Fuel : Memoirs of A Crisis

Crude shock for BP: US field may be shut months - Business - Business

2006-08-08T09:01:00.000-07:00

Crude shock for BP: US field may be shut months - Business - Business: BP SAID it had discovered corrosion so severe at the huge Prudhoe Bay oilfield in Alaska that it would have to replace 26 kilometres of pipeline.

Someone please explain to me why BP went 14 years without cleaning the system in place in Alaska? Did they not think that the Alaskan winters and the simple effects of time and moving fluids might have an effect on their hardware? Who hired the people behind the decision(s) to just let the pipeline sit unattended, and why do they still have jobs? Or do they?

One can only hope they're not just getting a harsh talking-to by their bosses.

Is anyone still convinced that oil might not be such a reliable resource anymore?

WSJ.com - ADM Chooses An Energy-Savvy Outsider As Its New CEO

2006-04-28T07:30:00.000-07:00

WSJ.com - ADM Chooses An Energy-Savvy Outsider As Its New CEO: "ADM Chooses
An Energy-Savvy Outsider
As Its New CEO
By SCOTT KILMAN and JOANN S. LUBLIN
April 28, 2006; Page B1

DECATUR, Ill. -- Archer-Daniels-Midland Co., placing a big bet on the business of turning farm crops into fuel and chemicals, shattered company tradition by appointing a woman and energy-savvy outsider as its new CEO.
[Patricia Woertz]

After a seven-month search, directors of the grain-processing giant here named 53-year-old Patricia A. Woertz, a former executive vice president at Chevron Corp., as chief executive officer, president and a director. She succeeds G. Allen Andreas, 62, who will remain chairman.

The move makes ADM, a commodity powerhouse with about $36 billion in revenue in its latest fiscal year, the largest publicly traded U.S. company headed by a woman. It also ends the lock of the storied Andreas family on the CEO post at ADM. That lock stretches back to 1970, when Mr. Andreas's uncle began turning an obscure soybean crusher into a commodity empire that moves crops and food ingredients across hemispheres."

This is huge. As in, enormous. ADM is a monster (meaning really, really, really BIG) and if they're putting an energy person in charge of their crop-producing concern, it bodes well for the alternative fuel scene.

Think about it -- someone who knows how to turn raw materials into fuel, is taking over a company that consolidates tons and tons of raw material in the form of crops... just at a time when this country is desperately in need of alternative energy sources.

"In picking Ms. Woertz, who has done business in such far-flung places as Kazakhstan and Venezuela, ADM is luring someone who knows how to turn a raw commodity into hundreds of products and can talk about it with Wall Street analysts as well as foreign dignitaries. ADM, which does business in 60 countries, generates nearly half of its sales outside the U.S. and is involved in everything from crushing soybeans in China to processing cocoa beans in Africa."

Seems like it could be a match made in heaven. I'll be watching to see what happens.

Yes, the virtual book tour creators guide is out there...

2006-04-24T16:32:00.000-07:00

Just as I was hitting the ground running, life intervened, and I ended up several states away with a family emergency. It did not turn out as we hoped. I'll not say more than that, only that I'm just now getting back to "business as usual"... getting my virtual book tour creation podcast out there for folks who are curious about what it means, and how to go about creating one.

Life is still good. But it's a far sight less heady than it was a month and a half ago...

Listening to Reading #2 of the Virtual Book Tour Even as I Write This...

2006-03-13T18:41:00.000-08:00

Life is good. I got my Virtual Book Tour Creator's Guide ("Podcasting Your Virtual Book Tour") squared away over the weekend, developed what I think is a very cool cover for the book, and got my material posted to Lulu.com -- I still need to proof it, but the project is just about ready to go out to the world. Woo hoo!

I've been feeling guilty for neglecting my "Fuel" edits, but I just had to sort out the VBT creator's guide before I could do anything else. I mean, for heavensake, I just needed to plug in the screen captures! Now that's done. {sigh}

That means I can focus on my "Fuel" edits -- more changes have come from my editor, so I'll need to tend to them. Still on-track for March publication (later this month). All things considered, there aren't *that* many changes to make, so I'm very encouraged.

I'm presently listening to the second reading of the book tour, to proof it and make sure I didn't flub up anywhere. So far, so good. I've had a couple of false starts to listening - I'd get 20 minutes into it, then get called away... listen to the first 20 minutes again, and get called away... etc. So, I fired up the laptop in the car on my way home, and listened as I drove. So far, so good. Total time is 47:18, and I'm now at minute 30:05. Woo hoo indeed.

I'm getting pretty psyched about this book getting out there. Listening to my podcast again, I'm reminded again why, oh why, we just love England. The memories are still fresh in my mind, even five years later, and we're looking forward to going back. Soon.

Listening to the story again, really gives me a different perspective. I think there is something to the oral history "thing". Hearing words read aloud gives them a different feel, a different sense. Part of me is reluctant to put my voice into people's heads -- I listened to Jeanette Winterson reading a section of "The Powerbook", and the feel of it was entirely different than what I'd imagined, which was a bummer, and it sorta-kinda ruined that book for me. But I think I'm doing the work justice, and anyway, it's up to others, if they want to hear me read the work or not, so I can't sweat it. This is a virtual book tour, after all. People tune in *because* they want to hear the material read aloud.

We're going back to Cornwall!!!!

2006-03-13T15:52:00.000-08:00

Woo hoo! We're going back to Cornwall! Laney's been reading "Fuel" and we both decided that we just have to go this year for the two weeks we've been promising ourselves. For years, we swore we'd spend more time there, but we never did. I always had to work. What a drag.

So, the other night, we just bit the bullet, brought out the credit card, and signed up for two weeks in Mullion!!! Ain't no stoppin' us now. And our friends in Mullion remembered us and penned a note that they're glad we're coming back.

So are we!

And in honor of the coming occasion, I'm eating yogurt -- Brown Cow "cream top" yogurt is the closest thing to clotted cream I can find. It's really quite good. Heavenly, in fact. And it reminds me of Cornwall, which is a good thing. A very good thing, indeed.

Reading #2 of the Virtual Book Tour ready soon!

2006-03-11T09:42:00.000-08:00

In the final stages of producing Reading #2 of the Fuel Virtual Book Tour podcast. I've got the whole thing put together, got the levels adjusted, and have exported it to MP3. Now I just need to give it one final listen, to make sure it sounds right, and out it goes to the rest of the world.

Whew!

If only they'd had Greasecars...

2006-03-07T04:29:00.000-08:00

Thinking back on the fuel protests and crisis in 2000, I'm struck by the irony of an entire country that's known for its fried food -- fish and chips -- being dependent on foreign oil, when we have the technology to run our vehicles on filtered, used grease/fat. There's a company in Florence, MA, called Greasecar that sells conversion kits for diesel engines, so that just about anyone with a mechanically injected diesel engine can run their vehicle on straight vegetable oil -- even re-used cooking grease/fat.

You'll get about the same mileage from using grease for fuel, plus the engine runs cleaner, and you don't end up a slave to foreign oil. Of course, you'll need a smidge of diesel to start your car on cold mornings (the oil gels at cold temperatures like we have in New England), but once you get going, you can drive the same as you would with diesel.

The implications of this are incredibly dramatic, especially if you're sensitive to the hazards (both domestic and international) of our reliance on foreign oil. There are so many, many reasons to convert to SVO (straight vegetable oil), I can't even begin to say.

Check out their site and seriously consider this, folks. It's time. We have the technology. We can do this better!

Book Tour Reading #2 Now in Production

2006-03-01T04:01:00.000-08:00

Have gotten started on Reading #2 of the Virtual Book Tour. Just landed in England, located coffee, and endured the agony of a car rental agency with its computers down.

Thinking back, I really was very stubborn about sticking with the rental agency I'd chosen -- I was going to have a British vacation, dammit! No computer glitch was going to keep me down! And eventually, things did come together, but what a long, drawn-out experience!

Anyway, it all worked out... and when I think back, I'm struck by the fact that at Gatwick there was only one British car rental agency. American agencies had moved in and pretty much taken over -- Avis, Hertz... and I think Budget. It seems odd to me, thinking back, that I just couldn't get away from the States, even on the other side of the Atlantic. I suppose it's getting that way pretty much all over the world, what with McDonalds in every port and Nike and whatnot in proliferation.

I remember when I was in Germany, how people complained so bitterly about McDonalds being everywhere, and it was a bummer. But nowadays, I think it's even moreso. The world is a lot smaller now, than it was in 1986 (20 years ago! don't remind me!) and the lack of local color just makes the whole world seem that much smaller. It's getting to the point, where it's tough to find any local color at all, anymore. Even at the smaller places -- perhaps especially at the smaller places, since those places often have inferiority complexes they hope to overcome with ascribing to mass-produced dominant culture commodities. Everybody wants to be somebody, and when the Big Guys (and the United States) are seen as Somebody, and American companies make it really, really easy to consume their products, then everybody has easy access to a whole new identity, compliments of marketing culture.

Ah, well. I suppose it's been this way since time immemorial. People have been cirumnavigating the globe in search of What's Cool and What's From Somewhere Else (often the two are synonymous) for as long as they've been able to hop in a ship and go. Ancient Chinese pottery shards have been found on the coast of Chile. The Merrimack Valley was a destination for miners and ore traders from the British Isles and Phoenicia. And the Silk Road opened up the East to the West aeons ago. So, it should come as no surprise that we continue to do this cross-cultural integration thing.

I just wish we could retain something of the original, now and then. If there is such at thing as "the original"...

Status for "Fuel" edits: 90%

2006-02-18T06:36:00.000-08:00

The book has been completely edited for style and content (but of course as soon as my partner Laney started reading it, she found things she thinks need to be changed... things like the date on the first page -- should be "2000" not "2005"... d'oh), so there will be more to do and more to come. I've also got a friend reading the manuscript... we'll see what she comes up with.

Status for the "Fuel" Virtual Book Tour: 10%
Okay, so it's more like 17%, since I do have one reading out there, already. But I'm seriously behind, and in the back of my head, I'm very disappointed with myself for "slacking off". Oh, well. I had to focus on the edits, and that's what I did, dammit! I've been occupied by things like blog CSS work, helping out with my partner's drumming circles, spending time with friends (which is a new thing for me, solitary that I am... somehow, I've turned out to have a bunch of friends!)... oh, and landing a full-time contract with a little company that's very eager for me to complete my tasks ASAP. And I've got to learn ASP.NET, which is fine. I can do that. I've got my book and the web to see me through. And it's a long weekend, so I can actually get something DONE this (three day) weekend! It's all good.

Just as an aside, I've been listening to "Weekend" by the group Curve, over and over for the past hour. It's fun. Listening to music over and over and over -- repeating it infinitely -- is something I've always done. It puts me into a semi-trance, and I find that even when I try to "dump out" of a song and go on to another, I'm in a groove. I'm catching up with all my blogs to the tune of "Weekend" and I'm trying to be easy on myself for having not gotten any podcasting/virtual book tour work done in the past month -- no, two months! Good grief. I've got people downloading the VBT RSS and the MP3, so what the $%&#^? Why am I holding out on people?

I went on vacation in Provincetown, and I'm not sure I ever came back. I'll be recording subsequent readings, starting this weekend, since I now have a new laptop and I've got Audacity loaded into it. It's also a lot faster than the other PC I was using to do my production, so that should help. And I can work anywhere, which is good. Throw the laptop and microphone headset in the car, and go out to a beautiful scenic vista and record my readings there. It could work. And the acoustics inside my little car are probably more conducive to audio production, than my living room or study. It could work.

Edits done through Day Eight

2006-02-08T15:43:00.000-08:00

The countdown continues. I've got all of three chapters to go, before "Fuel" is ready to finalize and put out there. I'm having my partner, Laney, review it before it "goes live" (it's only fair -- the book does talk about her a lot).

Not much going on, besides editing, walking in the woods, following up on job leads, blogging, doing more edits, doing chores around the house, riding the exercise bike, doing more edits, having lunch with folks, here and there, and tying up loose ends with my many different pursuits.

The Virtual Book Tour will resume, once I've got all my edits in place. Must focus on that tomorrow. Get it done. Just get it done, already.

Pumping myself up

2006-02-06T08:54:00.000-08:00

... with yet more caffeine and music... crankin' on my Fuel edits, making some serious progress... I'm up to page 103 of 177, and things are going well. I'm at the point in the book where I'm coming to terms with the fact of the fuel protest, and I'm supremely pissed off at everyone for creating the conditions in which I found myself -- emotionally and mentally depleted by overwork, and physically stuck by the petrol blockade.

God, did I need a vacation, back then. I'm surprised that I did as well as I did in Cornwall, as a matter of fact. Looking back and what I wrote five years ago, I was severely depleted on all levels, and I'm surprised I was as resilient as I was. I'm surprised I was actually able to process everything that was going on. Of course, I had my limits, and a lot slipped by me, but at the same time, I think I was pretty lucid at the time, and I could get a grip on what was taking place around me with some semblance of sanity.

I marvel, nowadays, at the exuberance and singleminded dedication I felt for my work in the late 90's. I mean, I really, really, really *believed*. I thought for sure that all my/our hard work was going to amount to something, and that we'd be rewarded for jobs well-done. I thought we'd at least be able to keep some semblance of ownership, that we'd be able to take credit for our work, that people would see what we'd put into all that web development -- the sacrifices we made in our personal lives, the dedication with which we figured out how to do things that had Never Been Done Before. I thougth that there would be at least some recognition.

But now, years later, I look around me at the travesties of mis-management and political posturing, the scourge of outsourcing and "offshoring" (how the hell did the adjective "offshore" get to be a verb, anyway? it deeply offends my grammatical senses, and anyone who doesn't agree with me strikes me as a little light on literacy)... I look around me at all that we've accomplished. We've accomplished a whole lot, too. I was one of the folks that people scoffed at in 1996, when I told them the web really mattered. And now those same people are acting as though they invented the stuff. It's just crazy. I mean, I really, truly, honestly believed in what we were doing. And the fact that I've been shown the door by people I've worked with, on numerous occasions, because of politics or posturing, or the simple fact that they didn't know what to do with a butch dyke (they didn't *have* to do anything with me -- just live and let live, dude!)... all of it just burns and stings, and no ointment will make the swelling go down.

I guess it's just greed at work, as usual. You build something pure and good and promising, and the people with holes in their souls who crave MORE-MORE-MORE and will stop at nothing to get it, arrive to stake their claim and push you out of the way. It's the way of the world, I suppose. But it really sucks.

Oh, what the hell. All that stuff I was working on, once upon a time, is over and done. It's been done so many times, it's not even new anymore. What do I care about all of that old news? What do I care about what was innovative ten years ago? There are new things out there, new technologies to follow up on, new ways of doing what I love to do, and I can't let it get to me, that I outstayed my welcome, an innovator in a land of status quo devotees.

It's been really good, having the past month off. I know I didn't spend all my time on Fuel, the way I'd intended, but I needed a break. I needed a serious break. It's been years and years, since I last had any time off, and it's been great, having time to unwind and "thaw out", as an acquaintance of mine puts it.

I've really needed a thaw. I mean, I wasn't working at fever pitch every single day of my web development life, but I never really gave myself permission to have down-time longer than a day or two. And illness has been my main way of allowing myself the leisure of not doing anything at all.

Of course, part of the problem, is that I love the work I do. Heaven help me, I love the world of the web, the code, the applications, even the bugs and inconsistencies. I love the act of sitting down at a computer and causing something new and unique to come into being. It's about as intensely creative an activity, as any I can think of -- even if there is no brush or pen or musical instrument involved. Coding is still an art, and I've missed it, over the past month that I've been away from it. Oh, sure, I've been working with Podtopia, my podcasting platform, and I've been doing some coding, here and there of different websites I've been maintaining. But I haven't been neck-deep in it, like I used to be, and I miss that old activity.

Used to be, I was up to my eyeballs in code, each and every day (even weekends, when I was working on my own coding projects). Used to be, I was up on everything. But over time, I've found myself drifting away from the coding and finding myself focusing more on what I want to do with a coded application.

Like publishing Fuel. Like publishing these blogs. Like podcasting. It's all very well and good, to build things. But it's fun to use them, as well. And end-use is what I'm into, these days.

I wonder, sometimes, if one of the reasons I've gotten away from coding, has been because I'm "a girl". At my next-to-last position at my former employer, I was working (and trying to code) in an environment that was very strictly divided between Men and Women.

Men were MEN and Women were WOMEN -- never the twain did meet. It was a little creepy, in a 50's kind of way, actually. The women were all deliberately feminine, and they were really rewarded for being good girls -- being supportive of the guys and nice and never using harsh language or being loud... The guys were all constantly rewarded for being GUYS -- boisterous, loud, a little rowdy, jock-ish, into sports and cars and all that. It was a little surreal, in this day and age. As though everyone were going overboard to prove what paragons of conventional gender expression they were. In 1955, I would have expected it. But in 2005? Oh, honestly.

I think a lot of them thought I didn't care for them. In fact, my boss asked me a bunch of times, if I liked working there. It was a job. Was I supposed to love it? I mean, honestly. I show up to do my work, not bolster other people's flagging egos and allay their insecurities and fears. It felt like I was on constant "nurture alert" as a female member of the team. After all, that's what "girls" do, right? Nurture the poor afflicted men around them, who have troubles at home with the wife and kids.

Everybody's got their thing, and nobody's perfect, of course, but someone please give me a break. Work should be about work -- not healing the emotional wounds of members of the opposite gender.

Well, it'sjust as well that they never really made me feel 100% welcome (not knowing what to do with me, and all, since I wasn't the most feminine chick at work, and I was loud and used harsh language and as a little too... too, for most of their tastes). It softened the blow of leaving them behind. Just picking up and leaving that burnout shop would have been far more difficult, had I really liked the environment I worked in, and had it liked me.

But I did leave them behind. And I feel like I've left more than that employer behind me. I've distanced myself from the obsessive-compulsive, addictive work habits that drove me for so many years. I've taken a break from the GO-GO-GO mentality, and I've traded it in for a more measured approach. An approach that recognizes that I've been doing web development for a decade, now, and I don't need to run around like a chicken with my head cut off, to get things done. Experience should be used to take a more careful, thoughtful approach to your application development, so that you don't make the same mistakes twice, and you don't burn yourself out before you hit the end-game.

That's where I'm at now - using my experience to publish print/electronic/audio. Using what I know, to accomplish things in different ways. In new ways. In ways that haven't been done before. And keeping out ahead of the pack, where I belong.

Podcasting.
Publishing in print.
Blogging till the cows come home.
Publicizing when I can, without being completely obnoxious about it.

Just taking things to the next level in a careful, considered, logically sound manner, consistent with what I know about myself, the technology world, the web, readers, audiences, and the limits of all of the above.

Of Ritual and the Sacred

2006-02-06T08:52:00.000-08:00

Saturday is definitely a better day for a day of rest than Sunday, in my book. If I live my life right, by the time Saturday comes around, I've pretty much exhausted myself and I really need a rest. But Saturday's when all the stores are still open, and it's when the transfer station is open for me to take my trash, and I've got a lot of Saturday rituals I do... like poking around outside... like looking at the basement and contemplating what I need to move/get rid of/re-shelve/bring upstairs... like running around and doing things that I don't get the chance to do during the week. Of course, taking time off this past month or so, I've had plenty of time during the week to get things done, so the old paradigm has shifted a bit. But still, Saturdays are the days I find it easiest to rest and take time off. It's as though my internal clock were wired for the old-style Sabbath.

Anyway, Sundays are often when I do my best thinking. Probably due to having been raised in a church-centric family and taught early on that Sundays are a day of rest. When I was a kid, we were forbidden to do work like homework or other chores on Sundays. We were to read, study the Bible, and do other restful things. I can't remember exactly how I spent my time, aside from wishing I could set my own schedule and not be bothered with this Sabbath business. I guess, even as a kid, I was keyed into Saturdays being my Day of Rest.

Anyway, it's Sunday, today, and I'm slipping into my reflective self again. I woke up thinking about ritual and the sacred. How ritual is such an important part of our lives, and we all have it in evidence, somewhere or another. Twylah Tharp talks about rituals in her "Creative Habit" book -- she has exercises where she asks what your first-thing-in-the-morning rituals are, and she talks about her own (which is rising at 5:30 each morning and hailing a cab to go to the gym to work out).

All of us have our morning rituals... our daily rituals... our weekly, monthly, annual rituals. As individuals, as communities, as a nation, as a planet. But in talking and thinking about rituals, I think there is an element that often gets overlooked about rituals, that qualifies a series of motions that we go through on a daily basis, as more than just motions. There's a quality that our actions need to have, to qualify them as rituals, rather than just rote routine.

That quality, I believe, is a connection to survival. I believe that in order for a set group of motions or gestures or actions, performed on a regular basis in a predefined way, to qualify as "ritual", they need to be imbued with an importance that is directly linked to our survival. We can't just go through the motions. We need to believe that those motions will keep us alive. We need a sense of the mysterious, a sense of the universal, a sense of the awesome and intimidating, in order for our "practice or behavior repeated in a prescribed manner" (as my Random House Dictionary defines 'ritual'), to be more than just habit. The minute we lose the sense that our actions are directly related to keeping us or a part of our existence alive and intact, our ritual becomes meaningless. Our ritual becomes a rut.

Think about it. For eons, people have been doing ritual to appease and appeal to the gods of their land, to assist with crops, weather, everyday logistical issues, pregnancies, marriages, deaths... the whole of life. When people lived a lot closer to the land, and much more was out of their control, than today (if the weather went bad and the crops were destroyed, it could mean half your children died... if illness raised its dread deathskull above a community, even the strongest and hardiest of workers and hunters could succumb, and threaten the survival of everyone).

Ritual, when people still believed that the gods had sway over the elements, had a dominant element of survival to it. It wasn't about getting together on a weekly basis and singing hymns that people all knew. It wasn't about going through the motions to prove you were a good person. It was about ensuring your survival -- the survival of yourself, your children, your spouse, your family, your benefactor, your community, your land. It was about appeasing elements and pleasing deities, to stay alive another year. Ritual wasn't some nicety. It was essential.

Even after basic essentials were put in place by overlords of medieval manors in Western Europe, essentially industrializing mechanics of the land by instituting systems of serfdom and calculated plunder and other management mechanisms which weren't so far removed from what we practice today in the western world, religious ritual was as important as ever.

But attendance at church was more a matter of spiritual life and death, than physical survival. When Church and State were inexorably linked, and the lords of the land had to answer to the representatives of the Lord on High for everything that they did -- and they could be excommunicated (e.g., consigned to the eternal damnation of the flames of hell) -- if they stepped out of line, the participation of the common folk in church services was an essential part of calibrating the depth of local commitment to Church doctrines (not to mention determining how many battle-aged men would be available to fight in wars arranged by either the local lord, or someone's interpretation of the Lord On High). I know I'm simplifying things a bit, and there are many grey areas to medieval history and the relationship between Church and State, but I just want to get to the bottom line, for the sake of making a point.

Even in more modern times, say, the past 300 years or so, in the western world, when science replaced religion as the explanation of How Things Work, and our machines took the place of ceremony in moving the wheels of creation, religious ritual had its place, in that it determined who was a Good Person and who was a Bad Person. It could mean the difference between life and death, for some folks, as being a Bad Person put you in a class of people who were last in line for the proverbial fresh bread and clean water... it put you in a class of people who couldn't get access to the good schools, the good neighborhoods, the good "stuff" that put you at the top of the pecking order. Being a Good Person, or a Good Christian, gave you a status that magically protected you from suspicion ... suspicions that could mean the difference between a rap on the knuckles or jail time... suspicions that could mean the difference between a good education and a good job and adequate nutrition and health care, and being left behind when the train of the American Dream left the station. In short, the difference between being a Good Person and a Bad Person translated to the difference between good teeth and bad teeth, straight bones or rickets, and a life expectancy of 75 or 45). Clearly, religious ritual, as empty as the ritual itself may have become for people, was still an important component of people's survival, up until the time when people stopped thinking that Christianity necessarily equated with innate goodness, or the promise of Everlasting Life.

Now, I'm not saying that Christianity (or adherence to some other organized faith) *won't* ensure your Eternal Survival. What I'm saying, is that people have stopped believing with the same fervor that Eternal Life is in fact a likelihood, if you follow certain rules and conduct yourself in a "Christian" manner. A lot of grey areas have crept into our perceptions of religion, and while there is greater freedom in that for some (and less freedom for others), the main area in which we've lost ground, is the significance of our religious rituals.

The old hymns don't have the same significance for us, anymore. The act of going to church doesn't hold the same allure for us any longer. The words and motions and activities we associate with Church don't have the same depth for us anymore. We crave ritual, and we crave the kind of ritual that is inexorably linked to our survival. But fewer and fewer of us believe, anymore, that the rituals handed down to us really, truly, will ensure our survival, either in this world, or in the next.

Enter web development. Now, don't get me wrong -- I'm not saying that computers and the world wide web are the new gods of our age (though some could argue it, and win the debate). What I'm saying is, web development in the late 1990's took on the flavor of religious ritual in ways that no other ritual could.

If you look to the old orientation of religious ceremony enabling you to create the world around you, in terms of affecting weather and crops and the lives of your loved-ones and community, and you consider the significance of ritual to be that of literally creating the world around you, by the appeasement or manipulation of the elements/mysteries, then web development totally fit the bill.

What happened was, a bunch of folks who delved into the mysteries of emerging technologies figured out how to make them work. We figured out how to design and code and test and tweak. We figured out how to create this whole new world that was nothing like anything we'd ever seen or experience before. We figured out how to create applications and platforms and pages and whole sites, that had never, ever existed before. We figured it all out, and people learned about our creations. They came to see what we were up to, we devotees of this Divine Creative force, and they liked what they saw.

Suddenly, the geeky nerd outcasts of grade school, the kids who had to hire dates for the prom or didn't bother going, at all, the queers and the oddballs, were members of a new priesthood. We liked the experience. We liked it a lot - not just because suddenly we were imbued with a wonder and a mystery that others could only begin to imagine, but because we suddenly had the kind of power to create the world around us that had eluded us all our lives, in the social milieu.

It wasn't so much that we could suddenly impress girls (or boys) and be the most popular kids on the block. Oh, no. We'd tapped something far more appealing and significant. We could suddenly do more than chafe at our helplessness in the social arena -- we could actually leave the social arena behind, where we were at such a disadvantage, and create a completely different and new world where *we* were the ones making the rules, where *we* were the ones who held the keys to the kingdom, where *we* were the ones who knew How Things Worked, and we could make them work the way we wanted, just as the priests of old could manipulate the elements (and I do believe that some of them actually could).

What's more, our power came from following set steps, set protocols, set "practice(s) or routine(s) repeated in a prescribed manner). Each day that we stepped into our cubicles and turned on our PCs and/or monitors, fired up our e-mail, checked for messages, looked over our list of things to do, that day, we were in ritual space. Each day that we met with our other team members to plan and plot our trajectory or troubleshoot issues, we were in sacred space. We were "reverently dedicated to some person or object" (which how my Random House dictionary defines "sacred"). We were totally dedicated to the cause. We were lesser gods. We were but a little less than angels. We were the creators of the world of our choosing and design. We were the Ones Who Knew How Things Worked, and our actions were directly related to the creation and the survival of the world around us.

Now, this brings up an important point about the signficance of ritual. To this point, I've been talking about its importance in terms of survival. But there's another element to it, as well, that bears mentioning -- namely, the role it plays not only in staving off impending doom, but in creating anew that which we desire. Ritual isn't just for preventing death. It's for creating new life. And that, I believe, is where its greatest allure lies.

I spoke earlier of ritual being important in preventing crop failures and untimely deaths. But no people can sustain themselves on avoiding death alone. They need to have some element of creating new life through their ritual, as well. It's not just to keep spring hail at bay, that our ancestors prayed. They also wanted to ensure ample rains and fertile livestock. They didn't just seek to prevent their own gruesome and painful deaths. They wanted long and prosperous and happy lives. Ritual has always been an important tool to prevent bad things, but it's also been a vital took for creating good things.

And that creative aspect was what kept so many of us going, in those heady 1990's. It was the spark of joy that came from a well-executed routine... the rush of excitement from building something that Worked(!). It was the constant encouragement that came on the heels of one successfully deployed website after another. It was the thrill of exploration and the excitement that accompanied each and every aspect of this new way, when there were no best practices in place, when there were no standards available, when everybody was making it up as they went along, and things Just Worked, because we were smart enough and tenacious enough to hang in there till the job was done.

Of course, it took a toll on our health and our minds and our personal lives. Of course, it fried our systems and didn't leave us much to work with at the end of each day and week and month. Of course, it really did a number on our relationships, and a bunch of people I worked with, once upon a time, had a lot of domestic strife as a (direct or indirect) result of the web development frenzy of the late 1990's. But we were looking for something sacred in our lives. We were seeking out ritual. We were creating our own belief systems and our own mechanisms for manipulating and instigating the elements of our world. We were doing something as primal and as essential to human nature, as animal sacrifice once was. We were busy creating the new world from the confines of 6x6 foot fabric-covered boxes. And we loved it.

But something happened along the way, that changed things. It changed things for me, it changed things for a lot of people, and it turned our sacred rituals into rote routines that stripped us of power, rather than imbuing us with it.

We became popular. And that was the beginning of the end.

I write in "Fuel" about how, by 2000, my employer had figured out that the web was actually a force to be reckoned with, and the work of my team had become an essential part of business strategy. That fact, while it did ensure my continued employment, helped to turn the sacred rituals of everyday web development into a rut that sapped the life from me and everyone around me.

Our actions were no longer as powerful as they'd been before, because the things we were doing weren't unique and as innovative as they'd once been. What's more, the people who are In Charge Of Things, had come up with the idea that they could institute "best practices" to follow, and there was increasing managerial oversight to our work. Suddenly, people who had just found out about the web a year or so before (at the most) were in charge of making rules about how websites should be built, how they should look, how they should perform, and what purposes they should serve. Real power to create, based on technical expertise, was taken from the original creators, and handed to the looky-loos.

The Titans had been replaced by the squabbling gods of Olympus.

Do I sound bitter? Perhaps. I'll try not to. But anyone who was in the position I was in, back in 2000, knows what I'm talking about.

But it wasn't the shift of power that ruined all the fun. It was the desecration of the religious rituals of web development by rampaging hordes of program managers and business partners who had dollar signs in their eyes. It was the violation of the creative forces by agents of command and control, who thought that the golden goose would be quite tasty for dinner. It was the secularization of technology, the dumbing down and standardization and process-development, that killed all the fun and turned what was once a deeply fulfilling practice into little more than a "salary continuation program" that supplied about as much inspiration and fulfillment as filling out your tax forms each year.

Actually, filling out your tax forms was more fulfilling -- at least, you could predict what would happen as a result, if you had your numbers all correct. With the folks who rose to power in the last 1990's and took the web by the horns, you never knew what foolishness or political chicanery would drive the initiative du jour.

God, how *stoopid* the sacred quickly became! I mean, you have the means by which to create an entirely new way of thinking and relating and being and working, and some MBA idiot shows up with some Big Idea about what's possible, when they haven't even scratched the surface of possibility. You've got these proverbial rushing streams of inspiration and drive and motivation, and some idiot with a backhoe decides to dam it up to feed their own personal power generator that sucks the life out of that river and turns it into a trickle downstream. You have these wild, raging winds that can move whole deserts for miles, and some goober builds a windbreak, so his shrubbery won't get uprooted. You've got this eternal flame of technical inspiration and genius, tended and fanned and served by a whole army of accolytes who would pay money to be allowed to serve that flame, and someone comes along and says, "Oh, I might get burned!" and snuffs it out.

That's what it was like around 2000, when wannage Idiots started to show up. And it's only gotten worse, as even more wannabe Idiots have queued up at universities to take courses and get degrees that they think qualify them for a "promising and secure career in information technology".

Well, I've got news for you. Not everybody is cut out for the work. And if you're more of a mechanic, than a priest, chances are you'll never attain true greatness in the field. You may find yourself esconced in a prestigious career, but true greatness will evade you, and you'll pass on to the next life perhaps wealthy, but ever mediocre.

You may be able to live with that prospect, but I never could.

Looking back on my trip to England in 2000, I'm struck that the thing that exhausted me so profoundly and that depleted me so completely, was *not* that I was overworked. It was that I was overseen by secularists who had no appreciation for the sacred rituals of web development. The difference between 1998 and 2000 was a whole world. It was the difference between being permitted the license to ply your trade on your own terms, according to the inexorable elemental laws of technology (all 0's and 1's, all binary, all yes'es and no's), and being subjected to the arbitrary, uneducated, uninspired, constantly shifting laws of individual men (and an occasional woman) who either supposed that authority equated with expertise, or didn't give a damn that it didn't.

There was such a dearth of sacred ritual in 2000, it surprises me now that I hung in there as long as I did. The sense of specialness, the sense of promise, the sense of the creative, were long gone, leaving on the shadows of memories. Those shadows kept me going. Along with the underbelly of sacred ritual -- the drive to survive.

Indeed, now that I think about it, the thing that wore me out, more than the fact that ritual had become almost a rut, was the manner in which that ritual was used. It was the base survival aspect of the ritual, that was so dominantly played out, that was the exhausting thing.

I talked, at the start of this piece, about how ritual needs to have an element of survival to it, to keep it going. You can't just show up in a place and go through the motions of your routine and expect that alone to hold meaning enough to sustain you. You need to have an element of survival to it -- keeping out of hell, keeping out of jail -- in order for the ritual to have significance.

Well, our rituals did have significance of that kind -- the "artificial urgency" that was first espoused by management at Hewlett-Packard was taking hold. I read somewhere, onetime, that at HP, one of their guiding principles is to imbue their workforce with an "artificial sense of urgency". In other words, tell them the ship is sinking, so they'll both bail and row harder. Faster! Faster! Faster! Onward! Upward! Unilimited potential! Endless growth! GO! GO! GO! GO! GO! It seemed to work for HP... for a while, anyway.

Well, other people in the IT world thought it might work pretty welll, too, apparently, because gradually and surely as frost in the tundra, that urgency took hold. Especially at my former employer, where we were constantly underfunded and over-committed, and there was precious little opportunity to unwind after one insane project, before the next one started up the following week. There was no cyclical aspect to it -- it was just constant work. And rather than allowing folks time to slow down and recharge, each subsequent project seemed even more demanding than the last.

It really was pretty stupid. Driven largely by people who didn't understand the development process, or who understood it well enough to think they could control it. And over time, our rituals took on more and more aspects of self-defense (preventing famine, preventing floods, preventing plague), rather than pro-active co-creation.

That's what you get, when you have people in charge who just don't understand the elements of the work they're managing. That's what you get, when you have people in charge who were taught in classrooms from books, rather than in the real world. That's what you get, when you haven't a clue how the creative forces of software development function, and you think that you can manipulate them all on the surface and judge them at face value.

Stoopid. Just really stoopid.

Not that I think anyone is really going to learn anything from this, in any way that will substantially change how web development is done in the world. Organizational dynamics haven't changed in eons, and there will always be those who see a good thing, don't have the faintest friggin' clue how that good thing was created or should be sustained, and they think they can package and sell it and get rich. They usually can.

The one person who I think has learned from all of this, is me. And I've learned plenty. Namely, that I'm a staunch and hopeless member of the Creative Class... that I do not suffer fools gladly... that the act of creating software and new technologies is a sacred, creative act for me that's full of ritual and meaning... that it's best if I find work so far out on the cutting edge, that nobody knows how to teach what I know, so there's not a glut of college grads who can bid for work at a fraction of my price... that creation is for me a deeply significant part of my life and it's best not to try to manipulate or control me, if folks want to get the best work out of me... that I belong firmly entrenched in the avant garde, the leading, bleeding edge, the foremost extremes of possibility, far beyond the grasp of people who Think They Know How Things Work, but are really more interested in making money from it, than learning about How Things Do Work. (The modern model of putting non-technical people in charge of managing technical projects, in my estimation, is the equivalent of having a river dam building project overseen by someone who's never actually been in or around water, but they've heard about it secondhand and they've read about water in books. Meanwhile, I'm swimming and rafting in the deep, wild currents of an undammed stream.)

I've learned that it's just no good for me to work with non-technical people who don't have a healthy respect for technology and its possibilities. It's no good for me to work with folks who don't have a depth of experience and tested expertise. And it's no good for me to be stuck in a permanent job that's run by people who don't know How Technology Works, and don't care that they don't know.

Contracting for such people is another story. That I can do. I can do just about anything for a limited amount of time, given the right money.

So, where does that leave me? Looking for work. Looking for technical contracts. Looking for What's Next -- what's so Next, that there's no book written about it, yet. There's no course available on it, yet, there are no "metrics" to determine success or failure in a standard manner. It leaves me where there are no standards, other than What Works, and the only true peers I have, are those who are as far out on the cutting edge, and as steeped in the sacred rituals of leading-edge technology development, as I am. It leaves me with the clear and true knowledge of who and what I am -- a priestess of the new faith, a conjurer of the new forces of a technical nature, a co-creator of the new realities that cannot help but change lives because intensely dedicated people like me are making damned sure that They Work As They Should.

It puts me out there, ahead of the pack. It puts me at a simultaneous advantage and disadvantage. And it makes my life worth living, with all of the sacredness and ritual that this life and this mind do crave.

Amen.

Chapters 3 and 4 are "in the can"

2006-02-03T06:37:00.000-08:00

They've been edited for sense and content and input into the computer. I'm 30% done with the text edits. Still need to do the book tour installment for them. I'm getting there. It's been very busy, lately, and I'm actually in a state of rebellion about getting down to WORK. I'm looking for a job, so the part of me that wants to be free and easy and not be encumbered by commercial concerns, is resisting finishing Fuel.

But looking back on that time, I'm struck by all the lessons it held -- not just about making sure you have a full tank as you motor across the countryside, but a whole bunch of other lessons about globalization and how I relate to it all. I have to say, I'm seeing myself in a new light, rehashing those experiences, and I see how the past five years have really changed me a great deal. There's an innocence in that book that pre-dates the September 11 attacks. There's a willingness to wonder and push envelopes and just surrender to an experience, that I haven't felt in several years. There's a dedication to my work and a willingness to maintain focus, no matter what the price, that is dissipated somewhat in the wake of my increasing disenfranchisement from the world around me, as a result of socio-political pressures. And there's a distinct lack of balance in my life, that has been rectified over the past couple of years -- as much due to disillusionment and bitterly failed promises, as due to coming to my senses.

I guess sometimes it takes a good kick in the ass to get you to smarten up. And a kick in the ass is what I've been getting, over and over and over, since that trip to Cornwall.

Well, life outside this study calls. Must away to my errands. But first, another cup of coffee...

The temptations of success

2006-01-24T07:07:00.000-08:00

What fun - I ran into a former co-worker at the transfer station on Saturday. He's still at the company I left not long ago, and it was interesting talking to someone I used to just interact with in the office, in a social setting (the dump being a main social nexus of the town where I live -- after all, what's more telling and intimate, than your garbage? When you stand shoulder-to-shoulder with someone, dumping your telltale cardboard boxes into the compactor bin, you learn a thing or two). But after the initial bashfulness passed, and I got the "go" light on my decision to leave the company and take a break (some folks take it as a personal affront, when you bail out of their company), I got into telling him about my projects. And it was great.

It was great, because I actually got to talk to a human being about my work -- about Fuel, about podcasting, about the many aspects of this PEAPOD project activity, most of which centers around the book (at this point in time).

Working online is great, but you don't get the same kind of feedback that you get from live interaction. Which is why some people will always prefer to read to an almost-empty room of 4 live people, instead of a virtual room of 400 people. You can actually get more feedback from the 4 live people. And they'll actually feed you energy. Not just e-mail you their thoughts.

Anyway, what came up when I was talking to this fellow I used to work with, was that old feeling of the projects I used to work on at that old company. The company I discuss in Fuel. I told him that "Fuel" is as much about how we feed our own energy, and how we keep going in our work, as it is about automobile fuel. It's about the Internet craze back in the late 90's/early 2000, when everything was so intense and we were so INTO IT!!!

Glimmer of recognition there. And it occurred to me that my writing this book, might be a catharsis for everyone who was caught up in the malestrom of Web Development before that bubble burst, when we were so focused on our success, that we let everything else just kinda fall to the wayside.

Our personal lives. Our relationships. Our hobbies. Our time off. Our vacations. Our outside interests. I mean, so much fell under the wheels of Web Development Initiatives for everyone involved... designers, developers, analysts... the whole lot of us. And the patterns we set up in the late 90's are sadly still in place, in many instances. I've been caught up in those kinds of nothing-else-matters-but-this-work projects many, many times since 2000, and the result is always the same: The project gets done, at considerable personal cost. The stars of the project pay steep prices in health and sanity, the folks rowing behind them pay prices as well, and in the end, while the project may have been Very, Very Important while it was going on, in the end, it's forgotten... eclipsed by the next Very, Very Important Project which demands our total focus and concentration.

Meanwhile, our spouses and children and hobbies and interests take the back seat to our professionally induced OCD, and we slip farther and farther away from what's important to us.

Honestly, isn't there a better way to work? The combination of the Information Economy with the Industrial Revolution is a recipe for personal disaster. Too many managers DON'T GET that you can't just herd creative-class producers like sheep. We need to be led, not driven like animals or machines. We need to be inspired, not threatened. We need to be encouraged, not demoralized. But because management is all too often in a world separate and apart from their creative-class manage-ees, they don't get it. They can't get it. And their managers don't see the point in encouraging them to get it. Because if they're in a position of advanced authority, chances are their careers were built from behaving more like drovers than Che Guevera, who still manages to inspire people, long after he's dead.

It's a sad, sad state, and until people figure out how to effectively manage creative-class folks in a professional environment, I'm not having anything to do with the permanent full-time scene.

The one place where employers could fix this management cluelessness is with HR. Those folks are supposedly the subject matter experts on "human capital" (until someone starts treating me more like a human, than a form of capital, they won't have my confidence or my trust). Those folks are supposed to be able to guide management in how best to handle the folks in their fold. But the vast majority of HR folks I've know, over the years, have not had the boldness or the spine to really stand up for what's right -- how many times I've heard an HR rep proclaim "We're not sending your job to India!" (much to the contrary of all pertinent indicators) I cannot say. And each time they did, I believed less and less in the ability of HR to truly tell the truth and to stand up for what's right and good.

The HR folks of the world are in a prime position to effect substantial positive change, when it comes to managing creative class people and helping management get a friggin' clue about what works and what doesn't. But from what I've seen, they're a whole lot more interested in preserving the status quo and pandering to the wishes of upper management (so they get to keep their jobs), than they are in serving their organizations as a whole.

Keep in mind, I used to work in HR -- at HP, as well as at one of Boston's top-ranked law firms -- so I know wherefrom I speak.

My solution for all of this? Remove myself from the equation. Get myself into a position where I don't have to deal with HR folks at all, so they're unvexed by my personal professional morals, and I'm unaffected by their politicial machinations. We can both peacefully co-exist. Just don't put me in the same room as them.

Anyway, enough bitching about how working in HR turns people into compulsive liars (which is shorthand for the politically correct identification for "unwilling or unable to discern accurate information and disseminate it to those affected")... Yes, I've got an ax to grind, and yes, I am still pissed off about how the dot-com bubble totally screwed up my life for those handful of years, not to mention cheated me out of my vacation in England, when that fuel protest and crisis presented quite the occasion to experience history in the making.

Okay, okay, so I'm not a helpless innocent in that equation. I participated in the dot-com frenzy, myself. It wasn't like someone held a gun to my head and forced me to participate up to my ears. I'm as culpable as the the systems in place that made it so easy -- even expedient -- to completely and totally screw the other aspects of my life, for the sake of a pat on the head and the right to live to see another day.

But I really do think that that time in the last days of the Bubble, really did a lot of damage to people and the inner fabric of our society -- at least in regards to the society built around the advance thinkers and creators on the leading edge of the web.

I suspect that there's been a whole class of people in some sort of adrenal distress since 1998 or so. And I suspect that mind-altering activities (be they taking designer drugs or unbalanced sex or alcohol abuse or loud music piped in through eardrum-piercing earbuds or extreme sports that threaten your life and limb, all in the name of fun) have somehow warped the psyche of the very people who are most inclined to create the culture of this land.

There's something just not quite right about the way we've gone over the past 10 years or so. Small wonder, we march into war, our eyes glazed over with adrenaline rush, howling, "Bring it on, mothafucka!" Small wonder, ritalin is being administered to more and more adults, as well as to kids.

We've shorted ourselves out, for sure. And we've gotten to the point where we can't even tell what's good and useful in our lives anymore, and vacations turn into nothing more than expensive diversions from where we'd much rather be spending our time -- in front of the computer or in a friggin 6x6 foot oatmeal colored box, whose fabric cover is no subsitute for the rubber of a padded room.

I mean, it's absolutely bizarre, to witness what's happened to the huge armies of creative, iconoclastic individuals who could be at the leading edge of Figuring Shit Out and Making Things Right... Once we were bold and brave and willing to take real risks. But we wore ourselves out on one too many crazy projects managed by People Who Didn't Have A Clue, and when we got the taste of a Porche's New Car Smell that we purchased with our stock options (when there still were stock options), we decided we're content to trade our sanity and a sense of purpose and meaning in the world a nicely feathered nest and that 42-inch big-screen plasma t.v., and the Gazillion-Gig, Multimillion Megahertz, You-Can't-Count-High-Enough-To-Understand-How-Fast-And-Powerful-This-Machine-Is PC (people, get real, already -- it's a *personal computer*, not a portal to an interstellar location far, far from earth).

Small wonder, everybody's so screwed up. Small wonder, the pharma companies of the world are doing brisk business. When all is said and done, someone somewhere found out how creative class people can be tamed and directed back into -- of all places -- the mainstream.

That's the hold I'm trying to break, in these couple of months I'm sitting out the 9-5 grind. I've decided that I'm taking February off, as well as January. The creative class drovers of the world can bite me, for now. They'll get their crack at me in March. For now, I need to regain some of what made me who and what I am, once upon a time, before the Internet happened and that friggin' bubble started to grow. I need to be back to my own self -- a self that's partly gone, partly eroded away, because of my slavish enthusiasm to the belief that I was indeed creating a new world as I worked, not just creating something new for the same old powers to manipulate and trade in for cold, hard cash. I was blind, so very blind, to the depths of deceit and manipulation some people will sink to, to fill the gaping holes in their souls (not just one hole, mind you, but many, left there by years of overwork and the belief that you have to pay to play). I underestimated the evils that men (and women) will do, to get What They Want, no matter what the cost. I overestimated my resilience and took far too little time to Step Away and recup what I'd lost.

I lost a lot in those years -- perhaps more, while the bubble was growing, than when it burst, quite frankly.

But enough carping. I've got other blogs to write. And I've got a book to finish off.

Onward! And not just Upward -- Inward, as well!

Substance in a sea of sound-bites

2006-01-20T06:41:00.000-08:00

What a manic little hobby this blogging business is. I say "business" because everybody, it seems, is trying to "monetize" it. It's understandable, of course. Not making any money at internet activities was (part of) what brought us all down around 2000-2001, and nobody wants to go throught *that* again. And so, we blog. Manically. Frantically.

As though our lives depended upon it, which of course we partly think they do. If we can't get out there and make our "internet properties" economically viable, we'll have to stop. We'll have to quit. And we'll have to go back to regular jobs with regular bosses and regular schedules. That's the kiss of death for our creative inclinations. And a lot of us have creative inclinations that won't be denied. Not for long.

So, we blog. Making sure that our news is current, our insights are prescient, and we're always fresh-fresh-fresh.

Because people might not come back to read what we have to say. They might get bored with us and change the channel.

They might just find something better to do with themselves, than read our blogs on a regular basis.

And we don't want that.

At least, most folks don't. As for me -- blasphemer(!) always -- I challenge the notion that people shouldn't have anything better to do, than read blogs. There was a spate of controversy for a while there, 'round about the fall of 2005, when independent research was showing that people were "wasting" x-number of hours each workday, reading blogs.

And I could feel a tremor of control issues run through the veins of the masters of our universe, the employers of our world. From what I heard, employers started blocking blogs with their firewalls, and folks got seriously up-in-arms about the "waste" of work time spent reading frivolous analysis and insight.

Okay, so I have to say in bloggers' defense, that not all blogs are claptrap drivel that's written to distract, as much as it's read to pass the time. Some are the result of a lot of insight and introspection and expertise in a given field. Far be it from me, who keeps a cluster of blogs of my own, to write off the medium as a frivolous waste of supposedly productive time.

But I also have to wonder, if people are that into reading blogs, why aren't they more interested in doing other things? If people would rather read some folks' retrospective on their lost weekend in Reno, what does that say about the other options they have for using their time?

And if most blog reading goes on in the workplace, what does that say about the type and nature of the work people do?

I mean, seriously, given a choice between meaningful work that engages and educates and enlightens me, and some pundit's missive about the current socio-political climate, I'll take the work anyday. But maybe that's just me. It wouldn't be the first time, I parted ways with the mainstream.

Personally, I blame cubicles for all that blog reading. I mean, seriously. Oatmeal-colored, fabric-lined, three-straight-lines-around you cubicles that are closer akin to veal pens, than workspaces. A workspace is a place where you can spread out and let the spirit move you to productive contribution to the world in which you live.

Cubicles are holding places for people who are either too fearful or too challenged when it comes to self-discipline and time-management, to find something more meaningful (and less "safe") to do with their lives. It's an awful, terrible, horrific thing, the modern cubicle. A pox upon our land, and a blight upon our souls. But that's the best that a lot of folks think they can expect from work, these days. And if the paycheck is right, people can put up with about anything... even an oatmeal-colored, fabric-covered box with standard issue desk and phone and computer and file drawer.

You can probably tell, I've been out of cubicle land for a little while. It's true. I'm taking the first two months of 2006 to sit out the rat-race. I've recently decided that hauling my ass into a little box that belongs to someone else and won't afford me the freedom to move about and do as I see fit, all the livelong day, is something I'd just as soon not do, so long as I can. I've got a book to edit, I've got a book to publish. I've got things to think about and a life to consider. Spending my days doing other people's bidding, even if it is for a tasty paycheck, is just not where my head is at, these days.

I need to finish "Fuel".

I've been wondering why I haven't been more actively engaged in its editing and finishing, since I first wrote it. I mean, it was a very eventful time, and it was a time that really changed my life in some very subtle but noticeable ways. Plus, it was in another country, and if there's one thing I love doing, it's thinking about travel in another country.

So, why the delay? Why the hesitation?

I think it's *because* the material contains the seeds of my life's transformation. And I wasn't ready to be transformed, till now. I mean, think about it - how depresssing is it, to look your demons in the eye, know what you have to do, to combat them and banish them forever from your life... all the while knowing that if you do anything that radical, everything you're planning to do with your life, which depends on the status quo, will quickly escape your grasp? I couldn't transform myself, just then. I needed to keep that draining job. I needed to stay locked into the system. I needed to stay at that wretched job long enough to buy my house, pay off my debts, and get myself into good shape to really move forward.

When I wrote "Fuel" the first time, there was no way on earth, I could afford to do what I needed to do -- step away from the interminable, depleting, burn-out grind and find work that fed my soul, not just my pocketbook. No bank would have approved of me saying, "Oh, I don't have quite enough money to pay my mortgage each month! I'm busy fulfilling my heart's desires!" And what mortgage company would have floated me hundreds of thousands of dollars, to purchase my home, had my main financial prospects been work that had the main purpose of enlarging my soul, not raking in the dough?

It's a sick and sinful world we live in, and the first sinful sickness sets in when you mortgage your life for the sake of meeting your financial obligations. But the sickness doesn't have to become chronic. The making ends meet can be a means to an end, not an end in itself. Most people don't realize that, though. They believe the bankers. And they believe those flyers they get with all their other junk mail, that tell them a second mortgage (oh, sorry -- a "home equity loan" -- that sounds much nicer than a "second mortgage") will help them wipe out all their debt in one fell swoop. A pox upon those who mail out all those flyers in the first place, to people who have more sophstication about their child's soccer game, than their financial wherewithall. When they get hold of you and convince you that increased debt to them is a very good thing, then the original sin of abandoning your soul for the sake of a fistful of dollars, sets for good. And you're fast-tracking to Gomorrah.

But that doesn't have to be the final word on the life you lead. It doesn't have to be the final anything. Mortgaging your soul for the sake of material comfort is a fine line to walk, but it can be walked. And it must be walked with a clear sense of what's true in the world, and what's not. You've got to walk that line with the full knowledge that what you're doing with your life is not ultimately what you ALWAYS want to be doing, and it's a means to an end. The minute you start thinking that it's an end in itself-- the daily shuffle into the veal pen... hooking up to the milker in your own corporate stansion -- and you become invested in it as a part of who and what you are... your goose is cooked.

At least, it is, if you're a creative sort like me and so many of my other friends from That Place I Used To Work.

Back in 1997, we all had other things we wanted to be doing with our lives, than sitting at a computer all day, typing in code, and making phone calls to people we needed to connect with and answer to. We were artists, we were writers, we were musicians, we were made scientists. We were a whole lot of things you'd never expect a bunch of corporate types to be. And we plied our trade in wary co-existence with the sorts of people you would expect a bunch of corporate types to be.

All that changed, of course, as we proved we were good at what we did, and we proved that our work had worth in the world. When the "other" bunch of people got wind that what we made and put in place could make money, everything started to change.

I hung in there. Of course I hung in there. It's well nigh impossible to just abandon something you've created that you love like your own child. But we were surrogate mothers, we bunch of web developers. Ultimately, our creation was the sole property of our employer.

And so it goes. How sad and tragic. Soon, the prima donna will be emerging from backstage to sing her final aria and succumb to consumption in a roar of applause.

But I'm not that prima donna. And I'm not in that world, anymore. I'm writing a book about that world, editing and polishing and making sure it reflects my current understanding of How Things Are, which is a bit different from my outlook in 2000.

I've learned a thing or two, since then. And I don't have to hie myself to a cubicle today.

And now for the press release...

2006-01-05T11:15:00.000-08:00

Independent Author/Publisher Announces Virtual Book Reading Tour Via Podcast

Independent author and publisher, Kay Stoner, announces the start of her virtual book tour for her forthcoming book, "Fuel: Memoirs of a Crisis". This virtual book tour is a podcast series of readings from her book, which tells the tale of two Americans stranded in Cornwall (Southwestern England) during the fuel protests and crisis of 2000.

Combining readings of sections from "Fuel" with ambient sound effects of audiences talking, laughing, and clapping, Kay creates an environment like she's experienced at live readings. "I originally had thought about doing a real-life book tour for Fuel," she says. "But I've got a lot of personal responsibilities and I don't have the time or money to launch a full-scale book reading tour. I've been podcasting for a number of months, now, and it occurred to me that I could produce a "virtual" book tour that sounds just like recorded book tours I've seen on cable television, or hear on the radio. The only difference, is that the audience sounds are "canned". My potential real-life audience, however, is probably much greater than what I could attract with readings at local bookstores or art galleries or public libraries."

With podcasting, Kay intendes to reach an international audience, who will download her audio and subscribe to her podcast feed, which they can find listed in major podcast directories, as well as at her podcasting site Podtopia.net. She's also writing a creator's guide for other authors who want to launch an international book tour, but lack the funds, the money, or the connections, to tour. For more information about "Fuel", creating virtual book tours, and podcasting, visit www.fuelbook.net. To find out more about using podcasting to reach a wide audience, e-mail info@podtopia.net... or visit www.podtopia.net.

I want to keep this short and sweet, but still convey ample information. There are three initiatives mentioned here -- 1) writing/publishing "Fuel" , 2) podcasting with Podtopia.net, and 3) learning how to produce virtual book tours with podcasting.

I'm hoping all three get noticed by readers. They're all interconnected. And links them -- and more -- are all accessible from all my blogs.

Embracing imperfection

2006-01-02T06:39:00.000-08:00

Well, I spent Saturday re-recording the first book tour reading with my noise-cancelling headset microphone (As Robin William's character says in "The Bird Cage", Madonna! Madonna!), but I'm just not happy with the result. I've got a lot of whiny hiss in the final recording, and when I remove the noise, it comes out sounding tinny. The bitrate is higher with the line-in microphone, but I'm getting a lot of extra noise, for some reason. So, I'm going back to the original reading, for the sound quality.

Looks like the internal microphone is the way I'm going to go. In future readings, I'll bump up the animation in my presentation more -- give it more of a performance. But I'm tired of waiting and mucking around with the sound files, and it's a new year, so I'll just get this out there, so folks can see what the first reading sounds like. And they can send me feedback. And I'll focus on improvements in subsequent readings. My ultimate intention is to piece together all the audio from my different readings, into a single audiobook -- also to be downloadable from Lulu.com -- so if I get to the end and I want a better feel for the first two chapters of the book for the final audiobook, I'll just re-record them there.

It's all a learning curve. But the curve gets less steep, as I go on.

Now that I've done my first complete reading, it's time to document the process for "Creating your Virtual Book Reading Tour", the creator's manual I'm going to publish with Lulu.com. Having a virtual book tour is so very cool, and I'm sure other authors are going to want to do it, too. So, I'll create a guide to show folks how to do it. And over the coming weeks and months of doing this process, I'll refine the guide, if need be. But at this point, I've got just about everything I need for the first edition -- except for the screen shots -- so, now I just need to capture those, and I'll be on my merry way.

Now, the documentation I'm doing will be dual -- print AND online. The book is "totally portable media" in one slick package, while the online documentation will be broken up between steps, and will become an online self-guided course, eventually. That way, folks can move at their own pace and have info right in front of them.

The online format actually offers more space to put information -- and bigger graphics, in color. The restrictions of 9x6 inches and only black and white text, can be a problem -- especially for pointing out smaller details of Audacity and the sound files. Online, I can have full-color, full-size graphics which convey information much easier. It's just a different way of conveying information, and both print and online have their strengths.

The main thing is, to convey what you want to convey, and do it as thoroughly as you possibly can.

And convey I shall.

I'm transferring the MP3 to the server right now, and I'm setting up my podcast page.

You can see it at http://www.podtopia.net/fuelbook/. Subscribe to the feed, or download the file today, to hear what's possible.

New recording of reading 1 created

2005-12-31T10:09:00.000-08:00

Now, to do the post-production on it.

The thing I love about my iRiver, is that it can record and encode my audio by itself. It's also a drawback, of course, since if I mess up, I have to edit in Audacity. The time I save from the get-it-right-the-first-time-through recordings, though, greatly offsets any aggravation from having to do post-production on the longer pieces.

The longer pieces, like the virtual book tour, will need to be edited, anyway, so it's no biggie. Plus, I really do need to give a closer listen later, so that I can make sure it sounds the way I want it to.

I'll be getting to the post-production in the next couple of days. The New Year is almost upon us, and I've got some fun-having to do, in the final hours of 2005!

Okay, we'll try this again...

2005-12-31T06:09:00.000-08:00

I'm going to re-record the first reading. I've made changes to the text in the manuscript, and I've identified areas in the former reading, that just didn't sit right with me. I've uploaded my first reading to here, so you can see what the first reading sounded like. Not very inspiring, I think. Also, there are some edits needed towards the end... around minute 10:40 or so, and from there it gets slightly more clunky.

I think I was just tired, when I did the first reading, which is why it's so important to be fully rested and have some energy!!! when you do your readings. If you haven't got the energy on hand, either get some more rest and wait till you do, or reach deep down inside yourself, and see what you can come up with.

No excuses.

About the last thing I want, is to be one of those writers who's obviously used to solitude and can't muster the energy for a compelling performance. Who, I ask you, is going to pony up fifteen bucks, or so, to buy something that even its creator can't get excited about? I'm telling you, part of the reason the publishing business is such a challenge, is probably because the creators of the very works that are supposed to be getting out there, can't find it within themselves to get excited about presenting their own work.

People -- pony up! Writers -- show a little spunk! I don't care if you're accustomed to spending 24 hours a day in solitary confinement. If you have gone to the extreme lengths of having written a book, and you've communicated with the Divine thoroughly enough to come up with something that you can be proud to put your name on, then for heaven's sake, show a little pride, and put some "oomph" behind it. Nobody is going to fault you for standing behind your work. But they'll certainly fault you for not standing behind it.

Signed copies soon available for pre-order.

2005-12-26T18:09:00.000-08:00

Rather than waiting for the book to be FINISHED before promoting it and selling copies, I'm doing what countless other publishers do -- I'm taking advance orders for book copies of Fuel. And I'm offering to sign the book for those who advance-order.

Fuel is a work in progresss -- tho' it's 90% done at this point, and only final surface edits remain to be done. Why wait, to make copies available.

Also, the first edition of the book is available online for folks to peruse. Be aware that the first edition is only online and it has typos and it's a bit different from the 2nd Edition, now in progress. But it's there for people who want to read it, to see if they're interested in purchasing a print version.

Those that can, do. Those that can't, should keep trying and working at it, till they get the hang of it, then they can teach it.

2005-12-26T18:06:00.000-08:00

Got my full audio produced for the first reading of Fuel for my Vitual Book Tour. At the time I was recording the first two chapters for the VBT reading, it seemed like I had good energy, but listening to it now, I'm not so sure. Well, like any live performance, you never know what you're going to get, and you can't be too hard on a writer, when they first get going with their reading series, so I'm going to put it out there on my Podtopia podcast, submit to all the directories out there, and see what comes of it.

Still need to create a link to do advance ordering. I'll need to create that before I put the podcast out there, because there's no sense in hawking something (and I do hawk advance signed copies of the book in the podcast) if you're not going to let people buy it.

So, the podcast is going up there, probably next week, after Christmas clears out of the way. Sounds terrible to say, and it's actually not a true reflection of how I feel about the season, but in terms of getting things done and getting this VBT out there, it will be most helpful for Christmas to be behind us.

Plus, I'll be able to tap into all the folks out there who are looking for fresh podcasts. And as far as I know, I'm the only writer who has a virtual book tour being podcast.

The learninig curve continues. It's still a little steep, and I'm learning as I go... learning that I need to keep my energy up and not be shy in my readings. Learning that I need to really punch some of the lines, not just recite them like a lot of monotonic writers I've heard reading out there. Learning that if I'm going to tell other people how to do this thing, I'd better learn really well what works for me, what doesn't, and what the quickest, best way to get from Point A to Point Z is. That won't happen with the first podcast. It mght not even happen with the second. By the third or fourth, I may be proficient in all this, and then the documentation will come easily.

But first, I've got to nail it all down, myself.

Oh, I also need to reserve the domain name fuelbook.net (if I haven't already -- I can't exactly remember at this point, if I've done it or not) and point it to www,language-professionals.net/fuelbook/ or /members/fuelbook/ Probably the latter, so it's in keeping with the other urls of my other endeavors.

Thinking back to that fateful September in 2000, it amazes me, how much has changed just in the last five years. There were the WTC attacks, of course, which have completely altered the way we do air travel, and our expectations for what awaits us at the airport. Reading/editing my experiences in the airport again, I'm amazed at how petty our concerns were, in the context of the years since. Worrying about getting a seat on the plane, once upon a time, pales in comparison to the worries I have now -- you never know if someone will decide you look suspicious and drag you off to the side, and if you look really suspicious, they can detain you... indefinitely. And while I don't think it's very likely that the same sort of airplane attack is going to be used again (tho' you never know), still, the thought is always in the back of my mind, that there might be some "event" that diverts the plane or turns us all into hostages of some kind. Paranoia now looks a lot more reasonable, than it did in 2000. And for much more serious reasons than existed prior to 9-11-01.

It certainly is a different world. today, than it was just a few years ago. And looking back on those days, reading my carping borderline-bitchiness about the inconveniences at the airport, calls out how much bigger the worries of the world have become, since then. It's been a little difficult to muster the enthusiasm for retracing those steps, in fact, because of the relative insignificance of the "worrie" sof that time. After September 11, all the troubles I experiences I've had as an international traveler, put together, just pale.

But still, I keep my spirits up and moving. After all, the context may have changed, but really, the concerns evidenced and discussed, and the inconveniences endured, are still as valid today, as they were in 2000. Perhaps even moreso. Because after Katrina and Rita, it became increasingly clear that the Way of Oil is a looming dead-end. But like many other dead-ends, it's hard to see the end of the road. It just kinda comes up on you, and you have to deal with it as best you can.

Like dealing with too much luggage packed. Like dealing with the crazy work schedules that keep you constantly running-running-running, no matter what.

The more I revisit Fuel and re-read what I wrote, the more evident it becomes to me, that the book is as much about human fuel, as it is about petrol. It's very much a "period piece", being set in the context of the tailing end of the Internet gold rush. It's very much the product of that time and that energy, that had us all go-go-going, all the live-long day. Fuel is about people, as much as petrol, and it's as much about the waning of individual spirit, as it is about the dwindling of gasoline.

One of the big things that stands out with me, as I read over the first couple of chapters of Fuel, is how much running we were all doing in the web world, in the late 90's. At that point in time, we all thought that our invested time and energies would pay off -- either in stock options, or in the chance to say we changed the world.

Well, we did change the world, and some of us did get the stock options. But in retrospect, it just seems crazy, how hard we all workd, and how long we worked that hard. None of us knew in 1998, that the bubble was going to burst as it did. None of us guessed just how thin the latex was... None of us pioneers thought that we'd eventually be replaced by younger, cheaper workers (though we really should have guessed we would be). None of us guessed that our intrepid employers were going to bail on us, cut us loose, or -- worse -- turn out to be felons who fabricated the majority of their numbers for the sake of share price.

We should have guessed, I know. We could have guessed, I'm sure. We were probably just being a bunch of idiots at the time, throwing ourselves heart-mind-and-soul into our web work. But in those days, we really BELIEVED. Nobody had given us a reason (yet) not to.

I wonder, knowing what I now know, if I could ever muster the kind of enthusiasm for innovative web work, that I once had. I wonder if I'll ever get a whiff of that new car smell again. I'm not sure I'd trust it, if it plunked me on the head. I'm not sure I'd believe it, even if someone came along and said, "Look -- here's the Next Big Thing, and we're cutting you in on the action." I think I'd be plenty wary, and I'm not sure I'd be willing to muster the enthusiasm for launching into the Next Big Campaign, given the depletion that I've experienced before. I just went too far into the abyss, and almost didn't come out, to have yet another sky-dive look very appealing to me now.

And that's a problem, when I'm approached by companies that want to hire me, who are so very intent on go-go-going, one more time, and rekindling the spark of the late 90's for the sake of another gold rush.

I mean, it is a very different scene, now, than it was 10 years ago, and there are actually customers who understand and want the things we code and create, these days. But I have to say, after being so fried by my past experiences, that the prospect of working with yet another team of driven professionals who are all willing to do whatever it takes to get the job done, doesn't exactly have me dancing in the streets.

Surely, there must be a better way to conduct business, than signing onto the old Hewlett-Packard habit of creating an atmosphere of artificially induced urgency. No joke -- that's been their tactic for years. I'm surprised they're still around -- no, wait, they're actually teamed up with Compaq now.

See? There are some serious sustainability issues, here...

The Plan

2005-12-26T18:05:00.000-08:00

So, the plan is to continue with the readings for the Virtual BookTour... point people to the Paypal link to pre-order a signed copy of Fuel in advance of publication, keep refining the book tour readings, and promote the podcast to all those eager new iPod owners in the week after Christmas... and keep working on edits throughout January.

The projected publication date of Fuel is February... I dunno, sometime in February. I'll figure it out later. I think perhaps I should time it out with other publication dates. Or maybe not. If I can get all the text edits done in January, I might as well publish the book then. I am, after all, an independent publisher, and I can do as I please.

So there.

The main thing is to have all the supporting elements in place -- have the website up and functional. Have the buy links up and functional on the website as well as the blog, and mention them in the podcasts of the book tour readings. Have the press release(s) written and ready to roll out via the online press release services I use. Have the tracker gif in place on the Fuel blog (done) so I can track what kind of interest people have. Make sure the blog is submitted to the appropriate directories. Make sure the site is also cross-referenced from multiple locations, so I can get crawled and included in the major search engines. Oh, and of course, notify the local media that there's a celebrity in their midst.

Mustn't forget the local media.

Oh, and travel websites and magazines. Send out press releases to them, as well.

I really think the virtual book tour is going to pique a lot of people's interest. Now, I just need to be able to put together compelling enough performances on the readings, as well as augment them with questions and answers, so that people will want to come back and listen to more readings later on.

No sense in doing all of this, if I'm just going to annoy and alienate people.

Time for more energy

2005-12-26T17:59:00.000-08:00

Okay, so I put together all the pieces of the first reading, and I gave it another listen. No, no, no -- it needs more energy. I sound like I'm on my last legs, and I'm lucky to be breathing. This will never do. Who in heaven's name is going to want to buy a book that starts out being so ... depleted? I've got to start on an up note, all my exhaustion of that time be damned!

I've heard it said that some authors are better writers than readers, and I'm sure it's true. But not for me. Why should I do an imitation of a worn-out, tattered-tweed-wearing artiste, who's laboring just to get through life as a writer? That's not who I am, that's no how I am.

Time to go back to the drawing board and spice things up a bit!

(And now that I don't have any more shopping to do, my schedule has opened wide up, so I can ;)

Virtual book tour update

2005-12-22T09:01:00.000-08:00

Working on the Virtual Book Tour (VBT) and getting that together. I have to give the audio another listen... edit out places where I paused or messed up... and put it all together.

Also, documentation is needed, to show others how to do this. It's WAY cool, and I'm hoping others will catch on to the fact.

When the VBT is squared away, I'll be paying a visit to all the podcast directories and blog directories, promoting the book tour. One of the nice things about having more than one medium to get the word out, is... you have more than one medium to get the word out. And each one cross-references the other, so you get real depth of exposure.

This is not an activity for the faint of heart. Because you just may end up being more successful than your wildest dreams.

Production for the virtual book tour continues

2005-12-18T08:53:00.000-08:00

I've got all the pieces, and how it just remains for me to put them all together. I still have some edits to do, such as changing the names of the people in the story (to protect the innocent and the guilty) and cleaning up typos, and I'm getting antsy that I'm not done with this yet.

There's lots to do -- so very much to do -- and I'm going as fast as I can. But the holidays are upon us, I still have shopping to do, and there's the small matter of just leading my daily life, as it comes... taking care of what needs to be done... balancing out life and work and integrating them more fully.

I've been trying to figure out why I've let "Fuel" go for so long. I mean, I wrote it all down in 2000, and since then I've had ample opportunity to edit it and get it out there. I guess I thought that the story of being stranded without any gas wasn't' very relevant, unless you're into travelogues about the English countryside. And there are so many other more interesting topics to talk about...

I mean, I know that we need to explore alternative fuel sources. I know we need to wean ourselves of our dependency on gasoline. I know we only have so much petroleum left in the ground. But it seemed that nobody else was paying attention to this issue, aside from the small groups of alternative energy inventors working in under-funded research labs and garages across the nation (and in Germany).

But when Katrina and Rita hit, and we all struggled with the gas shortage (high prices) for those several weeks, the idea that this book had long-lasting relevance re-emerged. It seemed that there might actually be an audience for this story -- an audience that can relate to the narrative.

So, out came the manuscript, and up it went onto Lulu.com. It's a work in progress, to be sure, and I'll probably be updating the copy over the coming months, to include factoids and other tasty tidbits. But the bottom line (for now) is, that "Fuel" does need to see the light of day as a printed book. And so it shall.

Memoirs of A Crisis

2005-12-12T06:05:00.000-08:00

Fuel is about to join the many books out there that have a blog associated with them. My memoirs of being stranded in England for a week during the 2000 fuel protests, which I've published with Lulu.com, is now getting an electronic "sibling" in this blog.

Check back frequently for updates on the backstory, the drama of being an independent publisher, rants and raves about alternative fuels and technology, and all things related to "Fuel".