Day: August 30, 2004

Ding dong, the witch is dead

Monday, August 30, 2004

The witch being TenEight.com. TenEight was a web site, forum, online apparel shop, and internet radio show I ran for law enforcement. It was up for 2 and a half years, had 300 or so users, and was dying out. No one had made a post in a month. Why? Well, any forum requires input from its operators to keep it going through the dry spells. I found I really didn’t have time to spend on that input and what time I spent I felt I could have used doing other things that are just as if not more important to me. So, away it went, with an abrupt jerk of the life-support plug. The webspace was transferred to a new domain, 5100bac.net, to house my web pages and my roommates’. I’m probably spending too much time as it is shuffling everything over and re-arranging it.

I’m on (wait, it’s after midnight) day 3 of my 4 days off. I managed to get the bulk of my weekend chores (clean the house, take care of the yard) done so I can spend the remainder on this site and on the throw-phone I’m supposed to build for work. What’s a throw-phone? It’s one of those closed-loop telephones that you can toss into a room where someone’s taken a hostage, so the negotiators can talk to the bad guy. Can’t be intercepted, controlled completely by the negotiator, and commercial models cost $2500 and up. I’ve been given $1000 in grant money to build one, and I’m wondering what I’ve gotten myself into. It’s a simple circuit, but there’s a long road from diagram to working model. It remains to be seen if I’ve wasted the grant money or not.

It’s my way or the highway, buddy!

Monday, August 30th, 2004

What happened to courtesy? Is it dead? Was it ever really alive?

By “courtesy” I mean treating the everyday people you come in contact with- the gas station attendant, the guy next to you on the bus, the woman in traffic ahead of you- with respect and politeness. I try to do this; I may not know you from Adam’s housecat, but if I pass you on the street I’m going to give you a little nod and if you stop me to ask directions, I’ll be as pleasant as possible. Where is it now? Why, when I stop someone to ask directions I get “How the hell should I know, buddy?” and when I pass someone on the street I get a snarl if anything at all? Surely it’s not my deoderant. Is it that people spend too much time wrapped up in their own concerns; to the point that their entire outlook is centered on what’s good for them and what they need? Anything else- like my need for directions- is secondary and impeding their achieving their own goals. And here I thought courtesy- and the larger derivative issue of being concerned with other things than your own skin- was part of what made society work. Someone wiser than I put it simply: Love is given, respect is earned, and courtesy is owed. One would think that the more crowded an area is, the more important courtesy would be; rudeness in a city where you’re literally rubbing shoulders with your fellow inhabitants would seem to be counter-productive. However, the opposite seems to be true: people in rural areas seem to be more polite than those in crowded cities.

Maybe this is why I’m anti-social at heart.