-> MY GLASS HOUSE
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NEW ORLEANS - 28 August, 2002: This Web site looks out at you, even as you look in at us, you know.
Like any good Webmaster, I look at what operating system you use to look at us, how long you stay, and what pages you visit. What I do each week is based on the information the "cookies" give me about you. I know more about you than you think
For better or worse, and if I ever mean to sell any advertisers on supporting an alternative and decidedly Leftist site like this one, this is information I need to know. I wish it was otherwise.
During a week like this one, when I'm running behind deadline getting out an edition, it helps to know that we are still keeping your attention. There is comfort in numbers. My fellow G-crew pal, JAMIE MENUTIS, kindly reminds me that I shouldn't be surprised if I'm a bit late on a week like this one, where I'm doing double-duty. Instead of only having design and editing chores to attend to, I also conducted our "Nouvelle New Orleans" interview with Hot Club of New Orleans. That required more time out and about. So I didn't make an entry for this Glass House in advance, as I prefer to do, I'm just typing it on the fly at the twelfth hour. That's not the way I prefer doing this.
So, if any typos slip past in this edition, they'll probably be on this page.
QUIET & A DEGREE OF SOLITUDE will be the order of the day as I lurch into this Labor Day Weekend. Labor Day already? Yikes! What happened to the summer. Here in New Orleans, after a sweltering July, the dreaded month of August has actually been rather mild. None of the high 90s (Fahrenheit) that July made us anticipate. It's been "normal" for the Big Easy, hovering in the low 90s most days. I'm pleased.The quiet and solitude come by way of my pal, Scott, who I've mentioned over the last few Glass Houses. He's letting me housesit for the week while he's traveling. An entire apartment to myself! What a luxury that is. It would be even more luxurious, of course, if somebody (ANYBODY!) would give me gainful employment once again.
I keep sending out the hooks. One friend has suggested I invest in a professional resume-writing service. But that's for when I have a budget.
For now it's just more faxes and phonecalls and wearing out the rubber on my tennies until something comes along. I got a call yesterday about the possibility of doing some more house-painting. Keep fingers and toes crossed for me, Children.
IN MY NEWS, my second bird, the male of Charity, came through this past week (Saturday) and I received the final payment on the Web site I was doing (Monday), so that I did not have to worry for or cadge cigarettes, food or beer this past week. That has been a relief, too.
Without the house-painting job, I have no idea about next week, of course. I am at the end of the tether. After Scott returns from his holiday, I have no idea where I shall go. It has been too long where I was staying and I have promised to quit, no matter what.
Yes, I do have a sleeping bag.
So, once again, the entire magazine waits while I pace around trying to determine how to entertain you this week. Fact is, I'm tired and starting to get hungry and the grey cells were already used up working on the other pieces in this edition. Some weeks, I just don't have a lot to say. This is probably one of them.
I did find out this week that my students from the course in Yugoslavia, for the Novi Sad School of Journalism, enjoyed my course on Internet Journalism. They even built a Web site about the experience. Follow the link to take a look. There are even pictures! I was chuffed.In fact, during a "vanity search" I found a bit of international press about our project. "You're like a jazz musician," my pal Matt joked, "famous in Europe and nobody over here's even heard of you." Ha-ha.
I take some solace in that fact actually, as NUA recently reports that there are now more active Internet users in Europe than North America, a first for that demographic. To my thinking the trend will continue to move East, not West. A lot of people on this side of The Pond are disillusioned with the 'Net because of the excesses of some of those "dot-com" yuppies who despoiled places like San Francisco. There's still a lot of bitterness out in this land about that and not just among duped investors. There are also guys like me who got burned on stock options that proved to be little more than Confederate money...
I still believe strongly in this medium and the impact it will continue to have on our lives. I think it's one of the last bastions for independent journalists, too. I'd never go back to a corporate cube farm. So I'm very excited about having taught that course and (more finger and toe action) I'd like to believe I'd be invited back to give it another go. Wish me luck!
This evening, unsatisfied that I had "finished" this entry, I picked up another biography of Napoleon that Scott had on his shelves (I miss books!) this one by an Oxfored don, Felix Markham, only to recall that the FX channel's original film "RFK" would be broadcast. When I still believed that there was a chance for political reform in this country I referred to myself as "a Robert Kennedy Democrat". That was before I read Tammany Hall's George Washington Plunkett, thanks to my friend Joe O'Neill from Ireland, and learned the truism that "Reform is the wave, but we [hardball, cynical political profiteers] are the ocean..."Nonetheless, like all cynical curmudgeons, I am basically a bitter romantic. I could not resist reliving that bygone era and the dreams it inspired in my then-young breast. The Kennedy speech among a mostly Black crowd on the night Dr. King was murdered is especially affective, as his standing in to speak for Cesar Chavez while that visionary leader was on a hunger strike.
The choice of the book and the film are related I realize. Like many of us, I look to the lives of "great men" in order to suss out how they managed to rise above adversity and move forward to achieve something. Luck is a wonderful thing and good connections certainly don't hurt, but I tend to believe there is some quality in each of us that allows for that breakthrough moment when the right decisions are made, the decisions that lead to the opportunity to prevail.
That is on the good days, when I am not in my "Facts and FAQs of Life" frame of mind.
WHAT I WANT THIS WEEK
1. Completion on the Job Search.
2. Some idea of when this couch-surf will end.
3. Real rest and reflection.
Thanks for coming back this week."Work like you don't need the money,
"Love like you've never been hurt,
"Dance like no one is watching..."
Rod
Rod was a columnist for the Andover News Network, where he wrote over two hundred articles on web design and development issues. He was also principal writer and Editor for IT Manager's Journal, where he reviewed technology issues weekly, producing 383 editorials. He became the Managing Editor for Electronic Mail/Newsletter Publications at Andover.net at the end of February, 2000, and left in September of the same year. He was a contributing writer for ACCESS magazine, which appeared both on- and offline for 10 million readers in 100 newspapers like the San Francisco Chronicle, New York Post, Boston Herald, Austin American-Statesman, Denver Post and Orlando Sentinel, among others. Rod was the US reporter for Silicon.com, a division of Network Multimedia Television in London, UK, reaching 3.5 million European readers, until May, 2001.
This year he worked as Assistant to the General Manager of a Big Easy company that does restaurants and nightclubs. (Think: The Boy.) Oh yeah, Rod's had Day Jobs working construction. Mostly renovations of old New Orleans structures, houses and a bar. Sometimes he designs Web sites for other people so that he can get his creative juices flowing the way he can't at a staid publication like this one. And he's been the instructor in Editing for Internet Publications at the Novi Sad School of Journalism in Yugoslavia. Right now he's in the unenviable position of looking for both a job AND a place to live. Couch-surfing sucks! He is not a happy camper. In his spare time, he chases women. 
Rod lives in New Orleans, Louisiana, right now. This town is seducing him the way a spider seduces a fly. He wants to live somewhere civilized when he grows up. Wish him Luck.
He continues to be committed to integrity, chastity and a dose of humility.
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