Category: Blogs

Running a little thin today, I know. Today was the day for more than a few job leads to come in. Some of them I would consider taking, some of them, eh, maybe if I get desperate. Chief on my mind now is whether my sanity can survive a daily commute into Manhattan every day, as I have a few potential prospects there. On the bright side, 3 hours a day on a train provides a lot of blogging time if I get the right equipment. On the down side, 3 hours a day on a train.

The one lead I mentioned previously has progressed on an on-site interview. I should be coming with references from several of the researchers I’ve worked with over the years and a recommendation from the CEO. I am optimistic. In the mean time, I’m still developing possibilities.

Sorry about the lack of posts this morning. A friend from NRA was in town, so we got together for lunch at a local BYOB BBQ establishment. For those of you not familiar with Pennsylvania’s twisted liquor laws, the Liquor Control Board had a fixed number of liquor licenses, so up until fairly recently, if you wanted to get one, someone else had to go out of business, give it up, or have their license permanently revoked. As a result, a lot of restaurants couldn’t get them, so it created a pretty lively Bring Your Own Bottle restaurant culture. There is even a Mexican restaurant I know in the area that gives out margaritas as a scheme for filling tables. If you do not have a liquor license as a restaurant, it’s perfectly lawful in Pennsylvania to give liquor away. You only need a license to sell it. The Mexican place in question closed for a number of days a year with a sign on the door that said “Gone to Mexico for vacation.” I always figured they were buying the tequila cheap, and smuggling it over the border.

Many thanks to all of those who voted for me in the Lucky Gunner “Gunnie” award voting without me even asking. It’s a really well done piece, done by TechnoFrames. I’m really jazzed about the case it came in too:

I’ll leave it to the readers to ponder whether it is ironic my award category was politics, yet I have difficulty with the kind of self-promotion that entices other people to expend their effort so that I can have something for myself.

The brief outage was me upgrading to the latest version of WordPress. Feel free to unfasten your seat belts, and move about the cabin.

From Richard Fernandez, comes my quote of the day:

The only thing worse than having your own business is having a moderately successful blog.

If moderate success if defined as 10,000 readers a day, I fail by that standard. My daily readership averages about 2.5k. But I completely understand everything Richard talks about in his post. That’s why I’ve decided it’s time to monetize this thing. I need an incentive to spend several hours of my day keeping up with everything. I’m working with a friend who has a web business to try to figure out how to make this work, but I’m pretty determined to do it. I might need some supplemental income soon anyway.

In relation to the recent topic of conversation on the Twit-o-sphere, Facebook and blogs, I thought I’d take a minute to explain my philosophy on “outing,” or rather, revealing personal information about people that they did not purposely reveal. There are instances where I think this passes the fairly low Internet ethics test:

• The anonymity in question is used for the purposes of sock puppetry. Sock puppetry is distinct from operating under a pseudonym. I don’t make any pretenses that Sebastian is a separate and real person from myself. It is merely a pen name. If I was indeed creating a separate identity, that would be sock puppetry. There have been examples of sock puppets having their true identity outed on both sides, and I think it’s acceptable.
• If the person seeking anonymity is well known in the community under which they are seeking the anonymity of a pseudonym, and are using that anonymity to gain some sort of personal advantage. Most of the time this would be sock puppetry, but there are some cases where it isn’t, but unmasking would still be ethical. For instance if someone well known in the community were using a pseudonym to release damaging information about other people within that community, that would be an example of non-sock-puppetry which would still allow the individual to be ethically unmasked.
• The person being unmasked is hiding behind anonymity to make viscous, personal attacks, or to engage in real harassment. I’ve seen some of the Anonymous comments Joan Peterson has approved on her site, and they are vile. I think if she discovered the identity of these commenters and unmasked them, that would be completely ethical.

But I don’t think most blogging under a pseudonym is problematic. Publius, from the Federalist Papers, is a famous example of this. I generally don’t ever consider it acceptable to out personal information in a public forum, when the person has chosen to use a pseudonym. Umasking, i.e. revealing the person’s true identity, is about as far as it should go unless there’s real harassment or something exceptionally vile.

Most of us are blogging under pseudonym’s for professional reasons, and unlike what CSGV may think, not because I work for NRA. They suggest “we now know he works directly with the NRA-ILA,” well duh, I’m a volunteer. I would hope their volunteers work directly with them rather than aimlessly doing their own thing. But, to disappoint CSGV, all my contacts with NRA have been developed through blogging and volunteering. Before that, I was just a number in their database, and someone who kicked in a few extra bucks here and there above membership dues.

Perhaps if CSGV engaged with their active members, and tried to actually organize them for action, rather than just get them frothing at the mouth, they’d actually get somewhere.

Many thanks to Bitter for filling in this afternoon. I did not want to announce this before Annual Meeting, but here goes:

• My company is liquidating. Everyone’s last day is Thursday, except me and a few other key people. I will be retained to handle the liquidation until the end up June, and then I get a generous severance package. But that’s conditional on me staying until the end of June. I have planned very well for this, so I will be fine. But it turns out liquidation is actually a lot of work, at least for now. I’m not quite ready to begin a job search yet, but will once my termination date is within a month (can’t leave before termination and keep the severance, and don’t want to tell someone I’m not available until July.)
• I’ve been thinking and now am leaning quite heavily toward a rebranding of the blog. This won’t mean much to regular readers. Same old crap, just with a different name and theme. Links will still work, and all that. Same archives. Same URL will still work, though there will be a new one registered for the new name. I will begin to take ads. Reason I’m seriously considering this is because I do need another source of income to help defray the costs associated with keeping the blog running, and because I’m really tired of explaining the name of the blog to people, and having people look at me funny when I tell them my blog’s name.

Other than that, don’t expect much to change. I’m not begging for money or jobs yet. This company has been rocky for a while, and as SayUncle will tell you, I’ve been worried about my job for as long as I’ve known him, which is going on four years now. I’ve planned well. Things will work out.

Apparently Righthaven’s web site went poof last night. I’m guessing Righthaven/Stevens Media is hunkering down for the inevitable backlash. The Righthaven Victims blog is pretty clearly enjoying the Karma.

UPDATE: More from EFF here.