January 14, 2007
Just a short entry to apologize to those few who felt compelled to tell me that I was finally making the right decision and/or I was going over to the Dark Side in my previous post about switching to Apple. The post indicated that comments could be left to lambaste or applaud the author in equal measure but would not actually allow anyone to do so.
This is because I have turned off comments universally on this site but neglected to change the default for new entries which allows comments — something one would imagine that Six Apart would have thought of but apparently it’s my fault, so I accept the blame and dutifully apologize forthwith.
As to the why’s and wherefores, even though I have at least two and possibly three or maybe even four methods in place of detecting and avoiding comment spam by automatically moving it to the scrapheap of horrible things we shouldn’t have to deal with like watermelon seeds and shoes that tell you they’re your size and then you try them on and, although they are the last pair available, truly are meant for someone with more demure treads than I, the spammers were getting more cunning than my automated systems and rather than fight them on a daily basis, I elected to just turn comments off for everyone.
So if you have any comments, feel free to email me and tell me how lame/brilliant I am. If the spam filters figure out how to eliminate the spammers now adding nonsense, off-topic posts with their URL in their signature, perhaps I shall allow all my beautiful and intelligent readers their voices back. Until then, feel free to mouth off on your own sites and spread the “Lance is an idiot-genius!” meme on your own dime.
January 12, 2007
When I ventured into an Egghead store in Pasadena, Maryland to purchase my first home computer circa 1990, I had a choice to make. Would I be a PC guy or an Apple guy? The choice was far from clear. There was already a plethora of PC manufacturers around, but the selection was basically the same. An Intel 386-based motherboard, a couple Megs of RAM, a 28.8 baud modem and a little TV-like monitor supporting a whopping 256 colors. Windows 3.0 was out in May, resolving many of the inherent problems with previous versions of the OS (while certainly introducing hundreds more) and you couldn’t truly call your computer a computer without some Lotus, some WordPerfect and some Borland for good measure.
My brother was an early Apple adoptee. He bought a Mac II that had Woz’s signature scratched into its surface. He was pushing hard for me to join the cult. “It’s been around forever, it’s reliable, the equipment is good looking and simple to use and you know what you’re getting with Apple because everything from Apple is Apple.”
I chose a different path for two reasons. First, my employer was using PCs on a Novell network and I was familiar with the software already. Second, and probably more important, PCs were a hell of a lot cheaper to purchase. So I became a PC user and Windows champion for years and years, buying PC after PC from manufacturers like Zeos and Gateway and Hewlett-Packard and Dell and Compaq and Sony and Toshiba, each time weighing the options in the Windows world to get me the most bang for the buck. I was confident in my choice, happy with the outcome and overjoyed to have the latest and fanciest and fastest new toy. I never regretted my original decision.
So it comes as a great shock even to me that my next computer purchase will be from the Cult of Cupertino. Ladies and gentlemen, I’m switching.
December 12, 2006
I want to believe that the web is like a phone booth and that we can leave messages out here for someone to pick up, that maybe they’ll find it someday, or that it’ll find its way to them. I want to believe that we leave traces of ourselves here, something that can’t be touched, something more than words and deeper than feelings and stronger than memories.
It’s weird losing someone. Even that word is weird in this context, to ‘lose’ someone. As if we set them aside and forgot where they were. I never forgot where she was. I always knew that she was out there at the other end of my email or my phone, like there was a wire going from my place to her house, a direct link between us. She knew me better than anyone, probably, which was both annoying and comforting.
But there I go making this about me, again. A bad habit. My worst, maybe. Keeping it all inside me, keeping me all to myself, and refocusing things that happen to other people into how it affects me.
She said I was doing so much better than when we met each other in Boston over tea with Alexis. I wasn’t supposed to be there, I think. It was girl’s night out, and the two of them had bonded via email messages about horoscopes and boys and the difficulty of being creative and female, or something like that. Was I even out, yet? Alexis went to the ladies room and she leaned across the table toward me, conspiratorially, and asked if Alexis liked her. She suspected that they would meet and not hit it off, the woman from NYC and the New Englander and there I was, the California boy, so out of place in so many ways, but she trusted me already and wanted some unvarnished truth from an uninterested bystander.
We stayed at that blue-walled tea house in the cold, wet Boston night for hours, finally agreeing that it was time to go only when Alex and I became worried that we’d miss the T. She was staying in the city. We hugged tightly as we all said goodnight.
She was already reading my web site and knew a lot about me because I said a lot about me, but she picked up so much more in such a little time. She was a sleuth about people. She collected them, keeping some for later and treasuring them. She wanted her friends to meet her other friends. She said I should come to New York and visit her in Hell’s Kitchen, that she knew someone I’d love to meet and we’d both get along so well. I could stay at her place, no problem. I thought that was nice and I thought it would never happen.
We traded emails — a lot of emails — over the next few months. She was going to a Web conference in San Francisco, would I be going to? When could we see each other again and she said that she missed me. It was hard for me, then, to hear that from anyone. I had years of therapy to come and lots of dark hours dealing with those demons we fight who tell us how bad we are and that we don’t deserve the good things. But she would hear none of that. “You’ll see,” she said, “great things are going to happen for us!”
In San Francisco we met again. The web was going strong, Bubble 1.0, money everywhere and dreams of big things. Being a writer, maybe? A book? Something would happen. She had her own company, small but doing well. She was a hell of a designer, knew people, well loved and respected. She fought hard, it sounded like, to get what she wanted. Not a bitch or anything, in fact she was very soft-hearted and bruised easily. Trouble was, she knew that. She could feel bruises coming. Had been hurt before. Things happen in life. So she kept most at arm’s length and let only a few inside.
Like me.
We watched this guy dancing. It was a closing party, somewhere in SOMA. I was drunk. She was on my arm. We watched him, young guy, shaven head, body contorting in very suggestive and surprising ways. She leaned against me, warm and soft, her mouth in my ear saying, “You’re thinking of him sexually.” I blushed madly and gulped my drink.
She went back to New York, where she lived. If ever someone belonged to that city, it was her. When she was there, it was like she really owned that fucking town. She knew where to be, and when, and how to grab the attention of that pretentious little prick at Barney’s and have him give me some service, even though there was no way I’d ever afford that baby blue suede Armani. She didn’t care, that wasn’t the point. I counted. She counted. We went to the Knickerbocker and had T-bone for two and vodka martini’s. We spoke about the party at Yoko’s later, and wasn’t it a shame about Evelyn? That rock! Fake! Stupid cad. Whatever will she do now? Another martini, please! Isn’t the jazz divine, tonight?
She gave me my first pirated software. A complete collection of Adobe fonts. She handed me a shoe box of discs on her voluminous bed and said I could have anything I wanted. She was always that way. I repaid her by installing a second hard drive in her computer. She said she could never get the whole master and slave thing.
I moved to San Francisco and she stayed in New York. I was sure she would never leave it. I was there with her on the coldest New Year’s Eve of my life, colder than it had ever been in Vermont. We stood on the roof of her building two blocks from Times Square and heard the swelling roar and watched the ball drop. We counted down and toasted with champagne and danced, we danced together on her rooftop, for warmth and love. “I shall henceforth be known,” I shouted loudly, spilling cheap bubbley on my puffy coat, “as Poopie Snugglepants!” She called me Poopie for the rest of my stay.
San Francisco was both more and less than expected. The Web unraveled as soon as I arrived and I found myself working at a company that creates email campaign for large companies to keep their clients in touch. Customer retention messaging. One to one branding. Buzzword city. It happened that after 9/11, New York held some memories that she wanted to not be near for a time, so I offered her a job working with me in San Francisco. She came here to live, knowing it wasn’t a perfect match but wanting change in her life, any kind of change. Dark spirits had taken hold and she wanted to rip herself away from them.
San Francisco, as we had both suspected but chose to ignore, was not her cup of tea. New York is a city that stays up all night, it plays guitar, it screams at you to get out of the fucking bathroom and let someone else have a go. San Francisco is a morning person. San Francisco plays acoustic guitar and wants the birds to sing harmony. San Francisco will wait just as long as it takes for you to go to the bathroom because, after all, some things take time. San Francisco was slow town for a girl from the fast lane.
But she pressed on and we worked out a weekend date at The Pork Store where we could be found without fail every Sunday at 10am precisely. She watched me lose weight and gain a boyfriend, and then another one. She loved my cat and took care of her when I went out of town, teaching Paris to sleep on a lap and play with pencils. She said that Mole sauce could be done either really well or really poorly, and there’s no in-between. She always seemed to know everything, and if she didn’t she knew who did. It didn’t really matter what my problem was, she had a solution. And she was always, always right.
She was a woman of contradictions. She roamed the web freely and opened herself up on numerous personal sites, including perhaps the first online zine written and designed solely for the web. She had domains stolen out from under her before it was cool. She used all the tools, tried all the new toys, seemed to know everyone and what was going on.
At the same time, she held her secrets close and dear, protecting herself and those she loved like a lioness.
When I heard last night that she was dead, I didn’t believe it at first and I didn’t know what to do, because normally she would have been one of the first people I would call under circumstances like this. She would have known what to do, and how to handle it, and what to say and to whom. She would have known how to comfort me, and would have been on a plane if I asked her to, and would be able to hug me from 3,000 miles away. She was quite beautiful inside and out, big hearted, full of love.
There is a lot to be sad about now, but I don’t think Leslie ever wanted anyone to be sad. She always wanted her friends to meet each other and be friends, too. She wanted to celebrate things, and watch people gather to eat her food and open presents and be just exactly happy. She wanted life to be that way. I’m going to remember her that way. Smoking a cigarette, drinking a Diet Coke, and laughing her ass off.
By Leslie Harpold
*
On Carrying On
A Tale of Two Cities
Written in the Stars
California
For the Duration of This Cheese Sandwich
On Bad Language
Demystifying Diet Coke(s)
How to Cook Thanksgiving Dinner
My Guys
Sympathy for the Deviled Eggs
I love you, Leslie.
October 26, 2006
Now that I’m out on my lonesome, trying to scrape together a few meager dollars to pay my rent and feed my cat while so many of my friends are off inventing new web applications that do what other web applications do, only prettier, thereby gaining the interest of the couple dozen “movers and shakers” of the blogging world who point out to the rest of us how dumb we are if we aren’t using this cool new tool that Google will be buying next week and promptly burying in the backyard next to the dead palm tree and that Koi pond no one really thought was a good idea in the first place, I posted my experience and résumé on Monster.com and Careerbuilder.com because that’s what we’re supposed to do, right?
If you’re considering drumming up any business or attracting the attention of a company to hire your talented little butt based on your posting at either site, let me just pass along three little words you so rarely hear about Web enterprises and their magical capabilities to solve any problem you’re having.
Don’t. Do. It.
October 16, 2006
(Author’s Note: I’ll be refocusing my various online interests over the next few weeks, so that this one you’re looking at will become more web design and web culture related, and the other sorely abused and ignored site will become more personal and hopefully just as angsty and angry and antagonistic as in the olden days.)
I went away for a few years to try to help a company convince other companies that the smart way to communicate with its customers was to translate everything they were sending out as paper could be sent out electronically to those customers’ e-mail in-boxes. The result was mostly a failure because companies are naturally more inclined toward customer acquisition than customer retention. In other words, in the great majority (and this is probably a big unsurprise to everyone but me) corporations would much rather keep bothering potential customers with useless and worthless enticements in the form of coupons and “special offers” via e-mail and direct mail than to actually listen to their customers and provide things like statements and product announcements and other on-going customer service publications that might be helpful and noteworthy rather than annoying and Spam-like.
So, there, in a nutshell, is my life for six years. I kept pushing for companies to listen and retain their current customer base rather than annoy and frustrate people like you who may otherwise have been interested in using their services because a friend of yours uses them already and loves the convenience of electronic communications that occur instantly and automatically instead of churning out masses of pointless, ugly, and ultimately fruitless attempts to make you aware that you can SAVE $1.00 RIGHT NOW when you spend $50 in a participating store near you.
In the meantime, and I don’t know if you noticed it, but Web Design died. It didn’t just roll over and die, it was killed by some very large guns wielded by very large hunters.
October 15, 2006
Hey there, guys and dolls! Sorry for the long silence, and hope you’re all ready for me to come back and start mouthing off again soon.
In the meantime, a couple of projects that I had on my work path suddenly dried up and I find I have a lot of free time on my hands and I’m getting tired of playing Xbox 360 all the time. So if you have any web work you need done, I hope you’ll consider me! I’m totally easy to reach and readily available.
Talk more soon!
June 6, 2006
I’m doing some stuff over here for the time being. You know, playing with the new toys, stuff like that. Check it out, if you so desire.
May 3, 2006
There is something to be said for the Cocktail Set. That era epitomized by Nick and Nora Charles, portrayed on screen by William Powell and Myrna Loy in several “Thin Man” films (along with their dog, Asta, of course). If you’ve never had the pleasure of taking in the charm, grace, humor and utter enjoyment of Mr. Powell’s not-quite acceptable Nick and Ms. Powell’s level-headed and fun-loving Nora, you’re missing out on one of filmdom’s great duos of human chemistry, right up there with Laural and Hardy or Tracy and Hepburn.
The Cocktail Set thought nothing of dressing up in tuxes and gowns for a night out on the town, visiting a club for dinner and a show, dropping in on friends for martinis and G&T’s, going back out for another show and then returning home for a nightcap, with the evening stretching until dawn. The object was never to get drunk and fall down, the object was to obtain that pleasant level of “buzz” that makes one feel like one is floating through life in a carefree but cognizant dream. Being drunk means trying to dive through the ice of reality and exist somewhere that you don’t have to deal with anything. Being buzzed means you can’t legally drive a car, but you’re still aware of that fact.
I have recently gathered about me some tools to allow me, in a limited way, to try to recapture that era. Not the 2-martini evening of a Darrin Stevens who, upon returning home from McMann and Tate, has discovered that Aunt Clara has conjured up Benjamin Franklin who is somewhere out in the world causing mischief with a fire engine and he needs to get soused but fast. I’m talking about that other fantasy of alcoholic intent, where a drink is merely an introduction to a more relaxed, and somehow more coherent life where everything somehow manages — even in the face of murder and mystery — to be just right.
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