Category: Serious

I’m complicit, I think

You’d think, since I work in pol­i­tics that I a) would not be shocked by any­thing any­more, and b) would feel like I’m already doing plen­ty to right the ship.

Appar­ent­ly, you’d be wrong. a) I am aghast at the blink-blink reac­tion of much of the coun­try to the bla­tant, naked racism on dis­play from the leader of our coun­try. b) I feel like in the day-to-day of laun­dry, mak­ing din­ner, plan­ning doc­tor vis­its, yard work, etc., etc., I am not as com­mit­ted to chang­ing this as I could be. As I should be.

I know, I know, pro­tect myself from burnout, you have to live your life, etc. I did not attend Fri­day’s march­es, I went to the movies with my fam­i­ly instead, and I did it on pur­pose. I did it to pro­tect myself. And yet, it has been almost a week and I can­not seem to shake the thought that I made the wrong deci­sion.

At what point am I com­plic­it, with my priv­i­lege, my mon­ey, my com­fort, even though I do the work? I am afraid I have crossed that point, and am, in fact, com­plic­it.

There’s always more to do, yes. But I think there’s always more we can do, even with­in our own lim­its.

My super­pow­er is writ­ing. Imma think on what I can do with it. Your ideas are wel­come, but I’m not look­ing for plau­dits or com­mis­er­a­tion. Let’s do this.

My wife

My wife, Tiffany, is hav­ing a birth­day today. It’s been a hell of a year, for a lot of rea­sons, most­ly good, but you know how rea­sons are, lots of gray in with the black and white. So on the occa­sion of her birth­day, I want­ed to remind her that I love her.

She is my best friend, the one I tell all the secrets to. We share the looks that mean this, the tilt of the head that means that, the ancient jokes, the life­time friends, the his­to­ry, the tears, the uncon­trol­lable gig­gling, the cold nights, the despair, and the heights of joy. We have the first house we owned togeth­er. We have the first dog we loved togeth­er. We have reams of old emails, and years of old texts. We have the books we love togeth­er, and too many sea­sons of guilty plea­sure TV. We have those things that we have knit togeth­er into our life, togeth­er. She is my lover. I know her, until I find new depths to won­der at, new resolve to envy, new whim­sy to dance with, and then I want to get to know her all over again. I am amazed by her, her strength even when she doubts, her love even when she hurts, her com­pas­sion even when she is tired. There is noth­ing I desire that she does not embody. There is no oth­er dance part­ner I fit. I am drawn to her, as to noth­ing else.

She is my part­ner. When I floun­der, she is there for me, some­times with a ten­der ges­ture, some­times with a kick in the ass. When there’s blood, she han­dles it. When some­thing smells bad, I return the favor. When I need to work, she shoul­ders the load. When she has one of those days, I want noth­ing more than to take it from her, that she can just enjoy what she loves. I would not have lived this life as well with­out her. I would not be who I am were she not here. I am in her debt, for all that she has made me.

She is the moth­er of my chil­dren. There is noth­ing more fright­en­ing than pluck­ing your heart out and watch­ing it walk around, play soc­cer, surf the inter­net, make friends, laugh, and cry. She is there for them, she is their friend, their part­ner, their love, their guide, their teacher. They would have half a life, if she were not there for them. I am a bet­ter father for her being their moth­er.

She is her­self. Incred­i­bly strong, but not with­out doubts. Con­fi­dent­ly com­pe­tent, but not with­out mis­takes. Com­pas­sion­ate­ly lov­ing, but not with­out needs. Curi­ous, but stead­fast. Com­plex, but forth­right. Beau­ti­ful, but intri­cate. Fun­ny, but sen­si­tive. Crass, but gen­tle. She is her­self, and noth­ing else.

She makes me cry when I think about her too much, because she is my every­thing.

Sweet­ie, I love you.

You’re safe with me (now with added thoughts)

Earring and safety pin
Yeah, it’s a safe­ty pin.
I’ve got a new piece of jew­el­ry. On my bed­side table, next to the ear­ring I wear every day, I now keep a safe­ty pin. In the morn­ing, when I get dressed, I pin it on where it can be seen. I do this to let peo­ple who see it know that if they feel threat­ened, scared, sad, or dis­placed, I will do what I can to help.

It’s an action that was tak­en in the U.K. after Brex­it, when immi­grants and oth­ers sud­den­ly found them­selves unset­tled in their own com­mu­ni­ties. It took hold here after the elec­tion.

A lot of peo­ple have tak­en umbrage at these safe­ty pins. At first the elec­tion “win­ners” called it a sym­bol of hate. They said it was divi­sive. They said that it sup­ports a cul­ture of per­pet­u­al fear. Soon after, some on this side decried it as a bland, feel-good ges­ture that is inef­fec­tive, insin­cere, and fleet­ing. A nice­ty meant for white peo­ple to assuage their guilt.

I gen­tly say to them, bull­shit.

I’m not doing this out of shame. I’m not putting it on to look good to my friends. I’m not wear­ing it to claim some high­er moral ground. I’m not belit­tling the fears of white peo­ple. I’m not pre­tend­ing a safe­ty pin will mag­i­cal­ly make black lives mat­ter. This isn’t a sym­bol.

It’s an action.

It’s an offer of res­cue, sol­i­dar­i­ty, and solace.

If you feel unsafe, or alone, or afraid, because you’re white, black, brown or anoth­er shade of human­i­ty, because you have an accent or a drawl, because you wear cer­tain clothes, because you work with your hands, or you despair over num­bers at the din­ner table, because you dare not walk alone at night, or you lie awake wor­ry­ing about what will hap­pen tomor­row… you deserve bet­ter. You deserve safe­ty, com­mu­ni­ty, and secu­ri­ty.

I will work to meet peo­ple where their needs are. I will engage in my com­mu­ni­ty to rec­og­nize these inequal­i­ties and make some dif­fer­ence. But I can’t always be doing that. I have a fam­i­ly, kids, the mil­lion things we all have that take away our best inten­tions in favor of just get­ting through the day.

So I wear the pin because I want you to know, even if I’m just out get­ting gro­ceries, or going back to my car in a park­ing lot, or wait­ing in some line with you, that you’re safe with me.

I may not look like you. Or maybe I do. But you’ll know me by the safe­ty pin. And by the way I won’t turn my back if you need me.

Added: There’s a lot of back­lash to the safe­ty pins, and a lot of back­lash to that back­lash. The arti­cle that start­ed it, “Dear White Peo­ple, Your Safe­ty Pins Are Embar­rass­ing,” has been repost­ed to Medi­um and Huff­post, which means it’s most­ly click bait now. (His orig­i­nal sto­ry at his own site is swamped, and he has a sec­ond, more con­struc­tive post up now.) The com­ments, and I’ve read a cou­ple hun­dred, most­ly con­sti­tute a back­lash of their own. Here are the impor­tant points:

  • Some mar­gin­al­ized peo­ple are grate­ful for the safe­ty pins.
  • Many mar­gin­al­ized peo­ple are not giv­ing it much thought, one way or the oth­er.
  • No, the white nation­al­ist move­ment is not co-opt­ing it en masse, what­ev­er one trolling graph­ic pre­tends to imply. 
  • Yes, you def­i­nite­ly need to do more than put on a safe­ty pin and pre­tend you fixed it.

For me, wear­ing it yes­ter­day, it made me think. It made me uncom­fort­able, prob­a­bly in the right ways. More present in the world I was walk­ing through. Aware of what the black woman at the radio sta­tion might be think­ing.

Final­ly, my bit above was not meant to encour­age any­one else to wear a safe­ty pin. It was explain­ing why I am. 

I am eager to hear why you might wear one, or won’t wear one, or what you think about it.

How I’m doing: 2016 election edition

It’s been a hell of a week, I won’t kid you. I spent the entire elec­tion sea­son being pret­ty con­fi­dent in Hillary Clinton’s vic­to­ry. I guess, I fell into the trap of believ­ing my expe­ri­ence of the world was shared by every­one. Clear­ly, I was wrong. And intel­lec­tu­al­ly, it seems stu­pid of me now.

But I believed she’d win, she’d be the first female Pres­i­dent, and that much of the progress we’d made under Oba­ma would con­tin­ue. Because, you know, the alter­na­tive was too unbe­liev­able to imag­ine. But on elec­tion day, with no real rea­son, I began to get ner­vous. By evening, as the polls were clos­ing, I couldn’t stop think­ing about elec­tion night in 2000, when we were at a bar watch­ing the returns, and some­one looked up at the TV and asked, “Hey, where did Flori­da go?”

It seems a small mer­cy now that Tues­day night’s returns were con­sis­tent­ly dis­ap­point­ing, with a long slow slide into a Trump vic­to­ry, no false hope moments to raise us up before dash­ing us back onto the rocks. (The Neva­da win was too late in the evening, at least for me.) But I felt numb, and kind of… blank. I was up until 1 am, just after John Podes­ta announced that Hillary would not be speak­ing. I went to bed know­ing the out­come, but when I woke up at 4:30 am, I checked any­way.

I work in pol­i­tics, albeit at the state lev­el, and I live in Kansas, so I’m pre­dis­posed to crap­py polit­i­cal news. I have spent the last few days read­ing and read­ing and read­ing, and think­ing, and talk­ing and think­ing some more. I think this immer­sion in the reac­tions of oth­ers, like a sort of shock ther­a­py, has replaced my mourn­ing peri­od. I’m not much of a mourn­er any­way (I’ll call it “wal­low­ing” when I’m pis­sy), and I just didn’t want to dwell on it.

Now I find myself itch­ing to do some­thing. I’m work­ing on under­stand­ing, and under­stand­ing will reveal the things that need to be done, I know. But until I get there, I need some­thing tan­gi­ble, some action, some dif­fer­ence to make. I feel, ener­gized.

It may all come crash­ing down, I sup­pose. Some day I’ll break down in the mid­dle of walk­ing the dog, or at the bus stop wait­ing for my kid. But there’s just so much to unpack, I think I’ve got some time.

Don’t get me wrong, if I sound blasé. This out­come is hor­ri­fy­ing to me, in every way. If I stop to con­sid­er the real con­se­quences, to peo­ple, to our coun­try, and to the world, I can feel the gib­ber­ing pan­ic creep­ing in at the edges of my vision. But these last cou­ple of days, I feel great. Like I have pur­pose, like I’m coiled and ready to spring. It’s weird. It’s inter­est­ing. And I intend to take full advan­tage of it.

SXSW 2014 Cover Art is Posted

I have just post­ed this year’s album art for SXSW, the Music fes­ti­val in Austin in eleven days.

But all is not well. SXSW has offered one track from each artist as a down­load (as a .tor­rent) since at least 2005. Accord­ing to the Unof­fi­cial SXSW Tor­rents site, while there are a small num­ber of tracks avail­able so far, SXSW has decid­ed to put the files up on Sound­cloud, instead. Sound­cloud works hard to pre­vent cap­ture of the music they play, which makes down­load­ing the tracks… dif­fi­cult.

Go to the cov­er art page to get this year’s art, and find out how to let SXSW know that you don’t like this.

SXSW Show­cas­ing Artist Cov­er Art

No rose garden delivered today

Anoth­er month gone by. It went fast, but most­ly because I did­n’t do a lot of pro­duc­tive writ­ing. I hit what you might call a bad patch. I have nev­er been the best at being relent­less­ly focused, and when you com­bine that with two cre­ative blocks, well. Noth­ing gets done.

Huh. So, are you ready to throw in the tow­el?

Wow, straight to that, eh? Yes I was, briefly, yes­ter­day. I was invit­ed to par­tic­i­pate in some­thing I very much want­ed to do, but I can’t because of mon­ey issues. This is the first time I’ve real­ly come up against the fact that I’m not mak­ing any mon­ey. Sure, we’ve been cut­ting back and pay­ing close atten­tion to what we spend, I’m clean­ing the house now, instead of hir­ing it out, and I have a finan­cial dead­line loom­ing in the mid­dle dis­tance, but this was the first time I could­n’t do some­thing I real­ly want­ed to do.

I thought about giv­ing up and real­ly look­ing for a job.

But I did some think­ing last night, and I decid­ed against it. Writ­ing, heck cre­at­ing any­thing, is like exer­cise. I know it’s good for me, and when I do it, it feels fan­tas­tic. It’s fun, I feel good, and after­wards there’s a glow (endor­phins!) about the rest of my life that can’t be beat. I’ve writ­ten about this before. Writ­ing is fun. Mak­ing stuff up, putting it down, being cre­ative… it’s a rush.

Get­ting start­ed is hard. Each day. Each moment, some­times.

So, what’re you gonna do about that?

I thought about get­ting a tat­too, like “FOCUS!” or some­thing, but they cost mon­ey and I already have a tat­too-reward-plan for weight loss. I thought about get­ting an ADD diag­no­sis (I expect I am in that crowd), but well, damn, I’m an adult. I’ve come up with a mantra, and some words to live by, to try to inspire/reason myself into work­ing. I’ve thought about ask­ing peo­ple I love to hold me account­able (that seems like a dick move, though). I’ve tried to post word counts each day I write (did you notice how not-often I did that? Exact­ly). I make lists and cross things off. I’ve even changed to-do pro­grams recent­ly, because sure­ly the last one was my prob­lem.

And then there’s the pos­si­bil­i­ty that all of these things are them­selves a prob­lem.

So you need to keep it sim­ple?

Why yes, thanks. That is what I was get­ting at. I need to sim­pli­fy. I have a few ideas, and I’ll let you in on them next time.

Sure, kick the can down the road. Fine.

I will, thanks.

You said some­thing about a mantra?

I did. For a while now, since last Spring, I’ve had some focus words I try to keep in mind. Goals for what­ev­er I am doing. They’ve evolved a bit, but I think I’ve set­tled on them now, and I look at them every day. They are not meant to inspire, so much as make me yearn to reach them. Words to live by, as it were.

Last night, I also came up with a phrase, a mantra of sorts. Some­thing to repeat to myself in a moment of sloth. I’m try­ing it out today, and it has most­ly worked. We’ll see.

But you’re not going to tell us what they are, are you?

No, I’m not. I’m over try­ing to force myself to do stuff by being pub­lic about it. Pub­lic-sham­ing myself does­n’t work. This is some­thing I need to fig­ure out with myself, by myself.

So, did you do any­thing this month?

Well, yes, I did. I hit a block on the short sto­ry I was writ­ing, so I took a few days and wrote a chil­dren’s book. It was an awful lot of fun, and it was­n’t too com­pli­cat­ed. i got to play with lan­guage a bit dif­fer­ent­ly than in a longer form. I’m sure it is not ter­ri­bly good, but I like the idea very much. Right now I am flesh­ing out the descrip­tions of the illus­tra­tions, pret­ty inte­gral to enjoy­ing the book. While i was writ­ing it, I was think­ing of Jane Yolen and Mark Teague’s How Would a Dinosaur… books, and Bri­an Flo­ca’s books (Loco­mo­tive and Moon­shot espe­cial­ly) for inspi­ra­tion.

Once I have the illus­tra­tion descrip­tions done, I’ll send it out to my friends for some feed­back. Then I intend to work on it, and final­ly I’ll need an illus­tra­tor. An illus­tra­tor who does­n’t want to get paid any time soon/ever. Per­haps a starv­ing illus­tra­tor.

Can you tell me what this kids’ book is about?

Nope.

Seri­ous­ly?

Seri­ous­ly.

You jerk

Yes, well. I’m afraid the ele­va­tor pitch will make it sound like some­thing it isn’t. Plus, the work­ing title is crap.

What ever

See you next month.

I’ve only just begun to write

Some of you may already know that I quit my job a cou­ple of weeks ago. Some of you may even know that I also quit my career at the same time. I’ve been work­ing in High­er Edu­ca­tion web devel­op­ment or tech­nol­o­gy since I took my first part-time job at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Iowa in 1996. That’s sev­en­teen years of web devel­op­ment work at three dif­fer­ent insti­tu­tions. It is a lot of time put into a career to flush it all away now.

But I have.

What are you doing instead?

I am going to write.

Um, okay. What are you going to write?

Well, that’s the ques­tion, isn’t it? When I start­ed, or rather, before I start­ed, my glib answer was that I’d write any­thing any­one want­ed to pay me for. That felt like the answer I was sup­posed to give, the answer that made this leap off the cliff at least some­what sen­si­ble. “Sure,” I said/thought, “I’ll write any­thing as long as it pays. Tech­ni­cal writ­ing, spec writ­ing, social media, what­ev­er.” Peo­ple who knew even less than I do about the writ­ing busi­ness would take that as a com­fort. I did for a while, until I fig­ured out I was fool­ing myself.

As it turns out, I don’t want to write just any­thing. I don’t want to do tech­ni­cal writ­ing. I don’t want to write web arti­cle-ads for pen­nies “just to get your name out there.” I don’t want to do PR. Is this because I’m only two weeks into it, and I’m still flushed with the promise of a Writ­ing Career? Will I be beat­en down by the end, will­ing to write ad copy for the local FREE Rental Mag­a­zine? I prob­a­bly am unrea­son­ably chip­per about it, I’ll admit.

But for now, I want to write three things. I want to write opin­ion arti­cles (hey, that’s what a blog is for, huz­zah!), I want to write fea­ture arti­cles, and I want to write sci­ence-fic­tion and/or fan­ta­sy and/or fic­tion. Basi­cal­ly, I want to write sto­ries.

What makes you think you can make it as a writer?

I know the road to becom­ing a writer is lit­tered with the car­cass­es of oth­ers’ attempt­ed careers. I know that “starv­ing artist” is a stereo­type for a rea­son. My moth­er once told me that she believed that peo­ple are artists or writ­ers because they can­not help it. They can­not stop writ­ing. They can’t not write.

That’s not me. I am lazy, unpro­duc­tive and eas­i­ly dis­tract­ed.

But my moth­er also raised me with an excess of con­fi­dence, and I do think I am a good writer. I think I can, is the answer, I guess.

How can you afford it?

Well, I can’t, frankly. The wife and I sat down and worked out a bud­get that would keep our stan­dard of liv­ing rough­ly where it is, at least where our kids are con­cerned. So we kept after school activ­i­ties and enrich­ment stuff, but killed TV. We save on child care but not on health care. We’re not eat­ing out (ever, it seems) and we’re watch­ing our spend­ing like hawks (lazy, eas­i­ly dis­tract­ed hawks). And even so we’re in the red. That is, we’re bud­get­ed to be in the red. That’s not good.

So I have picked up a small time gig doing some social media writ­ing, and that is help­ing us close the gap. But what I real­ly need is to write, so I can sell, so I can write some more.

How long before you come to your sens­es?

I’m telling peo­ple that I’m giv­ing it a year. Some stuff hap­pens in a year that will make it much hard­er to do this, if I’m not mak­ing any mon­ey yet. Or, you know, if it looks like I won’t be bring­ing in any mon­ey any time soon, some­day. If it turns out that I am a ter­ri­ble writer.

Okay. So how is it going?

So far it is going okay. I’ve been at it for two weeks now, full time. The first week was tak­en up with a meet­ing and time spent on the social media gig. Ramp­ing up on that took longer than I had thought it would. I also had some issues keep­ing my not-writ­ing bound­aries firm that first week. Then last week I kind of lost it a lit­tle, in terms of my focus. Focus is an issue for me, as it has always been. If I’m into some­thing, it is easy to lose myself in it, be pro­duc­tive and cre­ative and awe­some. If I’m not, it can be a dis­tinct chal­lenge to make any head­way (my sis­ter will remem­ber a leg­endary bout with frac­tions in the sixth grade…).

Last week, I had too much on my plate, or thought I did. And as a result I drift­ed. This week, I’m much more focused. The chal­lenge will be to main­tain that every day, every morn­ing.

I’ll keep you in the loop on how it’s going.

So, is that it?

Yup. I’m also going to read. I’m told that read­ing is the best way to lubri­cate the writ­ing. I hope to walk the dog on occa­sion, and I’ll be here when the kids get home from school. But I am try­ing my best to keep the not-writ­ing away from the Writ­ing’s time.

Edit: How I “watched” the Apple announcement

Edit: So, I end­ed up watch­ing via Engad­get most of the time, and when they had hic­cups, I went over to Ars Tech­ni­ca. Good job guys.

Hey folks, I am plan­ning on “watch­ing” the Apple announce­ment (iPhone 5S, 5C, iOS 7, maybe some iPads, ever so maybe a TV-relat­ed announce­ment that might just be new soft­ware) today at 10 am Pacif­ic (noon, where I am). Here’s how.

Last time I had the great­est suc­cess with Engad­get’s live feed. It has lots of fea­tures, appears to be home­grown (or at least unique) and worked well dur­ing this past WWDC Keynote. If you’re only going to do one feed, do this one:

Engad­get’s Live Feed

If you are like me, and you want to swap between sev­er­al feeds of almost the same cov­er­age with slight­ly dif­fer­ent snark, you might also try the fol­low­ing links:

The Verge
Ars Tech­ni­ca
TechCrunch
AppleIn­sid­er

What else is out there? Well, if you like pre­ten­tious hair and live video (of peo­ple talk­ing about the reveal, not of the reveal itself) you can’t do bet­ter (or worse) than C|Net’s ad-dri­ven pre-show page. Oy. Then, there are the lud­dites. AllTh­ingsD seems to be doing a straight up refresh-and-read approach, and Jim Dal­rym­ple’s The Loop is proud­ly pro­claim­ing their refresh for new sys­tem to be “old school.” I’m on the fence about Slashgear’s approach (they are new to me in live blog­ging) and Mac­World’s cook­ie-cut­ter ven­dor-prod­uct-live-blog­ging-plat­form.

Mason, 1998–2013

Mason, our Stan­dard Poo­dle, died Fri­day night. We got him from his breed­er when he was ten months old, and he was our dog until he died, just one month shy of his fif­teenth birth­day.

Mason
Mason (see more pho­tos at Flickr)

Dur­ing his long life he sur­vived inflam­ma­to­ry bow­el dis­ease, a par­a­lyzed lar­ynx, can­cer and a cou­ple bouts with pneu­mo­nia. We were pret­ty sure this last round of pneu­mo­nia would do him in, he’d lost an alarm­ing amount of weight, and showed lit­tle inter­est in his food. It took him a long month to show signs of recov­ery.

Iron­i­cal­ly, it was his renewed inter­est in food that killed him. Fri­day night he grew increas­ing­ly uncom­fort­able and unset­tled. By mid­night, it was clear some­thing was wrong, and we sus­pect­ed bloat, a con­di­tion in large breed dogs where exces­sive gas caus­es the intestines to twist and tight­en, trap­ping the gas and caus­ing expan­sion of the bel­ly and ribcage. It requires imme­di­ate surgery to cor­rect.

I took him to the emer­gency vet­eri­nar­i­an, and they con­firmed the con­di­tion. We chose not to put him through the surgery and the long recov­ery, an ordeal he would not like­ly have sur­vived, and which would have extend­ed his help­less­ness, pain, and mis­ery.

They gave him a seda­tive for the pain, and I got to vis­it with him for a lit­tle while. He could­n’t lift his head, but his eyes were open, and his tail wagged a lit­tle. I’d always imag­ined whis­per­ing to him in his last moments that he was good dog, but he’d lost most of his hear­ing the last few years, so I rubbed his ears instead, which is what Poo­dles love best. I cried a lot, and wor­ried that I was upset­ting him, so I asked the doc­tor in to end it. I was there when he died, I caressed him, and I cried some more. After it was over the doc­tor told me I could stay as long as I liked, but Mason was­n’t in there any­more, so I took his col­lar and went home to my fam­i­ly, to grieve with them. That was 2:00 am Sat­ur­day morn­ing.

He spent his whole life with us, and fif­teen years is a long time for a big dog to live. He came to us as a crazy, ener­getic pup­py, always run­ning and chas­ing, hunt­ing bun­nies and squir­rels. He nev­er caught one, but not for lack of try­ing. His favorite game was chase, usu­al­ly start­ed as an attempt to get him to play fetch, trans­formed by his pref­er­ence for keep-away. He got so excit­ed when peo­ple came to vis­it, we had to train him to put a toy in his mouth so he would­n’t nip. I don’t think I noticed when he got old enough that he stopped doing that, and it stopped being a prob­lem. It just did. He nev­er suf­fered sep­a­ra­tion anx­i­ety, but when we were home he liked being near us. He’d fol­low us around the house, set­tling where we set­tled, even after he’d grown old enough that stairs were more than an incon­ve­nience to him. In the last months, we would car­ry him down to be with us while we watched TV, then car­ry him back up. Bloat may have done the deed, but old age is what killed him.

It seems like he’s been with us for every­thing that’s been sig­nif­i­cant in our lives. He was our first child. He was there when our first son demot­ed him back to dog. And he was still there when our sec­ond son demot­ed him even fur­ther, and when our sec­ond dog put him in his place. He lived in every house we owned. He went camp­ing and canoe­ing with us. He vis­it­ed grand­par­ents and friends, from Min­neapo­lis to Wichi­ta. He was in a fam­i­ly reunion pho­to four gen­er­a­tions deep. He was our fam­i­ly before we had a fam­i­ly. And he was part of our fam­i­ly when we did.

I loved him.

He was a good dog, even if he could­n’t hear me say so.

He can run and play and chase like he used to now, in our hearts and minds.

No dilemma, Apple is a hardware company

John Gru­ber of Dar­ing Fire­ball points to this arti­cle at the WSJ: Apple Has an Iden­ti­ty Cri­sis: Is It a Hard­ware Com­pa­ny or a Soft­ware Firm? Gru­ber notes that this dichoto­my has been true every one of Apple’s 37 years.

But I beg to dif­fer. There is no dilem­ma. This has nev­er been true. Back when I used to write about Apple, twen­ty years ago, and today, it is quite clear: Every­thing Apple does is about sell­ing hard­ware. You can set your watch, your rumor mill, and your stock options by this.

If they don’t think it will fur­ther hard­ware sales, they won’t do it.