December 22, 2006

shark jumping 101

i think the time magazine "YOU" thing is stupid. i don't like those change-out images which feel pretty stereotypical (give the asian dude the keyboard, right, stick a mic in the brother's face), and since when does you = web 2.0 because a lot of YOUs aren't us, and everyone probably wrote about this already, but it's all news to me. did everyone love it or hate it? i think it's stupid. okay then.


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My how time flies!

Can it really be 9 days 'til dave winer stops blogging?


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roundtable with myself

Jenna's doing well. Her scabs are almost off, the final step in the post-surgery healing process for the tonsillectomy. The voice has a ways to go before it sounds like our girl again--(thanks to the adenoidectomy and sinus procedure)--how cute that it's gone up a few steps, but can I have our Jenna back? Minnie Mouse doesn't suit her so well. And the drainage issue is still, well, wow. But she's breathing better and bopping around, so THANK YOU for the prayers and good karma. It is working. We are bathing in it. Trust me.

And let me tell you, we were bathing a plenty as George and I recovered from the plague we picked up at the hospital. I haven't felt that helplessly sick since my own surgery 9 years prior, and it took me back -- the whole experience did -- tumbling back in time, past all of the traumatic speed bumps of the last decade and more.

Weee! Racing through the snow, in a one-hearse open sleigh, o're the landmines we go, puking all the way, ho ho ho...

What I should have known, and will you please remind me next time, you know there will be a next time, friends, is that I must remember to keep hold of the coping mechanisms I've worked so hard to keep on hand in my Mental Health Emergency Kit. Because all of that is gone as soon as I enter the doorway to panic. By the third second of terror, I don't even know my name, and I'd fly from the sound of it if I heard it, as every slice of solid ground slips away: so immediately I am swallowed. Eaten whole by the churning, burning eternity of agony that slows every second into seven lifetimes.

The problem with panic is that you can't see out the other side. Four walls without windows, it is always right now, and right now is always.

It Wrecks Me.

It's like that.

But in the end, I came out the other side, mostly rebuilt by physically mending and getting well, a process that took some good antibiotics and time, and tears and talk, and doubting and waiting, and believing again.

PLUS some warm thoughts from some good friends in the land of the blogs.

Thank you, all.

p.s. j. brotherlove--Should we start calling you uncle brotherlove now or later?


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Tish Digs In

Is something rotten in the state of blogmark? Uh, mebbe so. Tish Grier has uncovered some potentially not-so-funny business going on with a company selling bloggers' URLs for profit. Things that make you go, WTF?

Okay...it's bad enough that our mailing addys are sent to whomever will pay for them. And it's so bad for our teleophone numbers that we had to start a National Do Not Call list.

But *selling* our URLs??

Okay, maybe it's only going to be the URLs of "influential" bloggers, and the rest of us schmoes are out in the cold...

but still...Umbria is selling our urls! not their service! Which means we may be dealing with more spam than we already get.

IMHO, this is NOT how social media works and could ultimately black-eye a company that misuses Umbria's info. It could also open the door to other kinds of rip-off,splog-related efforts.


I would love to know if anyone knows more about this--and thanks to Tish for the scoop.

p.s., I'll sell you Tish's URL for $4,999.

p.p.s. Tish, shhhh--we'll split the profit.


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GoJuice: Ken Camp Jams on Alec Saunders New Presence

I enjoyed reading Ken Camp's thoughtful take on Alec Saunders' post about the "New Presence."

In his post, Alec ponders important points on the intersection of mobility and presence, reflecting on who we are becoming around what mobile devices, who we are when we are here and there (or no place in particular) with attached devices that connect us to other devices, systems and humans, when we want them to and when we don't, and all of that stuff.

"The intersection of presence and mobility is where the subtle politesse of telephone etiquette breaks.   Today’s presence metaphor, tied as it is to the device, is fundamentally broken in a mobile context.  What does it mean to be present when mobile?  My phone is on, and it’s not in use.  Am I available?  Maybe, and maybe not.  Where am I? Is the topic of the call suitable for discussion in a public place?  How about on an airline?"

As we bounce around social networks, collaborative spaces, and various message platforms online, we simultaneously bound across geographies, roles, and tasks offline; we have become mobile-squared, more dispersed and dis-integrated as our legacy systems once were. How the telecommunications industry and innovators deal with the scattered us is for experts like these folks.

What interests me is the future of online communication platforms that can keep me "whole" and allow me to dissociate identity-wise as I traverse the net, the same way that wireless networks and devices can keep me connected as I move about in the physical world today.

Part of the reason I've been posting less here, beyond the tugs and turbulents of family responsibilities, is that I've been writing and posting more within other roles I'm exploring in what I (sort of) joke is my "Third Life" experience. This is living across online social spaces through connected stories and dramas in tandem with others doing the same -- for example with Kat and Jeremy of Kat Herding Media (KHM), and their most recent practice of Clientology(TM).

My mobility goes to the very core of who I am, and then some. I want to play with who I am in the in-between spaces online and off. My identity is mobile. Nothing human is fixed; only devices on hips are.

Ken Camp is grappling with these concepts and more when he considers how we should parse the ideas of presence and mobility, deciding that we should call it nothing or at least call it something completely different... the Absence of Presence, as he describes here:

The problem isn't with the concept. The concept is sound. The problem is with the words. I suggest we abandon them all and start fresh. There's no benefit in continuing on a path that hasn't been thoroughly evangelized, isn't filled with latent demand to fuel a revenue stream, and has an 800 pound gorilla obfuscating the situation.

"I'm sort of inside the industry, and I definitely want to get my mojo on with presence, availability, relevance and context philosophically.  But I wouldn't take a job as a marketing manager promoting it. And I sure wouldn't take a job as a sales manager making quota from it. It's not an enterprise initiative, and not likely to be one any time soon.

"Call it mojo. Call it karma. Call it my Web 2.0 Aura if you like. My fear is that until a spin doctor steps in a really steps it up a notch, we'll continue to flail around the absence of presence."


I don't have enough depth to have an opinion on what to call the ideas these folks are knocking around, but I think you should take some time to read Alec and Ken, and see if they don't help get your GoJuice on.

Now I have some new presents to wrap. ;-)


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December 21, 2006

We're ok. Jenna's mending. George and I got an infection from hospital, got so sick, got meds, got better. Thank you.

so a lot of what i've been sitting with around this being sick and not feeling able to take care of myself or my kid, coupled with feeling like i was gonna die, you know it all goes back to that abandonment depression thing, of course, doesn't everything? yes.

but i am -- between panic and sadness and confusion -- at least this time aware intermittently of what the feeling feels like (that is when it doesn't feel like my imagined seconds before death)...

...clarified for me as I called a couple friends who were not there or busy -- to find someone to just help me (do what i don't know, make sure i didn't die and take care of jenna for me with george dragging his sick self through 5 performances....)

someone to promise me it would be ok who i could believe, and aside from the UNRELENTING pull of wanting my mother and knowing that wasn't going to happen, not because she isn't "there" but because i can't let her be "here" right in here, and how will it be for me when i'm old, and all of that...

and what if and what when and what if and what when...

...that bright, shining serrated edge that kept glistening was a single word: helpless.

helplessnesssss.

then
what am i doing: knowing i would wreck the world to make it ok for my kid.... to give her the tools to not feel this way -- i don't feel like i have them. not today. even after ALL of this LONG process, i still hit that space  -- whether it's live or memorex --  that's precisely helpless,,,,,,,,,,

                no one, no where: help me?

never we never forget the way there; the trips are less frequent but the gps is always on....

              where does the world go in that racing paralysis: the memory of before and hope of what's next dissolving.

.... how do i ever know it's ever going to ever end ever?

...that and then the whiplash: jenna coming out of anesthesia and her moaning - 'are they gone? is it over? is it done? are my tonsils gone?' and tears down her cheeks when i say yes honey, they're gone it's ok its all done,' and sleeping and waking and asking with the same mix of emotions, mommy, daddy, are they gone, is it over i don't get it?

...I don't know how to process it.

echoes come in layers, and I'm coming out of anesthesia when i almost bled to death and all of that mess is

IN MY FACE

and then all of my father's dying and death and sickness is like coming home. ......to the cool white cotton sheets -- she took such good care of me

i still don't get ANY of it or how to make it better for me or my husband or my child or my family, or how to make it stop or how to make it start, and i already know i can't, and that's where this show began.

i guess i'm back.


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December 19, 2006

this is not my beautiful house

i've been grappling with real-world stuff that's had me using the web more for research than for writing. like the old old days before i blogged, when finding stuff and finding stuff out was what made my brain zing. then blogging came, then writing to the web, then sharing ourselves, then NOT sharing ourselves, and here we are.

boring boring boring--we're a mass of boring twittering webbugs who care more about what's being said about whom than all of the whos we are.

ack.

i'll get over it. probably.

processing.

that's all.


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woot.


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