’t expecting to get much response beyond my family and a few friends. The ‘net being what it is, though, tales of my trials and tribulations seem to be spreading, and I’ve gotten many nice comments, e-mails, and phone calls, not to mention links on a growing number of sites.

Mentions that I’ve found as of 10/29/03 @ 0234:

I’ve spent part of the day updating my resumé (a task that I have to admit I always dread), and have polished it up to the best of my ability and posted it here. With any luck, between the temp agency, my own efforts, and what little notoriety I may gain in my fifteen minutes of fame, this stretch of unemployment won’t last too long. In any case, I’m certainly keeping my fingers crossed (though it does make it a bit harder to type, I can use all the luck I can get right now).

To address some of the concerns and questions I’ve received:

Legal recourses

A couple people have inquired about possible legal recourses. This is an avenue that I don’t particularly want to investigate, for a few reasons. First, I don’t think that the time and trouble is worth it, and second, I’d be willing to bet that somewhere in the labyrinthine red tape of contracts among my temp agency, the vendor, and Microsoft, this situation is probably covered in one form or another.

In the end, what it boils down to was a slight misjudgment on my part. While I (and many other people) may find Microsoft’s reaction to be extreme and unnecessary, chances are they had every legal right to make the decision that they did. I would certainly have preferred that they simply request that I take the offending post down (which I would have done in a heartbeat), but for whatever reasons, they chose not to take that route.

Future plans and possibilities

Thankfully, this appears to be solely an issue between Microsoft and myself. While I got the news from my supervisor, it was made clear to me that there was nothing he could do about the situation, and he was sorry to see me go. As I’d been a valuable member of the team in the print shop, able to cover nearly any position outside of administrative duties, losing me will be a bit of a blow to the shop (now, I’m not so amazingly egotistical to claim that the place is going to go down in flames just because lil’ ol’ me isn’t chipping in anymore, mind you — I just know that I was able to help out wherever I was needed, and I enjoyed doing it).

Seeing as how he was also caught off guard by this situation, he’s said that he’ll ask around and see if there might be any other open positions outside of Microsoft that I might be able to be shuffled into. This is no guarantee, of course, but it’s certainly nice to know that he thought highly enough of me to at least take a few minutes to ask around about possibilities.

I’ve also received a couple of requests for my resumé via e-mail, which have been sent out to everyone who asked for them.

In the end, though, I’m still crossing my fingers, waiting to see what may come down the pike.

Finances

A few people have inquired about how I’m doing financially. I have to admit — things are a little dicey here. Rent is due in a week, and while I’ll be able to dip into some emergency money to get me through this round, I will need to have stable income by the time November 5th rolls around or I’ll be in very dire straits. It’s quite typical, in a Murphy’s Law kind of way, that this would happen just a few weeks after I blew my savings on a new computer. Ah, well — there was certainly no way to plan for it.

Now, I’ve never been much of one for asking for money — I’m quite stubborn by nature (according to my parents, one of my first words as a child was “self!”), and generally, if I can’t handle something on my own, well, that’s just the way it goes. Besides, I can more easily see a website/weblog requesting donations when they focus on a specific topic, rather than being the essentially random collection of technical babble, political indignation, personal musings, and occasional bad humor that this site tends towards. ;)

That said, however…(oh, sure, first the disclaimers, then the heart rending plea for help, complete with a John Williams score — oh, can I get Steven Spielberg to direct the TV spot?)…I have had a PayPal donation button in my about page for months now, as well as the Amazon links at the bottom of each page. To date, these have netted me all of — hold on, let me check — approximately $12 from my Amazon Associates account, and absolutely nothing from the PayPal button.

Now, that’s about exactly what I’d expect to see, and I certainly don’t expect it to change. Heck, with the economy the way it is, there’s not a lot of people out there who have the spare change to help support some anonymous bloke whose sob story they just stumbled into while wandering around the ‘net. But — and there’s always a but, isn’t there? — should anyone feel moved to make small donation, whether through the PayPal link or by using the Amazon banner on my site to go shopping, I certainly wouldn’t complain in the least.

And I believe that brings us up to date. Once again, thanks to all of you for the kind words. Often, those are worth far more to me than anything else.

Of blogging and unemployment

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UPDATE: Please take the time to read my followup post, Fifteen Minutes of Fame, for my thoughts on what happened after I posted the picture, why it happened — and most importantly, why I don’t blame Microsoft for their actions. Thanks!

The day started like any other day — get up, dink around for a bit, bus into work, and start working through the stack of jobs. Just shy of an hour after I got in, my manager came in and asked me to step into his office when I had a chance. Sure, no biggie, and I headed over as soon as I finished the job I was setting up.

“Okay, here’s the first question. Is this page,” and here he turned his monitor towards me, letting me see my “Even Microsoft wants G5s” post from last Thursday, “hosted on any Microsoft computer? Or is it on your own?”

“It’s on mine. Well, it’s on a hosted site that I pay for, but no, it’s not on anything of Microsoft’s.”

“Good. That means that as it’s your site on your own server, you have the right to say anything you want. Unfortunately, Microsoft has the right to decide that because of what you said, you’re no longer welcome on the Microsoft campus.”

And that simply, as of about 2pm today, I once again joined the ranks of the unemployed.

It seems that my post is seen by Microsoft Security as being a security violation. The picture itself might have been permissible, but because I also mentioned that I worked at the MSCopy print shop, and which building it was in, it pushed me over the line. Merely removing the post was also not an option — I offered, and my manager said that he had asked the same thing — but the only option afforded me was to collect any personal belongings I had at my workstation and be escorted out the door. They were at least kind enough to let me be escorted out by one of my co-workers, rather than sending security over to usher me out, but the end result is the same.

More frustrating for me is that, having read stories here and there on the ‘net about people who had for one reason or another lost their jobs due to something on their weblogs, I thought that I had done what I could to avoid that possibility. To my mind, it’s an innocuous post. The presence of Macs on the Microsoft campus isn’t a secret (for everything from graphic design work to the Mac Business Unit), and when I took the picture, I made sure to stand with my back to the building so that nothing other than the computers and the truck would be shown — no building features, no security measures, and no Microsoft personnel. However, it obviously wasn’t enough.

So, I’m unemployed. I am somewhat lucky in that I’m not technically unemployed — I am still on the roster for my temp agency, who has been very good to me so far (and hopefully will continue to be), but as their ability to place me anywhere does depend on the current job market, it’s not a foolproof guarantee of employment coming in quickly. I’ve put a call into them and let them know of the situation and that I’m available and willing for whatever can be found, so with any luck, they’ll be able to find a placement for me. However, it appears that it’s also time for me to start hitting the streets and shopping my resume around again.

Wish me luck.

Ash to ash, dust to dust

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California fires seen from space

Boing Boing pointed me to this satellite picture of the smoke plumes from the California fires. Just incredible. There’s also a photoblog of pictures of the fires. Neat and scary stuff.

Forest fires are something that I don’t really have a whole lot of experience with. They’d hit Alaska from time to time, but rarely (if ever) came anywhere close enough to Anchorage to cause any major concern. Occasionally there’d be a decent conflagration out in the Mat-Su valley (about 45 minutes outside of Anchorage), but most of the time, it wasn’t a major issue in town.

Clouds from the 2001 Washington fires

Not long after I moved down here to Seattle, my friends took me out to see the Bare Naked Ladies at the Gorge near George, Washington. That summer there were forest fires raging over Washington, and we could smell the fire in the air as we were driving out. At one point during the drive, the sky was bisected — clear and blue on one side, and murky with smoke on the other, nearly enough to blot out the sun. This picture doesn’t really do it justice, but it was incredible to see.

Ash covers Anchorage

The stories posted of people coming out to find ash covering everything do sound very familiar, though — only for me, it was due to volcanoes. While I missed the Mt. Redoubt eruption in 1989/90 due to galavanting around Europe, in 1992 Mt. Spurr erupted not far outside of Anchorage, sending a cloud of ash all over the city. Unfortunately, I didn’t get quite as good a look at the effects as I could have.

I’d spent the day working at Fireweed Theaters, slinging popcorn at the snack bar. Got off my shift in the afternoon, probably around 5 or 6, and caught a ride home with a friend. As she was driving me home, we could see the sky darkening as the ash cloud moved in over the city. I had long hair at the time, and as we were heading across town, I wanted to let it down. I took the ponytail holder out of my hair, shook my head — and suddenly my glasses, which were a little old and not as tight as they should have been, went flying out the open window of the car and underneath the tires of the car behind us. Crap.

We pulled over and rescued what pieces we could, but the glasses were trashed. Given that I’m legally blind without my glasses, I spent the next day being driven around and getting new glasses, living my life in an out of focus, ash-grey world. I was a little bummed that I couldn’t see the ash clouds more clearly — it’s not exactly something that happens every day — but I did get to see some of the aftereffects as the cleanup got underway.

Just more of the oddball fun of life in Alaska, I suppose.

Metadata is a good thing

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Phil and I got into a conversation this morning (which he’s already mentioned) about the iTunes Music Store and the metadata (ID3 tags such as Artist, Year, Track #, Composer, etc. that are included with each song in iTunes) that they provide.

While I’ve played with it a bit, I don’t see myself becoming a big user of the iTunes Music Store for one very simple reason — their metadata doesn’t meet my standards. Specifically, the “Year” field is often wrong (for instance, Meat Loaf‘s ‘Bat Out of Hell’ is tagged as 2003, when it was re-released, rather than 1977, when it was originally released), and for the majority of the tracks on the store, the “Composer” field is empty — the Classical genre is the only time the Composer field seems to be used consistently.

Now, I fully recognize that for 95% (at least) of the population, this isn’t going to be a major thing at all. As long as the Artist, Album, and Track Name are there and correct, we should be happy, right? Well, sure, for most people. I’m just in that 5% who are picky (ahem…anal) about this (and it’s certainly not limited to my music, as I tend to be quite meticulous about keeping my books and movies alphabetized, and sometimes broken down by genre).

Part of why I like having all that information available is just the amount of different searches that can be done when it’s all in and entered correctly — and when you’re dealing with a music library that is upwards of 80Gb, emcompassing over 10,000 different tracks from around 1,200 CDs, that can be important!

To use one of the examples I gave Phil, Al Jourgensen has been active in a ton of different industrial groups over the years, including Ministry, the Revolting Cocks, Lard, and many, many others. As long as I have the Composer field entered correctly, then I can do a quick search through my library for “Jourgensen” and instantly I’ve got a list of every track in my collection that he’s worked on.

Another example: Bob Dylan has written an incredible amount of music, much of which has been covered by many different artists over the years. Suppose I felt like listening to all the covers of Bob Dylan tracks I had in my collection. Without good metadata, it’s not happening — but with the metadata, I can set up a smart playlist using the terms “Arist does not include Dylan, Composer includes Dylan”, and I’ve got a list of Dylan songs performed by anyone but the man himself.

As far as the Year field goes, I like to keep smart playlists for each decade — I touched on this briefly earlier this month — or just be able to sort a listing of songs chronologically. Having the correct year in the metadata is necessary for this, and years that are off can be pretty jarring (for instance, listening to a modern music playlist and suddenly having 25-year old rock could be a little odd).

So that’s why I have some of the habits I do (well, ignoring the deep-seated childhood psychological trauma), and why I’m not likely to use the iTMS for much more than occasionally grabbing a track to replace a scratched section of one of my CDs. I may use it for expanding my classical collection — I just bought a great collection of Bach‘s Brandenburg Concertos last week — but that’s probably going to be the extent of it for now.

What to do to fix that (and send more of my money Apple’s way)? Well, Phil and I batted this one about for a couple minutes. I’ve looked into this a bit in the past, and it seems that Apple doesn’t really have a lot of control over what metadata is and isn’t present for the songs in their store. If I’m remembering correctly, all encoding and tagging is done by the studios themselves, then provided to Apple for inclusion in the iTMS. So sniping at Apple isn’t likely to do much good, and it would likely be a bit beyond my ken to start harassing each of the various studios to pay attention to these little details (especially when, as I stated before, most people couldn’t give a flying fig about things like this).

The best case scenario, I think, is one that Phil mentioned: if Apple treated the iTMS library’s metadata in a similar fashion to the Gracenote CDDB (this is the service that iTunes connects to in order to automatically discover album information when you put a CD into your computer). With the CDDB, all information in the database can be updated by the users — if you put a CD into your computer and notice that some of the information is incorrect, you can make the edits and then re-submit the updated information back to the CDDB, essentially creating a self-updating and self-correcting public service.

If Apple could implement something like this for the iTMS, I’d be thrilled. Logistically, it’s a bit of a quandry, though, as it would likely need to include some sort of moderation to prevent someone submitting information for an album with every track titled “tHIz ALBum SuXX0Rzz!!!!!” or something equally intelligent. That extra added overhead creates more work for Apple, and as the iTMS is currently running in the red, Apple probably isn’t going to be anxiously looking for ways to put more money in for a feature that only 5% or less of its users are going to care about.

My suggestion, then, would be to create something akin to an “iTMS Pro” service. For, oh, \$5 a month (billed directly to the credit card already registered with the iTMS), an “iTMS Pro” subscriber could edit and submit information on tracks in the iTMS library, correcting information that might have been entered badly the first time (I’ve already noticed the occasional dropped space or inconsistent naming conventions), or adding information that wasn’t included, such as the Composer field. The information would still probably need to go through some sort of moderation process at Apple, but limiting the editing ability to people who were willing to pay the slight extra bit of money would weed out casual pranksters, and provide a few extra dollars to Apple to pay for that moderation process.

Is this going to happen? Oh, I seriously doubt it. But if it did, I’d be sure to sign up.

I like my metadata.

New toy: iSight

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iSight screencapture

So I went and got myself a new toy today — Apple’s iSight webcam. I haven’t done a ton of playing with it so far, but from what I have done, it’s quite the nifty little addition to my arsenal of toys.

The packaging is up to Apple’s usual standards of excellence. The box unfolds in half to reveal all the pieces: the iSight itself, a plastic carrying case, and three types of stands (one for sticking to the top of a CRT, one for sticking to the back of an LCD screen, and one for clipping to the top of a PowerBook). A FireWire cable is included, packaged underneath the camera.

Setting it up is incredibly simple — plug it in. Instantly, iChat recognizes it, and you’re ready to go!

I didn’t have anyone online who I could test a two-way video chat with, but I was able to test a one-way video chat (me broadcasting, them receiving) with audio going both directions, and it worked fine. The iSight has a microphone built in, so no extra cables or pieces are required to get the audio portion of the chat working.

After playing with iChat for a bit, I bounced into Yahoo! Messenger for a few moments. While Y!M doesn’t have anywhere near the speed or quality that iChat does, and doesn’t support voice chat on the Mac, it was able to recognize the iSight and allow for video/text chatting with other Y!M users without a hitch.

All in all, I’m quite impressed. It may not be the most practical toy that I could have picked up — especially with so few other iChat/iSight users in my sphere of influence at the moment — but it’ll be quite handy to have around at those times when I can take advantage of it.

Free association

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I hopped onto iChat tonight, and found a message from Phil waiting for me that he’d sent while I was off at work. I responded, and then we stumbled into a couple hours of free association. What follows has only been edited to reorder one or two lines to preserve clarity, and one or two tangents have been excised. I thought it was pretty entertaining.

Phil: wow. way to answer 8 hours later.

Me: lol yeah, well, I was at work

Phil: How about an away message?

Me: forgot to set it when I left…and for some reason, the ‘puter never went to sleep
Me: :shrugs

Phil: Heh. Alright. Phil: you’re forgiven, just this once

Me: hrm…i better be careful about that then

Phil: But don’t let it happen again, ol….young man!

Me: :laughs nice

Phil: Actually, it’s done it for like the last 3 days… but, whatever.

Me: really? bizzrre

Phil: I think your G5 just does not go to sleep.

Me: or even bizArre

Phil: bazaar?

Me: brasierre

Phil: brazier.

Me: glazier

Phil: glandular

Me: globular

Phil: gangster

Me: gangsta

Phil: Gang Starr

Me: Home Star

Phil: homerun

Me: hummer

Phil: That’d be nice. I mean, um, uh, er, um, uh, humvee.

Me: lol Me: (’twasn’t an offer)

Phil: Not from you, ol’ man

Me: hey, now…there are benefits
Me: just lose the dentures
Me: no worries about inadvertent scrapes

Phil: ROFL Phil: You’ve put WAY too much thought into that right there.
Phil: Now associate ‘humvee’!

Me: LOL Me: ah, right…(ahem) Me: Harvey

Phil: Harley

Me: hog

Phil: heifer

Me: girlfriend (ouch…)

Okay — a quick aside in my own defense here (free association can be dangerous sometimes…). I actually had to sit and think about this for a moment after I tossed it out, and as far as I can remember, the only time I’ve ever heard the term ‘heifer’ used was to describe an unappreciated girlfriend. A little sad, I suppose, but seeing as how I don’t tend to run around in farming circles, that just happens to be the case. In no way should this be construed as being aimed at anyone I have been involved with, past, present, or future. Anyway, continuing on…

Phil: platonic friend

Me: frustration

Phil: rage.

Me: prozac

Phil: claritin

Me: clarity

Phil: charity

Me: alms

Phil: arms

Me: bear

Phil: Arctic Circle

Me: perfect circle

Phil: maynard james keenan

Me: hillbilly

Phil: my dad

Me: stranger

Phil: balki!

Me: (wow…that’s a show I haven’t thought about in years…kudos!)
Me: Balkans

Phil: Urals

Me: urine

Phil: urinals

Me: fly

Phil: hornet

Me: run

Phil: Lola

Me: yum

Phil: Jessica Alba

Me: Alan Alda

Phil: Tony Danza

Me: Chachi

Phil: Joanie

Me: Cusack

Phil: Kojak

Me: bald

Phil: Jesse Ventura

Me: acting

Phil: Al Pacino

Me: taxi driver

Phil: underage prostitution

Me: pedophile

Phil: Cattholicism
Phil: er, Catholocism
Phil: er – ah, fuck it, you know what i mean.

Me: lol gotcha
Me: candy bar and a coke
Me: (do you know that joke?)

Phil: no, I really don’t.

Me: ah, damn
Me: okay…slight detour
Me: guy goes to confession
Me: starts to run down his list o’ sins
Me: mid way through (apparently he had a good list), the priest interrupts him
Me: “Hey – I hate to do this, but I’ve been in here all day, and I really need to take a piss. Could you come over here and cover for me for a few minutes?”
Me: “What? But I don’t know anything about giving absolution!”
Me: “Don’t worry about it – c’mere”
Me: So the guy goes over, and the priest points out a list tacked to the wall
Me: “See? It’s all here. Unclean thoughts, three hail marys…masturbation, seven…just follow the chart, and you’ll be fine.”
Me: “Um…okay…”
Me: So the priest takes off, and the guy starts filling in.
Me: The first two people go okay.
Me: Then a woman comes in, and starts going through her list of sins.
Me: He’s doing fine, until she says “…and I gave my boyfriend a blowjob.”
Me: The guy scans up and down the list, “blowjob…blowjob…” but he can’t find it.
Me: Frantic, he opens the curtain and pops his head out to see an altar boy walking by.
Me: “Hey! Kid! What does the priest give for a blowjob?”
Me: “Candy bar and a coke, usually.”

Phil: ROFL
Phil: Awesome. That’s awesome.

Me: lol Me: and now my response actually makes some amount of sense

Phil: so, responding to candy bar and a coke?
Phil: broke!

Me: credit

Phil: check

Me: Czech

Phil: Slovakia

Me: europe

Phil: france

Me: freedom fries

Phil: berets

Me: bad poetry

Phil: bohemians

Me: Moulin Rouge

Phil: Nicole Kidman

Me: (I’d go with “yum” again, but I did that earlier…)

Phil: (exactly. )

Me: Marilyn Monroe

Phil: (again with the “yum”)
Phil: JFK

Me: (and that ends the “yum”…)
Me: brains

Phil: zombies

Me: black and white

Phil: Gaussian blur

Me: photoshop

Phil: MS Paint!

Me: crap

Phil: donkeys

Me: shrek

Phil: my door
Phil: (There’s a connection there, honest)

Me: (allrighty then…)
Me: knock

Phil: D&D

Me: bag of holding

Phil: dime sack

Me: 420

Phil: 187

Me: π

Phil: The cube

Me: hypercube (which I need to see at some point…)

Phil: no, no, DO NOT
Phil: my word is now HORRIBLE

Me: really? bummer…the first one wasn’t bad

Phil: second = bad

Me: ah, well…thanks for the warning! Me: okay…off of horrible?
Me: adam sandler

Phil: rob schneider

Me: rob reiner

Phil: pauly shore

Me: biodome

Phil: biocomputing

Me: nanotechnology

Phil: self-replicators

Me: Kiln People (good David Brin sci-fi novel)

Phil: art majors

Me: museums

Phil: history majors

Me: term papers

Phil: midterms

Me: student loans

Phil: MBNA

Me: (MBNA?)

Phil: (loan company, #1 or #2 backer of the Republican party; Apple’s loan company)

Me: aaah, okies Me: bills

Phil: pelicans

Me: albatross

Phil: mariner

Me: baseball

Phil: hot dogs

Me: mysterious ingredients

Phil: cigarettes

Me: cloves

Phil: pipe tobacco

Me: sherlock holmes

Phil: the Dock

Me: otis redding

Phil: whistle

Me: sound of music

Phil: gag

Me: ball

Phil: arab strap

Me: porn
Me: (damn you…I had to look up an “arab strap”, and it’s just a strap on)

Phil: rofl
Phil: camera

Me: iSight

Phil: earshot

Me: wet willie

Phil: Bill Clinton

Me: stain

Phil: clorox

Me: fumes

Phil: ammonia

Me: oops

Phil: Britney Spears

Me: twit

Phil: Steve Urkel

Me: nerd

Phil: me!

Me: (you and me both, actually)
Me: pride

Phil: fall

Me: leaves

Phil: trees

Me: druid

Phil: Red Hat

Me: penguin

Phil: emperor

Me: norton

Phil: ghost

Me: casper

Phil: caper

Me: cape

Phil: cap

Me: skull

Phil: pope

Me: polish

Phil: sausage

Me: hungry

Phil: me, again.

Me: broke (again)
Me: (not to rub it in or anything)

Phil: (rofl, I didn’t even notice that)
Phil: windows

Me: annoying

Phil: Office XP

Me: suddenly everything sucks

Phil: New Orleans whorehouse on a Friday night

Me: (eclecticism > XP sucks!)
Me: fun

Phil: programming

Me: brainwashing

Phil: Nazis

Me: Schwarzenegger

Phil: Herr Gropenfuhrer

Me: Das Blinken Lights

Phil: BASIC Stamp

Me: food stamp

Phil: WIC

Me: candle

Phil: wax

Me: ear

Phil: earwig

Me: hedwig

Phil: inch

Me: nine

Phil: nails

Me: fingers

Phil: claws

Me: santa

Phil: snowballs

Me: blue balls

Phil: typical.

Me: (Y’know how to get rid of blue balls? Slap ’em and slap ’em until they’re red.)

Phil: (OW)

Me: (anyway…lol…off of ‘typical’)
Me: boring

Phil: Windows
Phil: (98)

Me: crash

Phil: airplanes

Me: Fight Club

Phil: Red Dragon

Me: (book was better)
Me: tattoo

Phil: (agreed)
hil: (oh sweet jesus, the first reaction I had to tattoo was another D&D reference)
Phil: wings

Me: Crow II (horrid, horrid, horrid…but she was yummy)

Phil: Underworld
Phil: (also horrid, but hey, I’d hit it)

Me: (oh, damn skippy)
Me: leather

Phil: BDSM

Me: kinky

Phil: my ex’s roommate

Me: my ex (one of ’em, at least)

Phil: Wow. it’s 2:30 am and my brain is numb.
Phil: That has nothing to do with my ex.
Phil: At least, not on the surface.

Me: :laughs I guessed
Me: you out?
Me: this is going on my blog, by the way

Phil: yeah, I’m out. I have to get up for classes tomorrow.
Phil: Oh, wow, that’s one hella long blog entry.

Me: about an hour and a half of free association…not bad!

Phil: not at all.

And that’s that.

Public / Private / Secret

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Triggered by a recent tech gathering that has caused a little bit of ruckus due to it’s perceived “invitation only” nature, Danny O’Brien ended up touching on a subject that I found fascinating: the difference between our “real world” conversations and the conversations we have through our websites, and some of the key differences between them.

In the real world, we have conversations in public, in private, and in secret. All three are quite separate. The public is what we say to a crowd; the private is what we chatter amongst ourselves, when free from the demands of the crowd; and the secret is what we keep from everyone but our confidant. Secrecy implies intrigue, implies you have something to hide. Being private doesn’t. You can have a private gathering, but it isn’t necessarily a secret. All these conversations have different implications, different tones.

[…]

On the net, you have public, or you have secrets. The private intermediate sphere, with its careful buffering. is shattered. E-mails are forwarded verbatim. IRC transcripts, with throwaway comments, are preserved forever. You talk to your friends online, you talk to the world.

This is why, incidentally, why people hate blogs so much. My God, people say, how can Livejournallers be so self-obsessed? Oh, Christ, is Xeni talking about LA art again? Why won’t they all shut up?

The answer why they won’t shut up is – they’re not talking to you. They’re talking in the private register of blogs, that confidential style between secret-and-public. And you found them via Google. They’re having a bad day. They’re writing for friends who are interested in their hobbies and their life. Meanwhile, you’re standing fifty yards away with a sneer, a telephoto lens and a directional microphone. Who’s obsessed now?

The first part of the article is about the tech conference, so you’ll need to scroll down about halfway to get to what I found to be the interesting section of the article.

While I hadn’t analyzed it at all, I think on some level I’ve always approached this weblog knowing that it resides in that hazy area between public and private. While it’s certainly public by virtue of being available on the ‘net for anyone who stops by or finds their way here through Google, it’s also in many ways private — it’s primarily about me, my life, and what I’m going through or thinking about in the world around me, and as such, of interest primarily only to friends or people who know me.

But because of the online mix of public and private, I’ve generally tried to find a comfortable middle ground in what I post and what subject matter I choose. While the tone of what I write here is generally of the “private”, conversational tone, there are certainly conversations I’ve had in the real world that I would be hesitant to post here — not because they’re “secret”, but because put in a “public” forum and taken out of context, they can be seen in a far different light than they’re intended. As an example, describing a friend as “the only person I know who’s so flexible he can put his foot in his mouth with his head up his ass” might be (and was) amusing to my group of friends and even to the person in question, but were that posted here, out of context and on its own, the intended humor might not be seen.

I think I’m rambling a bit now — it may be a bit soon after waking up to really dive into this. Still, Danny’s post fascinated me, and it’s worth turning over in your head for a bit.