Apple Foot

Anger, self-pity, the endless cycle

Last night I was feeling enraged. I sat here working myself up over things said earlier in the day, imagining things to say in reply, scripting entire dialogues based on a few words, feeling angry and put-upon. I shot off a ridiculously self-indulgent and self-righteous, slightly incoherent, email to a friend, describing the (unintentional) slight from my boss, the stress of a project I'm working on (working customer support is horrible). Woe is me, I'm surrounded by people who don't appreciate me.

My friend does not need to be putting up with this nonsense from me, particularly not now, when he's got legitimate problems. One of these days I'll learn to send the overwrought emails to my imaginary friend, not to a real, live person.

Gradually, I realized that what made me really angry were two other (but related) incidents. First, my friend E., a person who works in web-based databases, sent me an email in which she used a lot of programming/database terms I'd never heard. Not just, "I don't know much about that," but, "I've never even come across that word." Then I had a long, fruitless call with a customer who clearly knew more about database architecture than me, and was rightfully frustrated with the crappy application I'm supporting. (I really hate customer support calls that begin, "I'm a software engineer...")

What those two incidents clearly highlighted for me is that I have no skills. My title is "Manager of Web and Database Services," and I have almost no technical knowledge of databases or web technology. I could, of course, invest in some education, but that would be putting a stake in the ground and saying, "Yes, I want to be an IT professional." I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up, which is why I've got the non-greasy version of a job flipping burgers, why I've been doing nothing much in the same place for 20 years.

I don't have much technical knowledge, but it's more than pretty much everyone else at the organization. I can smirk at folks who can't use Outlook, and feel like I'm the superior, smarter person, surrounded by fools. It's all very well to feel smart, but it's much harder to actually do something with it. Really, it's high school again: big(ish) fish in a tiny pond. I've put myself in a position where it's unlikely I'll have competition, and I haven't yet graduated to something like college, where I was pretty average.

What does that say about me? That I'm lazy? Terrified of risk? So uncertain of myself that I won't even try to stretch? That I prefer to stay in a position and a place where I can be sure of feeling superior?

The sad thing is, for about ten seconds, I was very proud of myself for gaining this insight. Then I remembered that understanding is not the same as solving. In the last couple years, I've started to like myself a lot more. I think I've really become a nicer, happier person.

And then I take two steps back.

Indistinguishable from magic

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."--Arthur C. Clarke

Actual user request: "I will have those items set up for Thursday (Laptop, Projector, screen & microphone), though [building] is not in the range of our wireless.  [IT] may be able to help, if we have some type of wireless card available that can function without connecting to a wireless signal." [emphasis mine]

They Cannot Kill The Beast

I haven't felt this sorry for the Chinese since I read The Good Earth.

More power

Ladies and gentlemen, we have broadband.

More Rojo Follies

As of July 27 at 10:13 AM EDT, I find that Rojo is available--minimally. At this point, you can only reach the Rojo corporate blog, where you'll find this entry, dated July 25 at 1:30PM:

"The Rojo service came offline yesterday due to a power outage in San Francisco that impacted our data center. We are working hard to bring the service back online, but don't have an ETA at this point."

That's the last official update from them on system status--an update nearly two days old, when we're now starting the fourth day of a complete service outage. They also didn't bother to tag it, so if you pull up the "System Updates" category, the last update listed is from September 2006.

They did, however, manage to post their weekly Zeitgeist (dated July 27, 6:00 AM) in which they mention in passing:

"This week's power failure in San Francisco's SoMa district took out several brand-name Web 2.0 sites, including Yelp, Craigslist, NetFlix, SixApart, Technorati, Second Life and, yes, Rojo."

Notice how they don't mention that Rojo's still down, although the other sites mentioned have all recovered. I'm glad I've got their summary of important events this week, since I can't read my feeds.

Service outages of any flavor are inevitable. Service outages of this duration deserve thorough explanations. Rojo has failed to communicate with users.

When they are back, I'll be logging in just long enough to get an OPML file of my subscriptions so I can take it to a different aggregator.

[UPDATE: At 5PM July 27, an explanation appears on the corporate blog (still the only part of Rojo you can reach).]

Aggregator Woes

Sometime last fall, I think, I got tired of some service problems Bloglines was having and switched to Rojo. This spring/summer, Rojo has had numerous outages or weirdnesses (you know, suddenly you've got several hundred unread posts in a feed that hasn't generated that many posts in its entire existence?) Last night I tried to login and got the infamous "Nooz: Coming Zoon" message (because apparently Rojo expects befuddled users who can't reach the service to know that Nooz is another product by Rojo). There was a big power outage in San Francisco yesterday afternoon/evening, though, and many services (for example, Six Apart's various blogging outlets) were down. Rojo, however, is still unavailable 24 hours later.

Anybody have an online aggregator they like? I've been considering Google Reader, even though that means when I read (job-related, of course) feeds at work, I've got to juggle Google accounts, since we have a webmaster account for the company.

Girl Geeks

I realize this item is a week old, but I'm just catching up with a pile of stuff in my feeds. CNET published a list of the "Top Ten Girl Geeks." It goes without saying, of course, that no one is compiling a "Top Ten Boy Geeks" list, but if anyone did, would the list consist of five dead people (Ada Byron, d. 1852; Grace Hopper, d. 1992; Rosalind Franklin, d. 1958; Mary Shelley, d. 1851; Marie Curie, d. 1934), including two dead for 150 years, one fictional character, a "borderline autistic" actor whose claim to fame is playing an android prostitute, and a dumb-as-a-post perennial bad joke like Paris Hilton?

According to this list, almost no women have made any geekly impact in the current century. After all, the blogosphere has hardly any girl geeks, right? And apparently, CNET has forgotten its own history.  That's just a few web-related girl geeks off the top of my head--surely CNET can do better.

RSS Madness

This evening I logged into my Bloglines account to find that the Official Google Blog had 4,294,967,294 new entries (see screenshot). When I actually looked at that feed, it only had one post, on summer health tips-- which, since I hear the California heat wave has broken, comes a little too late.

It's not just me, but I haven't found an explanation yet. What's the number of web pages Google estimates it has indexed now, anyway? It's gotta be more than 4.3 billion.