FunctionalAmbivalent

As Good a Day as Any

For the last five years, more or less, I've blogged almost every day. It takes time, at least a couple of hours a day, to do what I've done here.

I started blogging when blogging was relatively new because I wanted to know what all the fuss was about. I thought blogging was something that I -- a professional communicator -- should know about, and it was. I learned a lot doing this, and I kept at it longer than I expected because I enjoyed it. Functional/Ambivalent was the first time in my life I had a public forum without an editor or boss of some kind telling me what to do. (I understand the value of editors a lot more now.) I wrote about whatever interested me at the time, no matter how inappropriate it might seem, and if you look back through the work I've posted here you'll see both creative and ideological evolution over time.

A key aspect of that evolution has been my interaction with my audience. There are some smart, funny people out there who've taken the time to comment on this blog, sometimes agreeing but mostly disagreeing with what I have to say. My main success metric on this blog was not traffic but comments, and believe me when I say that every single comment brought me some small measure of joy. I enjoyed the challenges you offered and, for most of the life of this blog, the differing opinions.

I'm going to end Functional/Ambivalent today for several reasons, the most important of which is that I have moved on to other creative projects and the time this blog demands is simply not time I can afford to spend. I've been working, for the last five months, on a book proposal. The proposal is one part of a year-long attempt to change my life, to leverage what I've done the last few years -- including this blog -- to return to my roots as a professional writer (though I remain involved in a couple of entrepreneurial ventures). In support of that, I've started and need to establish another blog on another subject. That blog is past the experimental stage and needs my full attention, but I'm spending too much of my time over here on F/A, which I love but which is no more useful to my grand plan than is playing golf or reading comic books. I've known for months that F/A was going to have to go; today is as good a day as any to pull the plug.

I want to thank you all for your time and attention and to tell each and everyone one of you how much you've improved me. I'm going to leave F/A up for a while, but I'm turning off comments because the spammers have already set in. Please don't imagine that means I want to cut myself off from the friends I've made here. You can reach me at [email protected], if you like. I'll tell you about my other project, which is dissimilar to F/A in the extreme and still finding its voice. (Perhaps you'll come help me with that.) I'll even pierce my veil of anonymity and invite you to be my Facebook friend, beause I'd really like to stay in touch. 

Aside from that, I don't know what to say. Except, again, thanks.

At the Request of Regular Commentor Richard...

...comment feeds are now enabled.

In Which I Am Saved, Once Again, By My Regular Reader

OK, listen: I'm not stupid about computers. I've increased my own RAM. I have replaced hard drives and added CD and DVD drives. I've debugged software and know no fear when installing peripherals. I've been an active and contributing member of the online community since long before the advent of color monitors and the World Wide Web. I've had computers since cassette tapes were standard input. I had MCI Mail and FTPed long magazine articles in Xywrite. I programmed in CPM and was an AppleLink member back when people debated whether the Apple mascot was a cowdog or a dogcow. I fear not the "run" menu.

So you can understand my frustration when I had to issue this plea for help.

And my embarassment now that regular reader Richard points out that my recent crisis with a magnification cursor is a matter of pushing a button i did not know existed. That's right: there's a button on my mouse that opens the magnification window that has for months befuddled me. A button, right next to my right thumb, that is called "the magnification button." Never noticed it until Richard pointed it out.

I'll be damned.

Tech Support: A Cry For Help

Every now and then, seemingly for no reason, a rectangular magnifying glass window opens up on my damnable Windows machine. The cursor is at its center. I have no idea how it opens or how to close it. (To close it, I reboot.) This is driving me nuts.

I've looked in Windows help and there's a magnifying glass function, but it isn't the same thing. I followed the instructions and nothing happened. (The magnifying glass Windows Help helped with is horizontal across the top of the screen. This is rectangular and follows the cursor.)

Clearly, I'm triggering it somehow. I thought I'd determined that it had something to do with hitting some kind of control-alt combo, but it just opened when my only contact was with the mouse. (I was swilling from a bottle of diet Mountain Dew with my other hand.)

Does anyone have any ideas? I'd really like to figure out how to turn this damned thing off without rebooting.

I'm running Windows XP Home service pack 2, and it's an HP computer. I tell you that because HP crams so much useless and confusing crap onto their machines that I will never, ever buy another HP computer. This may be some kind of HP bonus annoyance. (I used the "free" Norton security software on the computer when I first bought it, and when the three month trial expired I clicked "Yes" to buy the software, followed the instructions, and ended up with two installations of the same software on the computer fighting each other over which would be in control. For a week I felt like 2001: A Space Odyssey -- The Sequel. The software did battle with itself until I tried to un-install one or the other  versions, at which point the software versions allied against me to prevent the removal of any software at all. I had to wipe the hard drive clean and start over.)

My wife tells me this has never happened to her, so maybe I'm dragging my hands across the keyboard funny, even when I'm drinking Mountain Dew.

Functionally Ambivalent About the Anonymity of the Web

For the last six years I've blogged anonymously here at F/A. I decided to blog anonymously because I wanted to be able to write about whatever I wanted without worrying about it having an impact on my real life. It wasn't any grand strategy of creative freedom. F/A began as an exploration of blogging, then a new technology and cultural phenomenon that I thought I should understand.

For the first year of blogging, over on Blogger, I was so anonymous my wife didn't even know what I was up to. For the first few months, as I developed a voice and got familiar with the technology, I don't think anyone even read what I wrote. Then one day I wrote something about cartoonist Ted Rall, and someone linked to it, and I got comments. I have no idea how anyone found me, but suddenly I was on the web, live and with a (tiny) audience.

Not long after that I moved over to Typepad, which allowed the posting of pictures and captured rudimentary traffic data. When my wife told her siblings what I was doing, I got as mad at her as I ever get because all of a sudden people who knew me in real life were watching me on the web. I got used to it and they're now regulars here, commenting occasionally and sending me things to write about. But my own family doesn't know much about this; I have a brother who drops by once in a while, but that's about it. I enjoy being able to spout off without having to live down what I write.

A couple of weeks ago, I decided to try something new: a presence on the web that is deliberately anything but anonymous. Under my real name, with real information about my life and a real picture of me right there on the front page, I signed up for Facebook. My motivation for going on Facebook is a lot like my motivation for blogging: it's something I feel like I need to understand. Social media are a huge cultural phenomenon and an emerging factor in my business, so I'm in the midst of an aggressive effort to participate and understand. I'm spending four or five hours a day exploring and reading and asking around, and my schedule for the next month is full of lunch and cocktail appointments with smart people who've thought about this more than I have.

For now, there's not going to be much crossover between F/A and my Facebook self. Maybe that'll change some day, but for now, this is this and that is that. When I'm on Facebook, I'll miss the anonymity of blogging, and when I'm blogging I'll miss the ready-made interactive audience of social media, which will go out and find friends for you if you can't find them yourself.

There are a couple of my regular readers who know enough about me that they could find me on Facebook; maybe everyone could if they strung together enough clues and searched hard enough. I don't know why you'd do that. Believe me: I'm really not that interesting.

Still, I'm going to ask those of you who either know me or who can find me to please respect my anonymity. I'm less concerned about F/A readers finding me on Facebook than I am about Facebook readers finding me on F/A. Trust me: if the people I work with knew how much I write about women's undergarments, no one would go to lunch or out for drinks with me ever again.

So if you come across me over there, please let's keep this blog just between us girls.

Thanks.

OK, Let's Just Admit It and Call It a Week

I've been traveling and working and traveling and working, and I've neglected you and I feel bad about that. So today I'm not going to be traveling, but the work thing is still there and it's cold out and all I want to do is build a fire in the fireplace and scrunch down under a blanket and grumble. So, to celebrate my irresponsibility of the last few days, I'm taking today off. Or maybe not. Who knows? Maybe I'll get on a roll and post a bunch of stuff.

But right now, my toes are so cold I'm thinking of having them amputated.

I'll write a present for you this weekend.

Taking a Couple of Days

Family business.

Last Little Bit of Vacation Business, Well Overdue

I'd like to thank my guest bloggers, only one of which was able to maneuver through the maze of TypePad to actually post. Still, both Wally and Pursuit contribute regularly here, and in their lucid moments help keep my thinking straight. I'd like to thank them for their contribution while I was away and while I'm here.

But no more posting, Wally. This is my blog. Off you go to comments.

Part of This Process Is Considering the Target Audience

From the website Sexy People, my regulars:

NewMexiKen

Jessica

Fish

Frank

Lee

Scott

Pursuit

Wally

Syd (with prom date)

Squidley

Words To Live By, In Considering This Whole Blogging Thing

Flannery O'Connor:

Everywhere I go, I'm asked if I think the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them.