News can bring despair
Focusing of misery
Losing sight of “good”
Blog
Some thoughts on Wil Wheaton, The Internet, Radio Free Burrito and Taylor Swift
I’ve been a fan of Wil Wheaton’s Radio Free Burrito for years. It’s hard to conceive he’s been putting those things out for a decade. Anyway, today’s episode: Radio Free Burrito 43: my next mistake, hits on a few things that I’ve been thinking about lately.
He talks a bit about Taylor Swift and how crappily she’s been treated by the media, and by a certain cadre of the internet. I, too, have been discovering more in her music than I expected. And what made me take a deeper look was the grace and humor she’s shown while facing down the trollish brutes. Gotta love and admire anyone like that.
When talking about Pax and the hater-vibe he was feeling, he struck a nerve that’s been raw. In geek circles lately, there’s this whole “gatekeeper” thing going on. I hate this mentality. Perhaps it’s because I’m an old school geek from back when geekiness lined you up for bullying (at best). When you found ANYONE who shared those interests and passions, you felt delight, a thrill in someone else “getting it”. Those geeks I grew up with were a remarkably inclusive crew. Hearing people proclaiming “you’re not geeky enough” is both absurd and infuriating. You’re not outcast enough? Really? Of course, I’ve long felt frustration with those seeking to keep others out, to find some kind of purity. The purity of the experience comes from love, from passion. It’s the damn feeling, the joy in something, that makes it wonderful.
Of course, I’ve long been a proponent of diversity in all things. And I guess here is where I’ll stand. Wil is geeky enough, Taylor is too, and I’ll bet you are as well. Jeez, folks, lets all go watch Star Wars and get over ourselves.
My newest web project: ForwardFacing
I’m moving all my more formal business and technology focused writing over to my new website, Forward Facing. The goal is for CarlSetzer.com to be more of a personal site. Forward Facing will showcase my writing and web work in a more professional manner. At least that’s the plan.
Part of the fun with this, though, is that ForwardFacing.net is showing up in Twitter’s spam/malware database. I guess the prior owners were nasty with it. Anyway, I’ve made the initial request of Twitter to get removed from that list. Which me luck.
Delighting in the sky
Riding on the wind
Touching the sky with great ease
Much like Icarus
An Introduction to Facing Forward
I consider myself a global citizen. Born in Rhode Island, my life has taken me throughout the US and around the globe. I have a broad view of the world, though my core geographical identification is with Seattle.
My career brought me to several key Seattle area institutions, including Starbucks, Microsoft and a project or two at Amazon. I have a solid understanding of general business principles, technological solutions, writing, PR, internet and social media marketing. I have built websites (with a particular love for WordPress), myriad PowerPoints, intricate Excel spreadsheets, tracked million dollar + budgets, deployed Google Apps and Microsoft Office Online solutions (Office 365’s predecessor) , launched built networks, written press releases, edited and managed newsletters, and developed long-term strategies.
My focus has been on “getting things done”, while keeping an eye on the future. I seek solutions that make change, that grow and develop.
Changes Approaching
Grey skies have returned
Hints of autumn on the wind
Trees yet filled with green
Reflections On “Advice from 30 year old me to 20 year old me”
This morning’s glimmer from “Advice from 30 year old me to 20 year old me”:
“A few people will change your life forever. Find them.”
Searching, seeking, a pilgrimage of personal growth. Finding such humans ensures you grow. Such people challenge you, driving you past your internal resistances.
However, I seek more; more than to simply absorb greatness from others. I seek to Be One Of These People. If one person grows from my presence: success! Afterwards, “the more the merrier”.
What, really do I benefit embodying the values of leeches and mosquitos? Sure, at a primal level, I gain. But, I also lose. Human relationship is transactional. One-sided benefit destroys relationship and eventually leaves one isolated, alone. Lost to the greedy, immature mind: synergization, gestalt. Collaboration creates things greater than by an individual. Things greater than can even be conceived by the one. A zen quality therein, methinks.
This rainy Friday morning
And now it’s morning
Awakened and seeing rain
Feeling very grateful
My Ever Deepening Frustration With Apple
Those that know me well know that I’m an Apple guy. Well, that’s waning. There are several key things that have caused me great consternation, as well as a few key sector swings that have impacted my opinion.
A biggie for me: Apple’s reluctance to “play well” with others. One key example: the whole iCloud thing. Calendaring drives me crazy. Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo!, all these use the same calendaring protocol. If I send an invite, or receive one, from one of the other systems, it works fine in mine (currently Gmail). Updates come through, changes come cleanly. Apple, of course, needs to do things their way. So, when my wife sends a calendar invite from her iCloud account, I check to ensure sure it’s in my calendar correctly. And if she sends an update, I need to manually update. This drives me nutty. This is rudimentary. Nobody exists within one network’s system, and the inability to “play well” with something as basic as calendaring shows a deep disregard for customer needs.
Once, .Mac’s email (the original incarnation of the current cloud tool) was on par with Yahoo!, Gmail et al. (And was free too. Alas!) Well, that’s gone. The iCloud email interface is nearly identical to its first iteration and Apple has made minimal effort to update their UI. Clunky and ugly; ironic for an entity that makes a big deal about their design chops.
More critically, though, Apple’s dead silence on dealing with system issues angers me. A few years back, my Macbook would drop its wifi signal randomly and repeatedly. The wifi fan would sit and spin. I found the Genius bar useless. Then I read tons of discussions in forums, including Apple’s own. Nobody found a solution, and Apple corp’s insights, replies, thoughts or even a simple acknowledgment were completely absent. Well, my solution was simple: boot it into Windows. I did have it set up with Boot Camp and Windows worked fine (hence how I knew it was an OS or driver/OS issue, even though the Geniuses insisted it was a wifi network issue. Yeah, the library and Cafe Ladro and Starbucks and the local community college all configured their wifi with the same error). I’ve come across several issues over the years where it was clear Apple had a system problem, but we never, EVER saw anything publically announced by the company. Well, with huge PR debacle situations, they’d say a little “we value your concern and are working diligently on it” non-answer. Basically, silence. Then (like with the wifi issue above) an update rolls out and fixes the problem. Apple’s unwillingness to engage with even their fans is just plain dumb.
As someone who spent a significant portion of his career working on sustainability and social responsibility issues, their unwillingness to engage and publically addresses serious issues with their environmental and labor practices really disappointed me. Yes, eventually they caved in and started addressing these, but it took quite a bit of pressure and resolve to overcome the Cupertino silence. At least that was the perception based on their silence.
Last fall I took a web development course. The entire course was focused on the PC environment. My instructor needed to look for Mac based alternatives for each program they used and it was left to me to figure out how to make those equivalents work. Eventually I solved this problem the same as with the wifi issue: run Windows. But it was very telling, as the last dev class I took and all the design classes I took focused on Macs. There was pity and some condensention towards the Windows crowd. That’s dead.
If my Macbook were to die today, it’s likely successor would be some Windows variant. Justifying the Mac tax is hard enough given the comparative systems now. Add to that the issues I’ve had and it becomes very hard indeed to justify buying a Mac.
Cruel Words Upon A Summer’s Evening
Yesterday evening, harsh words drifted through the summer air. Voices of two women, brutal in their battery, stunning in their cruelty, I wondered, “are these coming from mother and daughter?” Perhaps they’re romantic rivals. There are a multitude of possible roots, and it’s likely I’ll never know the reality. And I’m not sure I want a deeper engagement.
Yet the rage tinged brutality engaged thereby intrigued me, intellectually. Are the speakers aware of social corrosion taking over? Can they see the destruction brought about by their words? Do they care? And what does healing look like?
Ultimately, they’re about being right, not about being effective. Damage was done, whether healed from or no. And we all lose when relationships corrode .