Popular fiction

my little boy is growing up...

2008-10-31T19:20:29Z

Joseph as Alex from Clockwork Orange.

zomg.

more good news/bad news on the health front

2008-08-21T22:18:24Z

So, today my doctor put my on thyroid replacement therapy for Hashimoto's Disease, a fairly common form of autoimmune hypothyroidism. There's lots on the web about this, but the interesting thing is that since my poisoning adventure last year, I've notice I have good days and bad days -- and the bad days were always associated with swollen feet and often with my skin getting very dry and just dying in layers on my face and such (yum, I know...).

Anyway, this was a clue to my new doctor who did a full thyroid blood panel on me, and found that my levels merited replacement therapy. The problem with this is -- well, once you start this, you can never stop, because your own thyroid will stop making the stuff and atrophy. But hell, it's $10/mo retail, one pill a day. Most of my friends in my age cohort are taking some pill that saves their life (anything from cardiac to tricyclic anti-depressants or whatever) and I got to 49 without a daily pill.

But now, I'm afraid to wonder what will or won't get better. My hearing? My weight? My feet that are often so swollen that I can't wear anything but slippers? Some of this brain fog that's plagued me sometimes for days? My hair loss (and you wonder why you never see me without a cap...well, wait, I've always worn a cap, but now I have more reasons...)? My crappy energy levels?

Anyway, I am trying to not set myself up for disappointment over the next month or three, as I wait to see what, if anything, in my life is transformed...

many things come to pass...

2008-07-25T22:56:16Z

So, I'm realizing that I haven't posted here in a LONG time, partly because some major things have happened in my life that have dominated my time over the past couple months.

A lot of the current somewhat fertile, somewhat frantic chaos happened when my sister-in-law called me two weeks before Mother's Day. The essence of the call was, "I have cancer -- you have to take your mom." After my dad died, my mom did the grand tour of us kids and decided to move closer to Joe and Sue. Sue didn't work (at least didn't work full time, I'm not so clear on this) and had more time to help her out. Mom's objection to living near me was twofold -- I invited her to come live *with* us, and she wanted her own place, and I am too much the gypsy -- "You'll just move." Although I assured her that if we moved we wouldn't put her in the yard sale, she remained unconvinced.

Now, I feel like of the three kids, I got along best with my mom (although I'll confess to being more daddy's girl in a lot of ways). But this is her decision. I come from a family of stubborn, opinionated folks.

So when my brother, some months before May, found that he was moving to Colorado and was moving mom to an independent living facility there, I called my mom and said, "OK, so you're going to have to move anyway. Do you want to come here?" And after some soul searching going back and forth she said no.

The other thing about this was that I was surprised that mom's dr's thought she'd be ok in an independent living situation. She'd been in lock-down in a home for terminal dementia patients for four years. Joe and Sue had told me she'd been better the past few months, but I had no concept she was that much better. She's not quite deaf as a post, so phone calls with her were often a bit absurdist at best, without thinking there were delusions involved.

So of course, I said yes. This was around May 1st-ish and on Mother's Day weekend, Mom moved in. This gave us two weeks to change the whole house. The eating table in the kitchen went to the dining room, which we'd been using as a living room. The living room moved to the greatroom in the basement. Fish's magic workshop, which had only recently swapped rooms with Joseph, went to storage, and we moved down there. This left the master bedroom on the first floor for Mom, so everything she did could be on one floor (she has Parkinson's, and some issues with mobility).

That was nearly as fun as moving the whole house. We even had to hire movers to be able, on a practical basis, to get all Fish's magic stuff to storage. The little buffer we had in the bank (which was essentially cash flow buffer) disappeared entirely as we incurred extra expenses and lost working hours.

Mom moving in had a set of adjustments. She'd never met Fish. She wasn't sure about anything here for a while. But we've kind of all settled in together. We've lost loads more time trying to get all her stuff with meds and doctors and social services and whatnot set up. It's like having another kid, for the workload, and we also have the issue of monitoring a pretty inflexible medication and meal schedule -- which also means sleep schedule -- and if you know us at all you know that's really changed our lives radically.

By late June, Sue was gone. Ladies, get yourself screened for ovarian cancer. I'm impressed by just how vicious and fast it can be.

So in early July, we spend another week orchestrating a trip to DC for the funeral by car. *OMG* My poor brother -- forty years of marriage to his college sweetheart, in one of those nearly anachronistically gender differentiated marriages that probably happen more in military families. He's learning to keep a house and balance a checkbook for the first time in his life at 64. And he's *still* moving to Colorado, away from his support networks. For the first time in my life, I am worried about my big bro.

And then the next week, Joseph leaves for NC to spend some weeks of the summer with his dad.

It feels like it's been nonstop.

Have I mentioned I'm trying to be in startup mode? And that's going slowly for obvious reasons -- as of now, I'm wondering if I can sustain startup mode at all. So we're talking to a possible business partner next week about a fit, perhaps subsuming our project under his already funded aegis. And we're pitching a book to O'Reilley -- Magic for Makers -- based on a class we're teaching in September/October.

We seem endlessly busy, and at the same time endlessly broke. I'm getting tired of it. I want something to move so we can have a better idea of What's Next? Not that we aren't having fun along the way! But May to now? Too much.

That's life in a nutshell. And nuts is about it.

Wouldn't want my life to be boring...right?

What we'll be doing with our summer vacations

2008-04-09T23:35:25Z

The homeland security office of defense transportation says -- don't support high foreign petroleum prices, do your bit for the war on terror -- vacation at home!

What do we need besides an Internet link, anyway...

a good week

2008-04-05T06:49:08Z

The only thing that could make me feel better right now is more money, but we're working on that.

Bernhard Drax and I put out a new video for Dancing Ink Productions this week, and it was shown at the virtual worlds summit in NYC and at the Dancing Ink folks' induction as Carnegie Fellows.

I got to meet Larry Lessig, after about 12 years of following his work. I made a comment after his speech and to my great astonishment I got applause for it. He wants to come into SL and see Tuna's show. I want him to see the piece Fish and I did for Annenburg (commissioned! I've never been paid for a commissioned art piece before!) on Global Justice, since the piece made extensive use (and described the meaning/implications of its use) of creative commons attribution-only media.

And we have a business incubator interested in Bernhard, Fish and my production studio.

*And* America's Got Talent's casting director talked to us on the phone today and wants us to submit her an audition video Monday.

It's very cool.

I was bummed earlier this week -- one year since the shellfish poisoning -- it was just about a year ago today that the doctor finally believed I had more than just some GI bug, and found out my liver was leaking enzymes into my bloodstream. Everything isn't 100% of then, and may not be again, but a year ago I couldn't read, couldn't follow a TV program, couldn't sit up for long, couldn't recognize one object from another on the kitchen table. Today, I'm making machinima, talking to investors, hobnobbing with legal rockstars, and getting applause for clever ideas.

So maybe life isn't so bad...

OK, I give...

2008-03-15T12:29:43Z

I am looking for a day job. Second Life consulting is light, Fish's stuff is taking off slowly, and my book-writing partner just bailed on me catastrophically. Except for a bit of stamina issues from illness last year, and a normal-person's apprehension of spreadsheets, I'm probably operating at considerably higher function than a mere human, but admittedly still not at my former pepperpot self. So I could probably only do two people's jobs, not 3-4.

Keeping that in mind, if you know something coming up in the Boston area in:

nonprofit administration
bizdev
social media
PR integrating social media
marketing
consultative sales, including whatever wonky tech you're working with
grantwriting
journalism
gaming industry
anything Henry Jenkins would think was neat (because if it's covered by CMS, I have the background for it)

Please talk to me. Nonprofit, I work pretty cheap if I believe in what you are doing -- for profit it would be nice if it scaled, start ups need to understand that I am not a fan of 60h weeks in the office, have a life, and these days for the first time in my life *must* sleep more than 5 hours a night...:) On the other hand, because I do scale my expenses to nonprofit wages, startups get more flex on the cash end of compensation also.

Will happily take a few months consulting to bridge to the job thing.

shava -at- efn -dot- org

Thanks!
Shava

We're #3 -- we try even harder than that.

2008-03-06T00:33:36Z

As of this moment, if you search Google News for

Obama attack ad Clinton

...you get a cluster of stories, an individual story, and then my story from Iconoclasm.

YMMV by the time you get this, but click here!

It's kind of silly how happy that makes me.

a blogger's life

2008-03-05T06:41:08Z

About two weeks ago, my blog articles at http://iconoclasm.gather.com started showing up as regular sources in Google News. Not Google blog search, but the mainstream news, alongside nytimes and folks like that.

My first thought was "WOW! I'm so excited!" My second thought was "Wow. That and $1.79 plus tax/tip will get me a coffee at Au Bon Pain."

And tonight I have a breaking blog article to write -- and Gather's down for upgrades. So y'all get to see the meat of it first. "My tablets! My tablets!" I can't go to bed until I jot this one down *somewhere*.

DailyKOS published an article that's getting a little play today, alleging that the Clinton campaign published an attack ad that intentionally colorized Obama's skin to darker, reminiscent of TIME colorizing OJ back in the day.

Here's dailyKOS's image from the debate video on the left, and the ad video on the right.

So, I played with desaturation, which is what the Clinton campaign said that they used to alter the image -- just a standard video effect, they said. Below is my image, trying to match the left and right sides. It very neatly came to -33% lightness, -33% saturation. Those controls are on the same filter control panel, but it sounds *so* much better to say "We just used saturation/desaturation" than "We took his face down 33% for saturation/lightness."

But here's the kicker -- look at the shirt on the left, and the shirt on the right. Notice how dingy the white shirt gets with the saturation/lightness lowered? This means to get the effect above, they had to *mask* either Obama's face or the shirt, frame by frame, to get the shirt to look right and the face to look dark.

Yup, just a casual Photoshop effect. My ass.

And you get to see it before it hits Google News. *hee*

Draft Larry Lessig for Congress

2008-02-21T05:35:55Z

I am so grooving on the idea that we could get Larry Lessig on the floor of the House. Read the blog post to find out some of the reasons why.

I am grooving so hard that I'm volunteering to push the idea all over Second Life, and help with PR and various.

U B grooving too!

Business Week does SL romance right

2008-02-15T01:15:53Z

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/feb2008/tc20080214_131079.htm

My (SL) wedding video is in Business Week. How surreal is that?

There are only a few insubstantial bits she got a little off from (virtual) reality, but over all a very sweet article.

Happy Valentines Day all!

No use piling the logistics on one date...:)

2008-02-14T06:02:05Z

Fish and I, or should I say Tuna and I got married in Second Life last week. As a wedding present, a friend created a youtube video of the event. Today (oddly enough) Business Week interviewed us on the event, and it may well be that my SL wedding pictures end up in Business Week. Is that surreal or what?

Proud mama!

2008-02-02T21:39:24Z

Joseph just got back from his school's competition in the state qualification Academic Decathalon competition. They are going to state. Joseph got honorable mention for language/literature, a bronze for economics -- but the really cool thing is that he got this special amazing award -- a very heavy expensive medal on a ribbon -- for being the best scoring underclassman (freshman/sophomore) ever, presented specifically by the original organizer of the Massachusetts organization.

He is very proud and happy -- and running off to a social at Voyagers tonight, so he'll get to brag a bunch to his friends.

A spa? How splenda'd

2008-01-30T07:35:49Z

Assuming I sign the form and all is well, I won an $8000.00 vacation yesterday to Canyon Ranch spa in Tucson from Splenda, winning (essentially) a marketing contest in Second Life. I created an attraction for them, a swimming pool filled with fluffy Spenda(tm), with swimming/diving animations to give away, races and various aquatic sports competitions, and food carts by the side of the pool with little signs on them, like:

Ice cream sundae with whipped cream: Made with Splenda -- only 46 calories (with sugar, umpteen trillion calories)

I like the idea, they liked it, the popular vote liked it. And I won! And it's nice because it wasn't one of those "your name was picked out of a zillion entries by monkeys specially trained to be random" -- I actually did something good to get it.

But jeez, this vacation place... This is really nifty, but I actually had to sleep on it and think about it to figure out what I *felt* about it.

I am, as many of you know, a red diaper baby (for you post-boomers, that means my parents were pinko communist radicals or something). So the idea of going to a vacation at a place that, omg, costs $1750/night and up (DO) is a little obscene.

Yesterday I thought we'd use the trip as our honeymoon this summer but a couple things changed my mind. #1 we're getting married this summer -- Hello!? Tucson? Summer? Maybe not so much.

The second thing is that this is a wonderful point to set my new years resolutions at. We are going to what is acclaimed as the best health spa in the world. All about healthy lifestyle and renewal. Well, gosh, we could use some of that!

So I think we're going to find a weekend when Joseph is gone (maybe even Boskone weekend?) and go do this thing.

I'm excited but a little stressed about the whole thing too. There's having to pay taxes on a vacation I'd never spend the tax money on for the grant total... And then I confess the class issues bug me. As a friend of mine said, "Don't worry. Dress down. They'll think you're so rich you don't care." I figure anyone I get to talk to, it's great -- I can hold my own with anyone. But I feel self conscious about how I look, how I dress...

Hmm...

Another aspect of this is I'm thinking of spiffing up the Indigenis website (which never really got fully launched) and using this contest as a publicity push for us. We'll see...

Social network panic

2008-01-04T07:12:37Z

So today I woke up when Joseph got up for school 6am-ish, and often I go lie down for a bit and wake up slow, with Fish after. But this morning I was just wired, and decided I hadn't done anything with my Facebook stuff for a while. This morning I added a bunch of friends -- getting very confused as to whom I might be connected to via one or more of linkedin, Second Life, facebook, whatever. Among other things, I noticed that I listed secret_willow as being "in a relationship" with me, rather than engaged -- and we've been engaged for more than a year.

So I marked us as "engaged."

Thing is, this means I get marked as no longer "in a relationship" and until he confirms, we're not marked as "engaged" either.

So this evening, I got a frantic (and terribly supportive!) mail from a friend saying, basically, "OMG, when did you and Fish break up? I saw it in my Facebook news feed, I had no idea! Are you ok? Do you need anything, anything at all? *HUGS*"

It took me a moment to figure out what had happened, and then I just had to laugh. I asked Fish to please log onto Facebook and confirm our engagement before we caused a panic among our friends.

But I haven't stopped laughing yet. I guess I was single, in a social networking sense, for about 20h today.

lolz

frustrating holidays...

2007-12-27T17:39:21Z

Hmmm.... OK, folks, so a little holiday stress...

We go see Sweeney Todd, which I've been so looking forward to. I saw the original on Broadway decades ago with the original cast. I like Burton, I love Depp, I am giggling to see Snape and the ratty guy from HP on the screen together. But after about #5 of arterial spray from neatly sliced neck, I'm done, I'm sorry. Kurozawa can just barely manage this artistically. Burton, apparently, not. This ruined the film for me, along with the missing Greek chorus from the original score. Bleh.

First my contract with the nonprofit I'm trying to organize has been...problematic. But let's leave that *at* that. If anyone has any short term contract work for the first of the year, please contact me, and I'll give you details.

Then Joseph's 12/23 flight to NC was through NYC on the day JFK was borked. We got to the airport, and his 7:30pm flight was scheduled to board at 1:40am the next day. And the connection in NYC was scheduled to board a bit more than an hour earlier.

To salve our tensions, we take a holiday burrito break at the new Chipotle's in Davis. I get black beans, and Fish and Joseph get pintos -- they both get awful GI stuff from it. Hmm....

The next morning, I'm dosing Joseph with cumin seed for the protection of his fellow air passengers, but he's dealing with it pretty bravely. Fish on the other hand is flat. Did I mention that while Joseph was gone we were supposed to be moving his bedroom upstairs and the office downstairs?

So...pre-airport. We were supposed to get a new fridge delivered on 12/24 -- the old one's been broken since early summer, freezes everything, slags veggies, crystalizes the mayo. For those of you who know how I love cooking, you can image how this has contributed to my wa. I've ended up buying enough veggies to use before they rot on the counter, which means fruit and compost flies all summer.

So at last the new fridge is to be delivered xmas eve! How cool! Except Joseph's flight's about 16h late, so I have to outload the food from the old fridge onto the cold back porch before I leave for Logan.

Then the delivery guys come and say, "Meh. We don't like this setup, you don't have parking space for a 35' truck, we don't like your face, bye!" to Jonathan. He calls Sears and reads the riot act. I load everything back into the fridge. At 5pm it's clear that despite Sears' word, they aren't going to be back that day. Rescheduled for the 27th.

Meanwhile, Fish is sick, everything's on hold. A thousand dollar gig says after weaseling for a month they can only pay him like $.60 on the dollar for the gig. More gigs are delayed in receivables. *sigh* Tight xmas.

Some good stuff happens -- Fish is getting fanvids on YouTube these days, and there's interest in using his services for machinima and music videos. See this: http://www.secondlifeonline.org/2007/12/24/tuna-tubes/

And last night, the heat goes completely off. Off off off. Something electrical. The plumber came, re-twisted and capped a few wires, hit a breaker and says it's fixed, but we're getting nada so far. The boiler's boiling but showing no PSI on the gauge -- I think that's because he drained some of the rusty water and put in fresh (cold) water, so there's no pressure yet. I hope. At least running up and down to check is keeping me warm... AH! now the radiators are burbling. Oh frabjous day!

I am thinking, when I get my benefits with MA straightened out, I'm going to put in for a few therapy sessions, see if anxiety meds will help. None of these things individually should be so bad. In aggregate, they are making me insane, frozen. Usually I can embrace my life as an adventure. This year seems like it's been one damn thing after another. I want something solid to latch on. This week was supposed to be a puttery vacation.

Bleh.

Next year will be better, right?

UPDATE: The guys delivering the fridge from Sears stopped in front of the house, didn't knock, didn't ring, tried my landlord on his cell while he was in the bathroom or something, and took off. Loading the groceries *BACK* into the fridge and freezer, waiting another 2 days...

not trance?

2007-12-02T04:12:35Z

This one really surprised me, as I totally thought I'd come out as a sensual trance type. Wonder how much of this is that, although I'm trancy, I'm also so wrapped up in Fish (which is rather different than Fish wrapped in newspaper)...

What's your sexual style? Take the sexual style quiz for yourself!

been a while...

2007-12-02T03:55:06Z

It's been a while since I posted here. Lots of changes. My recovery from April's domoic acid poisoning seems to be incomplete but continuing -- but it's hard to tell if it will ever get back to 100% of pre-poisoning. The deltas get smaller and smaller...

But many good things are happening. I'm working to try to make manifest a nonprofit youth journalism initiative which has me pretty happy, although the founder of the project is one of those women who complains that she can't delegate anything because she needs to control everything -- yet projects this on others. As a result, before I came along, the project had been gaining enthusiastic partners but no funding or plan or incorporation or c3 for about a year, I think. We'll see if I can do better -- it's a great concept. I could get behind the Saving the World thang with this one, if it comes out well.

At the same time my sweetie Fish is finally at the point of quitting his day job and going full time on his performing career. Several things influenced this -- for one, the place he was working has been in trouble and lowering his pay for years (by reducing bonuses to zero on a base+bonus position), and then they are moving to a place in Newton with no good T access. Plus, health insurance is now available through the state. Plus, dang, I make a pretty good manager and "beautiful assistant" as it turns out.

Joseph, my son, is thinking of moving to Chapel Hill for the last 3 years of high school. I have very mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, if he gets into Governor's School for Math/Science, he could be in pig heaven for a couple years, and he might enjoy UNC/CH, which has low in-state tuition. And his father is, honestly, better at disciplining him. He was always good at making good choices until the hormones kicked in. Now I am starting to understand why some folks might just ship their boys off to military school so someone else can handle the disciplinary issues. He isn't bad, he's just profoundly slack and insists on being micromanaged then bitches about it excessively. I suppose this is called "being a teenage boy."

I've gotten a flickr account for folks who'd like to see pictures of me, Fish, Joseph, and various folks' avatars and such.

More later...

SN

burma goes dark

2007-10-06T07:11:53Z

And I blogged about it.

oh crap!

2007-08-17T13:46:21Z

So, now that I'm over having a bad day (turns out the other day when my cognition was bad? I didn't realize I was running a fever...d'oh!) internally, I get hit with the externals.

Or maybe it's house innards.

Anyway, our sewer is backed up into our basement. Since the basement is finished, this includes Joseph's room and the magic workshop (yes, I really do love that living with a magician means saying I have a magic workshop in my house).

So yesterday, we blocked off the flood, opened all the windows, and fled for a good part of the afternoon. The good thing? Finally went into the Somerville Library and got new cards, which I wasn't able to find after we moved -- a year ago APRIL. Turns out that Joseph and I together owed a grand total of $0.30, which was pleasant, since I remembered he had overdue fines.

But this morning, without calling as they'd been asked to do, the crew with plumber and hazmat cleanup appeared at the house at 8am. The plumber was just *RUDE*, telling me "well, we didn't" when I asked why he hadn't called, and then telling me we needed to open the utility door (which doesn't go into the basement) and then treating it like everything about the situation was my fault -- the back up, the fact that we have (*gasp*) stuff in the basement, the fact that we hadn't cleared everything out of the downstairs bathroom and thrown it out (isn't that why you hire clean-up people? So you don't have to wade through 3-4" of raw sewage yourself?), that the back stairs are narrow....

"I didn't really wanna take this job lady," he said.

So I mobilize Fish and Joseph to move everything in the basement and magic room to one side or into the parts of Joseph's room out of the window-to-door line that the sewer rooter hose will have to go through. And as we're moving the last object, the reluctant plumber knocks on the door. They're leaving because their estimate needs to go up because they think they need to tear out the wall between Joseph's room and the bathroom, and they couldn't get the landlord on the phone.

I come upstairs, and send email to landlord and upstairs neighbor (who for those who know him is Mycroft, no doubt his own cheery self about the whole thing) saying, "don't flush, cook, shower, wash hands, or do anything that puts water down the drains until this is fixed, please -- they just left but nothing is fixed"

Then almost immediately, I have *no* problem reaching the landlord, who calls them, and finds out about the upped estimate.

Now, the whole backing up the sewer thing may be because someone flushed paper towels down a toilet. There were paper towels floating back up at any rate. The clog is between our unit and the street. Since the estimate went up, we will be doing CSI: Sewer Backup to figure who flushed the towels.

Neither Fish nor I had been in the bathroom. Joseph says he wasn't, and he never had issues flushing paper towels when he was 6 -- don't know why he'd start now. Jonathan says he didn't flush any such things. That leaves the ever cheerful Mycroft (who, I think, has more sense) or the guys who were replastering Mycroft's bathroom last week.

Hope the plaster guys don't use costco paper towels...;)

I'm not really all that repulsed by stuff that I might have cleaned out of a diaper, although I don't like having it all over my floor. On the other hand, there are chemicals and god knows what in this stuff, and every hour it's in the house, mold is growing somewhere. And add to this that everything involving food or hygiene is pretty much on hold -- and well...to paraphrase Han Solo, "what an amazing smell we've discovered!"

*sigh*

some good some bad -- the usual

2007-08-13T22:20:11Z

Today is not a great day for me, cognitively, so I am trying to do non-critical things. I slept lots of yesterday evening, got up for a short bit, then slept a full night again. Hard to concentrate, and the memory issues are particularly bad -- oddly this makes working in small writing bits like this, or in chat or SL easier than talking to people as speech.

Mostly it hasn't been this bad, though I still have good days and bad. I am working on Tor still, half time, doing fundraising. Last week I brought in $40K, so although my paperwork may be spotty at least I'm performing.

Meanwhile, Fish and I and a friend are trying to put together a business doing mixed-reality consulting in SL. This would allow me to do work as I can with less dependence on the clock, and feed work to the other two and go be sales/negotiator/evangelist. Since Tor cut me to halftime, I have to find other income sources, and this seems like something fun that I can actually do with the current faculties.

It's over 4 months now, and I still can't open up a spreadsheet and have the relations of the numbers leap out. I not only can't really do math in my head anymore, but more disturbingly, that sort of proofreading feeling you get when you're doing it wrong is gone for numbers. Some of y'all probably don't have this, but it used to be that if I was doing math wrong in my head, at least I went, "no no that's wrong, let me work it out on paper." Now I can *confidently* go with a bad result and not realize it -- which means I can never trust anything I calculate in my head.

The curious thing is, I always knew I had that capacity for spelling, for example (hmm...that looks wrong, let's look it up). But I'd actually never mapped one skill (proofing words) with the other (vetting calculations) until one stopped working.

Yesterday and today it took me *hours* to do a report that should have been a half hour job.

Yet I can brainstorm and think, write, visualize and imagine. If it has to do with speculating and creating it's there. If it has to do with setting things out linearly, I'm operating like a normal human on my good days, and days like this it's gone to crap.

Yet, as frustrating as it is, and with Tor talking about supplementing or replacing more of my functions, and not knowing what will happen next, it's still a point of gratitude that things didn't stop in April, when I couldn't read, or in May when I couldn't look at a menu and pick out the different sections without reading the whole thing line by line (or pick out an email subject from a bunch of lines of text).

I do think it's getting better, but not Better, if you know what I mean. Sometimes in the urgency of wishing that everything just worked again and wondering if it will, I can lose track that I am doing so much better than I was, that life is still good and interesting, and I am well loved.

It's those pesky things like, "How do I pay rent next month?" and "Will I ever be able to do ___________ again well?" and "If I have days like this, with no spoons, that I can't predict...how do I plan?"

On the other hand, SL stuff is being really fun, when I can take time to work on that. I got quoted in Information Week a week or so ago as a "journalist and Second Life resident" for a comment I left on terranova.blogs.com. My SL business blog, http://slbizreview.com/ is getting good feedback and attention. And when I'm in a state where I can't deal with the noise and confusion of real life, SL gives me a limited bandwidth way to be social.

Indigenis (the mixed-reality company I'm spokes-avataring) has someone interested in investing $50K in us, just on the basis of my writing. I think we're worth investing in, mind you, but I have to say that it's kind of fun to be doing something where just my blogging and resume, and the resumes of the folks I'm with, attract that kind of attention from thousands of miles away.

We have a launch party at SLCC (the 24th-26th in Chicago), and the web site's not up yet. I meet with the designer tomorrow. *whee*

I'm even earning money doing avatar makeovers, which is a blast. It's not a lot, but $20/hr (US not lindens) to go shopping on someone else's tab is kinda fun.

american food and its detractors

2007-08-09T08:24:30Z

Some of you know from my stories -- hell, some of you know from *experience* -- that my mom was...uh...not the best of cooks.

For years, I have been appalled and abashed at the way my mom was so *bold* in her ability to make anything purported to be food....artsy, inedible, and boggling.

Now, finally, after 40 years, I have discovered why, and found it in me to forgive her.

http://lileks.com/institute/gallery/

Do not drink beverages while cruising through this web site. You will snerdle.

My Second Life avatar appears as a fashion model on Canadian TV

2007-07-15T04:38:02Z

Nyla Cheeky in SL and I have discussed business and social issues -- and fashion -- in the months we've been friends. I really enjoy her label, as a designer, and tend to show it off on my slpics/snapzilla snapshot blog. Well, she was part of a segment on real businesses in Second Life (video) on Global National News on Canadian TV tonight, and used two of my snapshots modeling her togs.

For those of you who have only met me in my business persona, here's me as I cut loose, first as the alien-skinned mardi gras belle at Tuna Oddfellow's (video) weekly experimental music night, and then at the holodeck pool party in a leopard print bikini.

Don't send flowers...

2007-06-30T19:10:33Z

Well, I've gone 1/2 time with Tor, and next Tuesday Andrew and I are going to divide the office, like separating an egg, between fundraising and admin stuff. The admin stuff is hard.

I went into the meeting with Roger and Andrew telling them they should can me or keep me 10h/wk for PR and such, and if I went over I'd bill. But they insisted on 20h doing PR and grantwriting, and with health benefits. This is very generous and I hope I can meet their expectations at this point.

Meanwhile, I'm going to be doing a trial flight with a video news service in Second Life as a "roving reporter" type, doing 3m machinima spots on business and cultural issues in SL. This pays better money than my last public radio gig, but we'll have to see how much more time it takes to edit screen capture (vs. sound), and if this will smack into my structural organization limitations. I can sure visualize it. They also have an experienced camera guy who'll teach me, and maybe we can do a tag-team and just do twice as many stories together. I think that has good prospects as a fall back. I can write stories like crazy (even nonfiction ones...:)

I also got recommended by the previous staffer for a business stringer position at one of the larger, older dailies in SL.

I have some SL business writing clips at http://slbizreview.com -- in case you're giggling. Also check out http://terranova.blogs.com for an academic view (I only comment there).

Why am I looking for SL gigs? Several reasons. First, it's 24h and international, and I like the environment. I grok the virtual environment *and* the RL biz environment in a way few people can. But doing popular level biz writing doesn't require me to work as intensely with tables of numbers, which still are reluctant to parse. SL stuff is turning into real dollar pay as the big companies come in, but there's very little analysis going on that spans both insider and outsider viewpoints. Whether or not you believe that SL has much of a future, there are 5 and 6 figure consulting contracts going to folks bringing "first life" companies into the virtual environments and looking at some of them (see my review of the Kelly Services sim on slbizreview) I could do better with a couple of friends who've been in-world for a couple years and have integrity and skills -- but no link to outside business culture.

It's like the web just after the advent of e-commerce, maybe 10 years ago. Inside, any 2 geeks without biz experience but with in-world skils can flim-flam a company into thousands of dollars, tens of thousands, of work that has no staying attraction or usability, and that doesn't understand the needs of the clients, or that the clients don't understand what to do to maintain attention in the SL community. Conversely, bit ad agencies like Text100 are coming in and don't have links to the networks of trust that would get them the best buzz.

Recently I had an epiphany -- people treat a business presence like a web site or an ad presence. Really, it's more like getting a professional services group to set you up in an emerging economy. "Citigroup -- I need an operating unit in Ghana in six months -- go wild!" You need local staff, local architects and builders and landscapers, you need to learn the local culture, politics, tarriffs, import/export laws, media,... Moving a business into SL is moving into a simple model of a new country.

Dunno, we'll see what gives.

Save the flowers for Algernon. I'm pissed off, and a little humiliated by the insults of the last months. I'm a little worried about the material things going forward. My social life has completely changed. But I can still do extraordinary things, and I will continue to do them. It's just which things? And when do I really get to a place of peace with the process.

Fish on America's Got Talent tonight!

2007-06-26T13:51:13Z

OK, this is pretty surreal, but my fiance Fish's Second Life alter ego, Tuna Oddfellow, won NBC's in-world talent search for the "most talented avatar" among SL's seven million "residents." He got a million linden dollars (about $3800 if we converted it to real money), and his act will be on America's Got Talent tonight at 8pm.

NBC, of course, tells us this today, less that 24h before the segment airs.

So if you have media contacts you can hook me up with, get hold of me. If you're in Boston, come by the house 7:30pm or so with a folding chair/cushion and stuff to share for munchies/drink, and we'll watch together.

zomg!

sequelae -- 12 weeks

2007-06-22T00:15:36Z

Sunday will be twelve weeks from the time I had my initial incident of getting sick. Nothing in particular in research by me or anyone I know seems to turn up a better hypothesis than domoic acid poisoning, or amnesiac shellfish poisoning as it has been called (when they found the agent, they changed the name -- but many places still call it ASP).

The only medical source online that talked about sequelae (what happens after the incident in terms of symptoms and recovery) says that you can expect as full a recovery as you're going to get at twelve weeks out. Sunday makes twelve weeks. I am hardly all better.

There's been no change for weeks. Only a gradual wearing down of my morale as I get behinder and behinder, and more easily frustrated as my reserves dwindle, and realize how many capabilities are explored and confirmed as being impaired.

My neurologist never head of domoic acid poisoning and doesn't seem to have time and interest to investigate it. I've tried to get email responses from folks who study marine poisons all over, including WHOI, where I at least expected my appeal to the MIT card would help.

And ultimately, there's no way to *prove* what happened at any rate. By the time I got my stubborn ass into a doctor, whatever was in my system would have been gone, and we wouldn't have known what to test for.

But there isn't *anything* else I can find in the medical literature that keeps the intellectual faculties more or less intact while bazzing short term memory. On things I know, I can wax brilliant. I can think of interesting things. I can tell stories.

But I can't keep big "left brain" sorts of structures in my head. My math skills seem impaired. My ability to track time and tasks is abysmal. My ability to learn new things is blunted (although, I'm playing with using audio and pictoral learning which seems to work a bit better than reading text).

Many of these things I can do, but it takes me far longer than it should, and if I get frustrated I start draining spoons fast.

So, it seems it's not going to get better. What do I do now?

I am caught in several dimensions of dilemma. Tor doesn't have a replacement for me (I was a peculiarly apropos fit for them to begin with, but much of what I'm supposed to be doing for them I can't do). I feel unethical and dishonorable to ride this out without being paid, but what in the world am I supposed to do? I think I will propose to them that we figure which pieces I can do and prorate my pay somehow, at the next board meeting.

But I am seriously worried that I have to find something else to do, something that I can get paid reasonably for and still fit into my inefficient hours. I have a lease. I have a son. Fish doesn't have the job skills I...had.

I am a brilliant writer, a great spokesperson, a speech writer, a story teller. But so much of my life I have been a manager, organizer, entrepreneur. I think those days are over.

And, I will have to deal with the stigmas associated with this kind of damage from here out.

Maybe Fish's career will take off, and I can just be the magician's beautiful assistant?

I don't know. Today, I have to let myself be sad, mourn a little. I no longer believe I am going to get all better. I need to find a plan for what comes next.