The blog's been a bit quiet lately (although traffic hasn't slowed much - as Bob Sutor says, "having a photo of an attractive young woman on a blog entry will help drive a lot of traffic"), as I have been caught up in end of year preparations, Christmas holidays and a trip to the Deep South to see my wife's sister and family. I am trying to gather my thoughts, and have considered writing a "favorite columns" post, but decided against it for now. I may still do a highlights post, but I think I'll wait a bit.
A more important thing to post about is: What next? After almost four years writing this blog, with many hundreds of posts and even more hundreds of comments, what is it I want to do this year to keep things fresh? What do you want to see me do? More posts about rich text? About coexistence? About ODF? Or even about dating advice? More articles in the Rich Text 101 series? More updates on products? More insight into the world of software development?
Or should I just ask Mike Midas and Crystal Coex to post more? It so happens that a few months back, Andrew Pollack noticed how quiet Rocky Oliver's blog had been for several weeks, and asked me to "guest blog". Not thinking, and because I was way too busy (and lazy), I sent Mike and Crystal over to help out. Did I mention that I wasn't thinking? Anyway, the following was written back in September, but somehow Rocky managed to keep it off his blog, so I'll post it here just to show you what I have to deal with in my office. People complain about bosses, but employees can be worse...
Wage Slaves Unite!
by Mike Midas, Ace Developer (and virtual, remote guest blogger on LotusGeek.com)
It is said that house guests, like fish, start to smell after a few days. Something certainly smells fishy over at LotusGeek.com, where the elusive Rocky Oliver hasn't been seen for weeks, so our boss sent me and Crystal over to be house guests, to freshen the place up a bit, if you catch my drift.
Driving to Georgia from Cleveland is like volunteering to give blood when your half blind Aunt Gertrude is the only dumb sucker they let draw blood at the annual Red Cross blood drive, and her sciatica is acting up. You might as well just shut your fingers in the car door before taking off, but taking off we were, me with a hangover that a British King would have found sufficient reason for beheading whomever the current British Queen was, and Crystal with an attitude that filled the passenger seat like a hot blooded Latino princess being eaten slowly by a cold blooded South American reptile. If looks could kill, the looks she was giving me could have been used by the U.S. Marines to clear out all the insurgents east of Euphrates. Now don't get me wrong, Crystal and I work together just fine, but she doesn't like me, and the only thing I like about her she keeps covered up and out of reach of the likes of me.
But when the boss says jump, sometimes you have to put a lid on the snappy rejoinders, shut your eyes to the obvious headaches, smother your resistance like an unwanted pet ferret, and jump. After all, Rocky has been a friend to the boss for a lot of years, and not just any friend either, but a short, gimpy, motorcycle driving friend, and you don't find those on every street corner in town, except maybe you do in Georgia, which is why we were heading in that direction. Ever since Rocky start working for the Man, his time hasn't been his own. From free wheeling, hard drinking, bike riding independence, he has chucked it all over for the sake of the Suits, and the Suits have paid him back by piling on the work. So, when a wage slave calls, us fellow wage slaves go forth in sympathy, because our lazy, self made entrepreneurial pain in the ass boss wants to sit back at the office and "manage the business", by which he means pull in the big bucks while he waits for us to get back and do the real work. Not that I am complaining, mind you.
On a long car ride, because as you might have guessed, our boss is too cheap to spring for plane tickets when his yacht needs provisioning for the late season blowouts, a guy's mind tends to wander like the hands of a wayward Uncle when the attractive nieces are about. With the lack of any good scenery other than the Ice Queen, my mind wandered toward the topic of what the heck we were supposed to do to help Rocky. After all, Rocky's blog mirrors his skills, but his ego mirrors the Grand Canyon. When he wrote a book, he called it "The Bible", and if that doesn't say something about a guy, I don't know what does. So, I don't want to blog about "new @ functions", and I can't let Crystal blog about what she is thinking about in a public forum read by script kiddies, so what should we tell Rocky's readers to calm them down until he finds a free minute hiding out without his laptop in some corporate bathroom while the vampire Suits wander the halls thirsting for his blood, sweat and tears? I'm guessing they don't want to hear about CoexLinks and Blackberries, although it makes a good story, and Ed Brill has the whole evil empire thing pretty well covered. We could start some rumors about Hannover, like how it will include an Eclipse plug in for IPO (individual productivity orgasmatron), but they probably wouldn't believe it without some fuzzy screenshots by Maureen.
Then it hit me like a wet towel in a steamy locker room in 7th grade. We are talking about a blog, not a newspaper. It doesn't really matter what you say, what matters is what you link to. So, in honor of Rocky and his blog and the whole LotusGeek ethos, I give you Bennie and the Jets by Elton John, but annotated for the blogosphere with lots of links to drive traffic to LotusGeek.com. Maybe we can even get LotusGeek.com marked as a link farm and banned from the search engines, which would pay the boss back for sending us here. (Just don't let Crystal see the last two links!) [Note 02/9/2022 - all links removed due to the passing of time and the taking down of blogs]
Bennie And The Jets
Music by Elton John
Lyrics by Bernie Taupin
Available on the album Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
Hey kids, shake it loose together
The spotlight's hitting something
That's been known to change the weather
We'll kill the fatted calf tonight
So stick around
You're gonna hear electric music
Solid walls of sound
Say, Candy and Ronnie, have you seen them yet
But they're so spaced out, Bennie and the Jets
Oh but they're weird and they're wonderful
Oh Bennie she's really keen
She's got electric boots a mohair suit
You know I read it in a magazine
Bennie and the Jets
Hey kids, plug into the faithless
Maybe they're blinded
But Bennie makes them ageless
We shall survive, let us take ourselves along
Where we fight our parents out in the streets
To find who's right and who's wrong
© 1973 Dick James Music Limited