I was just thinking, for those who like to judge a book by its cover, wouldn't it be interesting if Amazon blended their 'you might also like' design pattern with Altavista's 'images that look like' functionality in their image search. That way you could find books that will go nicely together on your bookshelf...

So the deal is, the person in question in DCS3 isn't fully comfortable with me telling the story, so he wants to think about it for a bit. I'm not sure how I feel about it, as it bridges the line between my experiences and his. Of course I don't want to be cold and heartless, but I also see this as one of the tests of blogging: If you have a real-life experience, should you feel compelled not to blog it?

Of course the factor is the impact that it has on the other person. If this were something that made them look really bad, then that would be one thing, but that's not the case here. If it were a story they told me in confidence I would feel it wrong to blithely pass it on to the world.

The difference here is that this is a story that happened to me. It affected my life a great deal for at least a week, and though as it turned out that it affected someone else more, I still feel that it's more my story that I'm relating, and this is the epiphany, the cathartic ending.

The recursive nature of this whole medium necessitates that as I talk about my own life, I talk about the hows and whys and moral quandaries I face about posting or not posting, I'm again posting 'about it' ('around it' would be more accurate).

So, I'm curious to see where my readership's moral compass lies. Those of you who read DCS3 this morning, what do you think?

Keep in mind (as I am) that if this situation that happened three years ago were happening today, there's no way I wouldn't blog about it (except for employer-employee issues, which no longer apply here). These are my stories, these are people messing with my professional project and consequently my professional life, and as such they forfeit their right to ignominy. As for Other-Kevin, he has simply related his view of the story, of the people who fucked him directly as I was fucked peripherally. He clued me in on the missing data of who my own assailant was, and in so doing, freed me to tell a story which until now didn't have an ending...

Dotcom Storytime Part 3 is down for the moment, but will be back (possibly with revisions) soon...

I'm such a pushover...

So the avid reader will recall a couple weeks ago when I almost got on the radio. Well, last Friday I did!

Sarah and Vinnie were talking about cloning, and the morality of making clones for organ harvesting. ("They're still people, clones or not!") I remembered a research experiment creating frogs without heads and called in to tell them people without heads might be the next step. My cellphone was on its last bar of juice, and the car adapter was broken (actually, it's the lighter plug in my car that's broken, but same diff), so I was a little worried about getting cut off...

Anyhow, they didn't revisit the topic, so after keeping me on hold for 20 minutes whilst in traffic, Uze came back to tell me sorry, but they weren't going to get to me. they were about to play the 'Daily Game' though (twice on Friday, 8 and 10) and so before Uze dumped my line I asked if I could play today. She said I'd have to answer the qualifying question Sarah was about to announce, but if so, sure. (They always ask a qualifying question asking about something that they talked about earlier in the show, so people don't just call in for the game if they haven't been listening all morning.) I'd been listening for about 40 minutes, and also a bit earlier when the alarm woke me up, so I hoped I could get it. The question was "What movie will Hooman be reviewing?"

I had no idea.

I quickly thought about what was coming out soon, but everything I was interested in seeing had already come out. I quickly grasped for anything, and remembered that there's an Othello remake, "O", coming out soon, so I guessed that.

Bingo.

So I'm on the air, they ask my name, where I work, that stuff... They ask what the environment's like at Yahoo! and I say it's really casual, and they ask what I'm wearing right now, and as I look down to see what I'm wearing my phone goes 'BEEP!' which I immediately think is it telling me that it's about to cut out from lack of batteries. "Shit." I say, then realizing that the phone was just telling me that my cellphone horoscope had been received, and then remembering that I'm ON THE RADIO, and I hear them scrambling, but they didn't bleep it out. Sarah: "The bleep button's so far away and we only have like seven seconds..."

Anyhow, the question was really easy "Which of the following was not present at the battle of Wounded Knee? General Custer, Crazy Horse, some other Indian, or Paul Bunyan?" It was the second day they asked that question (though I didn't hear it the first time) and the previous person got it wrong. Still, it'd be pretty stupid if it wasn't Paul Bunyan, so that's what I guessed. Bingo.

Four boxes of Clif Bars and two Blink 182 (warning, loud link) tickets later, I get to 'have my own show' for one minute, where I can talk about whatever I want. So, as promised the week before, I of course plugged Ernie-Aid, and the best part is that some friends heard me.

Now that Cingular has 'info alert' functionality, they've been trying like mad to make it useful. The problem is that it's not on-demand. You have to go to the web site and preprogram what you want. "I want Giants scores at 5pm (regardless of when the day's game ends), weather at 6am and my horoscope at 8 sharp."

Aside from the difficulty in even finding the page where you customize your info alerts, the alerts themselves are tiny to fit on a regular non-WAP Nokia 5190, 6190, or 8290 screen.

The net result is 'news alerts' that consist of obscure headlines only, no stories. You have to go to the web site to read the full story.

Undoubtedly the worst part is the horoscopes. Call me spoiled from having read some truly great astrologers, but Cingular's daily cellphone horoscopes plainly suck. Yesterday's was: "Plug the leaks. Take a mental health day. Yoga practitioners are ahead of the game." Sunday: "Talk with authority. Color code your moods. Don't argue about small differences." Huh?

After reading these for months I'm convinced they're not written by an astrologer, or even a fortune cookie copywriter. It seems more likely that someone just wrote a few hundred sentences on pieces of paper and grabs them out of a paper bag randomly, arranging them into barely cogent pebbles of 'wisdom.'

Heck, that's what computers are for! So, to share my wry amusement with these horoscopes, I've taken several dozen of these cellphone horoscopes and broken them apart and last week on the train (where, incidentally, I'm writing this post, while slogging through the south bay salt beds (yeah, really funky timeshifting in the editing process here... Deal with it. :-) ) ) I wrote the Cellphone Horoscope Generator.

I wrote it in perl since I don't have a PHP interpreter on my mac (yet), but I translated it to PHP tonight so it will work within the existing system without a problem. If you haven't noticed it yet, it's be there in the navbar on the left, under 'Cell-o-scope.' Every reload will give you a new cellphone horoscope!

Yes, I was a little bored on the train...

Okay, it's almost storytime, but before I share more of mine, I'd like to point to another interesting story I just read.

Kuro5hin has an interesting story and discussion on the nature of addiction and the detox struggle. It's an enlightening tale that I think most people can probably apply to some facet of their life, even if they don't have a conventional addiction.

The on-board discussion following the article has been quite lively and is really proof that the author isn't alone.

You want content? Sure, come back in the morning and I'll have content for ya. Right now sleep is good...

So (thankfully!) Miss E's not in labor anymore, and now there's one more little person in the world: Logan Connor Schluntz.

Friends having babies... Too cool...

...and way scary.

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9/1/01 Update: Rather, his name is Logan Conner Schluntz. Congrats Miss E! (Ammy's right, we really do have to find another name for you since you've been married for years and are a mom. 'Miss' doesn't cut it anymore... :-)

Palm's VII replacement, the m705, and two new 'always connected' wireless Handspring models got FCC regulatory approval this week, and are due in stores before Christmas. I so want one of these. I'd been thinking about getting a Blackberry for a while, and Sony's Clie has also been poking at my wallet, but I think I'd much rather have a Handspring k180, which has a keyboard like the blackberry, but with palmOS and built-in cellphone. If only it were in color...

The interesting twist is that just a day after the FCC granted the licenses, Palm and Handspring requested the approval be postponed, so public viewing of the FCC application is withheld until they're closer to launching. Think Christmas.

Miss Elizabeth's in Labor!

Okay, I realize most of you have no idea who she is, but it's cool to me.