Responsibility

Posted on December 26, 2012 by bluedepth

I took Scott to work this morning for Barnes & Noble’s after-Christmas doorbuster sale that starts today. I pulled in to my driveway and parked my 2007 Santa Fe and was fiddling around cleaning things up and I put a check that has Christmas money on it behind the visor. When I opened the visor everything that I had put there, mostly just coupons that were expired all came tumbling out and all over the place. No big thing, so I start picking up whats in the car and since I had the drivers door open some of the slips fell out onto the driveway. I got out of my car, bent over and started picking up the debris, as I’m not one for littering. I looked up and at a sharp angle back at my car and my eyes settled on the rear passenger window and the interior light was on, I noticed something out of place and opened the door and looked closer.

The ceiling mounted handle for passengers to enter and exit was pulled out on one side and hanging drunkenly askew. I looked all around it looking for damage, perhaps something pulled out of the frame or something else and all I saw was the screw that held it together lolling in it’s case as part of the handle. I opened the case with a fingernail and the screw shuffled out and onto the floor in the rear drivers passenger side. I went inside, searched high and low and found a serviceable phillips head screwdriver in the basement and went back outside. I reassembled the handle and screwed it back into the frame of my vehicle. I tightened it up and then went around to the other handles and tightened them up too. All in all, not a huge problem.

But what does bother me is that this happened to someone who I had in my car, a friend, and they didn’t report what happened to me so I could take care of it. I don’t know who used that handle, and I don’t know if it failed while they were using it or if they used it and then it just jostled apart, but those sort of things don’t just happen on their own. Ceiling mounted handles like that just don’t shimmy until they run out their screws and just fall on the floor. What bothers me is that nobody noticed and nobody thought to draw my attention to a problem with my car, just use it and if it’s broken, ignore it – that way maybe they thought to escape responsibility for their actions? How do I know? It’s not like I would have dragged them to a repair place and made them pay for damaging my car – it was just a screw, easy fix. It’s not really the severity of the damage either that upsets me, it’s that nobody took responsibility for it when it happened.

I can’t assign blame and perhaps the person who broke it doesn’t know they broke it, therefore nobody is to blame. It does strike me that people in general are rather unobservant at least, if a handle seems jiggly or shaky perhaps you should tell the owner that there might be a problem coming down the pike? Car handles, especially those ceiling mounted ones are supposed to be firmly affixed to their assemblies. Perhaps I ask too much of people to notice such things.

As it is, there are new rules for being a passenger in my car. I value my car and I’m still making payments on the vehicle, so since people won’t grace me with responsibility or even basic observational reports I will have to insist that all use of the ceiling handles be forthwith out of bounds. You will have to enter and exit my vehicle without them and if you can’t do that, then you should find some other vehicle to use. My car is important to me as is it’s value and it not being broken. I also will be making regular inspections now to ensure that my vehicle is respected by those that I transport with it, because nobody is observant enough or respects me enough to let me know when things are falling apart.

It’s a sad statement that I have to do this, but this isn’t the only mystery damage I’ve had to deal with either. Someone or something put a foot-sized hole in the drywall in the upstairs and never thought to even mention it until I discovered it later on. That was fixed many moons ago, but either I’m plagued with an occasional poltergeist who is out to mildly irritate me or I have someone in my midst who lacks the basic respect and responsibility of being an adult. One of those is more likely than the other. Since I don’t know who did what, I can’t address this open letter to anyone in particular. Know that I find your lack of respect, responsibility, and observation to be cowardly and shameful. Don’t come forward and don’t take the blame for it now, but in the future, and for anything else you may accidentally damage, think upon these words and be an adult.

Chick-fil-a

Posted on August 2, 2012 by bluedepth

I wrote this as a Facebook comment, but I think it’s good enough to be elevated all the way to a blog post. I would welcome engagement on this subject, feel free to leave comments.

******

I actually have a vested interest in this entire kerfuffle surrounding Chick-Fil-a. The president of the company declared that they do not accept marriage equality for people like me. At first I only patronized Chick-fil-a because I was under the erroneous impression that their inequality towards people like me was rooted in their patriarch who was more than 80 years old and that his children would correct the company when he passed on. As it turns out, that is not the case.

At first Chick-Fil-a was guilty of basic inequality, a kind of mild bigotry. But over time more information was revealed about just how much Chick-fil-a hates people like me. They have donated money to organizations that have as their central purpose to deny marriage equality to LGBT individuals. There has also been some talk about how Chick-fil-a has donated money to support the Ugandan “Kill The Gays” bill, which supports the active murder and disposal of people like me. Driving past a restaurant that makes food where the management has demonstrated hatred and bigotry against me makes me upset.

The president of Chick-fil-a has stated erroneously that God, through the Bible, has decreed that people like me should not marry. He is unaware that his very church that he loves and believes in did indeed marry same-sex individuals from the beginning until 1250AD. Just because the church changed their tune does not mean God has. It would be more accurate for Dan Cathy to describe his position as “We chose to hate gay people and we chose to be bigoted.” Because that is what he has done. For 1250 years God, through his Church has sanctified relationships like mine. Just because you are ignorant of the history of your faith does not mean you are innocent of being a mean vicious bigot. It just means your ignorant.

In the end, what does it mean to not go to Chick-fil-a? It means that your money, or the instruments that hold value, even coupons for “free” food, which just shift the value from currency to your patronage, end up benefiting these people who have actively chosen to be ignorant bigots bent on demonstrating their hatred for their fellow man. They pose as Christians and I question this assertion. Jesus Christ, the man the Christians claim to follow had absolutely NOTHING AT ALL to say about people like me. His teachings were centered on love, forgiveness, and how one could eliminate suffering through following the path he taught. I am unable to successfully connect the actions of Chick-fil-a, a noted Christian company with the teachings of their Messiah, Jesus Christ. I do not see the love, I do not see the forgiveness, and I do not see any elimination of suffering. They uphold the banner of inequality and in the case of Uganda, state-sanctioned murder of people like me.

I am not like the rest of you. I am less of a person than the rest of you. I am not able to get married, despite being in a loving relationship for 15 years. I am beset by Christians who hate me despite their Messiah only preaching love. I am afraid for my life, I am afraid for my rights, and I am afraid that the inequality demonstrated to me means that those that treat this entire conversation so cavalierly do not really respect me or understand just how important equality is.

As I have said to many Christians before when they exhort that Jesus only wants to love me: I don’t want love. I want equality.

And I don’t want Chick-fil-a. I don’t want to support hate. I am sad that others do. But there is nothing I can do, there is nothing I will do, other than write these words. Do as ye will. Pray it doesn’t harm someone you love.

Hopping on the Wagon

Posted on July 25, 2012 by bluedepth

Comic Books. I was quite a fan of them before Mr. Johns sucker-punched me with the travesty of Brightest Day and then pushed me off the train completely with the New 52. That all being said, and in an effort to forgive some of that transgression I’ve decided to tentatively start buying comics again.

I’ve been not-reading for a very long while, despite it being very easy for me to start reading again since my Local Comic Book Store is actually in my basement, it’s all the comics that Scott has collected as he never fell off the wagon. No point in buying comics again!

Except, there is a reason to buy them again. And now we get to my three classes that I’m approaching comic books with. There are three, named, One, Two, and Three. What they mean has everything to do with how much I enjoy the books and my feelings on “rewarding” the comic book company with sales they wouldn’t have otherwise with my discretionary money.

Class Three – Comic Books I’m going to buy in digital format and catch up with. These books are my most favorite and I want to vote-with-sales the writers and artists attached to these books:

Green Lantern
Flash
Nightwing
Green Lantern: New Guardians
Green Lantern Corps
Red Hood and the Outlaws
Teen Titans
Atomic Robo

Class Two – Comic books that I want to read, but I don’t feel I want to pour money into. Since we already have these books on the premises I am going to read them. Is that theft? Reading another persons comic books? Technically I suppose if you wanted to be a huge anal dick about it you’d insist that selling a comic book has nothing to do with the paper and everything to do with the license to access the media and that license is expressly designed just for one person and not more than one person. So is reading a comic book I dig out of a white-box in my basement, theft? If so, all I really need to know is from the comic book companies, if this bothers you, please tell me and I will ignore these books below:

Superboy
Journey into Mystery
Unwritten
Wolverine and the X-Men
AvX
Extreme X-Men
Blue Beetle
Batman
Detective Comics
Batman and Robin
Amazing Spider-Man
X-Factor
Avengers Academy
Captain Marvel
Ravagers

Class One – These are books I used to have but no longer want to read. Thankfully the ones on this list I haven’t bought in a long while and DC has actually come along and nailed them off for me. There aren’t any comics on this list.

Just in case people get really worked up about their favorite comic ending up on the Two list or the One list, know that if a comic really does well and touches me, that these are classes, not castes. I will always be open to pushing comics from One to Three or Two to Three. Just the same as comics from Three to Two or Three to One. Although it’s really quite something to ever leave Three, just so we are all on the same page.

Now it’s time for me to set up my order with Comixology. Still wishing they had a subscription model, but that’s an argument best left for another time.

Wine Tasting

Posted on July 14, 2012 by bluedepth

I took this weekend, and extended it to include Friday and Monday and we’re spending it up in Traverse City, MI exploring the wine trail in the northern region of the lower peninsula again. We’ve explored this region before and have gotten to know many of the wineries and vintners in this area.

Yesterday we dove in and visited four wineries:

Blackstar Farms
Bowers Harbor Vineyard
Chateau Grand Traverse
Chateau Chantal

My experience in the first two was exemplary, the last two were abysmal. Now as to the why behind my experiences it comes down to how the tasting rooms were organized and run. Blackstar Farms conducted a very congenial tasting room and I quite enjoyed my visit. The pace was self-led and it provided me sufficient time to write in my wine journal. The tastings here were free because we had retained the wine glasses we purchased the last time we visited. As for Bowers Harbor, this was a new experience for me, being happily surprised because the last time I was there I was so put out that I vowed I would never return to that winery again. The last time I was at Bowers, the tasting room manager didn’t listen to anything I said and just poured whatever they felt like pouring. Uh, no good. But this time? So much better! The new tasting room employee was wonderful. She was engaging and didn’t put pressure on us and listened to the wine order that I wanted and the wines I wanted to taste.

So, what about the last two?

Chateau Grand Traverse was very beautiful. It had a lot of curb appeal and a very impressive name. Big bold lettering, the stuff that marketing directors purr over. Once we got inside I noticed several things that were troubling from the get go. The wine tasting area was spooned up against their gift shop, which was top-to-bottom stacked with everything from snacks and dip-powders to books on wine. Very elaborate however rather distracting. Then as we approached the wine tasting bar a fellow greeted us (we won’t share names to protect the guilty) and immediately set the pace. The pace was best described as ‘breakneck clockwork’ as once we were settled and given a guide and a pencil we were under pressure to select six wines. The fellow behind the bar was one of a team and it became very clear that they had a script and a schtick to work from and they were playing it back to us. They might as well have been robots. The same jokes, the same affable smalltalk, over and over and over. There wasn’t even any attempt to mix it up even once, the script was that one-dimensional. The pace at Chateau Grand Traverse was a mad dash to the end. Just as you had swallowed the taste you had, Mr. Helpful was in your face making comments and analysis which trampled over the thoughts you were trying to form of the wine you just tasted. Wine is supposed to be savored and enjoyed, not chugged like cheap college beer. Our progression along the six free tastings was so rushed and harried that I gave up writing in my wine journal. What’s worse? They saw that I was writing yet cared not a jot that I may have preferred a slower approach. It was this that set me on edge, and so I decided that four tastes in that I was done. I was going to stop writing and stop thinking about Chateau Grand Traverse and after being told several times that “Number 14 is our BEST SELLING WINE!!!” I concluded that Chateau Grand Traverse was not, and never will again, get any of my money. Yes, their sweet Riesling was sweet, but it was also flat and dull. I could have mixed a simple syrup with grape juice and made something similar. So, whatever! After that I endured even more protestations from the staff that “Number 14 is our BEST SELLING WINE!!!” — Yeah! We got it! We aren’t buying it! And then our guide for the wine tasting just disappeared. He was replaced by another person, a woman who started us off on the same script and schtick all over again. If Chateau Grand Traverse was in the Twilight Zone, that would have done a lot to explain their dysfunction! Alas, I left Chateau Grand Traverse with the express desire to escape. Also I was filled with the urge to punish that winery for its rank obnoxiousness and rude behaviors, but instead of raising a stink I just left. I don’t want to go back. Yes, I was going to buy a bottle of their Chardonnay, but their staff made damn sure that wasn’t going to happen and thinking back upon it, it will never happen. In fact, if we do TC again, they will join the few other damned wineries we have abandoned. If we go, I won’t enter that establishment again. And yes, it was that bad.

As for Chateau Chantal, the wine tasting was okay, it didn’t suffer the same problems that Chateau Grand Traverse had, however their system for tasting wines wasn’t very conducive to a good tasting and this is because they categorize their wines by small black rhombus symbols, one symbol is for wines that you can taste for free and two are wines you have to pay to taste. You get three rhombus symbols, so three free tastes. You can’t taste-for-free their more expensive wines and those are all marketed as “Reserve” or “Select”. What can you taste? Basic wines that would have been good to drink out of boredom. The scores never broke 75 out of 100. So I tried three wines, all not very good, and at the end I didn’t taste anything that made me think that the “Reserve” or “Select” bottles were worth even looking at. If you are going to set a tasting fee, fine, but it’s far better, in a marketing sense to give your customers a sense of liberty by charging them some basic fee and letting them taste a handful of wines. If you want to make your customers really happy, set the fee to be the wine glass, then brand it and sell it that way, that way your customers are getting some small bit from you that they remember at home and they are more apt to try different wines. Paying discretely to taste “special” wines isn’t the way to go.

So, here’s a guide in a nutshell for what I think, from a customer’s point of view a wine tasting room should have:

The Wine Bar should be a centralized island or clustered along one side of the presentation space.
The staff should be friendly, scriptless, and be sensitive to the various approaches some people may wish to follow. The best way to assess how much interaction is important is to start with basic questions and ask the customers what wines they like the most. If the customer doesn’t know then you can ramp up your involvement and be more of a guide. If the customer does know, then proceed slower. If you notice the customer has paper, a book, or a journal, then slow the hell down. If a customer is writing about your wine, then that customer knows their palate and input from you should be limited to statistics of winemaking such as chapthalization, brix ratios, methods, and just one or two key points that are special to notice about what they are about to taste.
Tastings should ideally be with a small fee, between one to five dollars and if that’s the design then some token should be sold, a coaster, a wine glass, a wine charm, something. The best fee would be charged and then waived if the customer purchases a bottle of wine. That fact should only be revealed to the customer if they actually buy a bottle. Do not lead with “If you want to taste there is a fee, if you buy, we waive the fee.” Make the waiving of the fee a surprise to your customers. That will ensure repeat business, which is what you should really be after. One purchase does not a true customer make, repeat visits and repeat customers are the key. In a way, you should want to turn a customer into a fan. That’s where your value is!
Let your wine speak for itself. Do not let the tasting guide be a chatterbox. If the people coming to taste want a chatterbox, let them lead the guide forward, don’t start there!

I’m sure I’ll come up with more of these rules, so I may come back to this post and add to it, but these are some of the core things that wineries really should take seriously. It’s not enough to simply push bottles out the door, you have to engage with your customers and turn them into fanatics. The best way is with good wine, convivial and conservative wine tasting guidance and cultivate an air of happy engagement. If a customer feels welcome, feels like they are getting some basic respect and the wine is worth it, then they will no longer be simply customers, they will be fanatics.

Here’s a little example for you all, there is a winery in this region called Bel Lago. We walked in as new customers the first time we visited the region and now we are Bel Lago fanatics. We walk in and we pluck bottles off the shelf even before we arrive at the tasting bar because we know what we like and Bel Lago followed the basic rules and converted us from simple customers to fanatics. If you want to see how to run your wine tastings, visit Bel Lago. Feel the atmosphere and the environment there and learn from it. That is, if you want to sell wine and be successful. If not, then go to Chateau Grand Traverse and wind up their staff before their thinking parts run down.

Publicize!

Posted on June 8, 2012 by bluedepth

WordPress just released the ability for me to publicize my blog posts on Tumblr, so this post should end up being linked to Twitter, Facebook, and now Tumblr.

As I do almost all of my blogging on WordPress, this is a good thing. I notice that the different services shine all a little differently. I don’t get any replies on Twitter about my posts, Facebook may earn a comment or a Like, and since I manually haul out to G+, that is its own ball of wax.

Speaking of G+, one thing I have noticed is that people get very bent out of shape when I post a password protected WordPress post to that service, way more than any other service by far. I think it’s because people have taken the art of engagement very seriously over in G+, since it’s not really going to unseat Facebook when it comes to uniq’s. People just don’t seem to understand why, at least on G+, what hides behind those protected posts. I protect them because I have to prevent a certain audience from gaining access to what I write in those posts. There are some people I just can’t trust with ‘the whole truth and nothing but the truth’ so I have to make the posts protected after a fashion. It’s something I never expected that I would have to blog about, but if I do, then the people who throw fits hopefully will read it and understand that their concern is misplaced. The protected posts really aren’t that interesting for regular folken, they are written for a different audience. Close friends and family pretty much, so not being able to see the protected posts really shouldn’t upset you – you aren’t missing anything.

So, it’ll be interesting to see what comes of this whole sharing to Tumblr thing. Frankly my tumblr doesn’t get much traffic or followers. We’ll see.

And for those who continue to read the tripe that I write, I thank you. I promise poor quality and rambling on in the future. Gotta keep up my standards. 🙂

Throw It Back

Posted on June 2, 2012 by bluedepth

I used to fret and worry about my relationship with alcohol. What did it mean? Is the drinking itself bad or is it the reason behind the drinking the really bad part? Maybe it was a combination of both. Next month I’ll turn 37 years old and quickly plowing myself into my 40’s. So what preciousness is to save that I’m holding onto?

Americans have a really funny way of dealing with alcohol. We used to love it, then we hated it, then we prohibited it completely and all the while our relationship and use of the substance has not changed. I notice this a lot when I go to purchase alcohol from shops, especially here in Michigan. People are so, I suppose the emotion they must feel is embarrassment, because the shops all reflexively wrap bottles of alcohol in brown paper wrappers. Like it’s shameful or embarrassing to be seen in polite society with a bottle of Jack Daniels, Jamesons, or Captain Morgan. Wine never really got the sharp end of the stick, and neither really did beer. Both of those spirits are too weak to be of mention. You’ll go to the bathroom a lot before you’ll feel much in the way of an effect from those particular drinks. It’s the harder liquors that surprise me. First off, Michigan rigidly controls the price of spirits right down to what retailers are allowed to sell the spirits for. It doesn’t matter who sells what, they all get their prices out of this dog-eared pale-blue booklet that the state hands them. I sometimes wonder why the state of Michigan thinks it’s the sole arbiter of the price and availability of spirits in their state borders? As if they could control their citizenry with laws. Hah. But there it is, artificial price fixing for no good reason. A 750ml bottle of Jameson’s Whiskey is $25 in Michigan and $17 in Illinois. The only reason I’d buy liquor in Michigan is out of laziness.

And as it turns out, my favorite liquors are Jamesons, what a shocker, and as funny as it seems, the low-brow rums, Bacardi’s Oakheart and Newfoundland’s Screech. I don’t really care for the specialty long-aged rums and apparently I prefer just the english-speaking rums of the world, as the rest aren’t very much to my liking. But really where it’s at is my relationship to a bottle of Jamesons.

What is my relationship to alcohol? I drink liberally and I become intoxicated and I enjoy myself. I do not make a mess of myself by drinking beyond my personal limit, nor do I operate any machinery while under the influence. That last bit is a lie, of course, as machinery includes my iPhone and my computer, so a few bouts of drunk twittering won’t send me to jail. I’ve never operated a motor vehicle, and almost always I’m the designated driver because, well, lets face it, I have control and money issues. So back to drinking. It’s a joy. It brings warmth and happiness into my life. Not that my life was bereft of warmth and happiness before, but while intoxicated it makes many things feel better. Many things are easier to cope with. I wear my emotions on my sleeve and I share my feelings, some would say, too readily. There was a humorous picture of a boy stating what I often times find myself thinking, especially sober, and that is “We’re all thinking it, I just said it.” So we get down to the reasons why I drink.

I like to drink because it feels good. I like to drink because it tastes good. Wine is principally what I’m getting at, as there is a universe of delicious flavors in wine and more people should go exploring to see what they like. Beer? When I was a kid and very sensitive to bitters, beer was awful. As I age however, beer has become like water. It’s a drink with food, it makes you belch, and makes you have to see a man about a horse quite often. In many ways, beer and wine are somewhat okay ways to replace water, especially if you question the quality of water. I personally have never felt that the water where I live is good for me. Now, before people get really worked up, the gentle reader should be aware that I was raised on the worlds best water. The city supply of Syracuse, New York. That water is drawn from Skaneateles Lake and is some of the best tasting water on the planet. I am sorry that more people don’t understand just how wonderful it is to walk up to the tap in your house, turn it on and be able to drink what comes out without even a single iota of worry, and enjoying the taste, which is the way water should taste. It should not taste like a chlorinated fish bowl. So the water is a big reason for the more simpler spirits. But that doesn’t touch on the stronger ones. Here again I like the taste, or perhaps, in the case of Jamesons, I’m genetically predisposed to enjoy the taste, I do sometimes wonder about that. I also enjoy the feeling it gives me, and then, and what everyone really wants to know, is the social aspects to my alcoholism.

I drink because Hell is other people. This is very general and expansive and it’s not really meant to hurt others feelings, but lets face it, unless I’m in love with you or we are exceptionally close, Sartre’s statement about Hell being other people eventually finds it’s mark. I can endure a lot of things from people, especially when I have no other choice. I can be whatever I need to be to endure the situation. That’s the blessing that comes with a monumentally strong sense of self-monitoring. In work meetings I can be calm and reserved and measured, that sort of thing. Generally however I can’t stand humanity. In all the ways we are unique and special and loving, that’s got nothing to do with it. It’s the baser things that bother me, the odd behaviors, the many varied ways we abuse each other and in many ways, so effortlessly and lets face it, callously. It can range from being a real prat to being incidentally and nebulously a horrible human being. So what comes of all these unpleasant feelings? Being exposed to people who chew too loudly, snort, wheeze, moan, whine, or in one way or another do whatever they can to be as awful to others as they can, where is there to go? Where can anyone go if they are trapped in that situation? I am forever thankful for alcohol. “Please pass the wine” is a far more pleasant thing to say than dragging out (or dragging up) the varied unpleasantnesses that surround some social situations. I find that it’s almost always more preferable to prepend potentially unpleasant social interactions with a precautionary buffer of alcohol in my system. If I am nursing a beer or a glass of wine, of throwing back shots of Jamesons, I can eventually reach a place where the things that upset me no longer really bother me, and in a way, alcohol makes everything better. So yes, I drink, at least as a partial reason, to cope with the people in my life. I am not going to point fingers at who makes me drink, that would just be courting disaster, but in a general sense, Hell is other people.

So to get back to the beginning, is it a problem? Should I be concerned? The answer is, I don’t give a damn. I’m not going to fret over what drinking means to me, I’m just going to enjoy my life and all the things in it and if I spend my time in a beer bottle or a bottle of Jamesons, then that’s where I want to be. For pleasure, for joy, for happiness, and to escape Hell, at least for a short while. Anything can be endured as long as there is a break to it, a stop, a discontinuity to horribleness. In many ways, alcohol is a blessing to endurance.

Abandoning Google Plus

Posted on April 12, 2012 by bluedepth

Yesterday I opened my Google Plus page and discovered to my surprise and initial pleasure that Google had brought a new interface to their social network system. As I started to explore this new interface I started to immediately notice that things had changed not for the better, but rather for the worse. Google had unilaterally included their chat system on the right side of my browser window, it’s something I rarely ever use so that system is all wasted space. I noticed that the stories in my circles, the things I really care about are now shuffled off to the left in a column that lost 10% of space on the leftmost and 50% on the rightmost, being moved over for some controls at the very top of the page that now occupy this dreaded whitespace region on my Google Plus page.

It’s this whitespace, and the meaningless chat talker system that I can’t stand. Facebook attempted a similar move by presenting me with a chat-talker screen on the left side as well months ago, when I still used Facebook. When they made the changes to their interface, along with privacy concerns and workplace issues with social networking I left Facebook. Now it just languishes as an identity marker, if content gets on my Facebook page it’s wholly accidental. Twitter’s web page also underwent this columnar approach, as they reconfigured the entire interface out from underneath their users. For Twitter, I stopped using that because it was more noisy than useful, the people I wanted to engage with were just human billboards, and the interface changes were really the straw that broke the camel’s back.

So what is there to do? Complaints about the interface changes are really the only channel you have to express how much you dislike when a service does this to you – but you have no real power. Just complaining is one easily ignored tiny little voice in the darkness and doesn’t amount to anything at all. The only real power that any single user has is the power of choice. In the end, the only choice I have to make is, do I want to still use the system? It’s actually a matter of abandonment. I abandoned Facebook. I abandoned Twitter. Because they changed the interface and made it less useful to me, I am facing the idea of abandoning Google Plus. I don’t need these social network systems to give my life meaning. They need me, or rather, they need aggregate me’s, lots of people, to give what they do meaning. The less people use a socially networked system the less appealing that system is to everyone else. Facebook is only compelling because everyone uses it. There is no real value inherent in Facebook itself. This is a lesson that the classic business models these companies use can’t take into account – that their popularity defines their success. If they make a grossly unpopular change to the interface, then people will flee and their success will go tits up.

I don’t care to encourage other people to abandon these systems if they like them. Each of us has to make these kinds of decisions on a wholly personal level. I find it obnoxious that Google, and Facebook, and Twitter for that matter all force interface changes on users without giving the user any control whatsoever. It would be more elegant if there were a batch of controls we could select from and build our own interface. Put the bits and pieces where we want, opt out of things we don’t care for and make the interface work best for us, as the users. None of these sites have done that, they all behave as if they have global fiat to make changes willy-nilly. The end user who has to contend with these changes can’t do anything really except make that singular choice surrounding the issue of abandonment.

So where do I go now? It’s comic, but in many ways I am looking forward to going backwards. There is one system that I’ve used, mostly as a category but the people behind what I currently use I regard as being the platonic form of that category, and that is WordPress. Going back to blogging. What does the WordPress infrastructure have that attracts me? It’s got stable themes, the site looks very much like it always has. There are changes, but they aren’t as gross in scope as these other systems have perpetrated. I can share links on WordPress, I can write long posts, short status updates, and WordPress has a competent comment system already in place.

So I will give Google Plus until May 1st to do something better with their interface, to recognize the value in the stream and give us users the choice of what systems we want to see on our Google Plus page. Google should give us the ability to turn off the whitespace region, we should be able to turn off the chat talker region, so that we can maximize the stream region. If they fail to correct these glaring human interface deficits I will do to Google Plus what I did to Facebook. I will abandon Google Plus. I will keep the account running but I will no longer actively use it. Things that end up on Google Plus will end up being the same sort of things that end up washing up on Twitter, specifically links to content on my WordPress blog. Google’s loss will be WordPress’ gain. WordPress has always done right by me, and I respect them. I do not respect Twitter, nor do I respect Facebook. My respect for Google is quixotic at best. I used to believe in their “Do No Evil” company mantra, but that has been shed as Google has done some very evil acts, they aren’t what they once were and this sullying of their image makes the pending abandonment easy.

Will my abandonment hurt Google? No, of course not. I’m not so full of myself as to think that me leaving will change anything about the service, that Google will even notice my absence. However if I can inspire other people to give another look at WordPress, maybe see that progress forward can be achieved by regressing to earlier systems may be a worthy pursuit if what you get in the trade is interface stability. That this single raindrop encourages others to fall. The raindrop doesn’t believe it is responsible for the flood. I can only hope that I help the flood along. These massive changes that these social network sites perpetrate on their usership should be punished! We want it all, we want to use the service and we want to control it as well. We want the interface to be regular, logical, useful and static. When we want to make a change, we want to be the ones making it. We do not want to be victims of someones good intentions, Google! I would say this for Facebook as well, but that’s a lost cause.

So time is ticking away. If Google does not act, then the stream on that service is terminal. If that comes to pass, I will be migrating to my WordPress blog.

I hope to see some of you there.

LJ – The Taxman Cometh

Posted on February 3, 2012 by bluedepth

From 02/12/2003

Just polished off my taxes, Scott’s and Dan’s. Turns out I’ll be making quite the killing refund wise so I have decided to invest my money in three ways. One way is to completely disentangle myself from worrying over the fundage for our groups Gencon trip, second, to ferret cash away somewhere safe for an eventual trip to Wales (& Ireland, maybe), and the third bit I am not sure on just yet. A part of me wants to toss it at my credit debts, another part wants to have it broken into 5’s and 10’s and roll around in it like a horse with a bad back itch.

While putting some mileage on my Guncon2 controller for the PS/2 with my friend Dan from work we did taxes and chatted and I wondered why the feds don’t establish a monetary return (interest after all) on the withholding that I’ve been involuntarily paying via my employer, that would add a bit of flavoring to my 1040A for sure and be more fair to everyone.

Another thing I discovered tonight is that even though there are slight differences in withholding and such, I really got a taste for the poor getting poorer and the rich getting richer while doing everyones taxes – the divide between Scott, Dan, and My income tax returns shows me how unbalanced income tax is and it angers me how it is affecting my friends.

2011 Leelanau and Old Mission Peninsula Wine Explorations – The Wretched

Posted on February 2, 2012 by bluedepth

Finally here is the list of wines that we didn’t care for at all. I don’t know why and I can’t explain it and I’m not even going to try to cover this one with platitudes. These wines had something deeply wrong with them.

Peninsula Cellars 2007 Dry Reisling – dump it in a field.
Peninsula Cellars Old School White – dull.
Shady Lane Cellars 2009 Cabernet Franc / Merlot Rose – Watery and weak.
Douglas Valley Bunk House Red – Vinegar.
Chateau Chantal Naughty Red – Burning bakelite, repellent.
Brys Estate 2010 Pinot Grigio – Hot and Blunt, best sacrificed in an earthquake.
Brys Estate 2007 Signature Red – Dull and flabby.

I hate writing these criticisms and hurting the winemakers, but these were absolutely awful. C’est la vie.

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