Thank you, Dad

Date: May 15, 2017

This began with a sloppy first draft. Changes, for clarity, have been made since. The repetitiveness, a return to certain themes throughout, was not removed. That's on purpose, as it is telling. I realize it's not especially well-crafted because of that awkward repetitiveness.

 

As the ninth anniversary of your death arrives, on May 20, I realize just how much emotion, achievement, knowledge, religion and philosophy, food and drink, movies and music, and pain and passion was passed from you to me.

I hope I will be wise enough to better prepare for my own end, to avert the pain of it to my loved ones when I go, and I don’t leave the perception of my selfishness, as you did.  That seems brutal, and it is, admittedly. But not cold, not without compassion. With honesty. Honesty is something that is underused. 

But not today. Not when reflecting on the loss of my father which, philosophically and emotionally, can either be a shallow reflection of only happy thoughts, or of truthfulness. Of realness. Of happy things and tragic things. Of real emotions. 

I’m not much of a happy-thoughts fake. My father was unpleasantly honest or joking at times, some loved ones found, and I’d have to say that it is a fair estimation. I was grateful for that "cruelty" lots of the time, even when a part of me didn't like it. 

Honesty is the best “cruelty” there is. Honesty: not bullying, like “you’re fat,” or “why are you so lazy”— he was quite good at doling out teasing affronts at times. Sometimes, not teasing. But there was sincerity in it, more than not. Blunt observation hurts. 

So, honesty, huh? My father could be a bully. That’s not something his friends, admirers and family want to hear. That wasn’t the utmost nor the chief definition of him, either. "Bully" is a fair description of him at times, without question. Faint if you will, seeing that someone would call their own father a bully, and not in the context of despising him. Perhaps instead you will read on, determined, as I am with my father and so many others, to find the silver linings in unpleasant truths about a lost father. Frankly, I’ve no time for fake claims of happiness and the fantasy of positivity. 

I thank my father for my love of and my anger with him. I don’t want to have bad thoughts about my father, but he was well aware of those thoughts, and I think we'd both made peace with them. This is what matters: bullying as he might have been at times, I have no doubt, even at the worst of those times, it hurt him to be that man. 

That's what makes the difference. My father was quite the unfinished emotional being. Bullies, the ones I love and the ones I have no real care for, are composed of broken and incomplete parts in their emotional makeup. Aren’t we all so incomplete? you might argue. Sure. In different ways and with different ways to manage it. Different reasons for it. 

There are so many things that my father said or did that were important, and those are what I hold to me. That's what I toast him for, often, especially when having a drink alone. 

Thank you, Dad, for being so bold as to take your extremely humble, working-class childhood, an upbringing where you were raised in a one-parent household, and becoming an Army Air Corps jet trainee; for attending college to ultimately attain a PhD in English, while working full-time with a growing family. 

I'm not sure anyone on Earth appreciates what you did and tried to do more than I do. Though you did not invest in a great childhood for me and my siblings, I honor you for working despite odds and circumstances and your own problems; for raising your family from near the bottom of the working class you were from to the white-collar middle class. 

I resent some things. But there are many things for which I am grateful to you. You made it clear how valuable hard work, humility (not always but in many things) and knowledge are. You were brashly honest at times. But, you were not compassionate at times when it would have been very helpful. You could be quite numb-skulled despite your advanced degree, and your scholarship beyond it. 

You were more a scholar than a philosopher, more a technician than an artiste, and, too many times, for me, you were an example of how not to behave around other people than you were a role model. There were folks who truly appreciated you. I did, too. Often. 

You struggled with demons and, it seems to me, with guilt and memories I was never welcomed to know or share. I could see this in your eyes, and I can still see it in my memories of you. 

Despite the worst, and despite the hidden things, I admire and respect the honorable things you did, against a significant slope and in an often unwelcoming environment. 

There are things I cannot forget, regrets about you, important things. There are pains I know today that might have been so much less challenging had you been more willing to be the father and not the hands-off breadwinner. It’s too late and too pointless to hold a trial for those wrongs and perceived wrongs. I cannot cast them off, but those regrets do not define you.

You did not let things stand in your way. You did not avoid the work to achieve, to answer that strange, common calling to do something that means something, despite the costs of it. You were embarrassing at times. You were hilarious at times. You were good at times. You were wrong at times. But, I understand.

You struggled with emotions and with love and affection versus masculine comfort, like so many of us – men from broken homes and with damaged childhoods. I recall many times over the course of my life, in your presence, where the look on your face told me wordless tales about your life and the thoughts you keep to yourself and betrayed in alternative embellishments culled from those secret things and indirect, unrelated events or conversations. I, as you, are often caught in thought. Deep in thought. Lost in thought. Lost at times in haunting, terrible thought. 

My trust and respect, as a youth, generally in parents and in adults was admired by adults. How terribly I learned that such a trust should be limited, because the reality is there's only a myth of adulthood and wisdom. For me, that realization came at a fairly significant cost. And, too young. I was, and am, like so many who lacked the benefit of a childhood without serious abuse. Other have been betrayed far more brutally and even younger and I, but one abandonment of my claims, the word of an adult taken over mine, will forever discolor my life. It came at such a great cost to me. 

I forgive you. I cannot forget. I fall into bitterness now and then. But I did forgive. I hope that my peace comes with greater wisdom than you had, in emotional intelligence, and with greater care for my family than yours came. But each person is only so smart in so many ways, and quite dumb in others. I learned that from you. 

I have such a long way to go. You knew that, because you knew your own incompleteness. 

Rest in peace, Pops. 

- Jon O.

[Edited for clarity, Oct 2020]

What does it mean to be creative?

I consider myself a creative type. What is creativity, to me? Well, I'm just some guy, not brilliant but not ignorant, someone who has working class, third-generation American roots, a college education and a somewhat troubling childhood. My father had gotten his Ph.D. (English) and worked in universities most of his life. 

Creativity, to some, seems to only be artistic things, those things alone: drawing and painting, architecture, writing, singing, and acting. That is not so. Those are indeed creative endeavors, obviously, but those are artistic talents. People are talented in many ways. Frankly, I've come to suspect that those who are artistically talented are the least relevant to real life things, unless they are also grounded in healthy business or other practical matters as well. Raw artistic creativity is just that. Brilliant works, such as those by JRR Tolkien, George Lucas, CS Lewis, and others do not come from a plain creative place. Good works are, if with nothing else, done through hard work. There are no lazy geniuses. 

Creativity is more than artistic talent; business leaders who recognize this -- and who embody it -- are those who bring the most promise to our economic and societal practices. Whether they are highly creative themselves, or embrace those who are highly creative in their ranks, those who run things will do better to sustain a creative climate in their business. To put a sharpened point on it: If business operations are obsessed with the bottom line and getting the most benefit for the least payout, then we are no better than slave-traders. 

There is such a thing as being "too creative," I must quickly point out. The saying "experience is the best teacher" is an abbreviated way of drawing a line between good practices and those efforts similar to wrangling cats.

I helped imagine, launch, operate, and manage three media operations. Since my youth, I've been very much into drawing, writing, acting, music, and just plain imagining (dreaming, daydreaming, not paying attention, whatever you want to call it). 

While I've gone in a direction that moves me away from creative media, in some ways, in my job in recent years -- business proposals and technical communications -- the creativity has never left me, and it has, in a variety of ways, served me well in all of my work efforts. I have artistic talents, while undisciplined they might be at times, but I am also a creative thinker. I am very right-brained and left-handed. 

- Jon O

Paying respect to the perspective of Frank McCourt

When the author of Angela's Ashes, a Pulitzer Prize winner, published that book, he was in well into his 60's. It was his first published book. That gives encouragement to any writer who is not in their teens or twenties. Here's a collection of Frank McCourt's thoughts about writing. And teaching. This is not the whole collection, just a taste. Hit the link to read the whole thing.

These were compiled for the About.com blog, Grammar and Composition, by Richard Nordquist. (If you are a writer or language person of any type, I highly recommend that blog.)

Remembering Frank McCourt, "Teacher Man"

Here are a few ... observations on writing and the teaching of writing.

The Magic of Writing:
I always wanted to write because for me it was magic to get a piece of paper and put words on it. As I'm always saying, to put together words that were never before put together by anybody. To take two words that were never joined together like a "scintillating turnip." I would put words together like that just to keep the language fresh.
(Frank McCourt Interview, The Academy of Achievement, June 19, 1999)

Finding His Voice in Angela's Ashes:
After 20 pages of standard omniscient author, I wrote something that I thought was just a note to myself, about sitting on a seesaw in a playground, and I found my voice, the voice of a child. That was it. It carried me through to the end of the book.
(quoted in The Providence Journal, 1997)

Teaching and Learning:
You can teach biology and origami and how to skin a rabbit but I don't think you can teach creative writing. You can hint and nudge and inspire and encourage. You can help aspiring writers in their search for their material, their style. . . . What I learned, most of all, was that if you're teaching and not learning then you're not teaching, and if you don't enjoy yourself in the classroom, you might as well be driving a taxi.
(Frank McCourt, "Reflections on Creative Writing Class," The New York Times, April 14, 2002)

Follow Your Bliss:
I found out eventually why I was put on this earth. I was put on this earth to write. And as Thomas Carlyle said, "Happy is the man who has found his work." So I'm happy, and I hope everybody else finds that, too.
(Frank McCourt Interview, The Academy of Achievement, June 19, 1999)

- JRO

Powered by ScribeFire.

Kudos for customizable, simple iGoogle

I like iGoogle.

I didn't even like Google initially, because when I searched for my own stuff, it didn't seem to pop up on Google. My stuff did show up, and much higher on the listings, on Yahoo! (dilemma: do you put a period or other punctuation after the exclamation point in the name of the company "Yahoo!" or get creative to avoid it altogether with something like a parenthetical distraction?).

Thanks to Google News, which I like and have customized, and then iGoogle, Google eventually won me over (and of course I use Blogger and I use Gmail, too).

However, when I search, I typically like to search using Ask.com, and thanks to Firefox's customized search bar, this is easy. I like the extra categories it throws at me on the sidebar of the window. Call me research addicted, I'll not argue it.

iGoogle is not bogged down with CPU-straining, attention-draining graphic elements keeping wheels and progress bars reeling to load the background and the foreground of the page. By the way, I avoid the Ask.com home page, since it is graphically busy, by opting for the Firefox search bar I mentioned earlier.

iGoogle is not like many news sites and other graphics-heavy sites people choose for home pages, those others frustrating anyone without a 6-foot Ethernet cord directly patched into their ISP's broadband hub. (And that would be everyone, really.)

My iGoogle page is pretty busy: Google News (my former home page, with highly personalized news blocks) and several other news gadgets are on there, the Daily Beast Cheat Sheet (which is far better, to me, via iGoogle rather than as a home page, which it was for me for a brief time), and Gmail, Blogger, Twitter and many news gadgets/widgets/thingies -- whatever you wish to call the modules you can add to your iGoogle page.

iGoogle is well worth consideration as a quick-loading, easygoing home page, a perfect jumping off point. Well done, simple: and why not? Not everything needs to look like -- and take up the computing power of -- the Action Video Game of the Year, does it?


- Jon O.

Powered by ScribeFire.

New business launches in the time of deep and eery recessions

I noted in the post "Top 10 reasons to start..." (below this one) that the impact of a bad economy can adversely affect one's good health. I found it affecting mine, seeking out and reviewing too much information about the current strife, what horrible errors -- scams, regulations, and more -- brought us here. I strive to not go blaming it on one person or group or any persuasion, too, so it gets ugly listening or reading much of what's out there (including my own thoughts on the situation).

Starting a business now could be a very welcome distraction for many, if one found like-minded, driven people to get it going.

Shutters may be going up, but not a lot of them, not right now. That could change in six months, or a year. I believe, sternly, that many opportunities arising right now are suitable to the "mother of invention" adage. This as others are coming down. I have had my own idea about a concept for other businesses, not for a standalone company, while I might have to pursue that direction for it. It is an idea that suits the time, but is no huge moneymaker, just a good idea for helping folks when they need a job.

Just today (this morning), driving a regular road pattern of mine, I noticed the second of three small car sales businesses at a large intersection closing up. Literally: there was a guy at the gate to the property, pulling closed the gate on a big, empty slab of asphalt. That company had only just opened up some time in 2008. Adjacent to that used dealership was another, long there, which was now empty. Happily, a third which always seemed to have very clean, very current or well taken care of vehicles, was seemingly very much in business.

My wife works for a married couple who just started a small business. They are so dedicated to the task, as is my wife and the other employees, that they cannot help but succeed (the particular field is a good one, for one thing, for good or bad times). It comes from their dedication, though: that stuff rolls from the top, as they say. A company will never fail from the bottom up! An important (evasively obvious?) lesson, for anyone wanting to start a news business: you better love it! If you don't, then you might not want to bother. If you do not love the field in which you want to start a company, then you will perhaps succeed, but just how miserable do you want to be? The hardest thing to do everyday is to work at making a business succeed if you are unhappy, painfully disinterested, or just plain miserable everyday doing it.

The prospect of starting a new business has long appealed to me. I had a hand in startups and very small companies on about five or six occasions. I ran, partly managed, or otherwise helped launch three media companies, from 1997 to 2002. I moved in 2003 from the area where two of those companies are still in business, to follow my career wish to stay in news media. As I've covered on this blog, an ownership and management shuffle led me out of the last startup company, a daily paper (it was a tough time, too, in the industry -- among the great many things it changed, permanently and briefly, Sept. 11 steeply lowered ad dollars in 2001-02). After a while, staying in news media proved contrary to my fate.

In 2005, after a stint in graphics and computer services, I became a tech writer and proposals writer. The work was quite unlike news design and journalism, but it paid much better and I found myself to be very well suited to it.

Those exciting and challenging days of startups are fond memories in lots of ways. As with anything, there are caveats. As I opined long ago (1992): "Some people rise to an occasion, others just show up." (That's mine: you can use it with attribution. Grin.) So long as folks are in it to work hard and do things appropriately, strive to avoid, briefly, an "amateurism trumps accuracy" attitude, startups can always succeed, both in appearances and on the all-important financial records. Most of all, the people running the thing have got to love the work, and the more those working for them, WITH them, also love it, the better the likelihood for success.

- Jon O.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Vonnegut offers some simple thoughts on writing style

Kurt Vonnegut on Writing With Style - Vonnegut on Style

[Vonnegut] offers seven deceptively simple principles:

* Find a subject you care about.
* Do not ramble, though.
* Keep it simple.
* Have the guts to cut.
* Sound like yourself.
* Say what you mean to say.
* Pity the readers.

Pity our readers? Vonnegut goes on to explain that our "audience requires us to be sympathetic and patient teachers, ever willing to simplify and clarify--whereas we would rather soar high above the crowd, singing like nightingales. That is the bad news."

"The good news," Vonnegut continues, "is that we Americans are governed under a unique Constitution, which allows us to write whatever we please without fear of punishment. So the most meaningful aspect of our styles, which is what we choose to write about, is utterly unlimited."

These days, About is a massive collection of what we now refer to as blogs. It is one of the originals, I think. If you enjoy writing, aspire to write, teach writing or have any interest in writing, the About.com section on Writing -- Grammar & Composition -- with Richard
Nordquist is an easy bit of usefulness and some encouraging, quote-filled lessons on a wide variety of things.


- Jon O.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Tribune files for bankruptcy; Zell not swell, neither is print news

Forbes tells a story about the media business. I shake my head. Cycle repeats.

Welcome to the news media business, where newspapers are becoming passé and, I hope for their own sakes, common employees might be beginning to realize -- as I regretfully but realistically had done in 2003 -- that so-called traditional media is coming apart, and the ranks are tightening, not loosening, for true innovative thinking in the leadership ranks. There's a tough road ahead for content creators in print media. News media. Daily papers, to be specific.

Old school is stubborn and refusing to alter the overall business culture in order to accept life as it is, based on what I've seen over and over in the business I wanted to be in for my whole career.

That Sam Zell ended up being as bad or worse as the prior folks running this failed business operation is shocking. The operation was a failed one as their business concepts and operational approaches were, in my view, functionally illogical, some policies were at times simply cruel and unfair (in the legal sense) to lower employees, snortily overconfident, and misinformed. They hired yes men, and built up these yes men, I suspect, and didn't allow real innovation to take hold.

I believe that gross arrogance and innovation can only survive in new ventures. Once a business is off and running and expected to perform, if innovation is required, it takes hard work, long hours and true smarts, not a pack of butt-kiss usual suspects attempting to be innovative

How Zell Killed Tribune - Forbes.com

Bad economy or not, if it wasn't for Zell and the enormous debt load he packed on the company, Tribune Co. would be trundling along profitably. It hauled in operating cash flow--which is net before taxes, depreciation, amortization and interest--of $90 million on $1 billion in revenue in the third quarter. In the six quarters before that, Tribune Co. was hauling in $200 million to $270 million per quarter in cash flow.

Sure, lots of that comes from the company's sports and broadcast arms. But even Tribune's publishing group, which includes those oh-so-old-fashioned newspapers, pulled in $13 million in operating cash flow on $654 million in revenues last quarter.

Zell blew it by treating the purchase of this august newspaper company like, well, like just another real estate development.

The company was struggling, for sure, before Zell stepped into the situation. He added to the indebtedness of the company, which he ought to have not. Clearly.

What's going on? I think a significant part of it is that news media is crumbling under the weight of a systemic fear of major change -- real change. The relative sustenance of radio, TV, Internet, email, even billboards and other outdoor print advertising, plus the emergent mobile marketing industry are competing for dollars that used to be rather heavily devoted to newspapers coffers.

The prospect of selling ads on pages is expensive, especially for daily papers, seeing their impermanence. This is ironic in a world going news brief and sound bite, you could argue, but really, it is not ironic. It costs a huge sum for a full-page ad in a daily. That same sum could be used on TV in a targeted cable market segment campaign. In some areas, at least, too many are deciding it is too expensive to pay for an ad in, for instance, the Daytona Beach News-Journal, rather than posting an ad for free on daytona.craigslist.com and in some freebie pickup ready-made for interested buyers, such as a Home & Land or Auto Trader publication.

It breaks my journalist's heart, in a way, to see daily papers get trounced, but business is business. That's what I was advised when I got the boot from a company I helped start, after working the longer hours, and determining the processes and how-tos, for more than two years at a daily startup which began in 2000.

I don't feel bad for alleged managers who (not all, but certainly some) have no heart to bleed for smart, movable, devoted employees that get tossed, due to tough budget cuts or mere cliquish infighting. Selfishness reins, it seems, in media. It is almost as vain as the film and TV industries. I suspect that in some ways, and in some circumstances, news media is more vain.

I hope the scoundrels running these continually failed enterprises (it is not good business to cheat people of their overtime then feel good about meeting budget, for instance) get to spend some time unemployed -- but scoundrels are always working. That's what scoundrels do, and there is always someone sucker enough to hire them, since they beat people into some sort of mental submission. Seen that, disgusted by it, had to tolerate it, hopefully I can avoid having to tolerate it some day.

The current flowing away from dailies and to the variety of electronic media also piques my intrigue and my we-are-too-dependent-on-electronic-media opinions. But the fact of the matter is, there are fewer and fewer folks who remember newspapers without Macs and laptops, and there are not many who even recall doing paste-ups prior to using PDF technology and direct-to-plate printing, either. So, when it comes down to it, newspapers ARE electronic media. It'll be good for media executives to consider that the printing press might be the thing that needs to go, not the content and creative employees.

Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, Tribune Company execs. It might do you -- and your low-paid employees who can hopefully survive this -- some good. Now that the second shoe has dropped, I hope you get through this. We need media, even if they choose to be biased and oddly

- Jon O

Powered by ScribeFire.

about Pogue's 'The MacBook Makeover' column

David Pogue wrote a MacBook review, but the driving interest from most his pining over the dropping of FireWire and reflecting on that and losing old videos. See it at http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/30/the-macbook-makeover/.

This is my comment in reply, based on the letter I sent to David, which I also used to create several comments at the review location on the NY Times' site. Please note that it is a bit more personal than you may expect, but that is with good reason. I lost my father in May 2008, and sitting in my place here is his old films, dating all the way back to the 1950s, at least. Those I must find a way to make copies, usable ones, for my siblings and myself, sometime. Read on and you'll get a clue as to where I am coming from.

David,

Your review of the updated MacBook was sad for me, too, as you noted it was for you. It has been a banner year for sad for me in some ways. So - good job, David!

Seriously, I was reading your piece and some pretty grim realities struck me. Forget the MacBook review, the other part drew more of my attention -- it is something that calls for more attention. That is, the legacy items of everyday people -- like you and me, let us say -- need to have a safe place to survive for our future selves, at least, if not future generations. So what if we just dump raw footage -- better than losing it all.

The demise of CREATING home movies on film or tape is coming fast. Ouch - life moves on - ouch again. Movie films (and then tape) have been around since the concept of moving pictures happened (obviously) more than 100 years ago (obviously). We're going from what is essentially the original idea to a whole new way of looking at filming -- recording. Calling it "filming" will be thoroughly inaccurate, except for sentimentality or out of habit, won't it?

To think we are not too far from seeing tape and film relegated to the sentimental status of the vinyl record is pretty awkward to me. It's as if we were to no longer drive automobiles, but we instead have personal mag-lev transportation devices. So, where's mine? I have far less affection for a gasoline car than for my movies. (Although I do still sorta miss the Firebird I had years ago.)

One jolly thing: It is quaint that we apparently care more about advancing our ways of collecting our memories more than we care about how we get around. (That's me putting a very positive spin on something, knowing there's an environmentalist or other dissenting thought lurking close by. Ignoring it.)

After getting into your column, I started to get the feeling my life is losing something out of scenes from M*A*S*H, when they would watch movies in the mess hall (or, tent). It was rarely -- in the show and thus in the characters' lives -- that what mattered was that they were watching movies. Just like us, they had other stuff going on. The movie-viewing was a drastically different event in their days, not something disposable. Watching movies was a distraction, sure, but it was not merely a distraction.

If I recall correctly, on M*A*S*H they viewed home movies a time or two, had comments and gibes over what was happening on the screen (just as with the Hollywood films they watched, only more). The effort and preparation, the sense of community, togetherness, the snickers and laughs -- that's what home movies are about. Not about laying down a great soundtrack, or using special effects (all cool, all cool), or how many hits your video gets. Not YouTube, definitely not that exaggerated depository for videos.

I hope the get-together idea behind seeing films isn't so easily relegated to merely sending a link, just as entertainment films are not relegated only to cinemas filled with odd smells, sticky floors, parent-less kids, and self-appointed narrators. (Nasty -- one reason to love analog and digital tapes and DVDs, and now downloads and DVRs!)

My father began taking movies on a Kodak Brownie (yes, BROWNIE!) film camera in the 1950s (likely it was even earlier). He died in May 2008. I was given those movies, based on an old will's listing. With them, I was given that camera, as well as a Bell & Howell projector we'd watched the movies on, when I was one of three kids in my family, and there were lots of Aunts, Uncles and cousins.

Among those films, I understand my dad had some shots of early 1960s Vero Beach, Florida, from back when he was a jet pilot stationed at now-closed Bartow AFB (near Lakeland, FL). That fact came up during one of the rare times in recent years that Dad and I had talked about those films. See, almost 50 years after that, I took a contract job there in Vero Beach with Piper Aircraft. I probably saw that footage as a kid, and it meant nothing to me. I only remember my Dad, his dark black teardrop-lens sunglasses on, in his flight jacket, his buddies, and jets. My Dad flew jets! Holy cow! Vero Beach, though I moved on from that job a while ago, and those films, both hold some really solid value with me. What concerns me is that I might have a far better chance of seeing Vero Beach itself than those films again -- or my own Hi8 stuff, for that matter.

I haven't watched those 8 mm films since the early 1980s, perhaps the late 1970s. I'd asked Dad about the status of the projector, the condition of the films -- he didn't crack them open anytime recently. The camera still does it's thing -- it is a wind up, I wound it up and it clattered away, just as I remember from when I was 8, or 10, or ever 3 or 4. I am going to have a heck of a time trying to transfer those films, I fear. I am going to have one hell of a time explaining to my wife what the heck I've turned our little dining area into to watch those films! But, as soon as things settle down a bit for us, viewing those films and finding a way to conserve them -- cost-effectively! -- will be a project of mine. I better find a way to put those things on a better media for the days to come. I never got into film with VHS tapes, but I recall a friend with a VHS camera, and I had used that one. In any event, we're talking old school's old school for movies!

And I also happen to be another fan of FireWire -- as I saw noted here, the speed issue is significant, not small. And USB2, well, that's great for my little thumb drive, but what about, as one commenter put it, hobbyists? These guys spend a lot of cash on their hobbies, and it seems to me FireWire is more than an option versus USB2 - even stubborn Win PC users know USB2 is second-rate. Sony recently offers a device that can transfer most analog tapes to DVD, however. That might be worth a buy, but I was hoping I could go straight to my Mac. Shocked, but not too shocked, that all this streamlining is also cutting devoted users out. That is a bit too aggressive, isn't it?

Bottom line is: Time marches on, we better get our priorities straight. All that tech means diddly if it distracts us from worthwhile reasons to have it, use it, or invent it. Let's focus on making our tech fit our lives, not trounce the legacy materials we have every three years or so (or have to pay BIG BUCKS to transfer them). That kind of progress says only one thing: progress is good but legacy is not memory, but old and useless. That's just a bit too capitalist for me, and a bit too lacking in any sentimentality.

Jon Osterholm

Business leading edge loses one to frozen finance markets

DayJet - leading edge company in flight, passenger travel, software development, logistics, and a rather "out there" use of statistical prediction for revealing customer trends, hit a wall.

I didn't see this news till today (I've had some other things on my mind, yet they were somehow, in a way, related). I am surprised it took me more than a month to catch it. I tried to get work at this company. They required more pilots, software engineers and very experienced aviation maintenance and operations managers. I was not suitable for that. However, there was a tech writing position there. Of course, I'd be looking for a job right now (as I am, anyways) in Boca Raton. Better to be hunting with Orlando metro area as my base than Boca Raton.

The founder of DayJet is a former Microsoft exec who also founded Citrix Systems. Ed Iacobucci, will not be any worse for the wear, but there are a lot of people who were only recently hired to put this thing into action.

The economy, though, may have only some part in it. Still, if you think things will get better, and not get worse before they get better, I suspect this is one piece of evidence to the contrary. Bravery in business is never said to be with much thanks until the truly hard part is over with. And, the hard part basically having only started in Oct. 2007, this one didn't get a chance to hit a stride.

I am really sad to see it go. The reality of a withdrawn economy is a tough thing to face, though. When you must get financing to survive, the noose is already there, it's just a question of whether anyone wants to replace it with a business necktie. In this climate, this business needed what you could call "true believer" money, or the investment of those who could believe in the concept succeeding someday, just not in the next five years seeing any of that money. I suppose much of that was already put into the company, and one can only hedge up a risky and cost-intense business for so long.

What a really sad thing to see. This was one of those truly nerd-intriguing companies, mixing originality, computer technology, travel and leading edge jets. What could be more on the edge of business and an industry changer unless they also drove you to your house or hotel in a Formula One car? But I am getting a little punchy about it.

A SNIPPET of a press release provided on Sept. 19, 2008:

DayJet Discontinues Passenger Operations
Global Financial Crisis Grounds World’s First “Per-Seat, On-Demand” Jet Service

DayJet launched the world’s first “Per-Seat, On-Demand” jet service in October 2007 amidst much anticipation. At this time, DayJet was among the best capitalized pre-operational air carriers in U.S. history and the first 100% all-digital operator.

Since service launch, DayJet has built a growing membership base of more than 2,400 regional travelers. The company has flown over 9,000 segments totaling more than one million miles – all while achieving an industry-leading 95% on-time performance record and a 93% customer satisfaction rating. DayJet also grew its “Per-Seat, On-Demand” service network from five initial destinations to more than 60 communities across the Southeast – filling in the regional transportation gaps left from the airline’s drastic service reductions (especially to small and medium-sized communities).

It was a good go, and expanded rather impressively. On borrowed or invested money, of course, seeing as this is the kind of operation that cannot do well in bad economic times. I hope to see this idea and this company up and running again. Maybe not soon, but soon enough.

The family of Business Journal publications ran the following (taken from Phoenix B. J. site):

By press time, no federal bankruptcy filings were found for DayJet. Through company e-mail, a spokeswoman said DayJet could not comment beyond the Sept. 19 press release and she was “officially no longer with DayJet.” Other attempts for comment were unsuccessful; a Business Journal photographer, however, observed a person inside DayJet’s administrative offices at the Florida Atlantic University Research Park, where the company’s sign still adorned the building. The building’s landlord declined to discuss DayJet’s status. A receptionist at Avitat Boca Raton, the Boca Raton Airport facility where DayJet housed some planes, said DayJet was no longer a tenant.

Even before the company’s exit, signs of trouble were emerging. In May, the airline said it was pushing back expansion plans for 2008 and reducing staff by 39 percent.

DayJet was impacted by the larger economic downturn, said Daniel Petree, dean of the College of Business at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach.

“They launched about the time we were going into a softening of the business cycle, and probably their ideal business traveler was under some pressure to pull back on the amount of travel they do,” he said, but noted there wasn’t one overriding factor for the failure.

I can't help wondering if that receptionist at the FAU Research Park got canned or told off for saying anything. It was an odd (read: senseless and tactless) move by a journalist to cite and name the person in such a way, unless it was agreed to between her and her bosses. Because, in the real world, receptionists do not speak for companies and who their clients are to the press. The author ought to know that. I just hope he did, and she didn't catch ten piles of grief for talking to the journalist. Else, that guy belongs writing for the Inquirer (HQ is there in Boca)

- Jon

Powered by ScribeFire.

Person Daniel Petree

Right click for SmrtMenu shortcuts

Politics and media: they don't seem to mix well at all

Food for thought, for sites such as Digg.com and popular opinions, thus popular media, in general...

Some days I am driven to crazed distraction by the two-party system and the mainstream media -- the power-hitters on TV, print and Web -- namely because "small-world" views like many who've put in "diggs" or comments on many news or blog sites have amazingly simplistic views. I believe they are being heavily pelted by the broad brush of mainstream media with inane sound bites and awfully brief articles. Thus, they reach broad conclusions that are plain silly.

Two parties offers just one more way to make it simple to see things - the parties - as black and white.

What young, or any politically uninitiated, Americans need to get a grip on is that the media is doing two things that are poorly considered: 1, the media is failing to accurately draw attention to the most relevant issues (superficiality and sensationalism are tops, and the broad brush of media tends to take the liberal, immature road, failing to offer unbiased reports); 2, failing to be forthcoming with commentaries and editorializing versus news stories, and their political stances.

I respect, without considering my like or dislike for them or their views, folks like Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Alan Colmes, Sean Hannity, Lou Dobbs, Pat Buchanan, and Michael Moore, for being forthcoming about their political and ideological leanings. It is so-called reporters and journalists who stumble along in what I assume to be arrogance and self-admiration, or outright ignorance, denying a liberal or independent or conservative bent, that get on my nerves. Most seem happy to not know themselves, let alone divulge their stance, and the consumers seem to invite the ignorance of just where they're getting their news from.

Written almost 50 years ago, you ought to read a book called "The Fourth Estate" by John L. Hulteng and Roy Paul Nelson (1971) for an idea of just what journalism is about, when you get under its skin (or in this case, under the newsprint, a-hah). If you prefer an elixir of eery fact-swirling (Hey! That's an opinion! Yeah, and I'm allowed, this is a blog; what's more, this is my blog), see some of Noam Chomsky's comments on journalism's darker influences and the very process of journalism.


- Jon O