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All of those are damn rare and easily treatable.

Treatable? Yes. But after reading this I think I'll stick with cooking meat, at least beef and pork.

"For those of you who spend your days in front of computers, I feel nothing but pity."
—Roblimo, 1996

I know it's over ten years old, I just think it's funny. Source His is the second post. Man... too bad he wasn't FRIST! ;-)

Then don't eat it!

Reminded me of a poll jwz put up, pointing to the story: The Worm Within

I'm definitely with jwz on this one: Save that fucker, wash it off, and put it in a jar on your mantle labeled with your name, the date, and "Sample #0001"

You ask how I fare? Friend, would you believe I am stoked?

I once had the kind of soul-crushing, life-draining job I see you describe: Cram-downs from the management, missed paydays, and a stunning sale announcement just before all the employees were handed their hats and rushed off at the end of a workday. This was back when the net was just emerging from itâ(TM)s embryonic form, long before Arthur Anderson and Enron. Harder to handle was the constant belittlement from management because I had funny ideas about this Internet thing, and it was something they knew little of and understood even less. I made plenty of big mistakes, it was my first âoerealâ job. I freely admit I was far from a model employee. Of course, I didnâ(TM)t personally raid the pension fund and try to screw my ex-employees out of their 401k money either.

In the ensuing years I found occasional work as a consultant, but couldnâ(TM)t seem to find the right environment to settle down in. Not to mention the trials and tribulations of independent consulting including nightmare environments, contract shenanigans, evil-doing clients, and the classic, âoeI never said that,â defense. While never soul-crushing per se, these engagements did range from hair-raising to nut-clenching.

Finally though, Iâ(TM)ve managed to come up with something that works for me in the sense that I get to control my own destiny, I do work that satisfies me creatively, and I donâ(TM)t have to add nearly as many people to my Book of Grudges. Being able to live with the person I see in the mirror each morning is also quite a bonus.

The first big question is what is your status as a business entity?

If youâ(TM)re employed through a contract agency, youâ(TM)re kind of stuck. They are effectively your bosses. You are their employee. As such your arrangement with the customer is constrained by whatever your company has set up with them. They charge the customer more than you cost, and keep the profits. Try to go to work for a customer and theyâ(TM)ll bitch up a storm. Still, this can be an okay deal, as long as you can find an honest outfit to work for.

On the other hand, if you have your own company, you have more flexibility. The customer contracts with your company to provide some service. Thatâ(TM)s your job. Of course, you also have to handle all the business development, billing, taxes and such that go along with having a small business. On the upside, you keep the profits that would have gone to the agent. The downside is youâ(TM)ll have to pay for any benefits like health insurance or retirement out of those profits. The nature of the arrangement with the customer is up to you. The trick is to manage it to your advantage.

If you think of the customer as the boss, or let them force you into the role of employee, youâ(TM)re out of the game before it even started. Theyâ(TM)ll treat you like a regular employee. They might even put you through their regular interview process. You get all the responsibility and headaches of being an employee, without most of the benefits. In the end, of course, you are only a contractor and not a real employee, and as such disposable and interchangeable. Geeksploitation, if you will. There are some places where being a contract employee (as opposed to a consultant) isnâ(TM)t so bad, but they also donâ(TM)t tend to have openings.

Alternatively, you can think of yourself as the boss of your consulting firm and your customer as your Client. By Client I mean not just the party by which your firm is being retained to perform certain services at some rate of compensation, but also the notion of a valued customer with whom your firm can form a lasting and mutually beneficial relationship. Contract negotiation is beyond the scope of this discussion, but it is critical your contract meets your needs as well as your clients. All too often the legal dep

I have a personal theory on the major origions of autism. It is often reported that autistic children often have mothers who are in intellectually demanding careers and are of above average intelligence. My theory goes that such mothers tend to have less emotional bonding to their children, perhaps in pregnancy as well, thereby giving their unborn children a profound sense of rejection. The children then retreat into their own inner world.

The extremely high intellectual demands of modern working environments doesn't leave much place for emotions or attention or warmth for that matter. This is what I attribute the raise in autism to.

To underscore my theory, go and visit online places like the Fray where lots of lonely rejected people recount their inner feelings and lives in our digital age.

Derek Powazek, creator of Fray, Kvetch, and others, wrote an excellent book on the subject: Design for Community.

I highly recommend it. It goes to the broad level of creating relevant communities, how to make sure they're useful, and also discusses the nuts and bolts of registrations and logins. It even has the pragmatism to devote a chapter on how to close communities down when they no longer serve a needed function, without leaving people in the lurch.

This really is a great book.

I can't pick just one story from fray so I'm going to say the entire Criminal section as a packge.

- tokengeekgrrl

I can't pick just one story from fray so I'm going to say the entire Criminal section as a packge.

- tokengeekgrrl

Did you vote today? Come tell your voting story in the {fray} ! This is the site that Jon Katz mentioned earlier today, where we're collecting stories from Election 2000. Come and share yours!

(And, yes, I know, I'm just promoting my site. But hey, at least it's on topic!)

Did you vote today? Come tell your voting story in the {fray} ! This is the site that Jon Katz mentioned earlier today, where we're collecting stories from Election 2000. Come and share yours!

(And, yes, I know, I'm just promoting my site. But hey, at least it's on topic!)

The fray's election story for this year was just posted !

FYI: The fray story from 4 years ago that Katz mentions can be found here:

http://fray.com/criminal/vote/

And stay tuned! Rumor has it there'll be a new one later this afternoon!

-- Derek

{fray} is a collection of first-person, true stories, each with its own posting area after it. We've hit on a lot of the big emotional issues - love, sex, freedom - and I happen to know we have a ton of high school posters.

For {fray} to be blocked from schools is ridiculous. There is nothing obscene about the site, few foul words (unless you count "naked" which is on the front page right now, and probably why it was blocked), and no pornographic images.

They're depriving high schoolers from a valuable avenue of self-expression (that I've worked very hard to make accessible) and I, for one, am pissed.

-- D

Damn, Katz. You really nailed it.

I was in college when my magazine subscription changed from Rolling Stone to Wired. The parallel seemed clear to me - RS was about my parent's revolution, Wired was about mine.

My senior year, HotWired launched. I obsessed about it, reloading the front page over and over to see it randomize. (This was the 2.0 homepage, with the random colors, remember?) I obsessed about it. I could tell they were creating the future. I wanted in.

Through a combination of luck, skill, and random connections, I got my chance. I moved to San Francisco and started working at HotWired at the end of 1995.

I worked there for 15 months, through two failed IPO attempts, the birth and death of Netizen TV and Hard Wired, and the doubling and tripling of the staff.

I grew up a lot in that time. I discovered what was important to me. I wrote it down and it got me fired.

But Wired and HotWired still meant a lot to me, and it pained me to watch them sink like ships this year. Slowly Wired morphed into a magazine for old fuckers in suits, not wierdo kids who loved the net and digital tech. And HotWired lost all its edges one by one, and turned into Just Another Website. The freaks and dreamers could go somewhere else.

Say a prayer for Wired, and then lower it six feet under. It's time to start over.

-- Derek, 7.11.99

Geeks read Wired as if it were the Koran. Everybody else read it because they were afraid not to.

It's fitting that in writing a eulogy for the "Wired era," one of its writers continues the magazine's longest-running trend -- masturbatory love.

Amid all the hype for new media and the emerging digital culture, you could always count on Wired to be more excited about itself than any of the subjects it was slavishly heaping praise on. Wired continues the trend this month by placing on its cover one of its contributors, Po Bronson, at the center and in front of four people he's writing about.

No one is more prominent in the photograph than Bronson, who coincidentally has penned a wonderful article in the issue about those other four shlumps -- people who came to Silicon Valley to make it rich in this IPO-mad climate and failed more often than not.

Wired strongly believed how important it all was because that made the magazine and its writers important, too. Never mind the fact that many of the things it hyped most were least deserving of it -- remember videogame-design-supergroup Rocket Science and zippies? I don't either.

When Conde Nast finally succeeds in removing anything that was ever good about Wired magazine, it will be best remembered more for what its refugees did afterward, such as Suck, The Fray and ClearStation.

(Some refugees, at least.)

As for the "Era" it supposedly ushered in, file that along with push, Netizen, the failed HotWired IPO and other as-if speedbumps on the road from gopherspace to here.

Wired published some nice articles -- and a good news site -- about a parade it more often followed than led. It paid some great writers and Web designers and hawked 1,000 technologically wonderful but completely unnecessary gadgets like the digitally enhanced notepad. (I'm still waiting for teledildonics.)

Let's not get carried away, though. I refuse to get excited about any digital revolution that wasn't fought at the command line.

Try: The Fray for an example of what I consider an excellent arts site. And, more importantly, what I think is the perfect use for the net: people communicating. Not point to point, but rather giving everyone a chance to see what they have to say. Also, check out This for a pretty cool analysis of what the web is doing to us.

As always, Andrew Kickertz