The Aerie

I don't blog for you

A helpful troll came by tonight - probably on the heels of a comment I made on the Huffington Post - to remind me that my blog is out here and awaiting further entries.

I'm still without work, although I have mentally moved from "on the shelf" to "unemployed," although there is still an outside chance that I'll get called back to the last workplace.

Meanwhile I'm working on some other possibilities and trying to maintain a positive attitude, despite being called some kind of loser by a very cool, very suave fellow who posted with a fake AOL e-mail address until I pointed out his IP was from Comcast, whereupon he switched to a fake Comcast address. Now THAT'S integrity worthy of Mark McGwire!

One of his comments, which really, really cut me to the quick, was that "nobody is reading" this blog. Now, I know that's not strictly true since my comments are sequentially numbered so I know how many have been posted, but I also know that it's Richard and Carrie and a couple of other die-hards subscribed to my RSS feed who are my primary readers now that my mother has died.

But the fact is, I don't post for people to read me. If I did that, I'd certainly post more often, and post higher quality content. No, I post for ME, because (as I said in an early post someplace ten years ago) this is as close as I'm ever going to get to a diary. Sure, I like when people read my entries, but that's frosting on the cake. The fact is, this is an online diary for me first and foremost.

And it's very valuable. Reading old entries, there is much that I have forgotten from merely ten years ago. Slices of daily life - my OWN daily life - that would never be called to mind again if I hadn't blogged them. And then of course there are my posts about Steve, Joe, my dad, Ralph, and Karen, those who have died. I go back from time to time and read those, or even forward them to people who knew them.

So thanks for the comments, fake-AOL-Comcast-commenting-troll-dude, but in fact I know that I'm shouting into the abyss. We're ALL shouting into the abyss. It's the human condition.

Now if you have any more comments to make, make them quick, or they'll have to wait til tomorrow morning 'cause I'm going to bed. And I don't want to wake up to two dozen "Oh, decided to not post my comments now, huh?" style entries waiting in the comment queue. If you've ever had to delete hundreds of viagra comments from your blog, you'll understand why I approve each one manually.

Why Mark McGwire is a good role model

I think Mark McGwire is a good role model to today's youth. He demonstrates that when you do something wrong, and when it's painfully obvious to everyone involved that you ARE doing something wrong, and when everyone tries to pretend you're NOT doing something wrong, and when you even testify before Congress that you're not doing something wrong, and when you make huge profits from doing something wrong even though everyone is pretending you're not doing something wrong AND pretending they don't know that you're lying about it, well when it becomes safe to do so, and when your brother is writing a book about the time that you and everyone else were colluding to pretend you weren't doing something wrong, THEN it's good to admit you were doing something wrong, both to clear the air, and also to promote sales of the book.

Because that demonstrates integrity.

The News is Really Most Sincerely Dead

Not for the first time, I copy a comment from a discussion thread as a blog post. In this case it's not MERELY laziness, but also the fact that I've posted this comment over and over again and I thought it was about time I consolidated it here on my own blog to refer back to later.

The issue is that I repeatedly read posts complaining that the news "isn't doing its job" or somesuch nonsense. Some "respectable" news agency (that is to say, nobody expects anything of Fox) posts some biased and/or incorrect information, and everybody screams Oh How Could They Do That!?

The problem is, the news is NOT the news. How do I know this? Simple: if the news were the news, then whenever someone made an egregious factual error, or when a news reporter editorialized or slanted a report, they would suffer a consequence. They do not suffer a consequence, in fact the most egregious broadcasters are often the most successful, therefore the news is not the news, Q.E.D.

On the Shelf

So I'm "on the shelf" right now. I was brought into this contract with the promise (and the rate reduction) that this was a two year opportunity, only to discover that, well, yeah, it COULD be two years, but FIRST they had to sell the client Board on their proposal to completely rewrite the client software.The client hasn't signed, and the prior contract expired, so here I am at home.

On the other hand I have a paper to write by next Friday, so what the hell. I'm working on that.

I'm also trying to get to the gym, but I'm waiting for my son to get ready to go, and pretty soon I'm just going to have to go on my own. Then, work on the paper!

Happy Tenth Anniversary

Well here it is, the Tenth Anniversary of my blog. There are a lot of hard-to-believes out of all of this. It's hard to believe that I've been blogging (admittedly on-and-off) for ten years. The think I've learned most of all from blogging is that I forget A LOT of what goes on in my life. Some of my blog entries, even entries that aren't all that old, describe situations about which I can summon no recollection whatsoever. I mean, sometimes I can grasp the hint of a gestalt from those times, something that says "Oh, yeah, I remember I was under a lot of stress working at that job," even if there are no specifics. However, other entries summon NOTHING, and cold have been written by a stranger.