Last Saturday morning my blog was down for the count.  I had received an email from Are My Sites Up stating that Creeva.com was down.   It told me that my blog went down late night on Friday.    I verified on Saturday that it was still down, and I had wanted to do some writing on it.  I waited.    I attempted to call tech support but after being the first caller inteh queu for over an hour I surrendered.  Saturday came and went and no blog.   Sunday morning site was still down.

I called into tech support again Sunday afternoon.   I was fifth in the queu and I was moving forward about 15 minutes at a time.  Either people ahead of me were getting help, or they were giving up like I did the day before.   I held on and finally managed to get through to a person.  Upon talking to the tech support I learned that my hosting server had moved.   Not only had it been moved, it was moved back in October.

I had known that they were going to move servers, but the e-mail announcing this stated that most people would not notice an changes.   What this says to me is that a new server will be put up with the same IP address with very little down time in the migration.    This however was not done, so all of my data was moved to a new server.    Since October I had been updating my information and blog on the old server.   When I managed to correct my DNS entries at my registrar, I discovered my blog was out of date since early November.   I was missing literally hundreds of articles once you take into account my lifestreaming posts that don’t make the front page or RSS feeds.   I was livid.

I called back and they stated they would get it synced back up off of the old server.   Ten hours later there was no change.     I waited until Monday when I knew there would be more then just support in the office.   Since I’m a reader of the Consumerist I followed on of their recommended ways of dealing with this is, I sent an executive e-mail carpret bomb here is what I wrote:

To Whom Can Help Me,

I have been a customer with AN Hosting (anhosting.com) a division of Midphase Hosting (midphase.com) since 12/24/07.   In October you were planning a server consolidation/migration plan (notice sent out is given below my e-mail (removed from blog article)) – which stated that some of our accounts would be migrated to new servers.   At that time I created an offline backup of my domain. Things went on working as they normally did until Friday night 1/16/09 7:15 PM.  At this time my site went offline.  This was verified by the service Are My Sites Up? (aremysitesup.com).   I was not aware and didn’t check my email to be informed about this until Saturday 1/17/09 early evening.   I called the support line and though I was the first customer in the queue I waited over an hour before I gave up.

On Sunday 1/18/09 I called in with my problem.  It seems my “free” domain was working properly – I don’t really use this site so I hadn’t checked it.   My add-on domains however were not working at all.   My main site which is an add-on site (creeva.com) was not working.   The technician stated that I had been moved to a new server and the old server was turned off, but my data should still be available.   My old server IP address was  [REDACTED], the new server you had migrated me to was  [REDACTED].   The technician on the phone stated that if anything was wrong with the site to call back and they could pull the back-ups off the old server.  I thanked the technician and got off the phone to start relocating my DNS and testing the site.

Before I migrated my DNS I adjusted the local host file on my computer to make sure everything was working on my main site.  Upon loading it and checking the entries it seems at the closest date I could pin down my latest blog entry was written at 11/10/07.   It’s hard to pin down since in October due to other concerns I had written and scheduled blog posts for most of the month of November and some going forward to early December.   The data may even be from October because I use these functions of wordpress.  I called back in to the support line and explained the issue and asked if I could get the backup loaded that he previously mentioned.

He opened a ticket for me and stated he would get this assigned.   In the ticket language he was vague – here is was he entered on my behalf:
Hi, I am having issues with my addon domain(creeva.com). My account was migrated
to another box. I am not able to view the latest version of my website, its
pointing back to November 10. I’ve been posting updates to my blog. Can you
please look into my account?

thank you

I’m not sure why it had to be opened under my name using the “I” reference – since the technician opened the ticket (ticket number  [REDACTED]).  I would think this is misleading to the technicians working on the case.   I checked out the language after I got the auto-email generated when the ticket is assigned to another technician.    I added the following entries after the auto reply to clarify the situation:
None of my add-on domains to my account are up to date – these have been
constantly updated through the last few months – yet under the current server
migration I was told I was migrated about 3 weeks ago.  So there would still
have been a discrepancy of a month during hte migration.

The migration letter stated that it would be seamless to the end user -
normally in most scenarios this would include making sure that the data was at
the latest possible and maintaining the same IP address – since I’m sure I am
not hte only customer that use another registrar.  If monitoring this was made
more apparent in the letter going out about the migration I’m sure this would
have saved the technical support some headaches.

I was finished some major changes on my add-on site creeva.com at about 4PM
1/16/09 – if a backup of the previous server ( [REDACTED]) can be found after
that time that would be terrific.  Is it Midphase’s policy to make backups
before taking a server offline?

Also wanted to ad – my blog at creeva.com may seem up to date more Nov. 10 – but
everything going through a publishing right now was written to publish at a
future (now past date) and the blog is catching up with it’s scheduled posts.
The current date of the latest post is not an accurate reflection of the latest
data from a back up – the bet I can ascertain the date was at least Nov. 10th
if not earlier.

A while later one of your technicians had checked on the issue and issued this reply:
Dear Brent,

We have investigated your issue. We could find that your account was migrated
from our old server  [REDACTED] to our brand new server  [REDACTED]. Please let me know if
you are using any ftp clients to upload the files. If so please use the details
that we have mentioned below to upload the files and update your website. Please
check the settings of your FTP client.

Server name : [REDACTED]
Server IP :  [REDACTED]
Username : [REDACTED]

We have also checked the blog site creeva.com and entered a post and the post
was successfully updated. We have attached 2 screenshots along with this mail
for your reference. Please check it.

Please let me know the exact issue regarding your subdomains. It seems that you
are uploading the new updates to our old server. So please use the above details
in your ftp client so as to upload the files to the new server.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Regards,
[REDACTED]
Technical Support Representative.
Hosting Services Inc.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Since he didn’t seem to understand what I was asking I reiterated my request – also notice in  [REDACTED]‘s reply that he gave me a third IP address that I should be using:
I need the data off of  [REDACTED] – which is where my add-on host was before
yesterday – I wasn’t using an FTP client – I was directly entering the data via
the wordpress interface – I checked my e-mail  logs and at no time was I alerted
there was going to be a server move where I would have had to adjusted the IP
address records of my add-on domains, if I had received that I would have been
more pro-active and migrated the DNS earlier.

The problem is I need the lastest information from Friday off of the
[REDACTED]  – one of the advantages on your home page is the fact that you
do nightly back-ups – so the backups should still be available.

I’m missing approxiamately 200 posts on my blog – affiliates update
information, theme updates – and that’s just for one add-on domain.  I also
find it odd that you give me the IP address  [REDACTED] – earlier tech
support gave me   [REDACTED] – which restored my access to the site  – I added
the IP address you gave me and added it to my hosts file locally before I
updated my registrar – I was hoping it would give me a more up-to date version
of my blog – it didn’t and just delivered me to a CGI page and the site doesn’t
load at all.

The problem is not access – and I can re-adjust my own FTP software – my
problem is data -freshness

Can I please get my data restored from the old server?

While you stated that during the migration – “In most cases, the migration is completely seamless. We have brought in a team of experienced migration experts to ensure this effort is handled with the best of care. If you should have a problem relating to your site, please do not hesitate to contact us: support@anhosting.com. We have a team standing by 24/7 to help out!”  I question the migration experts that performed this migration.  Currently at my place of employment we are performing similar actions with our infrastructure – and there was more customer outreach then you have given.   Since you know what are add-on domains are are your servers – any customer with a third party registrar should have been alerted by e-mail that their DNS records would have had to be adjusted.

Further action should have been done to sites on the old servers that were still getting traffic.  Since my site was receiving regular and steady traffic that should have been a tip off to action by your IT personnel that the customer should be alerted to adjust their DNS records.   This is all a failing on your team of migration “experts” by things that could easy have been prevented by a little due diligence on their part.

The biggest coincidence is that over hte last week I’ve been in discussion with someone to move over to your service.  I also had planned on migrating one of the non-profit organizations ove to your service next year to a VPS plan when their contract runs up.  Currently in good faith I can’t advise this to either of those accounts.   This disruption and loss of data is just not acceptable when it could have been easily prevented by checking what was going on the old server before you took it offline.

I am merely asking to have my backups from  [REDACTED] restored to my account.   Is this possible or do I have to make some other plans?  I am also sending the Consumer Advocacy blog “The Consumerist” (consumerist.com) a copy of this e-mail.   While the migration diligence seems to be in error you can still correct this problem and an unhappy customer by performing adequate customer service.   One of your features of An Hosting that is touted on your site is ” Backup Storage -Nothing is more shocking and heartbreaking than losing ones data and hard work. We back up our servers nightly to ensure you always have ANHosting to depend on!”  I am solely asking for my data to be restored as close to 4PM 1/16/09 as possible and my faith that I can “always have ANHosting to depend on!”

I sent this e-mail out to the American general manager of the company, the consumerist, the European Executives, and support.   I received an e-mail from the general manager and he got a technician working on the issue right away.   The issue was resolved in a couple hours.   They pulled my data off the old server and synced it to the new one.   There was still some minor issues that I had to correct – wordpress needed to be re-upgraded, but all my SQL databases were up to date.   They also kept me informed during the whole migration.

I really wish I could have had that level of care taken of me on Sunday, or at least a time frame when the data could have been restored.    When they try to equate a blog with a normal static website, it just shows ignorance on their part.   It does show the problem I have with doing regular back-ups – which is in the architecture stages right now.    The only thing I ask of my hosting provider is to live up to the promises they have given me.   I don’t open tickets – really I’ve talked to them only about 3 times in the last year.   The first being a simple problem I had while waiting for my account to activate, the second inquiring about the share SSL certs, and the third this issue.    I’m glad even though I “yelled” across the Internet more then I should have, that they came through and everything is now working.

Every once in a while I actually do one of the stupid chain letter things – this one seemed right up my alley – so let’s look at the results.  Further discussion at the end.

SUPPOSEDLY if you’ve seen over 85 films, you have no life. Mark the ones you’ve seen. There are 239 films on this list. Copy this list, go to your own facebook account, paste this as a note. Then, put x’s next to the films you’ve seen, add them up, change the header adding your number, and click post at the bottom. Have fun.

(x) Rocky Horror Picture Show
(x) Grease – own it
(x) Pirates of the Caribbean – own it
(x) Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Dead Man’s Chest – own it
(x) Boondock Saints
(x) Fight Club – own it
(x) Starsky and Hutch
(x) Neverending Story – own it
(x) Blazing Saddles
(x) Airplane
Total: 10

(x) The Princess Bride – own it
(x) Anchorman
(x) Napoleon Dynamite
(x) The Dark Crystal -  own it
(x ) Saw
(x) Saw II
(x) White Noise
(x) Vanilla Sky – own it
(x) Anger Management
(x) 50 First Dates -  own it
(x) Fletch
(x) Fletch Lives
Total so far: 22

(x) Scream -  own it
(x) Scream 2 – own it
(x) Scream 3
(x) Scary Movie
(x) Scary Movie 2  - own it
(x) Scary Movie 3
(x) Scary Movie 4
(x) American Pie
(x) American Pie 2
(x) American Wedding
(x) American Pie Band Camp
Total so far: 33

(x) Harry Potter 1 -  own it
(x) Harry Potter 2 -  own it
(x) Harry Potter 3 -  own it
(x) Harry Potter 4
(x) Top Gun -  own it
(x) Can’t Hardly Wait
(x) The Wedding Singer
() Little Black Book
(x) Happy Gilmore -  own it
(x) Mr. Magorum’s Emporium
Total so far: 42

(x) Finding Nemo
(x) Finding Neverland -  own it
(x) The Dark Knight
(x) The Grinch -  own it
(x) Monster Squad
(X) The Gate -  own it
(x) White Men Can’t Jump
(x) The Butterfly Effect
(X) Bubba HoTep -  own it
(X) I am Legend
(x) Money Train
Total so far: 53

(x) Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story
(x) National Lampoons Vacation
(x) National Lampoons European Vacation
(x) National Lampoons Christmas Vacation -  own it
(x) Caddyshack
(x) Caddyshack 2
(x) The Hudsucker Proxy
(x) Fast Times at Ridegmont High
(x) Clueless -  own it
() 9 Months
(x) Death to Smoochy
(x) The Sting
Total so far: 64

(x) SpaceBalls
(x) The Terminal
(x) Robin Hood: Men in Tights -  own it
(x) Forget Paris
(x) Dumb & Dumber
(x) Dumber & Dumberer
(x) Final Destination
(x) Final Destination 2
(x) Final Destination 3
(x) Halloween
(x) Pulp Fiction -  own it
(x) Dirty Dancing -  own it
(x) Eurotrip
(x) Roadtrip
Total so far: 78

(x) Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle
(x) Harold & Kumar: Escape From Guantanamo Bay
(x) That Thing You Do
(x) The Jerk
(x) From Hell – own it
(x) Hellboy
() 2 Girls and a Guy
(x) Rear Window
(x) The Whole Nine Yards -  own it
(x) The Whole Ten Yards -  own it
Total so far: 87

(x) The Day After Tomorrow
(x) Liar Liar
(x) War Games -  own it
(x) Ferris Bueller’s Day Off -  own it
(x) Ten Things I Hate About You
(x) Iron Man
(x) Gothika
(x) Howard The Duck-  own it
(x) Sixteen Candles
(x) Just One of The Guys
(x) Breakin’
() Breakin’ 2: Electric Bugaloo
(x) Ski Party
(x) The Mask -  own it
(x) Son Of The Mask
Total so far: 101

(x) Bad Boys
(x) Bad Boys 2
(x) Joy Ride
(x) Lucky Number Slevin
(x) Ocean’s Eleven
(x) Ocean’s Twelve
(x) Bourne Identity
(x) Bourne Supremecy
(x) Bourne Ultimatum
(x) Bedazzled
(x) Predator I – own it
(x) Predator II
() Kicking and Screaming
(x) Ice Age
(x) Ice Age 2: The Meltdown
(x) Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory -  own it
Total so far: 116

(x) Independence Day -  own it
(x) Casino
(x) Resevior Dogs
(x) Back to School
(x) Christine
(x) ET
(x) Children of the Corn
(x) Summer Rental
(x) Batteries not included – own it
(x) Catch and Release
(x) Rush Hour -  own it
(x) Rush Hour 2 -  own it
Total so far: 128

(x) The Crow -  own it
(x) How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days
(x) She’s All That
() Calendar Girls
(x) Sideways
(x) Mars Attacks
(x) Smokey and The Bandit -  own it
(x) Smokey and The Bandit 2 -  own it
(x) Wizard of Oz
(x) Forrest Gump – own it
(x) Big Trouble in Little China
(x) The Terminator – own it
(x) The Terminator 2-  own it
(x) The Terminator 3
Total so far: 141

(x) X-Men – own it
(x) X-2 -  own it
(x) X-Men: The Last Stand
(x) Spider-Man -  own it
(x) Spider-Man 2 – own it
(x) Tango and Cash
(x) Jeepers Creepers
(x) Jeepers Creepers 2
(x) Catch Me If You Can
(x) The Little Mermaid
(x) Freaky Friday
(x) American Psycho -  own it
(x) Jumper
(x) Cruel Intentions
(x) Cruel Intentions 2
(x) The Hot Chick
(x) Shrek
(x) Shrek 2
Total so far: 159

(x) Swimfan
(x) Miracle on 34th street
(x) Old School
() The Notebook
(x) K-Pax
() Little Big League
() A Walk to Remember
(x) Tropic Thunder
(x) Boogeyman
(x) The 40-year-old Virgin
Total so far: 166

(x) Lord of the Rings Fellowship of the Ring -  own it
(x) Lord of the Rings The Two Towers -  own it
(x) Lord of the Rings Return Of the King -  own it
(x) Raiders of the Lost Ark -  own it
(x) Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom -  own it
(x) Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade -  own it
Total so far: 172

(x) Baseketball
(x) Hostel
() Waiting for Guffman
(x) House of 1000 Corpses
(x) The Devil’s Rejects
(x) Elf
(x) The Big Lebowski
(x) Mothman Prophecies
(x) American History X
() Threesome
Total so Far: 180

() The Jacket
(x) Kung Fu Hustle
(x) Shaolin Soccer
(x) It -  own it
(x) Monsters Inc.
(x) Titanic -  own it
(x) Monty Python and the Holy Grail -  own it
(x) Shaun Of the Dead
(x) Hot Fuzz
Total so far: 188

() High Tension
(x) Club Dread
(x) Nick Fury : Agent of Shield
(x) Dawn Of the Dead
(x) Hook -  own it
(x) Chronicles Of Narnia: The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe
(x) 28 Days Later
(x) Orgazmo
(x) Super Troopers
(x) Waterworld
Total so far: 197

(x) Kill Bill vol 1
(x) Kill Bill vol 2
(x) Mortal Kombat
() Wolf Creek
(x) Suburban Commando
() Mr Nanny
() I Spit on Your Grave aka the Day of the Woman
() The Last House on the Left
() Re-Animator
(x) Army of Darkness -  own it
Total so far: 202

(x) Star Wars Ep. I The Phantom Menace -  own it
(x) Star Wars Ep. II Attack of the Clones -  own it
(x) Star Wars Ep. III Revenge of the Sith -  own it
(x) Star Wars Ep. IV A New Hope -  own it
(x) Star Wars Ep. V The Empire Strikes Back -  own it
(x) Star Wars Ep. VI Return of the Jedi -  own it
( x) Ewoks Caravan Of Courage -  own it
(x ) Ewoks The Battle For Endor -  own it
Total so far: 210

(x) Point Break -  own it
(x) Dogma
(x) Animatrix – -  own it
(x) Evil Dead -  own it
(x) Evil Dead 2 -  own it
(x) Team America: World Police
(x) Mallrats -  own it
(x) Silence of the Lambs -  own it
(x) Hannibal

Total 219

You see I already knew I had no life, so now you can see my movie choices – I think a bit of it is unfair since I’ve seen the original and remakes of a few movies on that list.  In that scenario should I count them twice.   I guess 219 out of 239 isn’t too bad, it’s also only the tip of the ice berg of what I’ve seen.   Heck tonight in the hotel room I’m in three movies have played so far while I’ve been catching up on blog articles.

]]> http://creeva.com/2009/01/13/stupid-facebook-chain-letter-ive-seen-a-bunch-of-movies-but-i-swear-i-have-a-life/feed/ 6 http://creeva.com/2009/01/12/youtube-getting-better-at-copyright-infringement-detection/ http://creeva.com/2009/01/12/youtube-getting-better-at-copyright-infringement-detection/#comments Mon, 12 Jan 2009 19:37:01 +0000 Creeva http://creeva.com/?p=3978

Image from here

I know I just gave a post on using creative commons based works, and about the problems of dealing with international public domain laws, but Youtube has cracked down on me.   Over the past few weeks I’ve been getting e-mails from youtube that say the following:

Subject: A copyright owner has claimed content in one of your videos

Video Disabled

A copyright owner has claimed it owns some or all of the audio content in your video [redacted]. The audio content identified in your video is [redacted]. We regret to inform you that your video has been blocked from playback due to a music rights issue.

Replace Your Audio with AudioSwap

Don’t worry, we have plenty of music available for your use. Please visit our AudioSwap library to learn how you can easily replace the audio in your video with any track from our growing library of fully licensed songs.

Other Options

If you think there’s been a mistake, or you have other questions, please visit the Copyright Notice page in your account.

Sincerely,
The YouTube Content Identification Team

Now in theory I could fight this, but I know I am in the wrong.  I had videos on my profile that did include copyrighted music.   For the most part they are not videos that I created, I was merely archiving them in a central location so people could find them.   All the videos that have been taken down are Machinima videos that were “filmed” in Star Wars Galaxies.  I can’t really take them up on the music swap suggestion, since the person that originally made the videos had a specific intent that went along with the chosen music.

This all goes into the idea of fair use and when is it ok to use something to create something else.   This argument is a bit out of scope for this post.   What I can say is all of these videos still exist online, archived in far off pages.   It is sad that they can’t be displayed to wider audiences since most of them do have true genius in their design.

I thought this apt to add before anyone thought I had a holier then thou attitude in anyway because of my recent conversations.   I knew the risks and issues involved with posting these pieces.   I never claimed any part of the work was mine, and the most important thing is – I knew where it stood in the grand scheme of things before I did it.   I’m not saying you will never run into a spot where you won’t ever use copyright material.   Just be aware of what you are doing if you do.

Image from here

I have a Palm T|X (well since my wife abandoned hers I have two).   I loved it.  It was useful.  It was helpful.   I even managed to get it online.   I moved on over to my Nokia N810 now though, and it does everything I used to use my TX for.   So does anyone have ideas on what I can do with the Palm without completely putting it out to pasture?

You ever notice that when you are on social networks that you seem to seek people out that you only have the most tentative of connections with.   I’m as bad as anyone.   I’m speaking of this after a true friend added me yesterday on Facebook.  It’s someone I messaged back and forth a few times with, and may mildly keep in touch with.   After that I went through my graduating class and added more people.  Some people I’m interested in from afar, some I’m interested in communicating with, some I have a passing interest in.   I also didn’t add a few that I wouldn’t be interested in, but I would friend them back if they connected to me.

I was thinking afterward though that just like high school, some of these bonds and connections are true and some of them just a passing fancy where no communication will ever really flow from one end to the other.   I see people that I know vaguely, I’m at least proper enough to stick with people I actually had classes or conversations with.   Some of these people only have friends that they went to high school with.  Some I may be the only one.

Looking at the sociological dynamics is very interesting.   Some people are extremely close with those they went to high school with.   I’m not, mostly since I’ve fallen out of touch with a lot of people.   Moving to Oregon also put a bit more space between me and the rest of the class, and even now I live about sixty miles away – though I play in the community band in that town.

Even the bullies, the preps, or the prima donnas from school, I wish them no ill will.  There was a moment in time I was worried about my standing in the social pecking order, but I think I left that behind when I was an underclassmen in high school.   I’m someone that cares about my immediate social circles and not those of memories of people over a decade old.   If they however wish to know me more in depth then my blog posts allow I’m happy to converse with them, maybe even have a coffee – but things won’t be like they were.  Because of that I don’t judge them by the way they are.

Time has changed most if not all of us.  I’m sure some of them all hang out with the same people from high school, get drunk every night with the same people they drank with when they were underage- but I hope the majority of them have moved from that.   That their dreams have been realized.   We have this spark of moment in time where we had a shared experience and it bounds us.   Not everyone is brave enough to face that moment in their lives, some people want to leave it behind them never to return back.   I’m sure those people I’ll never be able to reconnect with, the saddest part a couple of those were some of my best friends.

To the future and the past, we move forward solid in our own steps.   The echoes of the past follow behind us as we make our way into the unknown.

I never truly finished my “Month With Mom Series“, I was working on the novel for NANOWRIMO, and then came back and ran out of steam to finish the blog article series.  It’s take me over a month, but I wanted to address a couple comments.  The first came from my youngest sister who still lives with my mother and step-father:

Ok well im just going to say what I feel . About the part 2 and part 3 , I feel she should of never ever took him back . He is not a father and doesnt act like one. He does not bother talking to us all the time except for my yonger brother usually. And is mean to the pets . I dont even like him living in the house . And seems like he doenst even try at all . But I still dont get what she see’s in him. When he was in Columbus it was better without him . But thats all im gonna say .

She seems to have some of the same feeling that I do on the issue, at least when it comes to how my mother dealt with my step-father during their separation and the reconciliation.    So this is similar feelings coming form someone that is thirty-two and someone that lives in that household and is thirteen.   This is also her father, it might be my step-father, but it is her father and this is the treatment she feels that she gets.  Don’t forget that I had another sister pipe in on her feelings.  My own father has read my series, but thought it would be best to not leave public comments, I guess in some ways he is a wise man.

This next comment was left by Groovymarlin who runs her own blog, but I knew through playing SWG with.  This comment was left on part 20 of the series (also the final part I finished).

I’ve been reading these all along and I have to say they’re fascinating, though maybe not for the reasons that you think. I’ll just summarize my thoughts so far:

1. Your mom is obviously a very shallow person. It also sounds like she was a little too selfish and self-centered to be a very good mom.

2. On the other hand, you were all fed, clothed, received medical care, etc., etc, growing up yes? My point being – she may not be a very good mom, but there are much WORSE moms.

3. A lot of your complaints about her sound pretty nit-picky to a third party. I’m sure that to you, just about everything she does is annoying and obnoxious and irritating. But to an outsider, a lot of the things she does sound like…things that middle-aged women do. However…

4. Your opinion and view of her has obviously been colored by the truly negative things she HAS done in the past, and therefore every one of her transgressions is magnified to you.

5. Your mom seems to have a bad habit of using people, but remember: people allow themselves to be used. Your grandparents in particular seem to have no problem allowing her to manipulate them. Is it right? No. Are they adults, and capable of deciding for themselves whether to allow this? Yes (at least as far as we know – if at some point due to age or health they become unable to make these decisions on their own, then there would be a real problem).

I think in general you’re handling the mom situation the right way, which is to just let her do her own thing, as long as it’s not hurting you or your own family. I feel pretty bad about some of the things she said about, to, and in front of your sister. That passive-aggressive shit is not cool, not from anyone, and especially not from a mother. But what can you do about that, other than give your sister your emotional support and help her do her own thing as well? Nothing.

People suck, don’t they?

Ever since I read this comment I thought it would be a good blog post on it’s own for a reply instead of loosing it in the noise of comments that no one would ever read, just like my sister’s comment above.  Though she says I’m handling this the right way and can see where I am coming from I wanted to address a couple of the points.

Point number two stated because we were clothed, fed,  and had medical care that she couldn’t have been a terrible mom, there are crack addict mothers that can do the same.   When I was 16 I had a job where I pulled a muscle in my chest.   It kept going for a few days where I didn’t tell anyone that I was having trouble breathing.   Everytime I took a deep breath it physically hurt ot breath.  Not to the point where I couldn’t breath, but to the point where I thought something was wrong with my heart since it was in that vincinity.  Like eveyr male I ignored it as long as possible and finally mentioned to my mother.

My mother thought I was making it up and yelled at me for making her take me to the doctor.   Stating she didn’t have the money for it (my parents were divorced by then).   I think my grandparents ending up paying for it.   It turned out I didn’t have heart problems like i was afraid, but a pulled chest muscle like I said.   I had been hyper-ventilating for days, which means taking breaths faster and more shallow then you normally would.  I hadn;t noticed since it seems we are taught when you are hyperventilating you are gasping for air.   I was proscribed codeine for the pain, every once in awhile to this day the problem will creep back for a week or two and I just deal with it since pain medication is the only thing they can proscribe.   My siblings have had similar doctor experiences where my mother only reluctantly took them after we plead the case to my grandparents since my mom thought it was some sort of attention plea.

I never asked for medical attention from my mother.   Besides getting teeth pulled for braces the last major medical thing tha tI had done was in elementary school when I got chronic ear aches.   So this wasn’t a case of my mother always dragging me ot the doctor and me haivng nothing wrong with me, it was serious to me, I was in tears fearing the worst about my condition and thinking it was my heart.

A similar issue goes with the getting fed thing, my mother has always chosen not work.  Because of this she happily took advantage of the free lunch program for the local schools.  I can’t say that my sibling are still on it, yet for two years of my high school I was.   It seemed to her better to get her kids free lunches then to get a job.    She has worked the welfare system so she could go on buying things from the home shopping network and Longaberger baskets, but send her children into the free lunch program.  that is selfish and naive, and if she had been cutting back on other things maybe I would have more sympathy and understanding.

So did she keep clothed, fed, and medical care – only when it suited her, she didn’t have pay, it didn’t effect other people’s appearance of her, or she was forced.   I still wonder what school officials thought about me wearing hundred dollar tennis shoes (since she wanted us to look our best) while getting free lunchs.

Number three stated I was pointing out alot of nit picky things – I mentioned earlier that alot fo these were small things, things that eventually broke me and caused me to cut off all communication with her.    I don’t deny some of hte things were small, but it is also the small things that shape us.   The big things we overcome; my mother didn’t beat me, she was the person that cared about herself first and her children second.

Number four stated that I magnify the issues and focus them on myself.   I was the whipping boy, after me it the third in line, then the fourth (my brother second in line didn’t get the whipping boy treatment), now it’s my sister that’s fifth in line.  I can say what I felt was slights to me and things that I have a right to complain about.   If one day my siblings decide to tell their own stories alot of similarities will line up, since this is what they tell me “off the record”.   Eventually maybe I’ll get some of them to talk about their own experiences more.

I’m also however not going to deny that I’m writing about the things she did that annoyed me or set me off.   These feelings will seem stronger to me then outside forces.    Some of it is truly petty, but I needed material to write and I did leave some bigger things off the record for the moment, writing this piece reminded me of the doctor’s issue I mentioned.    I’m not saying I’m done with this series, but for the moment I’m done writing about it.   I may do some more pieces in the future, but it will be about the larger things she did when I have the time, energy, and motivation to write about them.

If your interested here are the links to the stories so far:

Read Part 1 Here

Read Part 2 Here

Read Part 3 Here

Read Part 4 Here

Read Part 5 Here

Read Part 6 Here

Read Part 7 Here

Read Part 8 Here

Read Part 9 Here

Read Part 10 Here

Read Part 11 here

Read Part 12 Here

Read Part 13 Here

Read Part 14 Here

Read Part 15 Here

Read Part 16 Here

Read Part 17 Here

Read Part 18 Here

Read Part 19 Here

Read Part 20 Here

The Internet with it’s promise of a revolution has succeeded in it’s goal of changing the landscape of information and how it is disseminated to the public at large.   We deal with issues that new media and remixing is causing in the areas of old copyright.   I’m one of those that bemoan the constant increasing of time before works enters into the public domain.   I would like to see more information enter into the public domain quicker and I think the creative commons idea is the future of copyright law, but this isn’t about that.   It’s about the loss of public domain works.

It is true that efforts are underway to save and collect media that exists in the public domain.   There are even people creating new work specifically for the public domain.   We have libraries of public domain works and sites that collect information form past websites.   Videos are being collected and maintained where the copyright slipped by and were not renewed in time.  These things are great.   However there are too many people that could care less about the public domain or the ideas that spings out of it.

Most of the time public domain media is considered old and out-dated.   People want things that are new and exciting.  They want constant progress with no respect for the ideas of come from,  and don’t what forge from which the ideas have be tempered.  This leads to a loss of ideas, stories, pictures and music.

I once had an argument with someone in my support for the public domain.   I pointed out all the music and stories that have been lost to the ravages of time and may never be recovered.   Their response was if it was popular it never would have been lost.   This statement is almost as asinine as stating that I have nothing to hide, so it’s a good idea to perform surveillance on everyone.   While the latter statement points to no respect to your own privacy, let alone others.  The former statement has no respect for what has been created.

While we can look at three hugely popular sites for public domain media, Project Gutenberg, Archive.org, and Wikipedia; these are all very niche sites that serve a particular purpose.   They each have a primary focus in what they want to maintain.  Since these are the big players in their directed niche they are considered one of the authoritative sources for the type of public domain media and information that is able to be retrieved from their site.   What about some of the niches that aren’t covered?

Project Gutenberg has a long standing history of salvaging books that have entered into the public domain.   They do a great service that literally takes hundreds of volunteers to take books form a print medium and convert it to digital text available to all.  They are known for their e-books, while they do have some other things that they try to maintain, this is what they are known for.   If you are looking for a book that is in the public domain chances are you will be directed to them first.

Archive.org on the other hand, while authoritative in some respects is the jack of all trades in the public domain sector.   You would use them for website history research using their way-back machine site, or you may check with them for public domain video or audio.   It is a haphazard gathering of people that seem to utilize the best of breed mentality, the problem with being the jack of all trades, is sometimes it’s a pain in the butt to use.   Archive.org’s usability is one of the worst of the mainstream big sites that I’ve used.  It’s hard to find exactly what you are looking for.

Then you have Wikipedia, which essentially the public domain research encyclopedia.   Yes, there are issues with it.  Sometimes you can’t trust.   Sometimes it can be edited.  With all these problems, it’s authoritative.  You can’t do a Google search on a subject most of the time without seeing a Wikipedia link on the front page.   People link to Wikipedia since it’s trusted and becomes the cumulative knowledge of humanity over time or does it – the question will be discussed in an upcoming blog article.

However there is plenty of other types of information and media that is not collected and adequately cataloged so it’s easy to use for a layman.   There are for-profit companies cataloging and maintaining repositories of public domain information, but these companies charge a fee for information that truly and legally wants to be free.   It’s just that no one cares enough to invest the time or money to create archives.   I’m not saying companies can’t make money from these ventures, but I think our higher institutions and governments should take first run at them until they are large enough to be spun out into it’s own non-profit organization.

What type of information am I talking about?

Legal Transcripts

Architectural Plans

Sheet Music

Video

Audio

Photographs

General Art

Etc, etc, – if it has been created it should be saved.

I will state of the big three mentioned above, some of those dabble in all of these things, but not to any appreciable level that exists outside of their primary focus.   Yes there are niche sites, this whole thing started out of looking for public domain sheet music.    No site is authoritative, they all have their own issues, and ironically enough they don’t normally have the same data the other site has.    There is no reason for this, scans are not proprietary or unique, nor do they count as a derivative work.

The other issue with this is global acceptance and resources.  Most of the collections of public domain works exists only within themselves.   There is a lot of cross work done by universities scanning the exact same item to be in their collection that another university has already scanned.     This is wasted man power since their is no authoritative repository to put this information into, or cross reference against.   So this leads to the popular stuff normally being at the front of the list and most likely to be duplicated again and again and again, while the more obscure things are left unread and unfound.

Archive.org, Wikipedia, and Gutenberg all of something else that these other niche sites do not have, global mirrors.  Being an American I could easily say the library of congress will eventually have everything public domain online.   The first part is if I actually made that statement it would be naive on my part.   The second thing is that it means other countries are counting on the United States to save the public domain data.   I’m sure we won’t put the same care to local translation and books, compared to American editions when it comes to preservation or public dissemination of the work.

I’m angry and annoyed.  I’ll be revisiting this topic, but hopefully this primer of where I am coming from is something for you to think about and comment on.

Migrating to WordPress 2.7 was quick and painless.  It was also the last time I will have to use the Instant Upgrade plugin that has made upgrades so easy in the past.   WordPress now has built in support for this functionality.   I’m not a fan of the color scheme though.  I used an administrator theme plugin in the past – currently it’s broken.

I did manage to remove about 5 plugins that were not needed any longer because wordpress added native support for the functions.  So far so good.

Recently I did a forum interview on the swg forums (thread is located here), I didn’t re-subscribe, I just visited the forums during SWG’s free month back special.   Here is the text of that interview:

-Forum Related-

Forum Name:

Brentgueth aka “Creeva”

Any particular reason or meaning behind your Forum Name?

I’ll let everyone figure out the obvious.

Is there any particular board on the Forums that you like/hate? Why?
The Intrepid board. Some people don’t realize that there is a lot of history here and back in the day it was quite fast moving. By the time you answered a post there would fifty new posts. It kept me active and made me a part of the community

Beyond that I hung out in the entertainer forum a lot since I believe the entertainer class is part of qhat makes SWG unique and special. I’m rabidly anti-afk it was SOE’s stance in not patrolling or punishing for AFK that was the straw that broke the camels back for me.

Any particular forum topic that you are fond of?

Anything community related or inspired.  The community is what made SWG and Intrepid great.  If it wasn’t for the community we had the game wouldn’t have lasted past six months.

Favorite threads?

Intrepid Has a No Grind……
Clarks House…… <—I remember this thread too, Hilarious.

Any Forum personalities that catch your fancy? (Person who’s posts make you laugh or like to read)

In no real order:

Corndog
Keltrien
Padre
Qitu
Darthtuefel
Irasha
Shikazi

-Character Related-

Main Character you play:

Creeva Murkado – Twi’lek for the win – Lekkus Until Death

Any backstory to their name?

to the name – no it was something I made up in 10 seconds and went with.  On the front side though, creeva has become my avatar name for almost every online service I use.  Because of Intrepid I’m extremely attached to that name – I even own creeva.com.

What profession are they? Any particular reason why you chose that profession?

Entertainer for life.  I respecced to other professions only to get the badges.  Beyond that I’m a full time entertainer.  During CU I briefly tried BH and pre-nge I was 90% of the time master entertainer/master musician/master rifleman.

I originally started a character on Gorath – his name was Jonathan Lysak (sp?) – the third day after launch Gorath was down and Xie ‘lanthia and I wanted to play.  I said you know what would be funny – let’s make entertainers – that should be good for a laugh.   We randomly chose Intrepid because that server was up.  The rest is history.

Sometimes fate just happens to put in a place and position that surprises you and is the perfect fit.

Any interesting Chapters to you Characters life?(Marriage, Kids, War Hero, Galatic Senator, Winner of the Intergalatic Pie Eating Contest)

Grrrr.  This is a hard one – but let’s hit the highlights

Starting Planet – Talus
Moved to Tyrena – Where My Heart Will Always
Member of Star Dragon Entertainment – Intrepid’s First Entertainer Troupe
Winner with the Def Stars In the First Intrepid Jam Bonanaza
Performed at every Groovefest (I think) – worked and helped Xie organize entertainers for the first one (She did most the work)
Founding Mayor of Symphonia
Founding Member of DEF
Founding Member of STARS
Founding Member of IPS
Fighter for entertainer rights
Helped organize and participated in the Intrepid Anti-Decay Protest
Helped Enchi-Lada rename a house Clark’s House and caused mass confusion
Was at Moya’s Wedding
Started the Museum Movement
Founded the first somewhat comprhensive Museum  – my buildings were the second museum on the server (though I announced first and they built theirs before I completed gathering things)
The first Intrepid funeral for a character was in my name
Founding Mayor of Pirates Retreat
Ran SNN – The Stars News Network – when INN was no more
Did behind the music columns on the forums for retired musicians
Maintainer of the Intrepid History Project at starsofintrepid.com (it’s a wiki go update your entry)

um…is that enough

That’ll Do Creeva, That’ll Do.

Roleplayer?

Roleplaying Light thank you

Are you in a guild? If so which one and why?

Currently?  Well I think I am still in STARS

In the past – I helped found DEF to be Intrepid’s first and only Entertainer Guild.   I did the same with STARS (it didn’t have the staying power – or rather Xie and I didn’t have the staying power to work at it) – I was also briefly in NWO.

How many years have you played SWG? Taken any extended breaks from the game?

I started at launch  – I’ve taken extended breaks here and there – I theory I’m still on extended break.   I will come back officially when it’s Intrepid’s final month as a server and play in the Tyrena the final day until the servers go black.  I don’t care if that’s in 2 months or 20 years, I will do my best to keep that word.

Over the time you played SWG what is your favorite memory?

That’s not fair – I guess if I had to pick – winning the first Intrepid Jam Bonanaza by being the first entertainer group to actually use lyrics instead of just playing flourishes.

Though the people, hanging out, being at home – that’s what makes Intrepid great and that’s what I remember the most.

What is the funniest/most embarrassing moment you’ve had in the game?

Arguing with Moya’ over toilet placement in the galaxy. <—First Crafted Toilet on Intrepid if I remember correctly.

-Other People-

Favorite person you’ve played with over your characters lifespan?

Xie ‘lanthia

What you would say to them if they were in game and the server was getting it’s plug pulled tomorrow?

e-mail me – you can get the email address from creeva.com or use the contact me form there – I would give you my e-mail address to post – but for some reason SOE doesn’t like that and messages get deleted that way.

Favorite Guild or Group of people you’ve played with?

DEF and STARS

If you participate in the GCW what player would you call your most Respected Nemesis?

AFKers – there is always a war on them.  I miss when I could break AFK macros by stealing their nalargon or omnibox.

-The Game Itself-

Favorite Iteration of the game? (NGE, CU, Pre-CU) And Why?

Pre-Cu – the possibility and purity of hte game – instead of hte watered down version

Favorite Pet/Droid? Why?

The AFK bunny – he dances AFK for credits – though I tell everyone to make sure not to tip me.

Favorite Weapon or Armor you’ve had? Why?

Davinci “Widow Maker” Laser Rifle – When it was created it was the post powerful rifle ever made on the server (my character still has it) – and an entertainer owned it

Favorite Profession in the game? (Past or Present)

Entertainer

Your preferred GUI color palette and Keymap?

Imperial – and custom keymap to be pre-nge controls

Favorite Emote of all time?

Don’t know – I /waved a lot though

Favorite in game Location/Planet? (Lake Retreat/Naboo etc.)

My original musuems in Symphonia

Favorite Server?

Intrepid

What keeps you logging in to SWG through the good and the bad? If you no longer log into the game what things do you remember that kept you playing?

The People

-The Player-

Any SW related collectibles that you are proud of?

I have some toys – but I won’t stand on the fact that there is anything I’m proud of – I do own the PS1 game Masters of The Tera Kasi still sealed.

Favorite Movie/SW book?

A New Hope

Favorite Food/Snack?

Pizza

What hobbies do you have outside of SWG?

Blogging (creeva.com) – I’m right now working on a novel for national novel writing month, I perform in two community bands playing trumpet, and video game collecting.

Your Country/Hometown?

Ohio

What is the one thing to see if we come to your Hometown?

a normal ohio small town

Any of your family members or relatives remind you of a particular SW character?

My wife distinctly reminds me of Xie ‘lanthia

And most importantly if SWG player showed up at your door because they were stranded in your hometown you would:

I’d keep them for the night.  The only player that I didn’t work with at one point (Wong-Fei-Hung and Astrolite) that I’ve met was Moya’ I took her and her husband to dinner once.

Picture from here

National Novel Writing Month is once again almost upon us.   I’m hoping to “win” this year by actually finishing my first novel (now decades in the making).  I’ve been trying to pump out blog content to be published over the next month, some good, some bad and some “meh”.  But I’m planning for nanowrimo now and I was wondering, would it be possible (with enough caffeine) to sit down and write the 50,000 words in one session.   My first instinct is it wouldn’t be (for me), not that I’m going ot attempt it.

Though I looked over my past track record, I’ve knocked out 3000 word blog articles in an hour before (very very rare), why couldn’t I?  With enough caffeine I could see me doing it in under twenty hours.  I just wonder if anyone that is trying to finish is actually going ot attempt this.   I’m hopeful that the first night I will be able to break out and do 5000 words.   I only need to do 1667 words a day to finish the novel.

Heck this post is a little over 200 words, it took me just a few minutes to write.  If this was practice for my novel I would be already 1/8 the way there for the for the day.

All other NANOWRIMOers – I wish you the best of luck.   See you on the other side.

Earlier this week this email (it’s been edited to protect names- edits in italics) showed up in my inbox:

Hi Brent.. I just want to know that I miss talking to you.  I am thrilled for you and XIE as you await the birth of your new little son.  I remember when the two of you came to see YOUR YOUNGEST BROTHER and I after he was born saying you will neve have kids and I said oh give yourself another ten years things may change.  Here you are….I am sure XIE is getting all prepared, reading planning, etc.  I think she will do great during  delivery, they have so many different ways to help with relaxation during labor.  After YOUR SON is born the two of you will be so amazed at that moment and your life will change forever.  You will never look at certain things the same way again.  And the way a new baby smells, its a special scent that only lasts a few days then fades away to the sweet smell of baby lotion bath wash.  You will see, I think its a good thing for both of you, you will have alot of fun.

Love mom

Now grammar and spelling mistakes I didn’t touch, just the names to protect some people’s identity.  When I told Xie about the e-mail she was miffed that my mother didn’t call.   I told her that was the only smart thing my mother did for this situation.  I’m sure my mother knows by now that if I heard her voice I would have just hung up the phone and she wouldn’t have had a chance to get anything out.    Score one point for my mother.  Though I’m going to make the wild assumption that she didn’t assume I was going to post this on my blog.

I read the e-mail out loud to Xie.   I started reading it in my mothers tone and voice pattern (I do a fairly passable impression of her speaking mannerisms).   I didn’t make it through the first sentence before Xie said she would smack me up side the head if I didn’t read it normal.   I submitted and read it normal.   The first thing Xie said after her rant on my mother e-mailing, was “So she wrote that whole thing to say ‘I told you so’.”  I replied with “Yep.”

One point of view could be said that my mother is attempting to repair a bridge between a fractured relationship.   Like eveyrthing else my mother attempts to do this is a selfish act.   When I was younger she put guilt trips on me for not having kids because she wanted grandkids (bear in mind I’m the oldest of her 6 kids so she was bound to have grandkids).   My brother already has a daughter and a son that should be born in the next couple weeks.  My brother is on speaking and family terms with my mother so she has two grandkids she would have access to.   My mother’s only access to me is messages that my siblings or my grandmother deliver.   The only message I ever send back is that I don’t care.

As it stands right now my grandchild will never have access to her.  I know how she screwed me up my siblings and myself (though I have a different world view, so I’m sure they think that I’m the one that’s screwed up).   I don’t want to risk exposing my child to that.   After my child is of legal driving age and can take himself over there, it will all be in his court on what he decides to do.  My child won’t be forbidden from going there, but I’ve been told that I’m not welcome there and can’t come over.  So I’m holding that to heart for the rest of time.

My point of view if you haven’t figured this out, is that my mom wants to be seen as the good grandmother.    She follows the theory in life that it’s better to appear good then be good.   Now I’m not going to say that I am any sort of saint.  I am who I am.   I don’t put on false airs for anyone.   I don’t pretend to be someone I’m not.   I’m rough, I’m honest, and I can be brutally blunt.   I’m used to that and I can deal with the consequences, because I enjoy who I am.

I haven’t put more than a passing thought into my mother in the last year.   When someone mentions her I give my knee jerk “I don’t care answer” and forget about her.   But this email has forced me to bring the pasts thoughts to light (just when I’m in a peaceful place again).   So in the upcoming month look for some articles about the problems I have with my mother.   This email may look like an honest attempt for reconciliation by some, but I know my mother’s methods.  I will concede that is what she believes she is doing in her mind.   She is just too naive to really look at herself for who she is though.

Saturday was the VHS Alumni Bands 22nd performance at the Vermilion High School Band Festival.   I originally marched for the Vermilion High School Sailor Marching Band from my Sophomore to Senior years (Senior Year Video) which encompass the fall of 1991 through the summer of 1994.   I had the option to put on the band uniform one last time for the Vermilion Fish Festival in 1994, but I declined that was the first time I performed with the VHS Alumni Band.

My first band festival (Fall 1994) outside of high school I didn’t get a chance to perform, I was marching with earlier that day for a home game with the Ashland University Marching Band.   I did show up that evening to watch the performance and hang out with friends.  I heard a lot of people say that this was their best year in Alumni Band, no disrespect to Joe, but I have to disagree, at least for myself.   The best year for me was my first festival back with the group at the Band Festival of 1995(?) which was Willy B’s (William Burt’s) last year as the Band Director for Alumni.   If it hadn’t been for Mr. Burt and his loyal students there wouldn’t have been an Alumni band today, so all of us can look back and thank them for making this possible.

I’ve marched many years with Alumni at the festival (1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2006, 2007, and 2008) and I only missed it five times because I was living in Oregon.  I can say I was extremely tempted to spend the money for a plane ticket and fly back for it during those missing years.  I’m extremely happy that I was there for Mr. Henry’s final year as both a high school director (my senior year) and his last year as an Alumni Band director.  Last year when he announced he was retiring as the Alumni director I had tears in my eyes (HEY I’M A SENSITIVE GUY!!).   David Henry is probably one of the greatest influences on my life, and I don’t know where I would be today if Jeff Luther hadn’t tried to convince someone who didn’t know how to play a note to join the marching band.    Someday I’ll write a whole article on Mr. Henry, today isn’t that day though.

My own personal tradition is to show up early for Alumni practice, I was always the first to arrive and just enjoyed being there sitting in the back of the band room anticipating the day.   This year I was dropped off and there already was another car there, three majorettes beat me.  For the first time I wasn’t the first one there.   Next year I guess I have to arrive at 6 AM.   My wife dropped me off, then she went a visited the grave of a friend to tell him about the new pregnancy.   Later in the day I told that friend’s sister, who is now in Alumni,  that we are planning on giving our child his name if it is a boy.

Mr. Price ran us ragged through out the day for the performance.   I’m not saying it wasn’t worth it, I’m just saying….   After lunch was practiced our closing routine for the first time and at the end we practiced the high step.   My ankles felt like they were going to break at any second.  It may have been the shoes, but I think it was age catching up with me.    I went out and bought a pair of ankle supports at dinner time.   I wore these for the rest of the night.   I managed to high step and I didn’t break an ankle.   On Sunday however I could hardly walk on my ankles at all.  By Sunday night it had migrated to just my left ankle.  It is still sore and tender four days later.

Pain and sickness isn’t new to me at Alumni Band though.   Two years ago I blew out and gave myself a sore throat in the morning practice.   Compound that by the fact that it was raining that night and eventually it got bad enough they moved the festival inot the high school gym – I was laid up sick in bed for four days afterward.  Last year I got the sore throat again, but it didn’t develop into anything more.  After last year I decided I wanted to be in playing shape – no sore throat and no dead lips.   I joined two community bands and that corrected the issue from that side.  I do think I’m going to have to start running again just to get my ankles in shape for next year.   These are the the things I do for Alumni Band.

Some things are funny, like the people being amazed that the current seniors were freshmen when they were seniors.   I pointed out that the current seniors weren’t even in preschool when I was a senior.   You have the differences in band style from the Burt to Henry to Price eras, and of course all of us think that our own era was the best.  There are things I missed from the past in Alumni.  Large groups of us used to sneak in Alcohol in water bottles and get lit before marching.   Before he did Dennis Pintur used to be notorious for that.   He was also notorious for blowing out his lip playing tuba and showing everyone his bloody white beard also.   The tuba’s back then actually did tuba chases, which I haven’t seen in the last few years.  During the drum breaks our tubas also used to twirl their instruments.   My first year in the band festival Mike Lewandowski put me on his shoulders during the drum break and we did a dance in our section of the field.

The band has changed and grown up.  This isn’t really a bad thing.   It may be why some of hte older members don’t show up still, but that happens.   The experience isn’t the same, people move away, people are busy – there are alot of reasons people don’t show up.   The rest of us… Well the the rest of us want to relive our glory days like Al Bundy.   In a way we are sad like some people think.   It is also glory.   The excitement of going onto that field, feeling the rush, and doing it one more time.   I’ll be there as long as I am physically able.  I’ll be there in a wheel chair and play for the middle songs only.   In the end I’ll be there.   I’ve lasted longer playing with the band then the band has played in the Vermilion Fish Festival (which BTW I think they need to start doing again).   I’ll survive and do it until there isn’t a band festival to march at anymore.   If it ever comes to that point I’ll just invite all the band members that want to show up on a fall Saturday, pull out some music, and play on the football field even if it’s just for ourselves.   Those that understand that, they are the ones that really want to “Do it One More Time”.

Videos:

Star Spangled Banner – Google Video Link

Festival Show – Google Video Link

Sideline Footage – Google Video Link

If you somehow missed it you can also always watch last years video here.

If you want to see the pictures I took – scoot on over to my Flickr set.

Picture from here

Ars Technica is reporting that a school in Pennsyvania has suspended 2 students for creating a Myspace profile of their principal mocking him.  A federal judge upheld this ruling when they were sued by one of the students for suspending them for something they created on their own time outside of school.   Personally I find this disturbing on two fields.

The first I want to bring up is parody.  I’m not sure why they didn’t take the parody defense.   To their non-target audience I’m sure the language and style they used was reprehensible, and to the school district bordering in libel.   I however remember what it was like being a teenager, a time period that most adults don’t allow themselves to identify with once they age past it.  The key thing they need ot look at is the target audience.   It wouldn’t be truly fair to have a trial of teenagers to be judged by their “peers” and have the jury made up of people older then 25.   That seems to be the tipping point when the social norms of the next high school generation are lost on the adults.   The language is different.  The clothing is different.   The attitudes are different.  Unless a similar mindset can be understood by the jury, the teenager will loose almost every time in a “Damn kids don’t respect anything” moment.  I think parody would have been the correct defense.

Now let’s look at the freedom of speech angle.  There is quite a few that feel like I do that the traditional schooling these days is to extinguish individual thought and bring people around to “group think”.  We all have our moments when we feel group think is a good thing, most of that time is when group think agrees with what we are thinking.   However when a student has individual thought they seem to get punished.  About eight years ago my sister was almost suspended for going to school with pink hair.   The problem was that “it was a distraction” – really?  Life is all about distraction and things that block you from achieving your goals.   Work through it.   She (nor the boys in question from the beginning argument) hurt or threatened the life or welfare of those around them.   Even then it should be either handled by the police or if it happened in school, by the police and the school.

One of the arguments the defense used was that though the boys wrote the information outside of school, it was targeted at students in it.  Duh!  Almost the whole of their society is wrapped up in school.  They don’t really live work and interact within the community.  Their peer and focus groups are almost all inclusively within that school.  Of course it’s going to be their target audience.  The same way that writing an OP-Ed piece for the local community newspaper is targeted at that community.  It doesn’t matter if the person that wrote the piece technically lives outside the city borders, it’s still valid.  They are addressing their peer group.  What we have now is we are creating a society where it is considered to mock or question public figures.  If their are repercussions outside of the normal legal channels, students then gain a greater fear of authority then they should have.

Like work, there needs to be a seperation between a students personal lives and their work lives.   What I do on my own time is none of my works business.  When I am at work it is completely their business and I have to deal with anything that stems out of my decisions from there.   If this case was going after the libel or slander side of the coin, which is where it should have gone, it should not have been handled by removing the children from the school.  It should have been settled in the courts and outside of the venue of schools.   The biggest issue is while if I do something egregious outside of work that can have a negative effect on the company, I can get fired.  Schools however should not be allowed to fire or punish students on things that take place outside of their borders of jurisdiction, which end at the edge of school property.

There was an article on mashable today questioning if ping.fm and hellotxt were helping the web world or hurting it.  I understand the authors point that if you are using these services that you are not taking an interest and active use in the social community that you are using these services to post to.   I can say from hits for ping.fm beta code requests on my blog, that lots of people are interested in getting access to ping.fm.   Now that it’s out of private beta I’m sure I’ll lose my number one spot in google for the term “ping.fm beta code”.  

If people want this what does this say?  It really means that we have diverse friendships.  We have communities that we want to share information with.   We don’t have time to manually copy or paste, nor do we have the time to try convince everyone we know to use a single service.   Since we can’t bring our friends to the service (much to the dismay of the social network providers), we take our information to them. 

We want to share our information, we don’t want to hoard.  I for example do all my writing on my main blog, twitter, and handful of other services.   Yet I have friends on almost every little social network out there.   Why should I be forced to chose between friends and the information I share with them.   Yes I’m sure some actual readers that are not into crossposting get annoyed over the repeated information on multiple services.   What about my friends though?   Where does the line of a healthy blogging business end and friendship cross?  My friends are the ones that inspire, the will always have the information directed towards them.    I am more then willing to take my information to them.   At what cost, a minor annoyance to literally a handful?

No one is forced to read my messages.   No one is forced to follow me.   No one is forced to my site.  If the author doesn’t follow ping.fm links, so be it.   I’m not losing what I truly care about.   Maybe when the a single network has all the features I want and 99.9% market dominance – then I’ll stop cross posting.   Until that time I’m proud to be a crossposter.

Picture from here

I’m out of writing ideas.   Well that’s not completely true, I have lots of writing ideas.  My problem is that I just don’t know how to write them yet.   When I sit down and start to write them they are not coherent, too short, and don’t make sense.   More or less these ideas still need to fester away in my brain some more before I can spew them out in some sort of legible thought.   My dilemna is that I want to regulary update my blog, and I want to write.   Maintaining a writing regiment keeps the mind sharp, keeps your readership up, and gives you practice in writing – which does make you a better writer then actually thinking about it.

To this end I plan to start writing movie, book, and video game reviews.   Originally I was going to use spoilershorts.com for that – but the original concept had reviews in a very short form.  I may repurpose it and post the reviews from creeva.com over there also, but for now I look at the writing and not positioning.   I’ve always wanted to do reviews, but never really got around to it.   With the exception of movies that are new and in the theaters – I’m going to hold off on movies I see at random and focus (for now) on what I actually own.   Sometimes I’ll even be offering my own copies for sale (I really need to clean out and trim down some of my collections).

I’m not going to turn my blog into a review blog, I’m still going to write my random unfocused style – the reviews will just allow me to write ahead and make sure that you have something new and interesting to read every single day.   It will also allow me to copy and paste and get some of the reviews done that I’ve wanted to do for All Consuming and Amazon.

Write once – use everywhere – the crossposters motto.

Now you know if you read my blog regularly that I don’t have the higest respect for Myspace.  I have been using Myspace more and the issues of it’s flaw just become more glaring with me over time.
Issues:

1.  There is no method for saving e-mails.   None, other then copy and paste – which is a huge pain in the ass.   While I do have the first snippet saved in a gmail notification I would prefer to have the whole message saved off and archiving.

2.  After two weeks it deletes your sent messages – WTF?  Why can’t I decide to clean out my inbox – if you want to clean them out why don’t you give me the option to automatically export a copy out for myself in my home e-mail account?

3.  Notifications – theoretically it wouldn’t take much more bandwidth to send me the whole message – I have no problem logging into your site to reply to email – but send me the complete email and not the first 140 characters.

I understand e-mail is not a priority for them, and not a focus of the site.  I understand they are a walled garden.  Dammit though, with the user base some interoperability with their e-mail would be nice.

I hate you Myspace.

Picture from here

Yesterday I wandered into a forum that contains random population members from my ex-hometown.  There was a thread about the teacher strike going on in town.  I don’t really self promote by going and saying hey read my site here and there around the net, but I did leave a post in the thread stating:

I rarely post here – rarely read it also – but today boredom struck  – I agree with the parent of this thread – ironically a few weeks ago I actually wrote on my blog on this subject here: http://creeva.com/2008/07/28/teachers-on-strike-in-my-hometown/

That aside – I’ll be very happen when teaching becomes a non-union position.

Though it was in general to a thread a user named Homersazdoh wrote this:

Where do you people get off thinking all the teachers are members of the peace corp.?  They have every right to try and get more money just like everyone else.  If you’re so concerned with the quality of teacher, then you want the best package to draw the best talent.

My next response was:

The problem is under a contract scenario with unions or large groups of employees you need to pander to the lowest common denominator – this means that better teachers are going to make less because the large number of average or below average teachers will bring them down.

But I’ve recently had siblings go through the vermilion school system (some still going, I graduated in ’94) – over time the quality has only gotten worse, the education is not as werll rounded due to block scheduling, more and more restrictions on individuality, and the lack of money being poured into the system that has nothing to do with teacher wages.

Oh well, I’ll drop out of this conversation, my child is probably going to be home schooled.

This is what I got from Scott:

Now of course I wasn’t going to let that by, but I excused myself from the thread with this:

Be careful – my wife is home schooled – I’m a college fail out/drop out – yet I’m in an extremely competitive white collar career.

My child will always be challenged – the common misconctption that’s I’ve always fought for public schooling is socialization – I never found it competitive nor strived to be more competive – I’m a member of a few social and group organizations.

BUt believe what you want – and thank you for derailing the conversation any further – I apologize to everyone for my detour I helped on this thread – I’ll drop out.

BTW – I don’t care either way the teachers strike and union goes -I’m not a vermilion resident – I moved out in 2001 – I won’t move back but I have friends and family there – I’m friends wiht a couple teachers there, and I’m a member of vermilion community organizations.

Now why did I give you this?  I figured I would give you some back story to what inspired this post.  Xie and I have had many disagreements about public schools versus home schooling, she wasn’t always homeschooled so she has the advantage of first hand experience on both sides of the coin.   She is also one of the most intelligent (and quiet) people I know.   I had a good experience with public schools, she did not.

However with the random inspections, school uniforms, the crushing of individuality, and the loss of personal liberties that kids go through today to “make them better citizens” and to “keep them safe”, has made me think twice on sending my child to public schools.   My argument in the past was the social aspect and the ability work with and meet people.   The competiviness of school was never a selling point for me.   Heck the overly competitive people were the ones that made my life hell in school and were the super jocks, the bullies that had something to prove, or the grade whores who thought straight A’s would give them the good life when they graduated.

I wasn’t a straight A student, nor did I try to be.   When I was in elementary school I was on the honor role and merit role all the time, so what?  My parents then changed schools on me and I then almost failed fifth grade.  My wife says I don’t respond well to change and I’m better with routine.  This is obvious when I went from good grades in a competitive private school moving to a sub par public school.  I should have excelled from an academic perspective, but I didn’t.   I was a fish out of water.

The same thing happened two years later when we moved to Vermilion.  At one point my father stated the best thing he could at me to alleviate my stress and to ease his concern of his son failing a grade.  He said that he would be fine if I was a C student.  This was all I needed to alleviate the strain.  I high school I only failed two classes, Spanish 1 and Algebra 2.  I did maintain a C average throughout school.   I was so much a C student that I graduated around 100th in a class of 250ish.  This didn’t stop me from going anywhere.   I managed to get into a good private college (which I then proceeded to fail out, but that was from lack of wanting to go to class).

Was I really a C student?  Not really.  I could have easily made honor roll, I just didn’t like homework.  I scored in the top 10% in the nation on my ACTs and in the top 1% on my PRE-SATs, I’m sure this helped me to get in college.   I just wanted to take the tests to prove I knew what I was talking about, the busy work held no interest for me.  The only competition I really participated in school was who could hit the highest trumpet note.

Now I have a good job.   There are articles kicking around the Internet about why going college is a waste of time and money these days.   I don’t feel I’ve lost out on an education.  Life is about learning and loving to learn.   To build upon what you have learned already and never stop growing.  Why would I put my child in the bad aspects of that, pointing out that my child would not be competitive because he may not go to public school is moronic.   Also when I saw the college valedictorian delivering pizzas when I was making 35k a year 9 years ago made a big impact on me.

I think that traditional schooling leads to more socialization and more social activities then traditional schooling, however saying I need to send my kid to traditional schooling for him to remain competitive?  That’s moronic.

Picture from here

Picture from here

So I’ve taken over the position of webmaster for the VCMA (Vermilion Community Music Association).  This is going to start a new series as I’m going to use them as guinea pig’s for what I’ve felt non-profits need to do to survive and thrive in the web 2.0 world.   They are not a big organization, and I’m sure I received this position for my background and not my witty personality.

I’ve been working on the site for a couple of weeks and here is what I’ve found so far.   They had a private member’s section on the old site to share files and personal data.  This section was password protected, but the username field was just a front, as long as you nkew the password anything you put in the username field was accepted.  Since I’m a security engineer, this just wasn’t going to work for me.  I’ve ranted before the illusion of security and how illusionary security wasn’t worthwhile at all anyways.  The other problem was that their member page “password protected” section was just a javascript that rewrote the “HTTP GET” to a file named a combination of the requested page plus the password.   So if the page was index.tml and the password was “password” the ending HTTP in the “HTTP GET” command would be indexpassword.html.   Since it was still a plain text file without any encryption on it, in theory it could still be spidered and stored by google, thereby completely undermining any security it was giving them.

I’m working on a better and more secure solution while maintaining the balance of ease of use.   I don’t want to burden them too much on the security side.  I’m sure some of the older members would blink at me with a blank stare if I handed them secureID tokens to access their newsletters.

Picture from here

The next thing I discovered is that code each web page by hand, ugh.  There was no way I was going to maintain each HTML manually and hope for any semblance of style and continuity between pages (an issue they had in the past).   They had been using FrontPage and offered to buy me a copy.  First no, no and no – currently I’m using Linux on my main computer (Ok I dual boot into XP and between WoW and Netflix streaming I don’t get into Ubuntu as much as I should), so Frontpage was out.  They were insistent at first that this is how it was done, I however readjusted things.  I moved them to WordPress which I’m not using as a blog but rather as a CMS (Content Management System).

Picture from here

I manually migrated the data from the old HTML files, I spent hours converting the front page data to be “clean” data that i can migrate and copy paste anywhere.   I was a dumbass though, I should have just copy and pasted the text into notepad or a generic text editor, then I wouldn’t have had all the background crap.  This is my nore to myself to now be stupid next time.  I added images and a javascript navigation menu, but essentially the page was just a cleaned up (easy to maintain now) version of what they already had.

Now the next step is to migrate them to Google Apps for their member related information……

Somehow I always end up volunteering for Vermilion non-profits, now if only I could get one of them to pay me……

Picture from here

I get distracted when I get home from work.  I’m easily amused and have the “Ooooooooooooooooooooohhh Shiny” mentality type of distraction.  I don’t deny it.   I don’t exactly revel in it either.   By the time I actually get around to doing some of the things I need to get done, it’s late, I’m tired and cranky.   If I put things off until the weekend we end up doing stuff and getting involved (“Is that a shiny over there?”) and so things once again get overlooked.   I’m not sure I would actually sleep if I didn’t know for certainty that it helps save my job and my marriage.   So what can I do about it?

Picture from here

Things I have tried with little or no success:

• Wall Calenders
• Sticky Notes
• Todo Tasks in Outlook
• Todo Tasks on Google
• GTD sites
• Web Calenders

Nothing so far seems to work for me – I’m mundane blind.  When there is a shiny I don’t even notice the mundane.

Like many geeks, corporate types, etc.   I live and die by e-mail.   This is something I greatly increased in focus when I was a consultant.   Now I can handle literally hundreds of e-mails a day, and I can’t stand a cluttered mail box.  I normally use Gmail‘s interface just through a browser, but I’ve been known to dabble in POP3 and IMAP access (the insanity!!).  Mostly though I just use the web browser.  It’s the same at work, home, and on the go.   The one thing I hate most about my mail box, is when it get’s full.   I hate a cluttered inbox, I hate coming back and seeing more then one page of e-mail waiting for me (which does happen if there is some strange reason I don’t check my email for two days).

Picture from here

So I stumble on the idea of combining these two things, hatred of e-mail clutter and a need to get motivated and GTD, so now I’m email my tasks to myself (and now Xie has joined into the game).  The first thing when I went down this road is to send myself a daily list of tasks to do, well I tried that once in the past and that doesn’t seem to help.  Neither do reminder services, since I easily dismiss them.

The format I use when I mail myself is TODO (task) – this forces me to stare at it every time I look at my e-mail.   I’m hoping it will succesfully burn the task into my brain.   When I actually complete the task it get’s archived, thereby saving me space in my inbox.   Too many tasks and it will roll over to a second page, I would be highly annoyed if that happened.   So essentially I’m going to be GTD by annoying myself.

Meh.

But it may work.

Picture from here

A couple weeks ago when the VCMA had their concert in Vermilion, OH there were school teachers wandering around the downtown area (the picture above is not my hometown) protesting.   I can’t say I understand completely what they were protesting, but before I go into a rant about the protesting – I’ll give you my understanding from what I got out of it and what others told me.

The contract from the local school district had been changed; previously the school district paid for the retirement of its teachers or supplied a portion of it.  Recently however this had been changed to put the burden on cost to the teachers who will have to pay their own retirement compared to the school district footing the bill.  I don’t even live in the same county as my past hometown, so my diatribe has no bearing other then outside views since my taxes will not be raised, nor will the quality of education my children receive be impacted.

The first thing that comes to mind – welcome to the real world.   I know a ton of people that went into public service or civil servant positions for the retirement.   It didn’t matter what the job was, it just mattered that at the end of the career they received that fat benefits and nice retirement package.   They could be a janitor or they could be a mailman, as long as the benefits were there at the end of the career they would be happy.   I’m so I care about what I do now and though I should be worry, I’m not thinking about the end of my career yet.  No one I know professionally get’s their retirement paid for by their employer anymore, that notion is old and out of date.

If a company in this day and age announced it was going to have an all inclusive retirement package for its employees there are a few things that come to mind.   The first being, what person is going to stay with a company for the 25-30 it takes to qualify for a retirement package – jobs don’t work that way anymore, very few people in this day and age start at a company at 18-20 and retire from that same company.  It’s idiotic and small minded in so many ways, to believe that you will be with the same employer.  The second is how far would a stock drop in a publicly traded company that announced something like this.   In the age of profits and margins an announcement like this would be considered fiscally irresponsible by the share holders.   However our tax money goes out to support all the public servants of our local, state, and federal governments.  Personally I understand the point of unions – but I don’t think anyone should get the guaranteed contracts that union works receive.   It should be dog eat dog and fight for the best value for the dollar instead of bringing down the people at the top and raising those at the bottom.  This is my tax money and the billions that the government could save by not offering automatic benefits are enormous.

There is another reason though I don’t have respect for the protest.  My freshmen year in high school my (then future) band director was up for retirement.   He decided that he wasn’t going to retire and he was going to keep teaching for another 3 years.  The next year was my first in band (other then a brief stint in 5th grade) and David Henry is now the metric I judge all other band directors against.   My senior year was his final year.   In a side conversation with him one day I asked him why doesn’t he just keep going?  He told me and a friend that he lost 15% (these numbers maybe wrong but it’s been 14 years and the intent is still the same) of his pension because he went on and taught the last three years.  He was happy to do it and would have done it again.   However, if he continued for another three years he would lose another 30% of his pension, and that he could not afford to do.

David Henry at the VHS Alumni Band Practice in 2007

Why is this relevant?  Well the teachers I saw protesting were all obviously younger then I am, and I’m not that old at 32 – the most they could be in their career is 10 years and that would still be stretching it.  I’m sure that most of them got into it for the idea of having summers off and the decent retirement package.  Some did it for the pure joy of teaching, and for those I would hope they would have done the job diligently regardless of the benefits at the end of the career.   One of the largest arguments that I’ve heard is that teachers are underpaid.  I won’t argue that, but at the same time almost all of them knew the pay rates before they started.   Feeling bad because they make 30-40k a year is just as bad as feeling sorry that the check out clerk makes minimum wage.  There is no surprises, they knew the scale and the pitfalls going into the game.   They could have done something else if they wanted to make more money.  They should do what they want to do because they enjoy it, not because of the money they make now and in the future.  I don’t see any of the love in teaching in them that I saw in David Henry.

Maybe it’s unfair to compare them to Mr. Henry.  He is one fo the two teachers that influenced me most heavily in my young life, though both of those teachers taught at teh same school district that these teachers are protesting in.   These are just my thoughts, take them to heart or throw them aside as you see fit.