Recently in Personal Category

So, about a month and a half ago I changed jobs. This coincided with a slowdown in blogging?

Why? Through a combination of circumstances, I had a wonderful opportunity to write about tech policy for a living. "Real" journalism. Paper and Ink.

The catch? The people I work for insist on total transparency and objectivity when reporting the news. It's really difficult to have an interesting blog and still report news in that way. In fact, it's almost impossible, and I didn't want to risk crossing any lines. In addition, I had to learn (and am still learning, and will be for a long time) a new style of writing and thinking about how I present material. 

On the other hand, I have never been surrounded by a more talented, experienced, insightful and supportive group of people. I was a History of Science major. I have zero formal training in Journalism as a craft. None. Zilch. Yet, these people had enough faith to take a chance on me, just some guy with a blog, and I've been lucky enough to be able to work alongside some people who know way more about the industry and the craft than I do, even about subjects that I've been following forever, and are far better writers than I am to boot. Bottom line? I get to write about what I love, and I get to learn from people who are absolutely top notch. I couldn't be luckier or have better people around me.

In addition, when I started, I was given the go-ahead to continue with the project that Robert and I will be working on for the next few days.

So, I want to take a moment and thank the amazing people I have the distinct privilege to work with at Warren Communications News, publishers of Communications Daily, Consumer Electronics Daily, and my personal favorite:


I do a good bit of work for that one in particular.

But seriously, as much as Robert went out of his way to thank me and Julie, I need to extend an even bigger thank you to the entire team at WCN, especially owners Dan and Paul Warren, and Executive Editor Mike Feazel, for letting me take the time to finish this project that began in January, and for simply being such a tremendous group of people from whom I have learned a great deal in a short time.

You should take a look at WID's web page  and sign up for a trial. If you see me at PDF or around DC and ask me, I might even have a copy for you to read (if I have permission...we do have copyright laws, you know). Between all the blogs and sites and firehouse of tech news, the policy issues that Robert and I are looking to start an East-West coast dialog on are covered every day in those pages in a level of detail that I couldn't even approach when I was blogging every day. The people who put it together are phenomenal and I am grateful for the opportunity be a small cog in their machine.

I am lucky enough to have a job I love and be around amazing people every day, and their understanding and generosity is as important as anything else that has gone into planning the next few days.

 

So a few months ago, I talked to Robert Scoble about why today's Web 2.0 world doesn't "get" Washington. 463's Sean Garrett totally nailed it in a blog post a few months ago, too, right around when I went into Radio Silence (more on that below). Robert said he wanted to learn more about the issue, and we talked more about it at SXSW. He said he wanted to come check this place out for himself, and I was happy to oblige

Just checking in.This morning I awoke at 7:21am (that'd be Pacific, if anyone's wondering).  This is exactly 21 minutes later than I need to leave my apartment.I was out the door at 7:27 and pulling out and into traffic at 7:31.  My ass was at my desk exactly at 8:00, so I was not late.Of course, it would be a day when I will not be leaving the office to go home until 9:00pm that I have to skip a shower to make it in on time.  it will be 9:30 before I can take one.  I can already feel grossness growing upon me and may need to burn the clothes I'm wearing in an attempt to erase this sin from my permanent record.I know there are some people who can go a day or more (gasp!) without a shower.  I am not one of those people.  I can't even shower the night before and maintain a feeling of clean the next day.  Maybe there's something wrong with me.Right now what's wrong with me is that I haven't had a shower today.

Certain video games were totally unable to make me play them.  Specifically, the Resident Evil series. Before you contemplate finding a way to sic a Licker on me, lemme explain myself - then you'll sic a Tyrant on me instead, I'm sure. The fucking controls bugged the crap out of me.  I like fluid controls.  I enjoy it when pressing right on the stick turns me to the right and causes me to then walk or run in that direction.  I hate (with that thousand Suns passion) when "up" always moves your character forward and you have to stop, turn, and then proceed.  Now I know that this allows you to walk backwards, thus lessening the pussy-factor of your retreat by letting you fire potshots at your foe.  I still am not a fan.  There's always unused buttons.  One of those can't be "back-step" or whatever?  Huh? Silent Hill (I believe 3...where you're the girl and there's a mall involved) would let you change the control type from 2D (my back-stepping nemesis) and 3D (my fav, pinoneered by Mario64).  Very cool; you can do the manly-retreat with one style and the fast-turning 3D action when you need some finesse (like when you need to avoid a subway). Now you may be saying "Alex, you love Silent Hill!"  That would be a true statement. While the mechanics of Silent Hill and Res Evil always kept me from taking the controller I was a huge fan of backseat-  or co-playing the game. Keeping an eye out for ambush action and supplies, offering puzzle solutions and, especially with the S.H. games, confirming with the actual "pilot" that yes, that shit did just happen. It was a really cool experience, especially when there would be 3 or 4 of us doing this; we took a very solo game and turned it into a crazily enjoyable group activity.

I've been neck deep in an issue that I can't really discuss these days since it's still ongoing, but it deals heavily with a problem of people devoting years to a goal, only to have their future decided by bureaucracy and politics rather than results.  I know how Washington works. I've lived my entire life here, save for four years as an undergrad and a brief stint training out of a boat club in Philadelphia. I've seen Congress up close and personal, and I've seen how capricious regulatory agencies can be. People's hard work and effort can be destroyed by a single person's choice instead of being rewarded in a fair an open process. It doesn't matter if it's a liquor license, an election, a promotion, etc. Politics drives everything, especially when the people making the choices aren't affected by the result.  And people wonder why I'm so cynical.

I find that I see more and more in myself in Gregory House, Hugh Laurie's character on that TV show on Fox. I don't see this as a good thing. Trust me. Meanwhile I am procrastinating on a time-sensitive project and will write about something tech/hill related once I am done. I promise. 

I can't really start a new post with a "remember that time when..." or "when I wrote about XXX" because despite having played around with Blogger since Al3x and I took Web Design together back in high school, I haven't been writing consistantly and therefore I have no archive that I really wish to show anyone. That isn't to say, however, that I didn't ever write about stuff. * did anyone notice that I differentiated Al3x and Alex? I did that without even thinking. I mean, totally autopilot. Weird. Something however that I thought I had gotten over during my four years in the arctic frozen tundra Brett Favre land is time zone differences. My first semester I wrote some kind of screed for a class I can barely remember on daylight savings time, why it is stupid, and time zones, or more accurately why I can't stand them. They vex me so. Oh, how they vex me. 

 See, one of my recent side projects has been working on a collaborative written product with someone who exists in Mountain Time, two hours back. Meanwhile, there is the extremely strange saga of me doing an incalculable amount of unnervingly timely and easy catching up with Alex, a subject which I really should write about at some point since it's really starting to enlighten me on the true nature of people and life in general, but I will save that for another time when I can actually process rational thoughts and put them into words * wait a second, isn't that what I'm doing here? I guess not. that require a bit more contemplation than me just bitching about how tired I am. Oh, back to Time Zones. So, I live in Eastern Time. I went to school in Central (-1) and many of my friends still live there. Not too bad. Now, add in trying to coordinate calls and drafts on a rather important piece of writing with someone in Mountain (-2). Stir in having to do massive amounts of laundry and cleaning, and an uncanny ability to get caught up in conversations with someone in Pacific (-3) that revolve around the obscurest of movie references and a still-slightly-disconcerting firehose of life that bears a strange resemblance to another person who you know in Eastern quite well, only far less depressing since the person in (-3) has managed to not be a total fuckup under considerably more trying circumstances, at least to the best of my knowledge. Ok anyway, TZ's are an entirely fictional creation based on the sun. Ships at sea keep their own time, either Greenwich time (GMT) or whatever is mandated by their function. Some large countries don't even have time zones (Soviet Russia and China come to mind). Maybe this isn't a bad idea. Dealing with such large swaths of time difference in an information-based society when our concepts of time zones go back to an industrial past (think DST) can be a problem. I'll tell you this much. Working on the MT project is going to take me through tonight into tomorrow, and if I actually write about what I want to write about once Congress gets back into the usual swing of things, I'll be writing for a Pacific TZ audience, living and working on an Eastern TZ schedule. I'm fucking exhausted. I'd better get used to it. Oh, yeah. And I still haven't done Registered Traveler yet. I might not. More on that later, maybe. * Stay tuned for why I hate Brett Favre.

When I was applying to colleges in 2001, Syracuse went out of their way to try and get me to go there. I was offered a scholarship (small) and they even sent me a book by one of their professors, some collection of native american poetry or something. So, fast forward seven years to my law school application process. Again, I get in, and they send me a t-shirt with their acceptance letter. This is a tier 3 law school. You would think they have more pressing things to do with their money than send prospective students clothing. Accepted so far: Catholic Syracuse Baltimore

A very brief conversation at work made me realize just how little of the actual D&D mechanics I remember.  In fact, I didn't really know the vast majority of the mechanics beyond feeling that the way armor worked was retarded.  You remember this from 2nd Edition; Armor ups your AC (Armor Class for those who aren't big ol' nerds) which makes you harder to hit. I mean, granted, it has the same impact on your HP (oh come on) in that it lessens your damage.  But by making you harder to hit? "Sweet! Thanks to my 200 pounds of armor I dodged that volley of arrows!" Now I'm not a mathematical kinda guy nor am I versed in medieval physiology and how it relates to athletic feats accomplished while wearing armor, but it doesn't really make a lot of sense to me. Even so, I still had a lot of fun playing.  For me, I don't think (Ok, I know this to be fact) that I was nearly as in to D&D as my friends but it was the one and only thing that we could all agree to do at the same time and place. So even if all I do is move the artillery around while some mathematically inclined fella with a penchant for playing against gender is teleporting onto giant birds' heads and making the big Minotaur useless in a fight it's safe to say it was a worthwhile use of an evening to get all my friends together and hanging out at the same time. And the pizza was good too.