Thursday, December 20, 2007

Real life doesn't immitate art

Pls listen to this old recording of Harry Chapin singing Mr Tanner:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ea6cgfU8bC4

The lyrics are at: http://www.lyricsdepot.com/harry-chapin/mr-tanner.html

And when you are done wiping your tears.. pls watch

http://youtube.com/watch?v=NLF9iEXnBRo&feature=related

and then

http://youtube.com/watch?v=K_5W4t_CBzg

and then wipe your tears again.. grin

Monday, November 26, 2007

a 40something + SN

My son (362 FB friends) and friend (17 FB friends) ask me to try it out. So I get on Facebook.

Day 1. All is calm, all is fine. Upload a picture, kinda fill out a profile. Sit and wait, sit and wait.

Day 2. A couple of my 20something acquaintances have found me and I confirm them. I respond to some pokes and some writings on my wall. I am a socially networked butterfly now.

Day 3. Someone buys me a free virtual beer. Someone else rejects my advances. Someone wants me to upload a real pic not my passport pic, another tells me I am connected via another. I respond to a few more pokes and messages . Ooh some one just bit me...this is funner than email!!

Day 4. My email tells me I have joined Yaari. My email tells me that my Plaxo wants me to define my real friends vs social-network friends. What a snob! MySpace comes calling thru another email from a now-ex-friend. My Facebook has 326 inbox/wall/poke entries. Where are my Outlook filters when I need them most?? I am SNing in volume.

Day 5. FB = 84 friends. Plaxo = 70 friends. MS = 84 friends (but none in common with FB). Yaari is still trying to break my resolve. Xanga and Friendster seem to have joined forces with Yaari to try and beat me down. I love Outlook!

Day 6. Flickr and Picasa claim SN DNA via Geni.com.
My Del.icio.us tags my Digg.
My Orcut sends a salvo into my Yahoo!360.
I WAYN via Zoomr while I also StumbleUpon Twitter.
I Soundpedia my iTunes while hi5-ing my LinkedIn.
Just MEETin and Meetup.com-ing my friends is tiring me.
My Snooth is now Tagged.com.
My tribe.net is all Pownced.
My Sametime is AIMing for my Messenger.

My sh*t son has 3,481 FB friends, while I have 38 passwords to my 15 usernames.

My 43things just became 1433. This SN stuff does not speak well of Intelligent Design.

Meanwhile: tkohli7140, thekohlimiester22, biggaboytk32, mostlyharmless42, kohleetee, SNgod-tktktk, MeSoYoungWannabe, KewlTK*4 and TeeKay## are available for all those who are having trouble creating usernames. I just switched back to pulse dial-up. I need a real beer!

accountability in DC

pork.... earmarks.... fleece.... hide behind the omnibus...

"oh! we didn't see the detail line-items we had to support the omnibus bill.."

one can understand, how in the dim past, doing things the good ole fashioned way, one would have to combine bills into behemoth single up-down voting scenarios....just take today's simple web technologies and add little bit of political spine (if there is such a thing). Its truly time to force our representatives to "line item vote" on every bill. Each is now responsible for each line item and only the majority voted line-items make it into the final bill. Each line-item can be as atomic as required.

1) Use wiki like technologies to create bills - each amendment has an author trail for transparency and accountability

2) Use line item voting - no more hiding behind the proverbial omnibus

3) All votes recorded electronically, and line-item results posted right away

4) All representatives to pen (blog) as to why they voted the way they did attached to the line items

simple bills, simpler results

how hard can it be? e-governance anyone?