Category: Digital Neighbors

The big news!

July 11, 2006 /

Today is my last day as a systems analyst in Troveris, the software division of Trover Solutions, an insurance subrogation company. I don’t want to try and explain insurance subrogation and you don’t want to hear it, so let’s just say this: insurance subrogation is not a bad or evil job, but it is boring.

Tomorrow, I start my new job as a consulting web developer for iNDELIBLE, a design firm in Manhattan. Unlike with Trover, there’s no point in trying to hide this blog by never linking or mentioning them, as my boss is already aware of it (he saw it during my phone interview as part of my web portfolio). I’ve been moonlighting on projects for them for the last three weeks, and I already enjoy the work more than what I’ve been doing. I’ll continue working from home while consulting; assuming all goes well for the next few months, I’ll be moving to New York in October to work in their offices as a full employee.

iNDELIBLE’s offices are in the same building as Fog Creek, where Sumana works, and it’s entirely due to Sumana’s agency on my behalf that I got this opportunity. I was and am very lucky to have a friend like her in my corner.

Sumana, is this the party that bored you?

June 8, 2006 /

Hey, look guys! Guys, look! A major label is sponsoring a P2P service! It’s KillAweCellent! Let’s look at all you have to gain by switching from your current P2P network:

  • Download one of literally hundreds of songs, in just hours, from another QTrax user!
  • That means hours of fun avoiding “rollover to annoy” Flash ads for the Motorola BoxKuttr!
  • Then listen to your music a certain number of times!
  • And every time you listen, there’s a flashing ad on the screen telling you how to pay more money to listen to it again, or pay a monthly subscription fee!
  • And you can’t put it on your iPod!
  • Or listen to it in Winamp, iTunes, Windows Media or MusicMatch!
  • L-Linux? Gnrt! Mpf! GnaHA HA HA HA! That was pretty funny. You’re funny!
  • Our poor, hungry artists get compensated! Where by “compensated” we mean “a fraction of the profit we make off the ad displayed while you’re downloading, which was already less than one cent!”
  • Now, if you have ever used any other P2P network, you will be aware that certain software tools will break the DRM on QTrax songs and allow you to listen to them as long as you want. The tool for QTrax files, called “mpq2mp3,” will be available roughly ten days before the service launches!
  • Don’t get it or use it!
  • Because we’ll still try to sue you!

So what have we got here? A service that offloads bandwidth and hosting costs onto you, that allows you to do what you were already doing, only with broken legs and a leaky gut wound, and you can watch ads or pay to do it. Sounds like a BitTorrent killer, guys! WHOO HOO! Champagne enemas all around!

No one outside of EMI will ever use QTrax.

May 5, 2006 /

Frances Whitney’s Jabberwocky has been a consistently good read since I found it through her son, my friend Leonard. Frances, who (to my understanding) has been living with HIV for years longer than expected, is getting ready to remove her IV nutrition pump. She isn’t up to writing anymore, but her daughters and sister continue to update for her as they talk to hospice, put Post-its on her belongings and record their conversations together. I wish we’d had something like this during the last months of my dad’s life. Their pragmatism is beautiful.

April 19, 2006 /

Sumana and Leonard are getting married, and that is joyous and perfect, and is it okay if I’m a little bit thrilled to see the particular format in which they told us about it?

CONGRATULATIONS, LEONARD AND SUMANA!

March 20, 2006 /

We came back with all our teeth!

Bee was incredibly gracious in putting us up (and putting up with us) all week, and we owe her a lot, but to repay it in rent she’d have to stay with us for four months. Not that Maria or I would mind, because Bee is awesome. I also finally got to see Graham perform live with the Bathtub Marys–I’d only seen seen him in rehearsal and heard him on mp3. We spent seven hours trying to absorb the Met (art, not opera) with Leonard, then had dinner and games and a subsequent Saturday Day Basketball with him and Sumana.

Louisville seems a lot shorter after nine days in Manhattan, but then it seems a lot sunnier too.

Brendan Talks About Things He Doesn’t Understand

March 9, 2006 /

Reading Raph Koster’s A Theory of Fun, finally, I came across this sentence:

“Beauty is found in the tension between our expectations and reality.”

Which contrasts interestingly with Rebecca Borgstrom’s assertion that suffering is the disconnect between desire and reality (which, as I vaguely understand it, is derived from viparinama-dukkha and sankhara-dukkha).

That’s not to say that together, they imply that suffering is beauty; in fact, Borgstrom (who I think would not disagree with Koster’s statement) has specifically denied as much. Whatever I’m fumbling at here is more subtle than that. So why not crush the subtletly beneath our old friend proof-by-analogy?

According to our premises, beauty is derived from expectations and suffering is derived from desire. Sumana has said that hope leads to expectations, secret or otherwise; I believe that. I also believe that desire invariably produces hope. So desire leads to suffering and hope; hope leads to expectations; expectations lead to beauty; beauty leads to desire. Insert ASCII diagram here. Suffering is the byproduct of the desire-hope-expectations-beauty loop.

Or make up your own better diagram, and tell us about it.

March 3, 2006 /

Kelly Link describes her stories as “kitchen-sink magic realism,” which I can understand, because the moment you say “fantasy” people think Robert Jordan and their ears shut down. Conversely, in her own words, “people hear ‘magic realism’ and they think ‘oh, like those Gabriel Garcia Marquez stories where people fly.'” (Everybody read exactly one magic realism story in high school, and that was it.)

Anyway, if I thought I could get away with it, I’d call Anacrusis “Kelly Link magic realism.” Look, it almost rhymes.

January 9, 2006 /

Sumana takes the old disappearing sock meme and makes it funny and touching. That’s skill, gentlemen–skill like we’ve not seen. Not since Morocco. Haskins! Initiate the Marianas Contingency! Good God, man, there’s no time to lose!