Category: Uncategorized

Evite seems to have failed to send my invitations, so I’m going to announce the party here and email my friends later today.

I’m having a joint party — it my 36th birthday and Ashley Bristowe’s something-or-anotherth birthday party on Saturday, November 8th. The fun starts at nine-ish, and the last guest crawled out at almost 7 a.m.. If you know me, you’re invited.

Pictures from last year’s festivities are here.

This year, I’m working on securing the Hot Tub Truck, which I’ve mentioned here and here. Bring a towel and a bathing suit. The truck will be outdoors, so bring something warm to wear between your jaunts from the house to the truck.

I’ll be providing food and some alcohol and mix, but please bring some to contribute to the bathtubs. Like last year, both bathtubs will be full of ice and hold all the bottled drinks.

Dancing always breaks out. This year, we’re going to simplify life for the volunteer DJs and rely on good old iTunes. If you have any requests for music selection, let me know in the comments.

I’m always up for new party ideas, so if you have any, leave them in the comments!

Michael Hanscom, author of the weblog eclecticism, got fired for what is — in my opinion, anyway — a harmless post on his blog.

Michael was a full-time temp working at the MSCopy, the print shop at the Microsoft campus in Redmond, Washington. MSCopy shares a building with the Shipping and Receiving department. Last Thursday, while passing by shipping and receiving, Michael saw something that he thought was amusing: a truck offloading a delivery of brand new Apple Power Macintosh G5 computers. He took a photo and posted it in a blog entry titled Even Microsoft wants G5s.

Microsoft fired him last Monday:

…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.

Michael writes in his latest post:

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.

November 5th is my birthday, so I’m going to celebrate it Japanese-style and give him a present: I’m going to send him US$20 via PayPal. If you’ve got even a couple of bucks lying fallow in your PayPal account, perhaps you might want to send him a little (there’s a PayPal button on his “About” page) just so he can make the rent.

Okay, time to mount my high horse.

First off, Microsoft Security — a phrase so oxymoronic that you really should be laughing your heads off right now — have some explaining to do. How does a photo showing the delivery ordinary off-the-shelf computers being delivered in broad daylight in a publically-accessible area threatens Microsoft? They should worry more about preventing dashing and clever accordion-playing geeks from using lame confidence man tricks to get past locked doors..

So what if they’re taking deliveries of G5s? When last I checked, they still developed software for the Macs, and even if they didn’t, there’s nothing wrong with doing research on the competition. If the article posting offended or worried them so much, they could’ve taken the diplomatic route and simply asked Michael to remove the posting.

Finally, even they must be aware of their reputation. Even the most starry-eyed rah-rah rookies at The Beast of Redmond (during my last trip there, I met some new hires, and they saw themselves as a kind of software X-Men, fighting to save a world that hates and fears them) know that many people outside the company see them as a greedy juggernaut with no qualms about killing their competition with Borgia-like ruthlessness. They must have considered — even for a moment — how the tech world would perceive the firing once word got out.

Just what is it with those Microsofties?

The US Senate has passed a bill to ban partial-birth abortions. Expect heavy debate in the blogosphere — Deenster and Wendy have already voiced their opinions for the “It’s a sad day for the Freedom To Choose” side, while Mark and Amy are sounding off for the “It’s a victory against The Culture of Death” side.

I’m going to let my ten-foot pole stay in the rack for the time being.

Liz “mamamusings” Lawley celebrates the first anniversary of her weblog, mamamusings, today:

One year.

Four hundred and thirty-nine entries.

One thousand, five hundred and forty-six comments. (Thanks for being the first, Joi!)

Over fourteen thousand page views per month.

An entire world of new friends and colleagues.

A changed life.

Who says blogs don’t matter?

Have a happy anniversary, Liz!

(And thanks for saying those incredibly nice things about my blog!)

I first heard about it from MetaFilter: Elliott Smith, “folk-punk” singer-songwriter was found dead of an apparent suicide yesterday.

What I’ll remember most about Mr. Smith was his appearance at the 1998 Oscars. His song from the Good Will Hunting soundtrack, Miss Misery, received a surprise nomination for Best Original Song. In what has been called of of the “notably surreal musical moments in recent memory”, he performed Miss Misery live, using only his voice and acoustic guitar as if he were performing in a coffeehouse to a few dozen listeners, only to be followed by Celine Dion’s saccharine warbling of her trite necrophiliac anthem, My Heart Will Go On, complete with full orchestral backing, a giant backdrop featuring the Titanic and an extremely jewelled neckpiece. In Hollywood, fakery always trumps The Genuine Article.

(The beautifully curvy Kate Winslet was supposed to wear the neckpiece, but she was deemed “too fat”, and the closer-to-stick-figure-ideal Ms. Dion was assigned to wear it instead. Yet another reason that Hollywood must be destroyed.)

Smith’s bittersweet tunes were a staple on many alt-rock Intenet radio stations, including my friends ‘ station, Global Pop Conspiracy. It was always enjoyable to hear Needle in the Hay.

Sweetadeline.net has an elegy for Mr. Smith, which includes this obituary:

Steven Paul (Elliott) Smith. August 6, 1969 – October 21, 2003. Elliott Smith was born on August 6, 1969 in Omaha, Nebraska. Elliott spent his childhood near Dallas, Texas where he began his musical training at the age of nine, winning a local award for original composition at the age of ten.

Elliott relocated to Portland, Oregon as a Sophomore at Lincoln High School where he achieved the rank of National Merit Scholar. During his time at Lincoln High School, Elliott joined the band “Stranger Than Fiction” in which he composed music and performed until his graduation in 1987.

Elliott later attended Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, where he majored in Philosophy and Political Science. During his time at Hampshire, Elliott, known then as Elliott Stillwater-Rotter, co-founded the band “A Murder of Crows”. He later became a member of well known band “Heatmiser”. It was during this time that Elliott began to release music as a solo artist.

During his lifetime, Elliott released five full-length albums as a solo artist as well as a number of singles. Elliott was nominated for an Academy Award for “Miss Misery”, his musical contribution to the Academy Award winning movie, “Good Will Hunting”.

At the time of his death, Elliott was recording his sixth album, “From A Basement On The Hill”.

Elliott is survived by a host of family, friends and fans.

He works for Boss Ross, he’s slick, he’s a handsome fella, he gets appearances on TV, he knows the value of good booze and he’s skilled at the fine art of annoying celebrities and his fellow churchgoers.

He just doesn’t play accordion…yet.

His name is Darryl Green, he’s my co-worker and he’s having a lot of fun in La-La Land.

We’re still a little short on diversity at tech conferences. Here’s a snippet of a conversation about BloggerCon between me and Ejovi Nuwere that we had on Joi Ito’s IRC channel earlier today:

<ejovi> were you the asian guy with the accordion at joi’s dinner?

<AccordionGuy> That was me.

<ejovi> ah, cool. i was the black guy.