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I have decided to master the extended discipline of Google-fu. I’m going for the Google-fu black belt. Google in 2024 is a system for knowledge and sharing that requires the concentration of an enlightened master to grasp. Between the time when those kids from Stanford invented a dandy search engine and last month when they decided to open fire on Facebook with Google+, Google has become the most diversified software service provider on the planet. They offer rarefied search tools like Google scholar, consultative and facilitative utilities like Google moderator, digitized library services, comprehensive geography information, cloud data storage services; and, the full range of what was once “desktop” software is available from Google online: document creation, presentations, drawing, spread-sheets, calendaring, and of course email. All those functions provide a scaffolding for Google’s business model which requires them to be the most powerful advertising presence on the planet.

Google groups contains a searchable archive of hundreds of millions of Usenet postings from the early days of online social networking. The watershed moment for Internet users and Usenet itself came in 1993, the so-called “Eternal September” when AOL opened the floodgates and gave all its zillions of customers access to Usenet groups. Google is preparing for its own version of “Eternal September.” The day is coming soon when all the migration tools will be in place and all the Facebook users will be faced with the shiny new thing that Google is offering them: Google+.

I have faith in Google. I think they can pull it off. Back around the turn of the millennium I became a Google search evangelist. In a way it was a religious thing. I didn’t have any data to support it, but I had faith in Google search results. I preached Google search to anyone who would listen. My faith has been rewarded by Google’s dominance in the search engine wars. I’ve also enjoyed using Intel chip sets running Microsoft Windows, usually in cheap, reliable desktops and laptops by Dell. When the iPad arrived, I got one, but I have to admit I prefer my Windows netbook to the Apple tablet. At that same time I upgraded my cell phone from a kludgy if powerful Palm PDA to the iPhone 4, a decision I have only regretted a little as the Android market begins to appear competitive with the slick Apple mobile dream machine. I really like my iPhone! But check back with me when the contract’s over. By then I’ll doubtless be ready to ditch the iPhone in a Cupertino minute.

The consumer information technology world is in constant turmoil and conflict. War is a dominant metaphor. Besides the search engine wars, we’ve had the browser wars and the “religious war” of Apple versus Microsoft users. Mac users are convinced that Windows users have an inferior product. Windows users are convinced that Mac users are a smug overbearing lot of over-privileged, under-achieving do-do-heads who don’t know anything about computers. This emotional struggle is reminiscent of the American auto industry in the 1950s. People then felt the same kind of emotional attachment  to their choice of automobile brand that today they feel for the computer they drive. Ultimately, people ended up driving economical, agile, smaller cars and the Detroit dinosaurs perished, defeated by Asian imports.

The browser war may have quietly ended in detente. Magellan is gone of course. Netscape was crushed by Microsoft which, like IBM of old, tried to impose an “industry standard.” But for its corporate market share, the world would long ago have abandoned Microsoft’s Internet Exploder browser in favor of more standards compliant competitors. In fairness, over the years Microsoft browsers have gotten faster and better, though no better than the competition. A quick count shows three browsers on this computer: Microsoft’s IE9, Firefox 5.0, and Google Chrome 12. For diversity’s sake, I better install Opera 11.5 too.

I am not a geek. Maybe, I have a little nerd in me, but I’m not a techie. I am however consumed with the desire to master the Google. Anybody know where I can hang-out with a google-fu sensei?

It was a great day filled with lots of “what-does-it-take” chores. A “what-does-it-take” chore is just what it sounds like, something that needs doing, that can be done in a short time and with little effort, something that’s so obvious and likely so easy that it gets pushed to the bottom of the priority list again and again. Trimming the clematis is a what-does-it-take chore. And what would it take to trim back that mock orange in the south lawn hedge? And cleaning up the peonies in what we laughingly call the “formal garden”… what would it take? It was a day for picking a few dozen daffodils to display around the house, a day for using up that roasted chicken in a pot of home made chicken noodle soup. What would it take to finish resetting the lannonstone wall at the back of the center lawn flower bed? It took more than I had in me, as it happened. There are still 12 humongous stones that need to be dug out and re-set. What would we do without root pressure from weed trees and the annual upset of frost heave? It would all be too easy.

What would it take to throw tennis balls for the dogs? Call me an enabler. They’ve got a tennis ball habit and I feed it. Didn’t expect the sunshine today. It was a pleasant surprise! What, I asked myself, would it take to get outdoors and use that sunlight?

Locally, there were challenges for the right wing “great communicators.” The big screen displaying images of the speakers seemed better positioned to communicate with the thousands of protesters on the Main Street lawn than with the few hundred teabillies on the King Street sidewalk. The left wasn’t giving anybody slack. Bells, drums, and roaring voices drowned out the sound system. The Americans for Prosperity carpetbaggers–Palin, Breitbart, et al.–were impossible to hear unless you were at the front of the gathering. Even so, at least one local lefty lamented the fact that the Koch brothers could afford better Audio/Visual gear than we can. In truth, this was the first time I’ve seen a big screen mounted on the Capitol wall. I hope they didn’t damage the building.

Many of the workers also express their willingness, indeed their obligation, to sacrifice to be sure their kids are well provided for and in their own time well launched into the world of work.

Cleaning women and caregivers, stone masons and iron workers, burger flippers, receptionists, and tech support people, a waitress, a retiree, a hedge fund manager, a UPS delivery man, a prostitute, a fund raiser, a press agent, a housewife, a student, a fireman, a school teacher, and a flight attendant… like us they all have stories to tell, they’re all human, they all work.

One aspect of finding a job and keeping it that isn’t examined in “Working” are the ever so human practices of nepotism and croneyism. I would have been sorry to miss it, so I’m feeling lucky that a musical comedy number played itself out over the last few weeks in the offices of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. There’s a kid, Brian Deschane, a college drop-out. No shame in that, Governor Walker himself was a college drop-out. The kid’s got a couple of drunk driving convictions. No shame in that. The last Republican President of the United States had a few youthful indiscretions under his belt. They didn’t hurt his job hunting prospects. But Governor Walker has been under a lot of scrutiny since he devalued the work of all public employees in the state. So things didn’t work out too well for young Brian. Yet. I’m sure he has a great future ahead of him, though.

From the Huffington Post: “In the young man’s lack of management experience and two more drunk driving convictions than college degrees, Walker saw untapped potential. Another thing he saw in Deschane was the way his father — Jerry Deschane, the executive vice president of Wisconsin Builders Association — skillfully managed to stack dollar bills in the amount of $121,652 for Walker’s gubernatorial campaign.”

In the middle of the front lawn is an enormous pile of oak leaves recently raked from the flower bed at the west end of the round-about. The lannon stone wall has suffered from frost heave and root pressure of a fierce encroachment of hollyhocks and mulberry seedlings. There’s some work to do out there to get it all back into shape for spring.

The white trim on the house needs repainting and the woodlot needs to be cleaned up.

There’s a machine shed full of small internal combustion engines and the machines they power just waiting for annual maintenance, and–in the case of the larger tiller and the brush cutter–major repair.

I have a couple of GB of memory I need to install on the older Dell in the office. I’ve successfully procrastinated around this simple task for almost a year. Work on the farm is never done!

So this blog has suffered while I’ve watched streaming Netflix–you can devour an entire season of MI5 in an evening if you put your mind to it–and read trash novels, good novels, and minor treasures of fun writing like the books of Sarah Vowell. What do I mean by “this blog has suffered?” Well, the writing around here hasn’t improved much, and the coverage of exciting political events fell off, and fewer cat pictures have been published, and the list goes on. I’ve finally fixed the RSS feed though. You can again subscribe to Listics and/or to Listics’ comments and feel assured that what’s being posted will find its way into your feed reader. So let’s see what happens next.

China Cat Sunflower (1972)

Take for example the command, “Roll on rug.” One evening Molly was indeed rolling on the rug and I asked her about it. Pretty straightforward… “Are you rolling on the rug?” I asked.

She leaped into my lap and began to lick my face and ears. After a minor tussle she was back on the floor and I was swabbing off dog spit with a paper towel. Unable to leave well enough alone, I asked her if she liked rolling on the rug. Bam! She was back in my lap licking my face and showing no mercy. When she was back on the floor watching me wisely from the (rug), I called Beth in to check it out. “Sit on the couch,” I suggested. She did. Then in a whisper I said, “Now ask Molly if she enjoys rolling on the rug.” She raised her eyebrows. “Really,” I said. And so she uttered the key phrase with the predictable result, and now Molly has us trained. Whenever Molly wants to play licky-face, we have to ask her if she’d like to roll on the rug.

Complex communication scenario, ain’t it?