I just had an insight that some amazing, exciting things are on the way for me, things that will make my full, already-exciting life seem dull by comparison. Life-changing stuff. Perhaps even world-changing stuff!
I’m not sure what it means but I’m curious (and brave enough) to find out.
I woke up from a fitful night of sleep at 3 AM and never fully went back to sleep. I’ve thus felt like a zombie all day, especially this evening when I had to help coach Travis’s basketball team.
It’s now book time and then bedtime for me. ‘Night all!
This year marked a few milestones for my humble blog: my 5,000th post as well as ten years of owning my domain, markturner.net! The official ten-year anniversary of my first blog post happens next week, so that doesn’t count towards a 2011 highlight.
I’m proud to say that I’ve since blown past my 5,000th post. This entry marks my 5,289th, which means that at this rate sometime in 2013 I will reach my 6,000th post.
A few of my fellow bloggers have said that their blogs are dead or dying. While my blog’s visitor count may have already peaked, I don’t really care. I write it because I love to write it, not because I expect anyone to gain any value from it. I’m not obsessed with the page counts or anything like that. It is what it is.
Certainly there are other distractions out there and each has its appeal, but I don’t see myself ever giving up blogging. I love the fact that this is my voice on the web and that I own it 100%. I love that it’s open to anyone who wants to visit, not just to “subscribers.” I also love that I have nearly unlimited space to express my thoughts, rather than being limited to 140 characters or some other arbitrary limit. I believe in an open and free exchange of information.
Thanks for joining me in the conversation!
The kids watched the very first episode of the dolphin-pet TV show Flipper on NetFlix today. I used to love watching the show as a kid, so I was sorry to see that it didn’t hold up too well 35 years later. At least the first episode didn’t hold up well.
In this episode (called “300 Feet Below”), Ranger Porter Ricks and his son Bud get a distress call from a shark-bitten boater whose boat is 12 miles offshore. For some reason the Coast Guard is of no use so Porter and son decide to rescue him themselves. They pick up the boater’s girlfriend to lead them to the boat.
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The weather was a beautiful, balmy partly sunny and 70 degrees, so we took advantage of it by heading out for the mountain bike trails at Lake Crabtree for a little exercise. We had an absolute blast!
Travis had impressed me earlier this week with the way he was riding the hills around the “creek” area after school. That showed me he might be ready for some off-road biking. Turns out not only he was ready, but Hallie as well!
We hopped off our bikes to watch people play in the field and soon found ourselves wrapped up in an impromptu soccer game with a kid and his family. Before we knew it it was approaching 5 PM and we had biked and run far longer than we ever expected we could!
It was a fantastic family day and a great antidote to the brutally-cold start we had to the week. Gotta love winter in North Carolina!
Last night I was lunging towards a misbehaving dog when I knocked my laptop onto the floor.
Oops. Fortunately only the hard drive appeared to be damaged, but the fact that the drive was less than a month old made me feel really, really stupid. On the plus side, I had a backup that was less than a month old so I didn’t lose much.
I’ve got a new drive which I’m loading up with my old files right now so I’ll be back up and running again in no time. And from now on I’ll be a bit more careful!
I attended this morning’s official announcement that Red Hat is moving to downtown Raleigh. While that’s a welcome announcement, it isn’t itself news. What CEO Jim Whitehurst joked was “worst-kept secret in town” has been known for months. What did capture my atention was one of the reasons Whitehurst mentioned to another open-source company as a reason to move here: quality of life.
Quality of life is one of the most important “incentives” a company looks for in a new location. If your employees aren’t happy where they are they’re more likely to go elsewhere. A good job market, a city with the right amenities, good government, and good schools are all important ingredients to an attractive business environment.
Raleigh has had the foresight to keep investing in itself so that it remains one of the best places to live and work. That strategy continues to pay dividends.
How does this get me a job?
Y’all knew it wouldn’t take long for me to bring up politics in my Highlights list, didn’t y’all? This year had me doing more at the General Assembly, mostly fighting an old battle but also jumping into a new one.
My long-running efforts to protect broadband competition continued in 2011, though this time my luck ran out when the NCGA (with Perdue’s help) passed a law to block other municipalities from providing their own Internet services to their citizens. Some otherwise good legislators like Sen. Josh Stein and Rep. Rosa Gill bought into the pro-business hype and voted for the ban, to my disappointment. I think many supporters of the ban simply didn’t realize what was at stake, in spite of the opinion piece I got published in the News and Observer. (Note: I neglected to add my op-ed to my blog until now).
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My Dutch friend and former coworker Guus Bosman was quoted in this Economist article about dual citizenship.
It made me think again that, in such an interconnected world, we may one day choose our citizenship by the way we now choose hotel and airfare rates on sites like Priceline.com: by comparison shopping online. Citizenship will become like today’s flags of convenience. Borders are becoming less important, are they not?
It’s not something I expect to live to see, of course, but it does make an interesting thought experiment!
AT THE height of the Dutch golden age, merchants exported their goods and their families to colonies on four continents. Four centuries later their descendants are less impressed by such adventuring. A new law proposed by the Dutch government aims not only to limit dual nationality among immigrants (in 2011 around 20,000 people gained Dutch nationality through naturalisation) but also to make it easier for the authorities to strip members of the 850,000-plus Dutch diaspora of their nationality, should they secure a second citizenship abroad.
Guus Bosman, a Dutchman living in Washington, DC, calls the proposal “mean-spirited”. Eelco Keij, a Dutch citizen in New York and one of the loudest critics of his government’s proposals, thinks that these days dual nationality is no more than “a harmless side-effect of globalisation”.
Politico is taking a look at Republican Presidential nominee Rick Santorum’s past push to restrict the National Weather Service’s ability to get its data to the public.
Weather doesn’t show up as a top issue on Santorum’s presidential campaign website, and AccuWeather doesn’t appear in his 2012 campaign donations. But some of his opponents, such as the liberal website Daily Kos, have tried to revive memories of the 2005 legislation this week — including with headlines claiming inaccurately that Santorum had tried to “abolish” the weather service.
In fact, Santorum’s failed legislation would have left the weather service intact, although with significantly reduced ability to distribute its information directly to the public.
Critics of the bill say the legislation reflects an outdated worldview — one that says government data should flow through profit-making middlemen, rather than being released freely to one and all.
I used to work at a commercial weather forecasting company, so I’m aware of the commercial value of weather data. That said, I thought in 2005 that it was stupid to make the public buy data that it’s already paid for through its taxes and I still feel that way today. Santorum’s bill was about as dumb as they come, and the fact that he didn’t see any harm in hobbling one of the most valuable government services speaks volumes about him and the type of leader he is.
