ROOMMATES - Episode 1

This is very funny.

The Ultimate Plan or, What the Hell is jeffjewell.org 2.0?

As I've previously lamented, I have experienced at several points in my life the need for a retooling, a reloading... even a restarting or two... and accompanying periods of research into biological, psychological, and metaphysical tools or methods for retooling, reloading... even restarting... in the perfect cosmically balanced way. I've picked up pointers, gained wisdom, learned techniques, and developed my own processes to leverage those assets in my daily life.

And yet, here I am again... seriously considering a complete restart. Has all that study and effort been for zero practical value?

Basically, the answer to that has to be "no;" if you've truly logically come to the conclusion "yes" then its time for some inwardly-directed thinning of the herd, and even as disconnected as I often feel, I'm just not there yet. So there is a value to the study and effort that simply has not manifest or been recognized yet.

It's in that spirit that I've rebooted my web presence: it is my intention to remake this aspect of my life with the most solid foundations, within the wisest restraints, and to the highest ideals I've collected over the years, with the dual purpose of changing my own life for the better and helping to guide others through their own reboots, reloads, and restarts. Much of the foundation work has begun over the last few months, with domains moving around and web services being consolidated and software being installed. The next step is fleshing out the skeleton.

The main bones of the skeleton are the WordPress weblog at jjewell.com, the phpBB2 bulletin board at jeffjewell.org, the ZenCart shopping cart at cart.jeffjewell.net the MediaWiki-based jjwiki, Google Apps, and this Blogger weblog.

Good news and bad news. And good news.

So I'm back to making a weblog entry after an absence that I feel good about justifying: although I haven't been making regular weblog updates, I have been making regular progress on my web presence. I've missed having a "real" web host where I could load software and setup databases, and I found a web host that fits my needs so perfectly that I think I'm going to write a post on it, here soon. MediaWiki, phpBB2, and ZenCart are installed and have basic functionality set up. And I've moved some domain names around to reflect the new content hierarchy on jeffjewell.net.

Which is where we come to the bad news.

I already think I made an error pointing jjewell.com to the jjewell.com jjwiki page. Although there are certainly steps I can take to customize MediaWiki's appearance, that page is for a substantially different audience than the rest of the wiki, and will likely always be subtantially different in layout and design. So different, that the best action may be to design that one page separately. Perhaps I abandoned iWeb too soon? Perhaps I'm the only one reading this and no one will ever care?

At any rate, as you can see from the un expurgated post time, I have rejoined this millennium and once again have internet access at home... so the final bit of good news is much improved access, meaning more content more quickly.

Dust... Settling...

As DNS propagates throughout the Inter-Tubes, jjewell.com now points to the jjewell.com article in the jjwiki, jeffjewell.net now points to the jeffjewell.net article in the jjwiki, and jeffjewell.org now points to the index page of my discussion boards. This page is now available directly at weblog.jeffjewell.net, adjust your bookmarks accordingly.

The weblog will still be used for announcements, but the day-to-day stuff I've been trying and failing to use the weblog for will be more comfortable on the boards.

How do I transfer credit from other online postings?

Okay, so I know that it looks like I've missed quite a few days here recently in regard to my "post a day" commitment... but that's only because I've made so few daily posts. I would, however, like to direct your attention to the following features, the jjwiki and the jjewell.com discussion boards. I am comfortable that the not insignificant infrastructure work I've done over the past couple weeks meets the spirit of my "daily" commitment, if not the letter of the "daily post" commitment. That's my story and I'm sticking to it... I may even amend the letter of the "daily post" commitment for just this kind of situation.

I'm really pleased to have an ssh/ftp style hosting account again.

Oh, and a Happy Day to all you Mothers out there.

Wheel Spinnin'

It happens to me every so often... sometimes more often than others... and it's particularly upsetting when it comes (like it did this time) right after an however-brief burst of applied energy and putting-checks-in-boxes; I once again find myself with so many things I think I need to be doing that I'm not actually focusing on any of them enough to get anything done. In order to fix that I decided to just finish something... and that something became this post.

And this post is not going to end up being much of anything... seeing as how it's now hours later than it was when I started. As also happens to me every so often, once I finally get some momentum in a direction, other responsibilities (in this case, my job) sometimes take the fore.

But anyway, I suppose this does count as an entry.

Definition By Association

So as I'm re-ordering the details of my life, I keep coming across brand names. I guess it's inevitable, I'm a child of the media, so I'm not going to beat myself up for it. But it is interesting to look at what has stuck around... what sorts of things I keep coming back to.

And by brands, that's not always the precise terms. Two things that meant a lot to me in my early days, the Miami Dolphins and silver coins (particularly dimes) aren't brands, but are still part of what I do.

Lego, Scripto, Mego, Atari, Nike (apparently I have a fetish for brands that end in vowels), Disney and Marvel are all companies that I've preferred, long term.

Anyway, I got fascinated thinking about what drew me to or kept me attached to different brands, and how that attachment still manifests. I'm thinking of doing a series a webpages about it.

I'm also thinking of re-doing my website with Scripto K780 style buttons.

Wow, this is good

I really like this article by KC Joyner from the New York Times. Last year's center for the Dolphins, Samson Satele, is gone, replaced by former Raider Jake Grove. Some fast-fingered internet jockeys found Grove's stats and declared the combination of moves a serious blunder by the men who'd just gone 11-5 with a team that had been 1-15 the year before.

I'd watched the games. I knew Satele got knocked around a lot at the point of attack... particularly in games where it seemed to matter most (Patriots, Jets, for example). And I also knew that Parcells, Ireland, and Sparano weren't likely suspects to be get the short end of the stick in a player evaluation situation.

Thanks, KC, for reassuring me that I'm been right about everything all along.

Here's an idea

I think I might just call my band jeffjewell.org.

It brings a couple different things into clearer focus, it offers a couple interesting options for sub-branding as different musical genres, and it actually solves a problem or two with regard to acquiring appropriate web presences for my new band name.

Well, I've done it again

Hey, it's not like someone couldn't have seen it coming. Indeed, I imagine Suzy's recently over-zealous dedication to being at The House early in the week weren't as much about the specials she was making as it was about keeping me away from the people I was most likely to honor with one finger's worth of feedback on their efforts towards making the business a success.

Anyway, late last night or early this morning, depending on how you prefer to slice it, I responded to a co-worker's complaint along the lines of "I don't like this list of things about this place, I'm thinking it might be better to just quit" with words to the effect that "yes, I think that would be best for everyone."

The conversation degenerated rapidly, even for one that involves me. So I'm bracing myself... I'm experienced enough in life to know that when you say something that desperately needed to be said but no one else would say, there are usually repercussions.