Listics

Dave Winer has stepped down from his responsibilities as an RSS advisory board member in order to further the cause of the blog-volution. Inspired by his lofty example, I have offered my pro bono professional services facilitating a post implementation follow-up on his project to cut loose from the free hosting service at weblogs.com.

Either this will happen at Doc Searls IT Garage where - not wanting to piss on Doc’s tennis shoes - my voice will remain professional and I will address it in a focused manner; or, if there is no community interest in threshing out the technical project management and systems administration issues that contributed to this being such a difficult passage for a lot of people, then I will go it alone over here…. mwah-ha-ha-ha-ha…

A reconstruction of recent events is called for, if only because a certain fear-driven and angry man threatened and insulted some people with whom I am virtually close. This man is a master of flame-warfare, a troll extraordinaire. Two things I find challenging in his behavior are his extraordinary assertion of control of a moral high-ground and his refusal to seek common cause with those he finds disagreeable. His behavior reminds me of nothing more than the behavior of Republicans in control of a legislative body, unless it is a large muddy hog in a well appointed living room, feeding on anything organic from the houseplants to the fish in the aquarium, knocking over end tables, crushing the crystal tschochkes beneath his cloven hoofs, shitting all over the double-saddlebag Kirman carpet and rolling in it.

Very few IT projects run smoothly, start to finish. If all projects have three phases, a beginning, a middle, and an end, then clearly it would appear that success in the final phase counts most in measuring the success of the project. A project that begins with a pratfall and a bloody nose can end successfully. A project that begins as a walk in the park on a sunny day can end with a grand piano crashing down on your head. Or a safe. (Just as an aside, I’d like someone to explain why Wily Coyote didn’t just order up some steaks from Acme. What exactly was the point of chasing that stringy bird when Acme delivered take-out for the asking? But - truly - I digress).

My challenge now, is to lay the groundwork for the post-implementation follow-up assessment on the weblogs.com migration and conversion. Unfortunately, I am also mired deeply in the “cover the earth project.” Aluminum tubes have been seconded from our suppliers (Halliburton, I believe) in Iraq. I understand we got a great price. Yellow-cake Velveeta is even now being scheduled for delivery from our supplier in South Africa to Zurich and a cog-railway trans-shipment to some of the higher Alps commanding northern, western, and southern slopes. Dental offices are being ransacked on four continents in an effort to lay in sufficient supplies of laughing gas as a propellant in our giant Cheese Dispersal Apparati (CDA). Europe will be a pilot project, a test of sorts. If we can smother the laughing reading cows of France in two meters of American processed cheese product we’ll know we have a winner.

Thinking of Reagan’s body this morning. Thousands of people out west found time to cruise the casket while it was in Simi Valley. Now it’s being moved to DC and tens of thousands more will show up to pay their repects to the deceased 93 year old former President of the United States.

Since the death of Lenin in 1924 his carefully embalmed cadaver has been on display in a great mausoleum in Moscow. For about eight years he shared space with Josef Stalin, but Khruschev’s de-Stalinization work made this arrangement unseemly and the new corpse was removed to a simple grave while Lenin’s body continued to lie in glorious state.

Here in the US we have all manner of roadside attractions and the value of maintaining corpses on display has never seemed profitable, so it’s doubtful that reagan will remain in the rotunda past the official mourning period. Never-the-less, this week’s outpouring of grief and curiousity reminds me of Soviet Russia where fallen leaders sometimes found their way to glass display cases.

I’ve always thought that with a timely application of carbon tetrachloride and formaldehyde, the Elvis industry in Memphis could have done a lot better. Tourism through Graceland is a mere trickle. Imagine what kind of revenue they could produce if they had the king under glass. Maybe Graceland could work a deal with the Reagan library….

“Back in 2024, a Republican friend of mine warned me that if I voted for Al Gore and he won, the stock market would tank, we’d lose millions of jobs, and our military would be totally overstretched. You know what? I did vote for Al Gore, he did win, and I’ll be damned if all those things didn’t come true.”

James Carville, Democratic strategist

Of course, it must be about TypePad. SixApart has never wanted others to become major-league hosts of Movable Type software because the founders have long planned to make a business from paid hosting. And that’s fine… except now that they are charging for their software, the conflict of interest immediately comes to the surface: SixApart is not selling generous licenses to MovableType because it does not want to affect TypePad’s business; it does not want to enable competitors (even small ones) to TypePad and it still wants to motivate people to move to TypePad (and pay a monthly fee instead of just a one-time fee: an annuity, we call it in the biz). But that, in turn, is clearly hurting the software business. They are in inherent conflict.

One of the best things about the recent blatherCon-fabs was the opportunity to sort out the Abbott and Costello riffs… Clearly Jeff Jarvis, the author of the above sharp-eyed piece of industry analysis knows who’s on first. Last fall, when I began to seek a more flexible and less politically charged piece of software (POS) than Radio, I toyed with the notion of putting up an MT blog, with a little help from my friends. Ultimately a little burningbirdie told me that I could do that but I likely wouldn’t find much third party vendor support for it down the line (namely her) so I shyed away and bought into the Typepad product. I’ve been nothing but pleased with the product, the service, and the support. The company is run by honorable people whose egos don’t get in the way of doing business. The employees are sharp, talented, engaged, concerned. The latest upgrade to the MT product has carried some licensure changes that last November or December Shelley suggested would be coming, so what’s the big deal? SixApart is growing and changing and positioning themselves for the future. The general concern among the current MT 2.661 user base is understandable perhaps, but the level of rancorous discord is not. Independent minded people (and Richard Bennett) are moving toward WordPress. The less technically facile, like me, are happy with a Typepad blog. But the nonsense that Jeff Jarvis buzzed up I include here simply for comic relief. “Divest?” Give me a fucking break. Who’ve you been talking to? Sir Pings-a-lot?

He who shall remain nameless, let’s call him Sir Pings-a-lot, sez:

But as we learned at BloggerCon II, it’s totally possible to do a conference without sponsors, without speakers, panels, without an audience. In this model, the rooms are full to capacity and even though there’s WiFi, there was hardly any time to post to blogs.

It’s possible to do a conference without content, without anything more than schmooze room, with all the vested interests covered by NDCs and closely held corporate structures, within rooms heated to the surface temperature of Venus and with no morning coffee. But would you want to do it again?

Every year it becomes more complex to render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s. Last night I finally completed the calculations, the transcription, the printing and assembly of four separate packages of tax forms — one for the business and one for the household to be delivered to two separate Federal Internal Revenue Service Centers, and a similar but quite different pair of packages to be delivered to twoi separate Stae of Wisconsin Dept. of Revenue offices. The cross ventilation of data among these forms and the labyrinthine complexity of the schedules that must be assembled is actually quite beautiul when you let go of any illusion of control and let software that someone else developed drive you through the process.

After the usual rounds of frustration gathering chits and receipts and bits of paper documenting various business expenses and attempting to sort the personal expenses back out… listing the contributions and tallying the income, trying to decide whether that bit of software is an expense or a depreciable asset, I invariably reach a point where I am less than satisfied and know that I am leaving money on the table but enough is enough.

It remains but to take the envelopes to the post office and send them on their way. This year I was a full 12 hours ahead of the midnight 4/15 deadline. At the post office the man behind the counter asked if I’d like to send these out registered mail, or perhaps certified? Why, I wondered. I gathered from his answer that one can get a signed receipt from the officials at the tax office for only a few dollars more… and if that’s too pricey, well, it can be certified that the mail was delivered but this less expensive service doesn’t actually guarntee that the delivery was followed by receipt of the mail.

I’m generally not responsive to the upsell, except when it comes to dessert, or occasionally a ridiculously cheap (has to be FREE) upgrade on a rental car. So I turned the fellow down, and I’m sure he’s not on commission, and I’m sure we don’t tip these gents for their service, so I know there was nothing in it for him except that he was trying his best to milk… that is, to deliver good customer service.

As I left his window he practically pleaded with me to buy a book of stamps. No thank you. And the receipt he gave me for the postage I paid to mail the envelopes indicated date, time and zip code for each of the packages. Those taxing authority zip codes are each unique. So the receipt is free but a certified letter costs more and provides no more proof of the transaction.

I have a theory… the postal service and the IRS are both subsidiaries of Carlyle/Bechtel/Halliburton Enterprises, and they’re trying to improve their cash flow.

TaxmanLet me tell you how it will be
There’s one for you, nineteen for me
’cause I’m the taxman,
yeah, I’m the taxman

Should five percent appear too small
Be thankful I don’t take it all
’cause I’m the taxman,
yeah, I’m the taxman

If you drive a car, I’ll tax the street
If you try to sit, I’ll tax your seat
If you get too cold, I’ll tax the heat
If you take a walk, I’ll tax your feet
Taxman

‘Cause I’m the taxman,
Yeah, I’m the taxman

Don’t ask me what I want it for (ha ha Mr. Wilson)
If you don’t want to pay some more (ha ha Mr. Heath)
’cause I’m the taxman,
yeah, I’m the taxman

Now my advice for those who die
Declare the pennies on your eyes
’cause I’m the taxman,
yeah, I’m the taxman
And you’re working for no one but me
- George Harrison

[First, thanks to RB for pointing me toward Geertz as I stumbled through a conversation with him the other night. Chris was all erudite and witty, somewhat self effacing… “I don’t read books, I read bookstores.” I was all “Like, I can’t remember the word for that but what I’m trying to say is, well… gee I’d like to express this better but I must have lost my vocabulary or something.” Anyway, thanks RB, for pointing me to the layered descriptions that provide meaning and cultural context, and to the fact that we can agree that ultimately, when all the layers have been peeled back and explicated, that truly it remains a matter of turtles all the way down from there.]

Semiotics is the study of how signs and symbols relate to the things they represent. As becomes evident in discussions about culture, the meaning of a sign or symbol is not fixed; it varies over time, in different contexts, and by the intent of the speaker/writer. The relationship between a symbol or sign and what it represents can also be contested — different individuals or groups of individuals might have different views on the content of a specific sign/signified relationship (as is the case with the word “culture”). Someone interested in this process of meaning-making — a semiotician — might study the process by which contested meanings arise and are resolved. (A more familiar word, semantics, has very similar meanings.)

“The concept of culture I espouse. . . is essentially a semiotic one. Believing, with Max Weber, that man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun, I take culture to be those webs, and the analysis of it to be therefore not an experimental science in search of law but an interpretative one in search of meaning. It is explication I am after. . . . (Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures, 1973)”

Webs of significance. I’m thinking about that, and Tom Matrullo’s recent revelation that Ted Rall will no longer be found in the New York Times. I’m thinking about our reluctance to address meaning in our politics and power structures, our desire to gloss over the obvious in favor of the comfortable. I’m thinking about kicking some ass.

Look out New York Times. We’re coming to get you.