Okay, I’m going to try it again: going to bed early and getting up early. Get stuff done in the morning, get the kids up and ready at my leisure.

The last time it failed for me, it failed because my daughter would wake up and start crying as soon as she heard me moving around. Got to the point I despaired of getting anything done in the morning because she was always awake and demanding attention. Well, now she’s a little older and a little more cool with just chilling out in bed in the morning, even if she hears me moving around.

This time, it will probably fail when #3 comes along in a month or two and disrupts the ever-lovin’ heck out of our schedules. But maybe I’ll try it again when things settle down again in the fall (ish).

The trouble with this whole thing is that I’m really a night person at heart. Given my choice, I’ll stay up until 6am and sleep all morning. Sadly, I don’t have a job that’s really cool with that kind of schedule. And too often I give in to my choice and stay up waaaaaay later than I should. (Which is the other thing that has killed such efforts in the past.)

So anyway, that’s the plan for now. Sorry if I’m not up to chat with you until 3am. I’ll probably crumble and go that way again some day, but for now I’m going to try for productivity in the early morning. Wish me luck.

Mirrored from Bum Scoop.

By a collection agency.

For someone else.

The robo-caller called herself “Chelsea.”

In a total robot voice.

OMGWTFSkynet

My dumb move or someone else’s? Open question.

So, a little background. I don’t go into work stuff much for good reason–it’s not really anyone’s business–but occasionally something comes along that I feel like talking about. Anyway, the company I work for used to sell a software package and some related hardware by Company A, and we were exclusive distributors for it in Michigan. In the last year, that relationship ended, and Company A began selling the stuff through Company B, both of which are a subsidiary of a Big New York Corporation. But here on the west side of Michigan, we were still the beneficiary of their referrals for IT service and general sales and such.

Well, that ends this month as well. And Tuesday, a muckity muck with Company B called to essentially offer me a job. He didn’t come right out and say so, but he was “gauging interest” for the job. All things being equal, my interest in the job is nil. I don’t like working for big corporations (and yet, I was in the Marines–how ironic) and Company B, as a subsidiary of BNYC, is the epitome of such–uniforms, custom-painted vans, seventeen layers of regional managers and assistant regional managers and assistants to the regional managers and so on. So it was pretty much a non-starter there.

On top of that, there’s the growing bitterness/animosity between our company and Company B. Natural, since we’re becoming competitors where we were not before. But it all started to remind me of a situation I was in back in 2002 when I was working for a competitor of a company that had previously employed me. My previous employer was in… trouble. Mostly, as I understood it, filing for bankruptcy protection to be able to put a supplier at arm’s length in order to get a handle on some double- and triple-billing. But my then-current employer wanted me to dish dirt on the previous employer and help him steal my previous employer’s customers.

Did not want to be in that situation again.

So, yesterday I told my employer about the contact with Company B and this morning called and left a message for one of the people who had been talking to me and let them know I would not be entertaining any job offers from them. (And, it’s possible that the question was moot anyway–I signed a Non-Compete when I started work for my current employer and even if they were made to be broken, I wouldn’t really want to go through the ordeal of breaking it.) It’s definitely nice to have been asked but A) I have few illusions about why I was asked–merely as a convenient pawn in the growing battle between Company B and my employer–and B) I’m not sure they could have really made it worth my while. It was nice to dream for a while that they would go buck wild and offer me $100k per year and effectively end all my current financial troubles (though they are few), but I’m certain that quality of life would have suffered and radically.

If I get laid off soon, or the company evaporates out from under me, I may regret the decision–but for now I’m far happier with the decision I made.

Apparently, I’m a Democratic “partisan moron.” Also, apparently, as far as I’m concerned “a Republican, any Republican, will always and inevitably be wrong; a Democrat, any Democrat, will always and inevitably be right.”

I really hadn’t noticed this about myself.

I think I’ve mentioned before how much I hate the kinds of things that partisan politics excuses–my guy is shiny and blameless, your guy can do nothing right, even when he’s agreeing with my guy. In fact, that was pretty much the point of posting that Jon Stewart clip a few weeks ago, what with all the pundits talking out of both sides of their mouths, which side depending on who they’re talking about.

As it gets closer to the election, it gets worse. Some random blog breathlessly points out how some isolated McCain supporters might be making comments, but the entire left wing of American politics is flinging Molotov Cocktails right at McCain supporters!!! ZOMG!! Or maybe it’s just that two ignorant dickheads are being ignorant dickheads and the bloggers in question somehow achieved the impression that a single incident can indicate a trend.

It gets better when they get confused enough to point out vandalism and malicious destruction of property perpetrated on Liberal Party supporters in Canada is somehow further evidence of left wing violence. Good catch, guys. Clearly the left wing has gotten so mindlessly violent they’re attacking themselves.

God I hate this bullshit. Is it November yet?

So.

My Dad had open heart surgery today. Happily, it was not precipitated by an actual heart attack, and the surgery evidently went very well. I’m really tired because I drove from Sault Ste. Marie to Grand Rapids to Port Huron today, and if you’re curious, that’s over 500 miles.

Yeah, that’s a lot.

Anyway, I apologize to those who are reading it here for the first time.

On the one hand, I agree with what Jonathon McCalmont has to say in his post Playing the Man, Not the Ball. There’s a credibility issue at work, at times, when bloggers conflate criticism with advertising and make an unholy mix. A critic who purports to analyze a book and assess its quality and place in the cultural fabric should probably not turn around and offer a signed copy to fiftieth e-mailer, or somesuch.

On the other hand, I think Jonathon has acquired an extremely narrow view of criticism and attempted to apply it with an extremely broad brush. For starters, I’m not sure the institution of professional criticism has ever been as noble or distanced from the petty business of moving books as he would like to have it. Perhaps then, it is an ideal to strive for, but I’m thinking that even in the hallowed halls of academia there’s a sort of unconscious advertisement going on. That the academy deems a book worthy of critical analysis in the first place is a sort of advertisement, made more direct when those serious scholars assign the book to their undergraduate classes and ensure a steady purchase rate of 30-50 per semester.

I know I sold back very few of the books I was ever assigned, and the translators of Dostoevsky and Bulgakov and Gogol probably garnered a few extra bucks on the backs of me and my classmates that they might not otherwise have gotten. Indeed, that I’ve re-bought several Dostoevsky novels in nicer editions and too many copies of The Master and Margarita because I keep loaning them out or losing them is a direct result of their regard in the scholarly vein. And speaking of Dostoevsky, one of his biggest cheerleaders (read: viral advertisers) early on was the noted critic Nikolai Chernyshevsky.

Which brings me to the most objectionable bit, in which Jonaton asks: “If that is the case then you have to ask every time you post, are you doing for free what a viral marketing agency might possibly pay you for?”

The point of viral marketing is not to stimulate every word-of-mouth transaction, but to be larger-scale stimulators, allowing a more organic and natural process to take root from there. People who like books are going to post the covers of those books, and links to where you can buy them, so that their friends know what to look for. That’s the essential process of the social internet that the commercial entities are so desperate to tap. Most people are not approaching their reading of a book from a detached and scholarly point of view, but from a consumer’s perspective, and so when they talk about the book they talk about it in a way that would appeal to other consumers. Worth reading, worth buying, here’s where to buy it, I think you’ll like it too.

That’s not the way Jonathon approaches things, of course, but then he’s also providing advertisement and viral marketing on some level, because he’s talking about it at all. It’s what the publishers intend, for advertisement, if he takes ARCs or (worse) he pays for the privilege himself if he reviews purchased copies after they come out. Just that I would read his reviews would possibly expose me to books I had not been aware of before and depending on what he had to say (and how I align my likes with his), give me a value-added promotion of the book. The cover, at that point, is largely irrelevant.

I don’t hang out in the GateWorld forum, so I don’t know whether or not this has been discussed to death, but… Doesn’t this make it sound like Stargate is trying to be more like Star Trek than less? Seriously?

Or maybe it’s a brilliant Star Trek/Quantum Leap mash-up! Yeah. Every week, the plucky team visits another planet and have to solve a problem before the ship tells them it’s time to go. Maybe the ship won’t let them leave until they’ve solved the problem, or maybe they have to solve the problem in an allotted amount of time (43 minutes, give or take) or the ship leaves them behind, stranded forevar!

I dunno, I should probably give the writers and producers more credit (and so long as Peter “Hey Look! The stars are Christmas lights in a sheet of black velvet! Isn’t this whacky Sci-Fi!” DeLuise isn’t involved, I probably can), but I always thought the strength of Stargate was that they shared less with Star Trek rather than more. Not that Trek is bad on its own, but, well, it’s been done, man. Let them reinvent themselves.

Oh, and here’s a great money-quote: “We really don’t want to be more of the same. It’s going to build clearly off the existing franchise but with a cast that gives it a younger vibe.” From the article over at Gateworld. So…. the joke about the WB-esque Stargate from the 200th episode is becoming reality? Sweet.

So, this weekend we moved my sister to Wisconsin so she could start her new job in academia. The driving itself was … ridiculous to say the least. Maneuvering a moving truck through Chicago traffic? Not my idea of an awesome time, but we made it through okay without too much trouble. It took all day, but could have been much more eventful, really.

Saturday we took the Lake Express passenger/car ferry home and got picked up on the other end. I was hoping for some better pics, but the clouds got in the way a little bit. The ferry ride itself was pretty awesome, though I wasn’t exactly prepared for the rolling action–a couple of times we had the old “only water visible on port side, sky visible on the starboard.” Ironically, for six years in the Marines, I never spent a second aboard a ship, so this was a bit of an education, on a pretty still lake.

I also watched Disney’s The Gameplan … with no sound. Turned out, I don’t think I needed it. It was all pretty clear, in a heavily over-acted, obvious Disney sort of way.

They also had food service onboard, which was relatively inexpensive and pretty good, if microwaved. Definitely a great way to travel to Wisconsin. If I can make it to WisCon, I think that’s how I’m going to go, maybe even just travel without the car and rent on the other end. They have a Hertz on-site in both the Muskegon and Milwaukee terminals, which the $140 round-trip ticket for the car all by itself makes rather attractive.

Anyway, had a good time, saw my sister all moved in and set up, and now I’m back, looking forward to a fun week of work. Or, you know, not.

Yes, that’s right FOXSports. Michelle Wie needs to learn her lesson. She should stop competing against men. Maybe you should get the belt ready in case she doesn’t learn her lesson this time. Danica Patrick and Billie Jean King are next in line, eh?

I’d say more, but it really kind of speaks for itself, and I’m between attempts to resurrect my wife’s laptop harddrive. Noticed this today when I pulled up an MSN homepage on a client’s computer. Grabbed a screenshot in case it went away. The article is still at FOXSports, but with a much less inflammatory headline.

ETA: Don’t blame me if you go to FOXSports and read the comments. I didn’t link to the article for a reason.