 ©1999-1999 ICFTP What're you, kidding? |
9 April 1999:
Hot damn, it's friday. Not like I won't be working tomorrow, but still...
Wanna see what this site looked like as a fetus? We had a picnic, a bottle of bourbon, some cameras... and the site just didn't take off. It was lacking something. It took me finding David's site to figure out just what that something was... namely, writing, content, something interesting to READ. Of course, the whole 'my life is turned upside down cause I've got this cancer thing' helped to make this one interesting. God, the things we'll do for art.
My second monitor just went 'CLICK' and blanked out for a sec and is now all fuzzy. G'dammit, this sucks. I need a new monitor. Anybody wanna donate? Anybody got a thin sheet of lead I can put between them?
10 April 1999:
Let's talk about the mayor.
The mayor? Ok, sure, why not.
Mike Dow seems committed to keeping Mobile ahead of the rest as far as technology goes. Works for me. I like this guy... and I hate politics.
You guys may or may not know, but Mobile's not much like any other small Southern city. There is a very different vibe going on here. The three other big cities in Alabama - Montgomery, Birmingham and Huntsville - are nothing at all like this place. (Although you certainly can't knock Hunstville for techonological innovation... can you say NASA? I knew you could.) Maybe it's 'cause we're on the coast, and on I-10, which runs from Jacksonville, Fl. to Los Angeles (and is it a drug pipeline? Oh yes, friends and neighbors, oh yes.) Other Southern cities are more insulated and more insular.... and while Mobile's insularity is just as strong, it's just a little further back, right behind that friendly "How are you?" People here are easy to talk to on the surface, and you can interact and work at that level for as long as you like... but it takes an outsider a while to get any deeper into things.
Mobile's got an aura of overgrown richness that anyone who's been to New Orleans would find familiar... but without the big-city edginess or the blatant threat of danger always just around the corner, and with its own flavor of small-town "we're all just folks" attitude. Even though the other city is much larger, we're doing more in the arena of new technologies... which is where myself and the folks I work with fit in.
I often get the sense that people here don't really understand just what it is that I do for a living. If I'm out in a bar and a girl asks me "so what do you do?'" I try to tell her in as few words as possible, and always prepare for that blank stare. (side note to all you hip and tech-savvy chicks out there: I am NOT saying that chicks are any less with it, but dammit, there's not many of you guys HERE. Rikki, where are you when I need you? Oh yeah, a thousand or so miles away. Dammit again.) I'm not a lawyer or a contractor, I don't sell airtime for cell phones or security systems. I'm not a painter. All of these would get me a "Oh really! Wow, I've got a brother/cousin/friend/uncle/ex-boyfriend who does that. Do you know him?" Usually I get a look like she couldn't really hear me over the jukebox, and the subject gets changed rather quickly. Even some of the folks in the creative industry here aren't quite sure what Dogwood does... they only know that it's new and has to do with the Internet and so therefore must be cool. So I'm accorded a lot of 'Oh wow, you must be hip' status more or less for free.
My boss, John Strope. Take notes, kids, when this man speaks, you oughta listen.
However, there is a steady undercurrent of talented people here who do know what's up. Thankfully, I work with a bunch of them. They drink just as much black caffeinated devil-juice as I do.
If your hand is shaking so badly that you can't successfully get the grounds from the cannister to the filter basket, should you really be making another pot of coffee?