hello world

Today is my Blog-iversary. *confetti* One year of bloggy goodness between us. *more confetti*

I have three other blogspots, two myspace accounts, two livejournals, and a friendster account. But this is the place I call my home. I dislike the whole "friend" dynamic on myspace and livejournal. The associations with the word friend are just too strong for me. I get unnaturally excited at the prospect of making "friends" and excessively hurt at the loss of "friends." I like to give my friends the option to visit me of their own accord.

The one thing I wish I could do here is reply to comments and have that reply sent to the commentor in question(like in livejournal).

Originally, I had wanted to do something special for this occasion.

See, I am very bad with committment.
My life resume is a list of short relationships, abandoned hobbies and projects, self improvement programs, diets, exercise fads, long lost friends - a veritable boulevard of deserted dreams.

My longest relationship to date was 1 year and 8 months. That was a continuous stint with none of that break-up kiss other people then make-up stuff so common these days. {JR and I circled each other on and off (mostly off) for about 5 years. That is another story}

My longest career path was 12 years in science and I have been sitting in neutral for 6 months now trying to figure out whether to continue to proceed that way.

A year of blogging is a pretty momentous thing for me. If I flossed this regularly my gums would be so much healthier.

I considered doing post every hour for 24 hours. I considered doing one long post for the entirety of the day, a la "Ulysses." I thought of posting a self portrait done in ketchup and mustard on a paper plate or naked baby pictures. But of course those ideas were all put off until it was too late. So all you get is this lousy post. Next year I'll come up with a game or something. Maybe I can get Veuve Cliquot to sponsor my birthday next year and have a downloadable coupon .... *snort*

I have tried to google my way here and found that it's super hard to find. When you start your blog make sure your title is catchy and unique enough to get you hits. Using your real name might help. My real name is common enough that you end up in very not me places.

As afar as I know I've got ten readers and 503 people who have peeked at my profile to confirm that I am one strange giraffe. I don't have any of the stats software that would tell me who's stopped by and how many times. (even though I'm dying to know) Thanks for stopping by. Thanks for commenting. Thanks for giving a damn.

To all the people to my right, I stop by your blog every day. I don't usually comment because I don't have anything smart enough or relevant enough to say. Were I to comment I'd just say "Hi! I'm out here and I'm reading. I love this post."

There's been some talk about Net neutrality and the internet which I encourage you to pay close attention to. Because there's telecom folks who want to make a pretty penny taking control of the internet. They aim to charge people to send information over the internet. In particular they want to charge large wealthy corporations. In exchange whatever these corporations want to transmit over the internet will get priority and be sent at the fastest speeds. The rest of us slobs will be relegated to the slow lane. These large wealthy corporations are drooling at the opportunity to stream movies and television shows over the internet. They would rather not pay a lot for the chance to do it, but I'll bet they like the idea that their "content" would get priority. They look forward to a future in which mainstream media gets to shovel the same shit down your throat as they do on the television, radio, in the movies, and the print media. Interesting considering the fact that you are probably online because you can't find what you like or speaks to you out there in the mainstream.

Already there are signs that telecom corporations want to decide what content travels through their networks. Will this extend to the way they run the internet? Will this extend to the kinds of conversations we can have on our phones?

JB says that it used to be that all radios could transmit and receive signals. It was peer to peer. The federal govenment stepped in and started granting licenses and now we all own receivers and Clear Channel owns the a big chunk of the airwaves from which they like to organize rallies in support of the war in Iraq. Can you imagine what you would be hearing if every radio in America could broadcast its own station? Wait, you might since you can do that right now with the internet.

People thought that the internet would end the world, that no one would leave the house and society would disintegrate. But what we find instead is that we use the internet to make contact with each other. Email, blogs, forums, message boards, IM - their popularity demonstrates that our deepest interest in this medium is to communicate and exchange information with each other. Not enrich telecom corporations.