openswitch

If you don’t know how a flowchart works, you start at the top and work your way down.

Obviously I didn’t come up with this. I saw it somewhere else on the Net. But the original version I saw had a bit of vulgar language and I wanted to clean it up a little.

I recently read through an article on Cracked.com that was absolutely intriguing. The author argued that there are at least 7 things that exist in the 21st century that are making you miserable. By and large I think the author makes some very good and well thought out points. But overall I have to disagree with many, though not all, of them.

I intend in this article to go through each main point the author makes in the linked page and give some of my thoughts on each.

#1. We don’t have enough annoying strangers in our lives.

This first point was not meant as sarcasm. The author argues that we need to be around lots of annoying people so we can build up a tolerance to them like we build up a tolerance to alcohol or a bad smell. He says that people are not as good at dealing with annoyances because they’re separating themselves from other people.

For the most part I agree. I mean, we do need to build up tolerance to jerks. The more jerks we are around, the less they annoy us. Or, at least that’s how the theory goes. I’ve yet to see any study that even remotely suggested this assertion, but hey, we’ll go with it ‘cause it sounds good.

But then the author says that

“The problem is we’ve built an awesome, sprawling web of technology meant purely to let us avoid annoying people.”

That’s going a little overboard. The author is right on target though when he says that there’s really no way to avoid annoying people:

“Now that would be awesome if it were actually possible to keep all of the irritating shit out of your life. But, it’s not. It never will be. As long as you have needs, you’ll have to deal with people you can’t stand from time to time.”

But then I disagree with him when he says:

“We’re losing that skill, the one that lets us deal with strangers and tolerate their shrill voices and clunky senses of humor and body odor and squeaky shoes. So, what encounters you do have with the outside world, the world you can’t control, make you want to go on a screaming crotch-punching spree.”

I think the author is awkwardly thin on evidence when he suggests that people in general are losing their ability to deal with strangers because they listen to their iPods at the doctor’s office.

#2. We don’t have enough annoying friends, either.

Speak for yourself man, I have TONS of one or two annoying friends I can think of. I’m sorry, but this point is ridiculous.

“Lots of us were born into towns full of people we couldn’t stand. As a kid, maybe you found yourself in an elementary school classroom, packed in with two dozen kids you did not choose and who shared none of your tastes or interests. Maybe you got beat up a lot.

But, you’ve grown up. And if you’re, say, a huge DragonForce fan, you can go find their forum and meet a dozen people just like you. Or even better, start a private room with your favorite few and lock everybody else out. Say goodbye to the tedious, awkward, painful process of dealing with somebody who’s truly different. That’s another Old World inconvenience, like having to wash your clothes in a creek or wait for a raccoon to wander by the outhouse so you can wipe your ass with it.

The problem is that peacefully dealing with incompatible people is crucial to living in a society. In fact, if you think about it, peacefully dealing with people you can’t stand is society. Just people with opposite tastes and conflicting personalities sharing space and cooperating, often through gritted teeth.”

I was one of those kids who was beat up/picked on/emotionally assaulted and you know what? I’m still a healthy, functioning member of society. But the argument that the author makes isn’t that we can’t be beat up as kids and then grow up to be healthy. He argues that we go online to seclude ourselves with our nerdy little friends who all are just like us.

The problem with this argument is that interest groups and/or cliques have existed for a long time and just because there are now interest groups and/or cliques online doesn’t mean they’re any worse. In fact, I would argue that interest groups and/or cliques can actually be healthy, natural entities.

If tomorrow there were no Internet do you think that everyone who is a member of the (as if there were only one) Dungeons & Dragons forum would all of a sudden be unable to find people to associate with? Not at all. They would find a local club or something similar to attend. People have been doing this for ages. Do you like golf? There’s a local golfer’s club where you can hang out with a bunch of other geeky golfers and talk about golf all day long. Like Linux? There’s a local Linux user group that I could go attend (physically, not on the Net) and talk about geeky Linux stuff all day. Social clubs or networks or cliques are not unique to the online world. And just because they exist online does not make them unhealthy.

But the main point of disagreement I have is in this quote:

“Just people with opposite tastes and conflicting personalities sharing space and cooperating, often through gritted teeth.”

Wait, are we talking about opposing tastes or conflicting personalities? Because anyone who spends any amount of time in an online forum or user group knows that while everyone there may have a similar hobby, it’s a far cry from “spending time with people just like you.”

I think the Open Source movement is an example of just this. You’ve got dozens or sometimes hundreds of people all trying to work together to accomplish the same goal and believe me, it’s often times through “gritted teeth” due to personality conflicts.

I think that generally this article I’m quoting from is written with the emo teenager in mind, not the married 30 year-old father. Still, let’s go on.

#3. Texting is a shitty way to communicate.

Yep. I totally agree on this one. Though it bears mentioning that it matters greatly on what you’re communicating. If you’re just telling someone “meet me at 9” then a TXT message is perfect. If you’re trying to smooth things over with your wife with whom you just had a fight … well, you might want to at least call her.

#4. Online company only makes us lonelier.

I didn’t see the connection between this point and what the author goes on to talk about. In this section he says that most communication is through non-verbal means. He’s absolutely right too. This is one reason why you really don’t want to have serious conversations over the phone. You can’t sense the non-verbals of the other party.

But does online company actually make us lonelier? Hardly. Well, I suppose it could possibly have that effect if you never had any contact with people outside of the Net. But again, this seems to apply more to the person who … never goes to school … and lives alone … and is a hermit … wait, how many people actually live like this?

Is online company the same as face to face company? No way. Does it actually make us lonelier though? I think anyone would have an uphill battle arguing that. It certainly doesn’t make me any lonelier.

#5. We don’t get criticized enough.

The author is very right in that there’s a huge difference between criticism and insults. But I’ve gotta be blunt here. I think very few people receive criticism … period. I don’t think it matters where they spend their time, it’s just a fact that in our culture criticism is generally frowned upon. We’d rather let the idiot continue in his idiocy instead of correcting him.

Online or off, we don’t get criticized enough. This is not an online phenomenon.

#6. We’re victims of the Outrage Machine.

“But how did we wind up with a more negative view of the world than our parents? Or grandparents? Back then, people didn’t live as long and babies died more often. Diseases were more common. In those days, if your buddy moved away the only way to communicate was with pen and paper and a stamp. We have Iraq, but our parents had Vietnam (which killed 50 times more people) and their parents had World War 2 (which killed 1,000 times as many). Some of your grandparents grew up at a time when nobody had air conditioning. All of their parents grew up without it.”

Blah blah blah. “When I was a kid we had to make our own toys.” Or the more ubiquitous, “I had to walk uphill to school, both ways, in the snow, without shoes.” Pure crap. Don’t feed me this stuff.

Every generation bitches about the generation after it. Every genearation will say to the one which succeeds it, “When I was your age … blah blah blah.” It happened to the boomers, it happened to the busters, it happened to the builders, and it’ll happen to us, genX. Gimme a break.

#7. We feel worthless, because we actually are worth less.

Here we see what the author is really talking about:

“There’s one advantage to having mostly online friends, and it’s one that nobody ever talks about: They demand less from you.”

And that’s the push of this article. It’s not about the big bad Internet. It’s not about the 21st century either. Those topics are collateral damage loosely correlated at best. The main topic of this article is people for whom “most of their friends are online.”

It really is about the emo kid who locks himself in his room. It really is about the emotionally stunted 30 year old man who never leaves his apartment in the city; who orders his groceries to be delivered, who never interacts with others. This article is not about the average Internet user or 21st century human.

The fact of the matter is that it’s not the Net that’s to blame at all, it’s not the 21st century either, not by a long shot. It’s about the person, the hermit. Hermits are NEVER healthy, well adjusted individuals. 1,000 years ago there were hermits and there are still hermits today … the only difference is they now have Internet access. Correlation does not imply causation.

Conclusion

In general I think the author makes some astute observations about culture at large. However, I do not think that the demonizing of technology is accurate or appropriate.

I figured that since I’m billing myself as “talented web designer” I had better be using a theme I made myself. If you recall, before I switched to a tumblelog style blog I was using this theme and was running it on Textpattern. I changed to WordPress when I went to a tumblelog style of writing because Textpattern wasn’t doing what I wanted it to do, mainly with the feed. But now that I’ve moved back to a more traditional style of blogging I’ve gone running home to Textpattern.

Man, it’s so incredibly nice to not have to look through my Akismet spam every day looking for false positives! With Textpattern, comment spam just isn’t an issue. And I love that my site uses textile again. It’s much faster to write an entry with textile than with HTML tags. Yeah, I know I could use a textile plugin for WordPress but it’s just nice that it’s native to Textpattern.

As you can see I’ve separated out my content. Main articles are in the left column, then in the right column you’ve got your del.icio.us link roll and then the flickr photos and then the blogroll. I think this format will serve my particular style of blogging better than a tumblelog (though the time I spent with a tumblelog was very fun!).

So, yeah, changing CMS’s is a very bad idea when you do it as much as I have in the past couple months, I don’t recommend anyone do it. I would have just stuck with WordPress but the comment spam was driving me bonkers. It was absolutely insane even with Bad Behavior and Akismet working side by side.

At any rate, I’ve committed to not make any design changes on openswitch for a year. This time next year I’ll consider redesigning but not until then. The reasons for this is basically the fact that me tinkering with this site is causing me to get behind in my other work, you know, the kind of work that makes money.

I also plan on picking up the 100 blogs in 100 days project where I left off. At this point it can’t be 100 blogs in 100 days, it’ll have to be 100 blogs as soon as I can review them.

As quickly as I really began falling in love with my new iMac I’ve got to send it back for a replacement. I’ve spent over 4 hours today on the phone with tech support (most of that time on hold, obviously) trying to get my iSight camera working. It still won’t work, and it’s quite obviously not a software problem. I talked to your vanilla Apple tech support and then was transfered to a “specialist” and after he had me do a number of troubleshooting things he told me that the issue is hardware. He said that it could be any number of things from a bad logic board to a bad iSight camera to a simple cable being unplugged. He told me that I could try to get it repaired if I wanted.

I then asked for the nearest Apple certified computer repair shop in my area. Then I called that store and spoke with the head honcho. I told him what was happening and he said, “Well, it could just be a cable unplugged.” But then he got honest with me. He said, “Look, I’d love to get some more business and make some money off of you, but I want you to have the best Mac you can get. If this were my Mac and I just got it this morning and it didn’t work 100% out of the box I’d replace it. You just paid how much for that computer? It should work out of the box. You shouldn’t have to repair a brand new machine.” I think he’s right.

So, tomorrow I’ll have a re-boxing and will FedEx the computer back to Apple, awaiting a new one. Apple is being very accommodating through all of this. They’re going to email me the shipping labels (pre-paid) and then, once I get a tracking number to them to verify that I am indeed mailing their computer back to them and not trying to pull a fast one, they’ll put a new computer in the mail to me straight away. Customer service was excellent, even the man with the Indian accent was very pleasant.

I’m still a little peeved though. I love this machine. I hate to have to send it back, but if I’m going to go Mac it’s going to be a Mac that works right out of the box. Unfortunately I installed and activated Photoshop CS3 on this Mac before I discovered that the iSight was borked. I hope I don’t have a hard time reinstalling it on a new computer when the new iMac comes in a week. But my gut tells me that I probably will have to call Adobe and somehow prove to them that I’m not trying to steal their software by installing it on two machines.

Though, now that I think of it, doesn’t a license typically allow for two installations if the same person owns both computers? One for desktop and one for laptop?

Anyway, I’m totally addicted to this thing now. It’s teh awseome.

The past year or so I’ve been thinking a lot about ministry and its current state. I’ve discussed this topic with people whom I greatly respect and who often times disagree with me. I say that to imply that I think I’ve gotten some well rounded advice on these thoughts. Both thoughts are very unconventional and both, likely, will cause high emotions. If you decide to comment please, let’s be civil here .

Ministers shouldn’t tithe

This idea is the most easily argued. The idea of tithing starts in the Old Testament with the Jews giving a 10^th of their income (often times physical income such as goats, sheep, etc.) and sacrifice it to God. God had set forth in His economy that He would then give accordingly to the Levites who were given no inheritance of their own (no land). So, the Jews tithed to God, God allowed the Levites to have a certain amount of this tithe so they could subsist.

If we use this as our model for tithing today then it can only be argued that the congregation gives to God via the church and God gives to the paid staff. The staff work full time at the church (tabernacle / temple in the OT) so they have no means of working elsewhere to make a living. God therefore supplies for their needs via the tithe. Obviously there’s a human element here in that someone has to decide how much a minister should get paid. But ideally this person or group of persons who make this decision would be seeking God’s will and take direction from Him.

At any rate, the fact remains that if we use the Old Testament as our model for current day tithing, then the ministers in a church should not tithe nor be expected to tithe, just like the Levites in the OT were not expected to tithe, they were the recipients of the tithe.

Edit: The best argument against this view is the fact that we all are ministers in our own way. We all are “saints” and therefore, by my reasoning everyone in the church should be recipients of a tithe.

However, that counter argument brings me to my next thought.

Full time paid ministry is not biblical

Except for the Old Testament where God Himself set apart an entire race of people (the Levites) to be His “ministers” there is no evidence — especially in the New Testament — that anyone was a minister as a vocation. Instead what we see is that ministers are always bi-vocational. The ministers (Paul, Barnabas, etc) gladly accept support from churches but instead insisted time and again that they would work other jobs in order that they might not be a burden on any church. For example, Paul was a tent-maker, the modern day equivalent of a construction worker. They had a job and then committed themselves to ministry in their spare time.

Now, I first need to draw a line. I don’t think that we necessarily need to be “exactly” like the New Testament church. If that were the case we should tear down our church buildings and start meeting in homes again. But I do think it’s important that we think through things. What are we doing that had its start in the Bible and what are we doing that is our own invention?

Conclusion

Some things we will readily admit are our own invention and didn’t have a start in the Bible. Things like when we take communion, how we baptize (oh man, there’s a fire starter), and how we worship all have no beginning in Scripture. They’re things the church has decided on over the years. These things are not necessarily bad. I only bring up my two points above because I think it’s good to think through why we do what we do. Even if it’s uncomfortable.

OK, I need to do this for my own sanity. I need to know who likes the tumblelog style and who likes the more traditional blog style. Show of hands please. No explanation necessary, just “tumblelog” or “traditional” or “don’t care” in the comments please.

moblog // Hula Boy

And if you were still sitting on the fence regarding Microsoft… “Microsoft Allegedly Bullies and Bribes to Make Office an International Standard.”