Radical Transparency

(in case the other blogs need a friend)

Tags



 
Posts filed under

dudes and websites

November 24, 2008

Leave a Trail

My grandfather has been relentless over the past month. 

Hal: Your site online yet?
Jake: Not yet.
H: When?
J: We're close.  Just finishing a few things.  You'll be the first to know.
H: Do you have a date?
J: Next week maybe.  Maybe the week after.
H: So you don't have a date?
J: No. I don't have a date...

At least twice a day with that conversation.  At least.

This past Friday, finally, mercifully, it stopped.  We put up the beginnings of the beta community space, and I'm off the hook with Hal.  For the moment.

Now he'll go make up stories about what the website is and does, spread them around the YMCA in downtown Wilmington, DE,* and confuse everyone he can.

To do that most efficiently and effectively, however, he needs a URL, and, this morning, he requested one. 

He pulled a scissor-trimmed quarter section of an index card out of his wallet and asked me to write www.carrotproject.com on the back.

"What's on the front?" I asked, as I took the card and flipped it to have a look.

A quote.  A quote that Hal has been carrying for more than sixty years.

Do not go where the path may lead,
Go instead where there is no path
and leave a trail.
-R.W. Emerson

Feels good to get to share a piece of index card with that.

*Hal, 87, spends about two and a half hours a day at the Y, mostly talking Delaware politics, naked, in the locker room.
Comments [0]


September 16, 2008

She Will Be Mine

Last night, an IM conversation started with this:

12:27 AM Wiley: dudes n websites just got a little bit more worried

And that's a good way for an IM conversation to start. 

Many moons ago, Wiley swore off women in favor of dudes and websites, so worried dudes and worried websites, in my opinion, are a good sign, a sign, at the very least, of some excellent stories to come.

As the conversation continued, it touched on the psychological impact of growing up on an all female university campus, the dangers of romantic involvement with your mother's colleagues, the beauty of the full court press metaphor, breaking that press, and situations in which you turn the ball over on purpose. 

It was an excellent conversation, but then it digressed to this:

1:03 AM Wiley:
  oh boy
1:04 AM me: not gonna watch that
  i can't handle seeing myself on film
  can't do it
 Wiley: oh yeah?
 me: can't
  too embarrassed
1:05 AM Wiley: might be good for you
  i'm doing it now
  it hurts for me too

That's a video of the lightning talks at DjangoCon.  Wiley and I both gave them.  Mine was garbage, I'm pretty sure.  I was busy getting nervous during Wiley's, so I wasn't sure how his went.

Wiley watched and rep