Honestly Kid

"What I really wanted to focus on was not the extremities, the worst poverty, or the worst slums, but on how people manage to construct daily lives in the midst of such challenges."

Lou Charbonneau from Haiti today:

I and other reporters traveling with Ban saw few, if any, U.N. peacekeepers on the streets of Port-au-Prince who weren’t actively involved in trying to keep ordinary Haitians away from the U.N. delegation’s convoy. But the search-and-rescue teams were visible. I saw at least half a dozen rescue squads from France, Israel, Germany and elsewhere in normal residential areas picking their way methodically through heaps of

I should know better. As a guy with two theatre degrees, I know first hand the terrors (and joys) of putting oneself and one's work before an audience. You can try to tell yourself that you don't 'need' or even 'want' their approval, but the truth is you wouldn't be there at all if you didn't. Rod Serling's voice is under any live presentation saying "submitted for your approval" to ... +more+

Simplebits pointed me to this great bit about coffee on theoatmeal.com. Great graphics, funny bits, and educational too. I've been cutting back on my coffee drinking for the last few months - switched to green tea, which isn't quite the rush, but keeps the caffeine withdrawal at bay. Without the medical evidence we have now, I'd probably go out with a 16 cup a day habit ... +more+

For my money, the Radical Convert is where the action is. These include people like Che Guevara, St. Augustine, Tom Cruise, Chairman Mao, Ghandi, and John Coltrane. All of these people could point to a day or even a moment when everything changed, each one saw the light and knelt down on their own personal road to Damascus. Recovering from that blinding insight meant changing themselves and everyone ... +more+

Working with web tech as with any segment of the IT/Computing world it is easy to fall into what I call a user tunnel. A user tunnel forms when we use the same technology the same way again and again with great or at least reliable success. User tunnels may or may not include work-arounds that compensate for software shortcomings and bugs, but they do keep the user attached to ... +more+

It was May of 1992. I was driving across the country in a tiny faded yellow early 80s model Honda Civic. We stopped in Chicago. While Los Angeles rioted over Rodney King and other cities reacted in sympathy, Chicago remained calm, cool, and good humored. I remember many things about that trip: meeting my first Pynchon fanatic, seeing the White Sox, drinking Old Granddad from a ... +more+

I've been reading Wade Davis' book Light at the Edge of the World: A Journey Through the Realm of Vanishing Cultures in fits and starts over the last year or so. You cheat yourself of a chance to better understand just what you are if you choose to ignore his well researched insights into humanity's current condition.

I've been using, installing, administrating, figuring out, breaking, fixing, hacking, tweaking, and pushing WordPress since back in 2006 when I created this blog (I never bothered much with WordPress.com until much later when a client asked me to customize the look and feel of a site hosted there). I have used ... +more+

It's dark out when I wake up and dark out when I return home from work. And it's cold. Why am I smiling? I've become a user. A habitual daily user. Such nice tiny white caplets too. They go down easy with breakfast, dinner, or lunch. No ill side effects either. Vitamin D3. Watching The Botany of Desire this weekend on PBS, Michael Pollan, et al made it clear to ... +more+