Thursday, September 25, 2008

Lost in the After Hours

The Dow was up a couple a hunnert today, but it didn't feel good. Nothing feels good anymore. We're all just waiting for Godawful.

GOOG was up a half a buck at the close, but then gave it all back plus change when RIMM went over the edge. And then, Heebner. Well. Heebner is Heebner. Beware Heebner. My mind wanders....

I wandered into Coney Island and read a thing about singers covering songs recorded by other singers. How great or terrible they are. I looked at the comments. All the comments had little cartoon pictures on them. I should have known.

The commenters were all disputing everybody else's faves. I decided to add a comment of my own. I wrote:

"My favorite cover is Bob Dylan's version of 'Precious Memories', on the 'Knocked Out Loaded' album."

That should lift the level of discussion, I thought. I looked for my prose in the list. There were 17 pages of comments, each one saying how many minutes ago it was posted.

I went to the end of the list, but didn't see my stuff. Then I saw it wasn't the end of the list anymore. The end was now page 21. I was standing on a moving sidewalk!

I decided to catch up to the end page. But, no matter how fast I clicked, I kept losing ground. The comments were saying "Posted 1 minute ago," when I realized that I had posted my comment over 5 minutes ago.

I was going in the wrong direction. I backed up to page 10 where the comments were posted 6 minutes ago. This was the right strategy, I figured: get out in front of it and run it down. But I didn't see it anywhere. I must have underestimated how long ago I'd posted. I started out in the other direction. I skipped around. At some point, I realized that I would never see my words in print.

I looked in amazement at the other comments. There were people having conversations in there! How did they do that?

I thought about a dream I had, years ago, where I got lost in a cemetery. It was the night before my father died.

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

He Ain't the Only One

This got my attention today:

"Heebner pukes his positions!"

A gripping read. Thousands have wondered what Heebner was up to at any given time and now this guy has devised a simple heuristic, that even I can understand, for making an educated guess.

But why would anyone care what Heebner is doing behind the curtain? I just want to know how much I lost every day.

Sunday, September 14, 2008

Through the Looking Glass

Both Microsoft and Google have a view of the heavens. Microsoft is Ptolemaic and Google is post-Copernican.

I looked at Chrome. But it's not about building a better browser. The thing is not to use a browser at all.

Click on Chrome and get taken immediately into full-screen, streaming, bit-torrent live video, 24-7, with a non-windows interface superimposed over your cockpit window. You're in a video game and, around every corner, there's a wall with ads all over it. All the things you want.

And if you want to know how it used to be - down at the bottom of the wall, there's a little Windows icon you can click.

Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Is that you, Mac?

Wouldn't it be great if we could handle all our affairs on the internet?

You don't think so?

The reason you think that way is because the internet, right now, is a bar where nobody knows your name. That's got to go. When we get rid of anonymity as a principle of the 'net, everything's gonna get better. And we'll be able to handle all our affairs in the cloud. It'll be the next best thing to Hallelujah Land itself.

I wrote a whole blog on this subject once, in blog-poetic style. I got my wife to read some of it.

She said, "I feel so sorry for you."