10 Weeks Later

Posted on August 2, 2006 by Steve Clancy

This week I wrap up my internship and Saturday I’ll be leaving Erie, PA. You may have noticed that I haven’t written much about my life in the last month or so. That happened because I have been busy lately. I have also tried to avoid talking about work in my blog, so that squashed some of the better stories. Since things are coming to an end now, I figure it would be a good time to reflect on my summer here.

Like most of the other interns here, I had reservations about coming to Erie. It took a while for me to get used to my new life here. I didn’t know many people here and I didn’t have a car, so I felt pretty landlocked for the first few weeks. Thus I projected a lot of my own feelings onto Erie. I decided it was a dreary and lonely place with nothing to do. I haven’t completely shaken that feeling yet either, but I feel better about it now than I did 10 weeks ago.

Around the 4th of July weekend things changed though. I started to develop relationships with some of my fellow interns and did things with them. And when I didn’t have things to do, I found things to do. Finding a bus to the mall went a long way to improving my weekends (and draining my bank account). There were also a lot of things I wished I did here that I didn’t. In any case, I started feeling like I was living in Erie, rather than stuck there. And it made all the difference.

So would I come back here to live and work? I am definitely warmer to the idea now than I was back at the start. It seems, however, what people really like about Erie is not its location, its geography, or its nightlife. It is the people who live there. Nearly everyone I work with who likes Erie has families, wives, girlfriends, or drinking buddies who make Erie a home for them. These type of people make a place special. And it that sense the only thing that was wrong with Erie was that it didn’t have the people I cared about in it.

Well I think I’m over my Dorothy-There’s-No-Place-Like-Home thing now. I feel like my time in Erie and my experiences here have been worthwhile, both professionally and personally. That said, it will be good to be home.

Congress Wants to Regulate Facebook, MySpace

Posted on August 2, 2006 by Steve Clancy

The Internet is an excellent medium for communication and collaboration. Possibly too excellent for Pennsylvania congressman Michael Fitzpatrick. This week he introduced his Deleting Online Predators Act (DOPA, with the emphasis on dope) in the House, a bill aimed at blocking access to MySpace and Facebook in schools and libraries. The objective of this bill is to protect children from stalkers and predators on these sites, but this is a rather foolish and dangerous approach.

For starters, most of these sites are probably already blocked in schools and it doesn’t stop kids from accessing these sites at home. The only people who will be affected are poorer folks who cannot afford internet access at home. Of course, these sites are probably more dangerous for them too. Social networking is a powerful tool that has legitimate uses and should not be treated like porn.

Also problematic is the law’s wording, which describes a social networking site as a web site that “allows users to create web pages or profiles that provide information about themselves and are available to other users; and offers a mechanism for communication with other users, such as a forum, chat room, email, or instant messenger.” By that standard, sites like Blogger and AIM could be blocked as well. That would make the internet about as static as a book – something libraries do not need anymore of.

What really concerns me right now is what this means for colleges and universities (since I am a college student). Reports suggest that the law is directed at schools and libraries that get Internet access through a federal E-rate program. The E-rate program is supposedly limited to K-12 schools, so it seems that the Facebook may be safe – for now.

Now I Need a CD Holder

Posted on July 17, 2006 by Steve Clancy

With most of the other Penn State interns in State College for ArtsFest, I didn’t have a whole lot to do this weekend. So I took a trip out to the mall and a trip to Walmart. In the process I expanded my music collection.

Lately I’ve felt like I’ve caught up with all the new music I need, so have been going back and picking up some of the classics. I also feel the need to buy more music on CD these days, in order to get better sound quality and no DRM. My rule of thumb has also been to “upgrade” a previously “acquired” album for every new one I purchase.

I never understood why people shop at overpriced mall music stores, but now I realize now the selection is much better. I have been struggling to find any of these classic albums in a Walmart, or even a Best Buy, but this store had a bunch. I picked up The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan and Parsely, Sage, Rosemarry, and Thyne. Both are fantastic, but I have been really into The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan right now. In general, the themes of 60s and 70s music seem just as relevant today.

Then in Walmart on Sunday I saw they had a couple Led Zeppelin on sale. Since I had some money burning in my pocket (and there was hardly anything else worthwhile there) I bought Led Zeppelin II and Led Zeppelin IV. I bought Led Zeppelin II sight unseen (actually unheard) and I really like it. Now I have a bunch of other albums I want to buy, but I think I’ll have to wait a little bit until I drop more money into the hands of the RIAA.

Reading Rabbit

Posted on July 2, 2006 by Steve Clancy

I am not an avid reader. I find it tedious and I struggle to sit in front of a book without falling asleep. Perhaps its because I’m a cinephile. That’s not to say I’m iliterate either: I read more newspapers and magazines than most of the “readers” I know. Still, I feel like I have a chip on my shoulder intellectually because I am a part-time reader. I am also a bit skeptical also that someone who reads a dozen chick-lit novels a year is more “well-read than me.

Perhaps the other reason I don’t read much is that there isn’t much motivation. The handful of books I read for school or pleasure a year is surpsingly enough to make me “well read”. Last fall I stopped in a trendy bookstore in Washington DC (it was trendy because they were playing AC/DC and had a bar in the back) and I had read half the books on their featured table. I guess there’s only a handful of books every year that are important enough and I am hitting them all.

Summer is the exception to the rule. I read a lot during the summer since I used to have a job that paid me to sit around and read. These days I am not paid to read, but I have so little to do outside of work that I decided to pick up the habit again. So far I am almost done Indecision after 36 hours of having it. I also bought Assassination Vacation and The Lexus and the Olive Tree, which I thought would be plenty for the summer. At the rate I am going, however, they might not last more than a week or two. It’s hard to argue with reading a book when faced with the umpteenth showing of Jurassic Park on TV.

Update: I just finished Indecision and it ended badly. Its a tad annoying getting preached to at the end of a story, but its even worse when the sermon has nothing to do with the 200 or so pages you read before.

How to Be An Asshole Without Really Trying

Posted on June 29, 2006 by Steve Clancy

Thought I’d share this tragic and amusing story from work. I have bonded a bit with a the interns in my office and we like to fool around with each other. For example, one day I was walking to a meeting and another intern drove by. When he saw I was walking to the same meeting, he smiled and gave me the finger as he drove by. Just innocent juvenille fun.

As I left work yesterday I recognized the driver of the car in the previous scenario, driving out of the parking lot. So I slyly gave him the finger while scratching my head. The guy recognized the gesture, gave me an odd smile and returned the gesture. As he drove by, I felt something was out of place. It wasn’t till he was passed me that I realized that wasn’t the intern’s car and that wasn’t him driving it. I just flicked off an innocent man. To add insult to injury, one of the other interns made the same mistake and pointed and laughed at him.

Naturally I was pretty distressed about the situation, as this situation could escalate if it got around that interns were giving other employees the finger. I imagine they’ve fired people for less. So I told my manager and the intern coordinator first thing today, which worked out well. They weren’t too upset and were happy that I had been honest about the situation. My manager even slipped me the finger during a meeting as a joke.

The only unresolved element of this is that I have yet to identify the recipient of my gesture. It seems there are a number of similar looking cars and people in my building. I actually went up to a guy and confused him by asking if we ran into each other yesterday. Hopefully I will find the person and get a chance to explain myself, because it is a funny story.

Moving On, Moving Up

Posted on June 18, 2006 by Steve Clancy

I am changing the location of this blog again, hopefully for the last time. I recently reaccquired the rights to http://www.quietkid.net again, so I am moving this blog to that domain. You can read about how I originally lost the domain here. WordPress.com has been a great host and I would highly recommend it to anyone looking to get into blogging. I wanted a little more control, however, and this gives me the oppertunity exercise that. The new site has mostly the same look, but I have made some improvements and added some additional content.

I'll keep re-posting here for a limited time while people make the transition, but eventually I'll stop. So you can start directing your bookmarks and feed readers to http://www.quietkid.net from now on. Last of all I would like to thank all my readers who have discovered me on WordPress.com. For the first time in my blogging career I felt like I was contributing to a community and had a real audience. I hope this will continue at the new domain. I appreciate your help and patience in this matter, thanks for all the support.

My Pedestrian Life

Posted on June 18, 2006 by Steve Clancy

I do not own a car and do not enjoy driving much, so I have always had to find other ways to get around. Generally bumming rides, public transportation, or bicycle has been enough. Last summer my bike died though and I started walking a mile to work at the pool. Sometimes I got a ride, but I did a lot of my commuting by foot. I did not mind that though, since the iPod may be the greatest invention ever for pedestrian commuters.

Flash forward to this summer in Erie. I have been able to get rides to and from work. Everything in between becomes a bit tougher. For the last couple weeks I have been limited to Arby’s and CVS for most of my day-to-day shopping needs, which is a bit limiting. So yesterday I walked down to the Walmart, which is about a mile and half away and took about twenty minutes to get to. On the way there I realized what I really needed to get was a bicycle. And since I got paid this week, I had plenty of money to blow. So here’s my new wheels, which hopefully can carry me around town a little better. Now I just have to figure out where you’re allowed to lock up your bike in the supermarket parking lot.

The You in User

Posted on June 7, 2006 by Steve Clancy

A professor once told us, “Only two industries call their customers users: IT people and drug dealers,” I had to get that out of the way. The internet has been alive with debate this week about “user-generated content” and I am happy to report that the name itself has been debated. As a content-creating user (is that what we’re calling it), I figured I could chime in on this subject.

Talking about a YouTube-esque video sharing site Lee Gomes of the Wall Street Journal writes today, ” The short cinematic pastiche we saw is an example of what has come to be called a “mash-up,” and for a big part of the tech world, these sorts of mash-ups are becoming the highest form of cultural production.” Ouch. Besides the fact that most user-generated content on the web is not a “mash-up”, is being derivative that shocking. One only needs to take a look at Google News to see the echo chamber that is the mainstream media. Hip-hop music is an entire art form based around building something new out of old tunes. And Hollywood can’t seem to get enough of “mash-ups”, be they sequels or remakes.

Most user-generated content, however, I think is “organic” content that comes out of people’s daily lives. SixApart’s new Vox service seems to be trying to cultivate people’s lives into interesting content. Flickr, for example, features lots of great original photography from a large group of users. There are plenty of worthwhile pictures for the public, but the others also are special because they mean something to someone. User-generated content is also helping to grow the “knowledge” of the Internet in exciting ways. The Wikipedia is a great example, there is a lot of stuff in there you could never find anywhere else.

I think the debate on books has triggered a lot of this backlash. I do not think books are dead, but I think there are certainly some that could be improved. A hyperlinked (even wiki-fied) textbook would be much more helpful than a printed one. Likewise, print encyclopedias are useful to no one. Still I think there is an audience for printed media. Coffee table books should not be done digitally. And I don’t think hyperlinking and commenting would do very much to improve literature. And I still think there’s something nice about a tangible object in your hands. I do think there is plenty of room for change though.

The Internet has enabled more opportunities for value creation than ever before. People can continue to complain about this or they can accept change and move forward.