Well known adventurer and writerJon Turk is reportedly hard at work on finished with his 3rd novel non-fiction book, to be titled Moolynaut’s Magic. Moolynaut is a 100 year old Koryak shaman who has been Jon’s mentor for the past six years. His latest novel book is In the Wake of the Jomon. Read more at his web site.
Dec 302005
Bring your instrument to The Wholographic Human for an informal song swap and jam session to be held on the last Friday of every month in 2006. The space will hold 10-15 people and their instruments.
6 p.m. Friday, January 27: hosted by Jay Toups
6 p.m. Friday, February 24: hosted by TBD
6 p.m. Friday, March 31: hosted by Charlie Mabbott
Dec 252005
Ah, nothing but the best for us Bitterrooters. On Christmas Eve, several of us West Fork neighbors convened for a tasty get together replete with Holiday toddies, Hutterite ducks, lots of veg dishes too, and conversations, catching up with each other’s lives. No big party, just big (and fun-loving) hearts, and that’s one of the best things about people in these parts.
All the best this holiday season and for the coming year.
Here’s a sincere, (end-of-year, glad-it’s-here) thanks to regular visitors for making the Whirled Home Journal a site to check for rightonlefoverthecounterrevolutionary spin, music, and videos. I’m enjoying the non-stop recording and writing, and pounding on this blog for the benefit of readers and listeners other than myself, and hopefully you are too.
Look for more useless ranting, essays, revelry, videos and music in two thousand and freaking already six!
Fight for our beliefs. It is what humans are born and bred throughout life to do. It’s the basis of America’s two-party political system. We do it unconsciously and consciously. We learn at an early age to slap labels on the other side of our public (and private) issues rather than dig for common understanding and resolution that benefits both sides. We almost never ask whether there is a more holistic, consensus-based approach to resolving such things. That usually comes after the damage has been done.
We learn to debate and entrench, not necessarily to resolve, our common issues. And the entrenched political debate is tellingly inefficient at producing tangible results, such as reducing our dependence on imported oil, or even more tellingly, reducing our national debt. We have learned to be exquisitely stubborn. We have also learned to ignore the elephant in the room of all public discourse in this country: the truth.
Choose any public issue. The war in Iraq. The price of gasoline. Guns, abortion rights, freedom of speech, the environment. What does it all come down to? Your opinion. My opinion. Right, left, red, blue, Democrat, Republican, atheists, neocons, etc. Money and power. Most issues come down to the pitting of one faction against another as the best way to move forward. Whichever group has the strongest argument (replete with means of funding) wins. And as a result of this outrageously expensive and wasteful political sideshow, we’re not moving forward. On the contrary our country is moving backward because we’re not practicing anything more than how to be good team members in whatever games we’re currently playing.
Polemic and polarity is no longer enough. It’s not a game with two sides.
Why do our politicians divide universal issues, such as the environment, into parts? Why do you? Do tree huggers and real estate developers have anything in common? We all breathe the air, and we all want to ensure that our progeny will be able to breathe the air (and drink the water) in fifty years. Instead, this country pays lip service to the global environment even as it wages a war to ensure that it continues to lead the world in per capita energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. The U.S. actually increased its output of gases 2 percent this year, according to the government’s latest report.
Bottom line: we’re all hypocrites because the numbers don’t lie.
Our soldiers are dying in Iraq for oil, to implement democracy, and to ensure that Americans continue squandering the very substance that threatens to poison our beautiful country and the entire planet. The USA is setting a particularly tragic example for India and China, which have both, along with USA, opted out of Kyoto Treaty protocols. So we have nearly half the world’s population committed politically to endorsing and protecting their short-term interests on one “side” of the environmental issues facing all of humanity.
It is a dangerous game that cannot be won by any amount of partisan politics and cultural denial. This is a game we will all lose. The environment we are collectively destroying today all but assures a bleak future in which succeeding generations will pay with their lives for our heedless abnegation of moral responsibility.
We’re Not Number 1: We’re Better Than That
Why does the US government have 8 trillion dollars in debt? How does being in hock up to our ears benefit America in world affairs or at home? Does anyone really believe that our crushing debt doesn’t matter because it will be offset by ‘growth’ in our GNP? I would happily write a check for the $28,000 dollars representing my portion of the national debt if I thought it was a good investment. Would you write a similar check?
My fellow Americans, might we try to practice our worst skills for a change? Don’t leap to judgement, suspend it. Don’t slice and dice the issues and focus on your side of the big story, focus on the whole solution. Don’t practice being right or “first” at all costs. Practice self-doubt, real soul searching, and compromise with the world around you for the good of all. Don’t wait for our leaders to lead. Develop sustainable lifestyles in which “less” is actually “more.” Practice happiness through equanimity. If you can get through this letter to the editor, and fully understand the word equanimity, you’ll be well on your way.
The Truth Is Not a Football, Sis Boom Bah
Still equate economic progress with taking everything good and whole in this world and cutting it into parts? Just keep doing what you’re doing and watch what happens in coming years.
When a sufficient amount of this beautiful blue and green planet is burned to cinders and riven into cutlets, it will be game over. No side will win. There won’t be a Hail Mary, 4th-down conversion that saves the day either way. The teams, fans, and cheerleaders on all sides will fail to avert a disastrous outcome by having done nothing, either politically or personally, to change the course of future events while there was a fighting chance. The NFL, the NBA, and NASCAR Nation will all be no longer because humanity will be no longer.
Perish the thought.
Some things are better off viewed from all angles but left alone and appreciated intact. Like rattlesnakes, grizzly bears and frogs. Like the truth in all things big and small.
- Happy Holidaze from your pal in the pines…
List of visitors from different countries in my web server logs this month:
USA, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, England, Finland, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Nigeria, Phillipines, Poland, Romania, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Spain.
What does it mean to have visitors from all over the place dropping by? Heck, I don’t know. Most of them come from searches for images or text that is mentioned on the site. Statistics are wonderful, numbers are great, but it’s still a challenge to figure out why and how some people visit and sometimes linger on the site. One visitor from Abuja, Nigeria has been to the site 15 times since September! Perhaps this person is one of those Nigerian scam artists looking for a ‘vulnerability’ before they send me one of those notorious letters promising millions if I help them out of a jam. LOL. I wouldn’t know because the person has left nothing more of a trail than an IP address.
“There should only be one billboard in America; one that says Buy Stuff!”
George Carlin
Okay, off come the nice-nice gloves. I’m calling out any and all WHJ readers, most of whom who have everything they’ll ever need in the way of security and material comforts, who have nothing left to give back to life beyond their own noses and personal interests. What am I talking about? Let’s begin with long neglected friendships, or the non-existent dialogue on politics, or your complete neglect of your impact on the environment, or neglect of any other good cause (such as donating to Katrina victims through a trusted charity), because you’re too wrapped up in your own psychodrama, too stingy and prolly too pooped from trying to keep up with your many obligations.
Sure you’ve got opinions, but you’re too busy, and mostly you have learned that it doesn’t pay to make points.
What are you doing with them besides “stuffing them” or bolstering your self image (and feathering your own nest) in life? There is a larger world out there, and it needs you more than ever, in case you haven’t noticed. Try noticing how many times each day you hold your tongue because you don’t have the time or energy to make your point. The result of everyone holding their tongues is the circumspect, suspicious, deteriorating world of today, being lead down the road to ruin by a few verbose idiots with bottomless checkbooks.
Is there a workable solution that will help you pull your head out of the warm orifice of apathy and do something about the cold, hard world around you? I think so. Take the offense. How about fewer obligations and less stuff for starters? You won’t be able to take any stuff with you; give some thought to this now, before you’re at the end of your days wondering what to do with all that stuff when you check out to the afterlife.
Speak up while you still can. Stand for something more than stuff. The time you save will be your own, and you’ll save money too. Which buys more quality time to spend any way you want: with your kids, your old friends, examing and re-calibrating your moral compass, making your thoughts and opinions known, and ultimately improving our world by making a difference in the world just beyond your nose.
Revealing What We Don’t Know: Top 10 Dictionary Lookups
Interesting that integrity, a noun meaning, essentially, wholeness or non-corruptibility, should top the list of the 10 most popular definition searches at Merriam Webster.
At #10 this year, people also searched in droves for the meaning of: inept, as in, not quite up to whatever.
Another popular word search this year was insipid, as in “lacking in qualities that interest, stimulate or challenge; dull, flat.”
Perhaps people who slept through their high school English classes are becoming more aware that they (or some of our elected leaders) might be insipid, not to mention deficient in integrity and lacking the necessary aptitude to lead our country.
Dec 092005
Linda Hiatt, our friend and neighbor. She (avoids) rocks!
Steep snowpacked dirt roads can be awesome sled runs. The reason we enjoy living by the seat of our pants in rural Montana is obvious in these TGIF video posts. Not only is sledding our driveway free and non-polluting, as you’ll see, it’s a riot on good days, and the exercise walking back up does us all good too.
See today’s mailbox run vids:
The Staff of The Bitterroot Life has a great deal of fun this time of year enjoying the hectic pace of publishing life here in the tall Pines of the Nez Perce Road. Here’s a movie of today’s sled run from our property down about 1/4 mile. (40MB, not suitable for dialup user download.)
This video hosted courtesy of the friendly folks at Pine Door Company.
Dec 082005
Message to 66.56.66.106
This site gets a fair number of hits. But not so many that I can’t in some cases deduce who the unique visitor might be. After all, every Internet user has a unique IP address, it gets logged by the server, I can parse the address against a mapping tool and sometimes be able connect a person I know in that area to the unique machine’s address. Like connecting an IP address of the visitor with a school, business or government institution. Now who could that be? Hmm, don’t tell me, let me guess!
I would never ‘out’ a visitor. And I hope that you don’t read this and leave in a huff and never visit again. But I would definitely like to have some fun with the idea that I think I know who’s reading. Like “Why do you visit and leave no visible reminder?” Or, “Why is my page interesting but not enough to say so?” Or, “What have you been doing for the past decade (or two)?”
The problem with Anonymous Coward visitors is that they are not much fun. They don’t reveal much. But here it’s hard not to leave some bit of evidence even when one desires anonymity. Anonymity’s a relative term. It’s an everyday illusion. To be truly anonymous you have to use proxy applications to hide your tracks. But you’re so smart you probably know that, or perhaps you don’t care either way.
If someone who manages a site wants to know more about who is on the other end visiting the site, it isn’t rocket science, or for that matter, preservation of historic structures. A little triangulation of time, place, and circumstance goes a long way. Guess it’s the very essence of knowing one’s audience, down to the person if possible. And it is an honor to know you and have the opportunity to in some way refresh the relationship with nothing more than a numerical address to work with.
I know who you are, I’m happy that you’re visiting. And oddly enough, I feel driven to say that I very much liked the person I knew as you, enough to zone in and recognize what likely appears to be a cyber visit from you.
How charming. I’d recognize you anywhere. Even hiding behind your gaudy IP mask.
Have a nice day!
Dec 072005
It was damn cold last night. So cold that ice formed on the window frames of our house, inside. So cold that horizontal icicles began forming wherever outside air managed to seep in around the doors. Have you ever seen horizontal icicles outside of “The Day After Tomorrow”? No? You must live in the temperate zone and don’t watch epic disaster movies. (I know, you’re too busy surviving disasters…)
Has your butt ever fallen asleep because you in front of your computer too long without taking a break? Hey it happens. Even during the warmer months of the year, the exquisitely luxuriant and sedentary life of a writer is conducive to causing cold extremities because the calorie-consuming business activity is mostly mental. In other words, my feet, hands and even my nose gets cold while sitting at the computer all day. As I sit typing this morning I have two shirts on, a fleece pair of pants, and Uggs on my feet.
Sometimes no article of clothing seems to be enough, which means sometimes the best thing to do is go outside to warm up! One of my favorite breaks is taking Mr. Chu for a sled run down to the mailbox and walking back up. It’s 1/2 mile to the mailbox, and 1/2 mile back, so this usually warms me up inside, not to mention giving Dogman the opportunity for a romp. Plus, it makes the house feel like a hothouse when we get back inside.
Thankfully we burn wood (free except for labor) and not oil or electricity to keep warm. It would cost a fortune to heat our house any other way. I tried a couple of older stoves and found them tough to deal with; lots of ash, low burn temperatures, lots of maintenance, and lots of wood. But a few years back I bought a stove with a catalytic secondary combustion technology from Woodstock Soapstone Company. They are very expensive units, but they are the Ferrari of woodburners. And they get the burn mileage of a hybrid. They’re incredibly efficient. I can go literally months without having to clean out the residual ash, and the vent stack stays nice and clean through most of the winter. And the clearest sign that it’s a great stove is in watching smoke come out of the stack. As in not very much smoke at all.
Dec 042005
Dark Force (War For Oil)
Jay Toups
©2005 All rights reserved.
The American Dream, remember that?
Broken by Demolicans and Republicrats
Funding the charade wearin’ Pork Pie hats
While we fill our tanks, keep Wal Mart packed
It’s their job to dine at the trough
Send the poor and willing to redefine Iraq
Confusing our capital with blood-stained cash
We’re all shooting cows here and that’s a fact.
Funny about us, we’re good folk too
Hooked on rivers of rich black brew
Buildin’ pipelines for peace, clubs out of hate
And every barrel we pump seals someone else’s fate.
The unofficial story’s ugly but far more true
This war has a dark force called me and you
Like politicians we back and all the shit we buy
Do you ever stop and ask yourself, why, why, why, why.
You don’t shoot the bullets, you don’t make the guns
Who funds the insanity are the deadliest ones
You could fight back just say no when you can,
Let your heart drive you, keep your dollars in your hand.
Turn off some lights, throw another blanket on the bed
Put some socks on, keep a cooler head
We’ll all be fine and you’ll stay fed
Livin warm and cheap and not a Yankee pig instead.
Freedom of speech, remember that?
Muzzled by indifference but liberty is intact
What’s happening to us is out beyond sad
If you think I shouldn’t go there that’s just too bad.
Killing the messenger won’t kill the truth
Imprisoning soldiers who’ve seen enough to refuse
Dying for two dollar gas that should be ten
This is a dream world we’re livin’ in.
The American way, remember that?
Lost by Demolicans, Republicrats
Leading the charge wearin’ Pork Pie hats
While we fill our tanks, eat hot dogs and take long naps.
Trust the experts to end the world
All you people with God and flag unfurled
Birth, death and taxes count on that
And war for oil to keep you quiet and fat.
If you can hear this, you’re close enough to ask
What the creator gave you, are you giving anything back?
Could you make a difference, perhaps you can
Wake up, smell the coffee, and finally make a stand.
What is one of the absolute worst things about working in the technology industry, or working for one or more vendors as a freelance writer, developer or marketing consultant? I believe it’s the lack of forward-looking strategy and negligent leaders and managers in most cases. There’s plenty of money, and willing employees, but precious little guidance. Everybody “technical” who knows something of value is usually too busy (or claims to be) to take the time to share it with the marketing and sales people who actually do the day-in, day-out grunt work. Or they share it poorly because they’re making it up on the fly.
None of this will come as a surprise to technology industry veterans, but many small technology vendors are run by people, usually men, who are usually great technologists, but who have not yet, for a variety of reasons, learned the art (and absolute necessity) of cultivating a loyal and competent workforce, or basically, winning friends and influencing people.
In this example, the company founder, president and CEO happens to also be the company’s sole proprietor. He calls all the shots. He answers to nobody, which becomes patently obvious within five minutes of even casual interaction with the guy. He signs all the checks. He picks up the tab. He tells people what to wear, and usually what to think and say. He monitors and controls the signature text used in the company’s email like a pit bull. He even publishes all of the web pages himself.
He’s also the only real developer of the company’s technology. He sets the pace of development, marketing, and sales, and the 16 or so employees who do his bidding always say yes to everything he says, because if they don’t, it’s bad news for them. He’s a borderline pathological control freak. He thwarts dialog, even when it’s needed. He is the embodiment of quick judgement, backed by egocentric negativity. He is disingenuous. He is disrespectful unless he decides to be charming, which comes easily. He’s also pretty damn smart. Perhaps a little too smart.
So it’s his business, he created it. But because he cannot share everyday responsibility for business operations, he is also the single potential point of failure of the entire business: the straw that could break the cash cow’s back if he dies or is incapacitated or loses his source code repository in a disaster.
This company isn’t the only small ISV with a brash, brilliant, chameleonesque leader clutching his deck of cards tightly, swaggeringly awash in enough cash to make the hellish business environment tolerable for anyone desperate enough to work for the guy.
Needless to say, the CEO isn’t a very productive programmer because he hasn’t managed to move any new product out of beta in 3 years, and as a result the company runs on hopes and prayers from its legacy customer base. It’s been this way from the beginning of the company. Their main product only runs on one operating system, and it’s not Windows or Linux. The company’s product is quite successful in its niche, but use of this operating system is also declining rapidly. Revenue is declining in lockstep with the decline of customers who are migrating away from the system the company’s software runs on.
The company has made many poor business and marketing decisions that could very well threaten future operations:
0. Product Roadmap and Marketing Strategy? It’s whatever the big guy says it is. Timeline to delivery? Who knows.
1. Committing to attending industry tradeshows, even signing contracts, then cancelling later. This has occured at twice in the past year, costing approximately 20K in ‘kill fees’.
2. Issuing numerous Press Releases about non-existent products. Beta releases aren’t products. The company makes no money until they actually ship real product. This confuses potential customers to no end. As a result, they tend to look for a similar solution elsewhere.
3. Advertising out of step with product offerings. This company actually pays for ads about products which do not in fact exist. There is no explanation for why the CEO insists that the business spend hard money advertising products that people cannot buy.
4. The company’s remote Rocky Mountain location means that the area’s potential pool of workers is not particularly robust, skilled, or mentally suited to the challenges of running a major technology concern. The CEO knows this all too well because “…he has to do everything himself.”
5. Command structure: He’s it. Nobody does anything unless the CEO commands it. When there is a new command, all other work stops and employees dive in to yet another fire drill to develop a piece of documentation, a web page, or a press release, etc. Employee efforts to deliver on previous commands of the CEO are shelved and pile up as new demands are made. At no time are the CEO’s commands committed to a schedule or any type of advance notice. The phone simply rings, the CEO barks out his orders to the operations manager, whines about not having any time, insults the person on the other end a few times, and expresses—in no uncertain terms— that he expects nothing less than the company’s full attention on each and every capricious attempt to manage the business effort.
6. Web site: One of the most telling aspects of this company’s dysfunctional nature, the corporate web site is a complete mess. The only reason it’s a mess is because the CEO thinks it’s good enough. Numerous attempts by employees to gain control and direction of the site over the years in order to improve and enhance it have been thwarted again and again, basically because of the paranoia and controlling nature of the CEO. He doesn’t want anyone to “break” the site, but he refuses to admit that it is already quite broken. This is a site with a 6 year old template that looks about as inspiring to a customer as looking at roadkill. Most who visit take one look and go elsewhere. Yet, the company doesn’t know this because there is no analysis of site metrics whatsoever, save the furtive opinions of the CEO, about the site’s visitors, transactions, gap analyses, etc.
7. Everybody else is stupid. The level of condescension exuding from the CEO would make even the Dalai Lama angry enough to punch the guy. Examples: Customers are ‘idiots’, employees are ‘imbeciles’, other vendors are ‘old news.’ Ideas proferred by employees are routinely swatted down. Employees have learned to keep their ideas to themselves and work around the CEO because he’s a brick wall. Machiavelli and Napoleon got nothing on this guy.
8. Ineffective management. It’s all about doing “what the CEO wants” instead of what the business needs. Marketing and sales staff are sitting on their hands waiting for new products. They’ve been sitting that way for years. They are good at keeping their heads down in return for a decent paycheck, not to mention decent health benefits. All they need to do is placate the CEO. The actual work is secondary.
If this sounds like your situation, let me ask: How much of what you do at your job is actual business, and how much of your effort is mainly sucking up to an idiot savant leader or manager who treats everyone the same way, like a rag doll?
I’d really like to know.
Related read: “Is Your Boss a Psychopath?”
Dec 012005
I’ve been reading chapters from Pete Townshend’s “The Boy Who Heard Music” as he publishes them on his blog. Very interesting, pseudo-autobiographical novella from a musician who needs no introduction.
There’s also an excellent mp3 of a new song of Pete’s that is worth a listen. If he sounds a bit like Tom Waits, it’s probably because the novella’s protagonist, Gabriele, sounds like that.
