busses and building managers

firewire CF card reader for only 11 bucks. So I got that going for me.

So I was thinking today. And that's always a well-known novel experience for me. Thinking about this work stuff I do. I've elaborated before on how much I love the control it offers. How much freedom I now have. How I now contribute, rather than leeching from the system. But as fundamental as it should have been, it never really occurred to me until this afternoon how much I like the creative part of it all. Many people go into business for themselves. Most frequently, it has to do with selling something, followed closely by offering your experience and advice in trade. But I actually create new things. Each jobs involves creating something brand new, that's never existed before.To me, thats an incredibly fulfilling thing to be doing for a living.

So I was talking to Tonto the other day, while we walked. Earlier in the day, I had been thinking, for god knows what reason, about oral history. The method by which knowledge and history were passed along, person to person, by stories and repetitive telling. But that all kind of died out with the advent of television. Without going into the evils of TV in particular, it is true that people started spending less time together creating life, and more time in their own little world, observing a fantasy. What really struck me though, was how 'blogs and journals are gradually starting to resurrect the idea of an oral history, albeit in written form. Message boards and journals are offering up technical answers. Memory archives hold the shared histories of families and groups. Individuals work through their past, and what it's made of their present, right there in front of your eyes. It's staggering, to imagine the sheer volume of memory that is online, now. And a little scary, in that so much of it tends to reside in single places, making it susceptible to loss. If the California is wiped out, the thoughts and stories of 10 million people may be lost. But the NBC homepage will be fine, thanks to colocation.

"boobies!"

(It still makes me smile.)