I’m currently at 28,299 words.  Just barely behind the curve (You should be writing 1667 words per day).  It’s been fun to be master of a universe, even if it is just in my own head.

I swear I’ll be back to blogging after November is over.  And who knows, maybe I’ll even post my novel up here when it’s done for those brave souls that want to waste a few hours of thier lives reading my dribble.

Via Daring Fireball

Unfortunately, the main problem for Alpinist is that the advertisers that pay the bills at magazines love pointless reports and big-breasted girls climbing in jeans, sports bras and beanies.  And who has ever seen someone climbing a legitimate route in the mountains wearing a sports bra and nothing else, that’s right, you haven’t. This was the real death sentence for Alpinist, no advertisers = no money.

What about subscribers you say?  Let’s take a look at the explosion of climbing in recent years.  Sport, Bouldering, and to a increasing degree trad.  How many people jump right into suffering in the mountains.  Not many.  Not too many “climbers” these days would willingly go and subject themselves to the freezing temperatures, rockfall, avalanches or having your buddy spooning you on a ledge that is smaller than the back seat of my volvo.  “Why in God’s name would I go do all of those at once?”, most would ask.  No, there never really was a large base to pull subscribers from for Alpinist.  Especially at $12 an issue.

As a subscriber of four years, I bid you farewell Alpinist.  All of us subscribers and readers will miss you dearly.

What do you do when it just gets to be too much?  Pull an all nighter?  Throw a big bunch of it away and pretend it didn’t exist?  Let me know in the comments …

I know.  Nails on chalkboards, ball-peen to the kneecaps, or as one other blogger put it, “your teeth so on-edge that it feels like you have been rubbing a mixture of Ajax and cocaine into them for the past week. With a wire brush.”

But from an advertising perspective, is this what Microsoft wanted?  It certainly has shock value.  It is very quickly making the rounds of the blogosphere, although most posts are blasting it as simple, horribly produced and just plain bad.  But backup.  Is this what Microsoft wanted?  They have certainly made Windows 7 known and they have made it known that at PDC they will be handing out hard drives with Windows 7 installed on them.  Maybe that was all they wanted to accomplish?   

From another perspective - I would argue a more well-balanced one - this is yet another wrap on the old “hang Ballmer” noose.  Honestly, you’d not be surprised to hear that Microsoft was on a campaign to alienate all of their developers, users and employees.  Oh, wait, they are.  

Seriously though, Microsoft used to be the big kid on the block.  Anyone remember that old Simpsons episode where Bill Gates buys out Homer’s internet company ”Compuglobalhypermeganet”?  Bill comes in with two hulking thugs and “buys out” Homer, breaking all his pencils and destroying his office.  Microsoft was the 800 pound gorilla in the room.  What has happened since then?  Well as they say, its better to go out with a bang than fade into the background - and Microsoft can’t even get that part correct.  They are slowly killing any and all goodwill that they had with developers, users and the general public.  Even their ad campaigns seem hell bent on making everyone just cringe and look away.  Like the guy who always gets too drunk at the Christmas party and then starts hitting on the boss’ wife.  Everyone knows what happens next - but no one wants to watch, it’s just too pathetic.

Check out the XDR-TB org site and see what you can do to help. http://www.xdrtb.org

America has become hyper-paranoid.  We have become a nation of gated-community living, pill-popping scaredy-cats that are afraid of not only the rest of the world, but each other.  I’ll bet each and every one of you out there can remember the constant warnings against talking to strangers when you were a kid.  Don’t talk to strangers?  How the hell else are you supposed to meet new people?!  What a crock of shit.  And yes, I know, it serves a purpose.  Keep kids safe from the crazies of the world.  But honesty.  It’s no wonder that we’re all anti-social malcontents when we’re all afraid of what might happen if we were to (gasp!) actually go out and try and meet new people!  

A story to illustrate my point.  My wife’s little sister was on a scout camp (yes, Irish scouts are co-ed).  This scout camp is done once a year, usually in Europe, and the whole premise is that you must get from point A to point B over the course of 2 weeks.  You are only allowed to spend a tiny sum of money per day and you must rely on the kindness of strangers and your own conversational skills to find your way and to find a suitable patch of earth for your tent each night.  This suitable patch is generally someone’s yard or farmland.  Well the year that Gina’s little sister did the camp was the first year that they extended it to America.  All along the way they would talk to people, tell them what they were doing and sometimes ask for permission to use said patch of earth.  Each and every time, the American they were talking to was agape at the fact that two teenagers were being allowed to run around the countryside alone.  ”How dangerous!”  Every person, without fail, would comment that it was a good thing that they happened to talk to them because they were nice (of course) but all of the other people in the community were crazy - or dangerous.  Every single one of the them.  That tells you two things.  One, that most people are genuinely good and helpful.  Two, that we’re all afraid of the big bad world that lurks in dark corners and down shady alleys.

I have a feeling that this has been slowly creeping into the American psyche for some time now.  I would venture to guess that it started at roughly the same time that America began to move into the suburbs, away from the community creating barrios and apartment blocks of the big cities.  We began to spread out, to create small closed off squares of land that we papered with NO TRESPASSING signs and we minded our own business.  All the while feeding off the the so-call “news” stories that screamed about doom and gloom.  We told our children that the world was dangerous and that no one could be trusted, and we told ourselves that it is a pity that this is what has become of it, but you have to do what you have to do.  Popular culture has done nothing to help the situation, with parents becoming more and more controlling in children’s lives and schools (especially middle schools) becoming so sanitized and institutionalized that they effectively squash any and all creativity out of students and teachers alike.

It’s time for this to change.  It’s time to stop listening to the news (except NPR), start talking to other human beings, and start meeting new people.  The digital world is wonderful and has brought us many things but it has also added another layer of seperation to an already fragmented society of paranoia.  We’re in this together people!  Do yourself a favor and go meet some new people, borrow some sugar from your neighbors and for God’s sake, go talk to some strangers - you’d be surprised the find that most are great people!