Change of Blogging Pace, Because Life Trumps Interweb…
Posted on Jun 8, 2008 11 Comments
I think it’s time to slow things down around here. I post everyday, mainly because I was the one that started Blog365, but also because I enjoy it. I have really enjoyed it and feel a sense of accomplishment since I have completed just over six months of daily posts. I guess what I have decided is that I have proven the point to myself and that I need to now focus on my purpose for posting. Sure, posting the funny viral stuff is fun and I tend to get a lot of hits on my site from that stuff, but what is that worth? Not much unless I get paid to post stuff I guess, and I don’t get paid for any of it, though I am sure that is no surprise. I could just as easily see it elsewhere, laugh, and move on.
I do write purposeful things on this site . Whether it be my own perspective on some tech topic or maybe something more personal, like losing weight. I pour myself into this in many ways. I guess for now though, I want the more purposeful and thoughtful kinds of things to be the only things that make it on my site. I am leaving the simple stuff, that has little to do with me, out of the equation and I will take that time and reinvest it back into my non-web life…
I have always viewed Kamen Lee Dot Com as potential a beginning of some kind. I have dreams of one day being a professional web presence. Whether it be tech in nature or some other kind of niche, I just always thought of my site as a starting point for that dream. At the moment I am finding that it has increased my ability and has helped me to improve my writing ability and style, but it has been taking up a lot of time. I feel the pressure, on a daily basis, to make a post about something and I am at the point that I generally abandon the way I want to post, for what I have time to post. In other words, Quantity has been reigning over Quality in most cases, not ALL, but most.
So what now?
We’ll see what happens. I guess I have come to the point where I end up asking myself what is all of this worth. What end result in life will be improved by me posting some goofy stuff on a virtual space? What else could I be doing with the time it takes to post that television blooper I saw on YouTube? I am starting to wonder where the use of the internet is complimentary to my life and where it is contradictory.
My wife and I are getting seriously close to getting involved in some kind of foster care program. Once that happens, the kid ball, so to speak, will be rolling and within a handful of years the phrases “fostering”, “adoption”, and “having our own” may ALL be a part of our evolving adult vocabulary. In that lens, I don’t see much room for Twittering, Blogging, or Otherwise unless it’s part of some kind of home based business.
So there it is, things are going to change and I am actually looking forward to relieving myself of the weight I placed on my own shoulders with the whole" “Blog all year” thing… Keep you RSS subscription and keep checking in, I am pretty sure I am not going away, I’m just changing gears to keep things moving in the right direction.
Oh, and just so everyone is clear on this. You can hire me to be a pro blogger of some kind. You would make my millennium…
Chris Pirillo WordPress Theme “WicketPixie”
Posted on Jun 7, 2008 2 Comments
I am pretty excited about this theme because it is way more than a new look for WordPress sites. Chris Pirillo just released it and unfortunately the theme and the associated plugin seems to not like my site, or test site for that matter. I fear it has something to do with my database setup with 1&1. We’ll see what I can figure out when I have more time.
A link to “WicketPixie” – If you want a copy of your very own. I think it will be worth the time to get it working.
For now, check out this screen cast Chris did.
Hit and Run Caught On Tape
Posted on Jun 6, 2008
Warning: Actual footage of event… not gory, but I wouldn’t show to my young kids if I had any…
This is a really sad thing to have captured on tape. Not because it was captured, but because it happened. This fellow was crossing the street when two cars came across the double yellow line to illegally pass another car. When they did, the second car hits the pedestrian and does not stop. They didn’t just “knick” the guy in the leg or anything. He went over the front right corner of the car. The driver most certainly noticed this…
Since the video has been released, there has been a lot of attention put in how the bystanders reacted, or didn’t react, depending on your view of the situation. I have seen some really nasty remarks about how poorly the bystanders dealt with the situation, some remarks were even racially fueled. The main criticism I have seen is that no one helped the man and instead stood around and watched.So here’s my thoughts…
Some follow up comments have confirmed that the MOST important action, calling the police, was done by at least four people within that first minute. So it’s not like everyone just stood and watched with no reaction whatsoever. The second reaction, to some, might have been to remove the victim from any more danger. This would have been a BAD idea, the guy was already in a bad way and he might have come out worse (dead) if someone, not knowing what they were doing, moved him. The first police car showed up within 1 minute of the incident, not a lot of time for anyone to grab hold of the situation and take control of it.
It’s not all good though… Not only did the offending car keep going, one stopped, probably looked, but instead of stopping traffic with their car, they pulled back into the traffic flow and went on their merry way. More cars passed the victim within that minute also. Seeing as the guy was in the middle of the street, I would think one of them would have thought to stop and hold traffic until things were more under control. The bystanders didn’t really take the wheel and stop traffic, which again, I would have thought someone would have at least attempted to stop traffic until the authorities arrived, but what this video doesn’t show is what each person was experiencing at that very moment. Sure, the dude on the scooter, doing a little circle to get a better view, was uncalled for and there was a report that someone took a picture with a camera phone and kept walking, but in general, the police were called and no one moved him. Would it have been better had someone stopped traffic? Yeah, but I would hardly pull out the racist card for not stopping traffic. Unfortunately there are some people that will never stop and help, only check it out and move on. It’s sad, but it’s not new, why do you think we all get stuck in traffic on the highway when there is even the slightest fender bender on the side of the road? Anyway, to those of you that scream outrage, be mad a the right people… namely the a-hole that hit the guy and didn’t stop. The rest of the people were caught in the moment of something terrible and some of them got the cops there within a minute.
The Price is Wrong
Posted on Jun 5, 2008 8 Comments
You have to feel at least a little bit bad for this lady. All of the excitement seems to have gotten her good…. Twice…
My National Arts Program Entries
Posted on Jun 4, 2008
The deadline is today, so it’s a last minute effort, but I decided to submit a couple of my pictures to the National Arts Program. I have no expectations to win anything, but the experience of entering, prepping, and showing some of my work is definitely a good thing. Just like my joining the Richmond Photography Meetup Group (Open to anyone), I hope this step also prompts me to continue shooting.
“Southern”
“Split Rail”
Funny Things About Richmond…
Posted on Jun 3, 2008 8 Comments
Richmond is an interesting place and probably like any city, town, or suburb, Richmond has it’s oddities, oopses, and embarrassing bits. Here’s a few…
- -Richmond, you are as Northernly Southern as you can get, wanna know how I know? I can get sweet tea at any Wendy’s in good old RVA. Know where I CAN’T get sweet tea? Most Wendy’s north of here. Go past Fredricksburg and unsweet tea is even hard to come by…
- Richmond, you are just south enough to get that thick Southern summer heat, yet north enough to get those freezing cold, windy winters. Worst of both worlds AND snow is generally sparse…
- Richmond, people seem to like the cobblestone streets, how about we make 64 and 295 into cobblestone, it would probably be better and prettier than the concrete, pavement, and pothole patchwork quilt that we have now…
- Richmond, the floodwall is a landmark of the city, but how about we keep it open to let the water out next time we get 14 inches of rain in mere hours… You can still close it when the river starts to fight back…
- Richmond, you may as well split the city into two and rename them both because South of the river and North of the river will never see eye to eye… They both think they are better… They are “River Border Elitists”…
- Richmond, keep trying with that “City Government” you have going on, you will get it right one of these days…
- Richmond, Do all neighborhoods have “things” they are known for? Like Northside being notorious for power loss and wet basements…
- Richmond, I am pretty sure there are still people saying, “What’s the deal with the Arthur Ashe statue?”
- Richmond, City Hall is still one of the worst places to go to in a car. 8 Parking spots just doesn’t cut it…
- Richmond, The coliseum still looks like a giant brown spaceship to me. Can’t we slap a shinny, futuristic coat of paint on that thing and make it a little bit less 1970’s spaceship like?
- Richmond, spotlights are cute and all, but the ones positioned at the gateway of our fair city from all points south of here are for a strip club… How awesome is that…?
- And Finally Richmond, it has been proven, your have some kind of magnetic force within your limits. How do I know? I have many friends that have moved away, vowing to NEVER return, and most of them live here currently. It’s been happening for years and it’s funny every time…
Inappropriate Innuendoes… Hahahahaha!
Posted on Jun 2, 2008 2 Comments
Leave it to the local newspaper to take a seemingly good deed and make it just down right filthy dirty… Way to go, that’s a big ole’ oops and it is very, very hilarious…
Net Neutrality and Me…
Posted on Jun 2, 2008 1 Comment
Take a look at this image… This is a “mockup”, if you will, for service offerings for internet service post net neutrality. The basics of net neutrality is that everyone should have equal access and equal right to the internet, as it is today. It has been suspected that the big shareholders of the internet infrastructure are working towards is a tiered internet service. If exaggerated, it might look like the image above. You would also have to add a business and enterprise level of service to this chart. Both of which would be significantly higher than the prices reflected above.
So here’s my take on this stuff. If you look at television as, quite possibly, the closest reference, the above structure would be about right and I am happy to admit that I am not a fan of over priced, over advertised television channels. I watch my fair share of television, but find the packages irritating and want so badly to be able to pay for a few a la carte channels that I like the most and leave the rest behind. That being said, a packaged internet service will never happen. It’s not possible. Why? Because the internet is a living breathing network of computers and code. How would I be able to buy a domain and start a new site with this kind of system? Would I have to submit my site to the providers, for a fee, to be listed and made available in one of the packages? That’s the most retard internet related thought I have ever had…
Here’s the deal, the difference that providers seem to be ignoring between television and internet service is this… Any average Joe can’t just register a channel and start broadcasting to it from home for everyone to see. But that same average Joe can do that on the internet. That’s how it was built, that’s how it runs today and if ANY legislation is ever passed that locks down the way things are done in an attempt to make things look like the above picture, the whole thing will collapse and we will have a veritable internet prohibition on our hands.
For me, as much as I love technology and the internet, I would never subscribe to something that looks like the above image. I am willing to bet most people are in this boat, which I why I hope our “pals” up in Washington are plugged in enough to make educated and wise decisions regarding this “issue”.
I would also like to point out that the people putting sensationalist images, like the one above, together is not really helping to properly “inform” the general public. Unfortunately I understand that scare tactics and sensationalism seems to be the only way to get the attention of people so used to seeing it daily on our news channels, but it is my opinion that sensationalism does a disservice to the actual cause. But that’s a whole separate topic to tackle at another time.
More than likely, if net neutrality is taken away and a layered or tiered internet access is introduced, it would be more of a favoritism system rather than a package based system. Meaning this, businesses and the elite would pay a premium for faster, more direct access. Home based systems would take a backseat to this access and for their dollar get second level service from providers. In a way, this is already how it works, but my speed of access is only based on my monthly service plan. My connection to YouTube has the same priority as a connection to YouTube from a fortune 500 connection. Without net neutrality, my connection would be held up, so to speak, to make more room for the much important corporate Joe trying to get his stupid animal videos fix.
It’s actually sad how low on the broadband totem pole the US is compared to many other countries. So what do ya say Washington, why don’t we dive a little deeper into the broadband race to get more speed and more access to more people and stop letting the almighty big business dollar try to run things…
Numbnuts – Spelling Bee Oops
Posted on Jun 1, 2008
Pretty funny oops during the recent spelling bee. Honestly, doesn’t it seem like they should consider not only the words themselves, but words that SOUND like the words they will be using…
Twitter… Oh Twitter
Posted on May 31, 2008 2 Comments
It’s really sad that I am so very used to these pictures. It’s cool for sites to go down once in a while… it happens. Especially when a site become very popular, very quickly, but wow, the drama continues and I wonder if they will ever be able to scale this system well enough to handle the load…
Will I and everyone be around long enough to find out is the real question… We shall find out eventually…
