PhoneBoy Says

My friend Sheryl did a post recently that articulated a thought I myself have had for a long time, though it goes far beyond life online.

In both my online and offline life, I have a number of different roles I play. There isn't a single one where I can always speak my mind. Ever.

Why? Because it is in my rational long-term self-interest not to. Some of what I have to say goes against my roles in certain contexts. For example, there are some things I won't say to my kids. There are thoughts I won't post online.

And I wan't to be clear: it's not because I'm trying to hide who I am or what I think. It's simply a matter of whether it is appropriate to express a particular thought in a particular place or not. There are plenty of thoughts I won't express publicly that I express in more private, appropriate settings.

That said, when you start feeling constrained about these different roles, perhaps then it's time to re-evaluate the roles you play and to whom. That includes evaluating where and with whom you participate online as well as offline.

I've been thinking about my dad a lot over the past several days. Likely it's because I decided to rescue my dad's blog off of Vox. I did an import from Vox, which did not go so well, so I took the blog through Wordpress, which preserved the comments but left the media all over the place.

Unfortunately, to get everything, I've had to do a lot of manual work as the Vox export did not get everything--a lot of the uploaded video files and some audio files. I am downloading, reuploading, and cleaning up as I go. I'm roughly a third of the way through his posts, but as they say, the clock is ticking…

I am reading through Dad's old blog posts. I can't help but do so. Since I'm going through the entries front to back, I am going backward through history. Those posts talk a lot about his politics as well as his financial situation, which was precarious because of the line of work he was in (computer repair), where he was (Northern California, just north of Redding), and the economy (which affected his jobs).

Aside for working for a couple different companies, he also tried to sell his services on the side, both directly and through services like Crossloop and SupportSpace. He also tried to do a number of things that he thought he might be able to sell for money, namely making DVDs of various sorts. Unfortunately, he really wasn't making it that well. It only got worse as his health deteriorated.

I consider myself lucky that I have a stable job for a stable company, I don't have to drive all over creation to make a living, and I am in good health.

It seems strange to spend all this time on a blog that, in the end, my dad thought was a waste of time. That said, I didn't have much of a relationship with my dad from about the time I was in college. The blog, which covers from about 2006 onward, has a number of different items in it from the personal to the political. Some of the interaction with my dad is in his blog, so it has personal meaning to me.

Of course, I should know from having moved content management systems several times for phoneboy.com that any "migration" between systems will never go without a hitch. Moving dad's blog from Vox to Posterous was no exception. In order to get the comments, I had to take a side trip through Wordpress, which introduced a whole mess of other issues into the import process.

Then there was the picture import into Flickr, which Vox provided a nice tool for. Pity it didn't give me an option to do only pictures and instead it tried to import all kinds of stuff it should not have.

Bottom line, I'm having to do a lot of "manual" crap to do it right and to make sure I've actually got all of dad's data off of his Vox blog. That said, I am getting to re-read a lot of the stuff he posted, so I don't entirely mind doing it.

I recently went through my dad's blog on Vox and copied it over to Posterous. He also took a number of pictures over the years. I've put a few of my favorites in this gallery. Some of these he took with a real camera, some he took as stills from his video camera. One I'm not sure where he got, but I don't think he took it.

Every once in a while, someone asks me why--as a man--I have such a childish nickname--PhoneBoy. It's a nickname a friend gave to me in the 1990s. Given the mild amounts of notoriety associated with it, it seems silly to change it now.

That said, it embodies a certain aspect of my personality I hope I never lose: child-like wonder. Man-made things like a bridge, a tall building, or a mobile phone. Things of nature like a mountain, trees, or the sky. Things that I'm sure I could understand, given enough time and energy. Things I simply look at and enjoy for what they are.

With this in mind, I've went through the various photos I've taken over the years and posted just a few of the things that captured my child-like wonder. Those of you who've known me may recognize a few of these pictures.

via twidroid

Word came out today that Six Apart's Vox blogging service is entering the deadpool--closing it's doors on 30 September. Not a huge shock since the service, which I originally liked quite a bit, failed to evolve in a meaningful way. I had imported my own Vox blog not too long ago and deleted my Vox account.

Meanwhile, my dad also had a blog on Vox as well. He passed away a couple of months back and I wanted to save his blog for posterity. Fortunately, Posterous' import process for Vox is simple enough that it doesn't even require a login to the site! I just pointed Posterous at the site, and it basically handled the rest.

Dad's new blog: TechZilla Said. I did a perfunctory "what this blog is" posting and created him a profile. Beyond that, I don't expect it to change. I don't even expect anyone to read it, but it's there in case anyone does.