unbillable hours

The Post In Which I Comment On BloggerCon in a Fashion Clearly Stolen from McSweeney’s Internet Tendency And For Which David Eggers Would Have Every Right To Sue Me For Infringement*

* But for which Neal Pollack would be told to go pound salt.

On Friday, April 16, 2004, I traveled to Cambridge, Massachusetts to attend the BloggerCon lectures at Harvard Law School. I was in attendance because of my interest in Jay Rosen’s piece on weblogs and journalism, and also because of my interest in seeing some sort of social commentary develop regarding weblogs. Normally, after attending a program like BloggerCon, I would have based an essay of this sort on the notes I took during the seminars. Unfortunately, the only note I made at BloggerCon was the hastily-scribbled “That is the weirdest receding hairline I have ever seen.”

Divorce News is a family law-related weblog, new to my radar. I found it by using the topic-based feed on Bloglines, which I'm finding extremely useful.

Thanks

Thanks to Professor Rosen (NYU) at PressThink for the link to On How We Discuss Blogs. Similar thanks go out to Pops of 2hr Lunch (who I seem to recall once had the Talking Heads' (Nothing But) Flowers as part of his masthead) who referred to it as a must-read.

Debra Galant, of the recent New York Times article Child-Friendly or Child-Frenzied? writes that On How We Discuss Blogs is heavy reading (and Scheherazade Fowler unjustly referred to it as picking a fight). I promise, next April Fool's Day, it will be nothing but short, happy posts. File that one along with Lenten resolutions. [FN1]

I'm stupified at the many hits I've gotten regarding that post (about 900 so far today, according to Type Pad, and, just to keep me from getting uppity, Site Meter reports a whopping 84 hits), particularly since I knew it was so long (in fact, the version on the site is my "pared down" version, just because I even got tired of reading it). I'm curious as to what the thoughts of others are on this subject, as I don't know if I'm being nonsensical by giving such weight to this form of publishing.

FOOTNOTES

1. As per previous years my actual Lenten resolution went along these lines:

PATERNAL UNIT: So what are you giving up for Lent this year?

TPB, ESQ.: Religion.

[ANGST ENSUES].

Gone

I went through my blogroll today, deleting all links to sites that had either announced their closure, failed to load, or had not been updated in a month. For the most part, it was an easy task. Mindless. Repetitive. Something that, deep down, I’m very good at.

I regretted letting a few go. Some were sites of close friends, people that I had known for decades. Some were sites to which I had contributed. Others were sites that I had linked to since the beginning, back when I started this blog in June 2002. These sites were harder to lose.

This is the process that I go through, whether it be removing dead sites or names from my cell phone address book. Haven’t spoken to him in months. Haven’t seen her since we broke up. Not sure if that’s even her number anymore. Gone.

Congratulations are in order.

Welcome to the Bar.

Bestofme Symphony No. 16 is up at Practical Penumbra.

I just spent 4.5 hours waiting in Superior Court just so the judge could adjourn my motion another two months. I am shooting laser beams of displeasure from my eyes.

De Novo is a new blog by the former authors of the En Banc legal blog. It's introductory post links to four essays on how to think and write like a lawyer. It's always wonderful to read (especially since I can't read any Typepad-based blogs right now, damn it) some thoughts on the basics of my profession: writing, rhetoric, critical reading, and negotiation. I think I'm going to have to take on a few of these essays, as well. Very interesting stuff.

Via Stay of Execution.

This Week's Best Of Me Symphony (No. 14) is up over at Irritable Blog Syndrome.

Enjoy.

On Being Judged By One's Writings

"It is those we live with and love and should know who elude us."

Robert Redford, Narrator, A River Runs Through It (1992).

At A Preponderance of Evidence, Jonas Luster has written on the social issue of how we are, can be, or shall be judged based on our "internet identity." By internet identity, I mean that which is informative about an individual based on those writings, images, links, press releases, and the like that can be linked to the person's name.

Jonas stated that the ability to craft an intricate, if not accurate, internet identity represents an important social change.

All those examples show one thing more or less clearly - the circumference of our actions has increased, the distance between actors and observers is drastically reduced. The effect of actions and affiliations has grown to include those not usually in our direct circle of influence. Not unlike the promise of YASNF (Yet Another Social Networking Fad), separation has lost in influence, while reliance on a proper self-display has been amplified by technology.

Shatner laughs, I can tell

So, basically I've ignored just about every attempt for me to become an "involved blogger."

"Meet-ups?" I said, "you must be huffing. If I wanted to meet up with you, I'd tell you which bar I was going to be at. Seriously."

Actually, to be honest, it's not so much that I avoided these things as it was that I was oblivious of them until long after they had passed. Which brings me to the Harvard ....

the Harvard....

You know what? I am not going to call this damn thing "BloggerCon." I can just hear William Shatner, circa Saturday Night Live, going "All of you, get a life!" whenever I hear the "Con" ending.

Anyway, Pops said he was going to be there so he could find out what "product" Adam Curry uses, and I haven't had my Boston fix in, oh, six months (which is fortunate; I should have been taken off of the Boston Police's APD list by now). And seeing as I haven't had my Boston fix, and this is an excuse to harass perfect strangers, I figured I'd drop on by.

For those interested in the Harvard... shindig, here's the info.