When
· Naughties
· · 2006
· · · June
· · · · 28 (2 entries)
Freedom to Leave · That’s the title of a remarkable piece by Simon Phipps, long but worth reading all of. I suspect that most people who read ongoing have had a chance to hear Simon speak; but if you haven’t and you get a chance, take it. I think he’s actually better on the stage than on the page, and since this is a very good piece, the speech that went with it will have been outstanding.
Real Social Networks · It’s like this: John is the guy who’s building the new room for the new kid; he was recommended by Diane, who’s a friend who used to work with Lauren and got me to do the XBRL keynote and lives ten blocks west, near the Pilates studio where we work out and Lauren swaps computer maintenance for private consultations, and it turns out that John’s stepson Joe was in our kid’s kindergarten class and we already knew him; Joe and John and Rudy live just down the street from Brennan, who was also in the kindergarten class and whose mom gives our kid piano lessons. We got in Albin to do the electrical work, he’s worked on the house before and knows the ropes; I met Albin through my old friend Glen, I rent an office from Glen over a clothing boutique he runs as a sideline, he uses my pictures on the covers of his neutraceuticals-company catalog and he brought Albin in to run the wires for the DSL at the store/office. Matt, who used to work for me and Glen at a former business we were in, set up the DSL at the store, and he helps us do the firewalls on the Debian box in our basement, and he also hosts ongoing on a server he runs for his political party, and he just wrote me asking to pitch in against some DMCA-like legislation looming foully over the Canadian horizon, and I helped Sun sell some Ultras to the lab where Matt works at a local university, and then helped straighten things up when manufacturing screwed up and sent the wrong CD with the computers. Turns out John is going to be doing some work for Tracy three doors down, whose boy and ours play all the time and sleep over and so on; but Tracy met John not through us but via Nick’s mom; Nick was also in that kindergarten class and played soccer with our kid on the team that I co-coached with Phil, who does secret stuff for Apple and used to do the XML conference proceedings for Lauren and sits on the ECMA committee trying to put lipstick on the Microsoft Office XML pig. Anyhow, John and Albin hit it off and they’ll probably call each other in for carpentry and electrical work in future. Why do we need computers to help us with this?
