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Saturday, February 15, 2003
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 Saturday, February 15, 2003
started 2/15/2003; 3:07:33 PM - last post 2/16/2003; 11:17:19 AM
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Doc Searls - Saturday, February 15, 2003 
2/15/2003; 7:07:33 PM (reads: 9098, responses: 7)
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Sphericool 
| | Cool. I'm here, Live from the Blogosphere. The music is loud, the crowd is hip, the atmosphere is partylike. Just took a bunch of pix hope I can get up soon. We're going on any minute now. Leonard is sitting next to me here, "watching Doc type," he says. Leonard was responsible for getting Larry Lessig's speech at OSCon last summer up in both audio and bloggio (not sure what to call it — look at the audio and flash versions of the speech in the "Related Resources" sidebar). |
| | [Later...] I'm back. More to report when I have time. Sunday will be mostly a family day. |
Giving forward
| | The case of the stolen laptop is now closed. On Thursday we got a call notifying us that the computer and its bag had showed up by the office at my kid's school. It's still not clear what happened. Was it stolen and returned? Was it found somewhere and brought to the office? (There was school-related stuff in the bag.) We don't know, and it doesn't matter. Somebody did a Good Thing by bringing it there, and it's just a huge relief to get it back. |
| | The reason I didn't tell the news earlier was that I wanted to come up with some strategies for redirecting all the generosity that has come my way since I reported the theft last Saturday. |
| | There's the fund Chris Pirillo set up. This morning he said he wants me to have it anyway, and to leave the next step up to me. More about that shortly. |
| | There's also the story of the damaged G4/400/10 Titanium sent to me by a friend who had crippled it with spilled coffee a while back. His local shop gave him a prohibitive repair bill, so he moved on to other iron. When he read about my situation, he thought maybe I'd have better luck with the thing. It arrived Wednesday. On Thursday morning, my shop (the excellent Mac Mechanic in Santa Barbara) called to say that, in spite of heavy wear & tear (it was even more worn-looking than my old G4/500, which I didn't think was possible), all it needed was a good cleaning and a new keyboard. I told them to go ahead and do the repair, and to install a 60 GB drive, which would bring it within 100MHz of parity with my old TiBook. Total cost would probably run $500-600, I'm told, and it would be done next Monday, when I need to return a rental I've been using in the meantime. |
| | Several hours later came a call from the school saying my old laptop had showed up there. |
| | After picking my jaw up off the floor, I asked my friend the TiBook donor what he wanted to do, since the unit was still his. He told me he was just "paying forward," and invited me to do the same, perhaps giving the unit to somebody who really needed it. |
| | I know plenty of deserving folks, but none who deserve it more than my friend Joe (not his real name), who has been a source of constant generosity ever since we showed up in Santa Barbara. Joe is a novelist, screenwriter, playright, songwriter, photographer and actor (you see him on reruns all the time) who has fallen on hard times and makes an inadequate living doing construction and handyman work. The other day he found that his wife was pregnant with their 5th child. After my laptop walked, Joe spent two days putting up reward posters all over town and doing detective work on the margins of the local homeless and criminal classes. It was labor above and beyond even the call of friendship. |
| | Joe's PC crapped out a couple months back, and he can't afford to fix it (bad HD), much less get a new one. So I decided he should get the TiBook. That way maybe the rest of us will soon be seeing more of his work. (He has a pile of songs I'd like to see him put out under a CC license real soon.) |
| | That leaves Chris's fund. What do you think we should do with it? I don't want it for myself. I want it to pay forward in the spirit of generosity demonstrated by Chris and his readers, by my friend the TiBook donor, by Joe, and by the good soul who returned my laptop. |
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Ryan Irelan - Re: Saturday, February 15, 2003
2/15/2003; 8:04:27 PM (reads: 510, responses: 1)
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Excellent idea, Doc. I consider this a record week of generosity inside the blogosphere.
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David Hoskin - Re: Saturday, February 15, 2003
2/15/2003; 10:07:09 PM (reads: 472, responses: 0)
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Superb idea - you are free to use my donation for the rapair of the laptop to give to Joe, or any other use you ot the other donors decide. Consider my small contribution community property.
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Aquarion - Re: Saturday, February 15, 2003
2/15/2003; 11:06:19 PM (reads: 481, responses: 1)
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Give it to me :)
Better, you could give it to help the running costs of one or more of the various blog-info things that are operating for free, or (if it's enough) maybe to get Technorati to do a week/fortnight/month of it's premium services for free. Basically, I think the money should go towards something that would benifit blogging in general.
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Beth - Paying forward
2/15/2003; 11:09:12 PM (reads: 546, responses: 0)
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I suggest you hold on to your funds for a while. Given the current climate, it's not hard to imagine that a good use for it (a la the September 11 funds) may emerge in the not-too-distant future. I'm someone in DC's ground zero who has not bought tarps or duct tape, but this kind of thing is, shall we say, on my mind.
An alternative is a donation to United for a Fair Economy (http://www.ufenet.org). I just read about this organization in the UUWorld (the periodical for Unitarian Universalists). The founder is a grandson of Oscar Meyer; he gave his half-million dollar trust fund away in his mid-twenties, and he now works with Bill Gates' father on dealing with the gap between the richest and the poorest in this country. Interesting stuff!
Finally, a quickie bug report. I was unable to choose either "District of Columbia" or "Washington, DC" from the state pull-down in the registration process. I may not have put all the US territories on the list (how many visitors from Guam would you expect?). But it might be nice to include the nation's capital :).
Beth Mazur
IDblog: http://idblog.org
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Actually I was going to say he should give it me :-) After all my Mac is so old I don't think they even sell addin boards(NuBus 8100 +G3 upgrade) for it any more. But while it is limping along, it does run. So it sounds ike Doc made a good choice.
I have no idea what is the fund that Chris started but maybe Doc could use it to cover the repairs for the TiBook he is passing forward. That would probably be in the spirit of the people who donated.
Glad to hear that the TiBook and probably more important, its data made it back.
==Paul
http://PrivacyDigest.com/ Daily news from the privacy front.
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Fred Grott - The Laptop Fund
2/16/2003; 3:17:19 PM (reads: 476, responses: 0)
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Doc since your laptop was found at school why not donate to one of the teachers that happens to need a paltop?
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jeneane - Re: Saturday, February 15, 2003
2/16/2003; 9:23:12 PM (reads: 556, responses: 0)
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There isn't a blogger out there I trust to do the right thing more than you, Doc. Your decision about Joe is great. With any extra, I'm sure you'll do good deeds.
Maybe we should start a kitty for blogger's in need--whenever we have an extra five bucks we throw it in the kitty, so when someone loses their job, or can't afford their kids' schooling, or their spouse dies, or whatever, we have a few bucks saved up to help them out. I'd sure trust you to do that. Everyone would.
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