Fiat Lux
Scott and I were supposed to be taking a week’s vacation back East this week. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out that way. I posted some of the headlines in Twitter over the weekend, but if you’re not a Twitter fan, here’s the long and the short of it:
On Friday afternoon we were told that what we though was a mild-to-moderate shoulder injury Scott suffered while out on a bike ride was, in fact, a lot more severe than that — basically, the accident broke both the left ball joint and shoulder blade in several places — and surgery was required to put Scott’s shoulder back together.
He went under the knife first thing Saturday and is now home recovering. The vacation has been canceled. Long-term, Scott will be just fine, and everything could be much, much worse — which I’m infinitely grateful for — but I am also bummed about the lost vacation. We don’t travel home anywhere nearly as often as I would like.
There’s a lot of interesting things going on out there in the world to blog about, but I’m not feeling very bloggy right now. Please feel free to peruse my blogroll for a list of folks doing a much better job of this blogging thing than I am.
I’m of the camp that feels a blog is not a blog without comments. I also feel that there should be as few barriers to entry as possible when it comes to allowing comments. Easy interaction is a huge part of what has made the Internet great, and I’m a huge fan of it.
However, the damned comment spammers have made it impossible for me to run my blog the way I’d prefer. The vast majority of my older blog entries have had their comments closed to keep the spammers at bay, I’ve added all sorts of anti-spam plug-ins, and I’ve turned trackbacks off entirely.
And despite it all, especially in the last 48 hours, the comment spam has been overwhelming.
So today, and unwillingly, Captcha verification has been added to the blog comment form (Thanks Scott!). I really wish I didn’t have to, but it’s either that or go to some form of user registration / comment moderation, and on balance, I think Captcha is a little less of a burden all around.
To all you comment spammers out there who’ve forced me into this: You suck.
To the rest of you: I’m sorry. I hope it’s not too much of a hassle.
In a little more than a week from now, this humble blog will celebrate its 4th anniversary. But that’s not what this post is about.
I was actually blogging all the way back in 1996, although back then, it was called an “online diary”. I thought that I’d lost those web pages forever, but I finally got the Wayback Machine to cough them up (I’d forgotten the correct URL, silly me).
So, if you’re curious, you can see what I had to say all the way back in February 1996, and intermittently the rest of that year. Nothing momentous at all, really, but I’m pleased about it. And I’ve downloaded a copy of the file, so that I won’t lose it again.
Look, we know what we’re talking about here won’t be able to happen today, tomorrow, or next week. It’s going to require some serious time, dedication, and faith in the brand you’ve built. Your stock is tumbling, the lowest it’s been in months; your customers have lost faith, and those buying Treos seem to be just going through the motions; your efforts to expand your business have gone unfulfilled, and perhaps most importantly your consumers are unhappy and looking for the next great thing — that you’re not providing. But it’s not entirely hopeless. Your biggest competition’s already shown its hand, and you’ve seen how successful they’ve been. Look at what they’ve done right (and wrong), and build upon it.
Even if you only implemented half the suggestions we’ve laid out here we think you could really turn things around. And we do, honestly, want you to make it through this thing. We want to love Palm like we loved it in the old days, and know somewhere, deep down, you’ve got some fight left in you. And believe you us, this is your shot. The bottom’s about to drop out on the Treo, and if you can’t make it happen soon, you may never get another chance to get a foothold on innovation.
Sadly, I think Palm is neither willing nor able to listen.
Why cat blogging? Because they’re a much-needed dose of perspective when Ben Bernanke powers up the helicopters.