Asymptomatic

There must be intelligent life down here

Identity
January 22, 2006

After my attendence of the blogging meetups yesterday, it has become abundantly apparent that I need to produce a business card sot hat I can share my identity with people in the real world. Unfortunately, I’m not exactly sure what sort of identity I want to portray.

It has been a long time since I have used the Midnight Circus domain for anything. And if you’ve received email from me, you might wonder why it comes from Midnight Circus and not Asymptomatic. The history is long and complicated - well, ok, not so much.

Back when I started on the web, I was creating a resource page for the White Wolf role-playing game, Vampire: The Masquerade. If you know me really well (most people who visit the site don’t know too much about my real-life work, which is a very strange phenomenon to me and worthy of a post all on its own) then you know that I have worked with some folks at White Wolf for various reasons, and have actually been given a small credit in a poorly received supplement. Nonetheless, the tabletop gaming industry was a significant part of my life at the time.

Since Midnight Circus was created as a dedicated role-playing resource, I wanted a site to write about things that were unrelated to that topic. Out of that need, Asymptomatic evolved and become what it is today. The Midnight Circus web site has long since been taken offline, as my disenchantment with White Wolf and their products grew, but I have been using the domain for my email for so long that I couldn’t change it now - it’s part of my online identity.

As my online endeavors expanded, I’ve created a couple more sites. Particularly well known these days is Red Alt, which is a blog software resource site on which I host a good bit of my open source work. And through my work at Red Alt, I was able to jockey a position with Shimmer Studio, where my freelance work is brokered.

So the question for me becomes, What identity am I trying to portray? Do I want people to see my personal site, or my professional sites? Which of those should they see? Or should I create a whole new brand under Midnight Circus (an idea I had been toying with for a long while but never actually completed) to work from?

Down at Fergie's
January 21, 2006

Ah, late lunch, early meetup.

The expressway was joy today, weaving in and out of wide spaces between cars. This is probably the fastest I’ve gotten to the city. And so you have no excuse but to come on down for the Wordpress/Philly-blogger meetup. Right now. I demand it! And I’m already here, for pity’s sake…

Slowly Killing Myself
January 20, 2006

Berta has now been gone on a work trip for two days, leaving me with the kids.

It’s not as horrible as I could make it out to be. I could, for instance, mention that Abby handed Riley one of the soft sugar cookies (those things will be what truly killed me in the end), and he proceeded to rub the icing into the brand new couch. Or the NFL-style tackle “hugging” of the 1-year-old by his older sister, bouncing his poor noggin off the living room floor. Or the screaming fits that ensue whenever I try to use the bathroom. (Yes, please consider how awful it would be if every time you went to pee, someone stood outside the door and wouldn’t stop screaming, and then when you came out, acted as if nothing odd occurred.)

Contrary to all that, there are a whole lot more fun things we’ve done that Berta’s been away than there have been things to complain about. Abby and I have been building a volcano (I hope to have photos of the completed work online when it’s done), and talking about how to add money. Tomorrow, we’re planning on learning how to play Blackjack while the last bit of paint dries on the Volcano.

Riley has his own little quirks. He’s been getting up in the morning and insisting on watching TV while wrapped up in two of his knit blankies. Not one. Two. Fortunately, he doesn’t want to watch TV all day. He’s kind of self-regulating. When he’s done, he climbs down and starts grabbing toys to play with. In the evening, he’s not that interested in TV at all.

But no, that’s not what’s killing me.

eBay Fedback
January 19, 2006

Should I feel obliged to leave positive feedback on an eBay item that was shipped without incident or special attention?

I recently placed an order for an MP3 player from Creative Labs. Their entire refurbished sales department operates through eBay. They’ve sold hundreds of refurbished items, so their reputation for successful transactions is not hurting. Plus they’re a giant corporation with a generally good reputation. So why would they send me an email asking for feedback?

We noticed you have not left feedback for item number 5828610064, Creative Zen Micro 5 GB Black MP3 Player w/ Warranty, and we were wondering if there was a problem with the transaction. If your item has not yet arrived or if you are experiencing any problems with it please let us know.

We also encourage you to leave feedback for us as you feel appropriate.

Well, ok, they’re concerned that something didn’t go well. And that’s good. That’s a sign of good customer service. But since they’ve done nothing that I would complain about and nothing out of the ordinary that I would rave about, I would only feel comfortable giving them neutral feedback. And really, that’s not what they’re looking for. More to the point, being a large corporation, they probably wouldn’t care as much as any of the smaller sellers that would prod me into giving them the thumbs-up/thumbs-down feedback.