Sipping from a Firehose

Recently returned from Linuxworld, from the fine city of San Francisco, and as this was my first convention not staring out from behind the dark screen of a large-headed comic character costume (which was part of a comic strip I wrote called Wexler), well, when I hear the phrase "It's like trying to take a sip from a firehose," I now know exactly what they mean.

Linuxworld is a big wide open source world. Information was coming at me from all directions, abbreviations and acronyms I'd never even heards of, I mean WTF?!?

So I just hid my know-nothing quizzical deer-in-the-headlights stare as best I could, and when some genius geek strode up and prodded me with information, I just let them talk, and it didn't take me long to realize that's all they wanted to do, talk, they wanted to prove they knew something I didn't know, and I just knitted my brow and gave them a look like, hey, thanks for the info bud.

I mean, in this computer world, there is just so much to know, and in the phrasology of Rumsfeld, I don't even know what I don't know, but I am starting to learn what I don't need to know, which I guess is a big start.

I mean, in writing marketing and other literature for Message Partners, I've learned so damned much, and I thought I actually had some sort of bead on this computer stuff, but as one person after another came and prodded me about my product, it really is so much different to go from this here computer out into the real world talking to real people answering real questions.

Hence, it’s like taking a sip from a firehouse, and it’s one week later from the end of the convention, and I’m still swallowing water as fast as I can.

But I did get to ride a Segway, got to race around the convention center until it felt as natural as walking. So when are they gonna add Segway trick-riding to the X Games?

What's in a Name?

I’ve been watching my friend Mike Katz for awhile. I had already been on the internet with my own URL for a bit, and as my brother at the time was buying up URLs by the bushel (he even owned HowardStern.org for awhile), so I was quite curious what name and URL Mike would choose for his business. I know that a name is hard to come up with, and if you can pick a good one, in terms of the internet, it can really make or break a business (remember when they sold business.com for 5 million?).

He first came out of the blocks with the name RAE Internet. Not bad, I’d say, as it’s just three letters, and three letters, all combinations of any three letters, were getting quickly bought up by those folks known as cybersquatters.

But RAE is kind of awkward as well, as how the hell do you pronounce it? You remember that old commercial, you can call me Ray, you can call me Jay? But in this case it would be you can call me Ray, or you can call me Ra E, or you can call me Ree.

I mean, us Americans, we tend not to pile our vowels on top of each other like the French, as it can create some very funny pronunciations (I once new a French girl named Aurora, and I simply could not say the way she said her name, and as you can well imagine, the relationship didn’t last). But still, three letters is good, and if it worked for him, then no harm no foul.

But several years later, I saw that he’d changed his company name to Message Partners. A HA, now he gets it!!! For someone in the email security business, Message Partners is the perfect name. A name that’s relevant, easy to remember, and best of all, easy to say.

I guess the only real confusion with Message Partners is that Message looks so much like Massage. And I live myself in downtown New York, not so far from Chinatown, where there a dozens of Massage Parlors that give those famous happy endings. All I’ve got to say about Message Partners is that, if you do use us, our happy endings last a hell of a lot longer.

Open Source, Open Seas

I have a question that’s been bothering me.

But first, I think you should know I am fairly new to this game, by which I mean the email security/archival game, and as my last company got bought up and by luck a good friend of mine happened to have a kickin’ email product and a fine company in need of an e-wordsmith, which as you’ve probably figured out, is me.

As you may have guessed, I hark from another industry, but as is my want, I always try to jump into any new task heels first. And all I’ve got to say so far about the internet industry, people sure do got to swim mighty hard to stay afloat in this info-ocean.

I mean, I kind of feel like Neo in the Matrix, when he’s just going through his ordinary day-to-day life and suddenly some stranger shows up and peels back the banal reality to reveal the endless stream of 0s and 1s which makes up the Matrix.

Only I’m coming at it from the other side, all I can see is an endless stream of 0s and 1s, and every time I think I’ve got a good understanding about what’s going on, well, it reveals itself to be something completely different. And I wouldn’t exactly call myself Neo, I’d call myself Neo-phyte.

So here I am, in the middle of this info-ocean, an ocean bigger than any I’ve ever seen – about the size of the Atlantic and the Pacific and 2/3rds of the Indian Ocean added together – and all I’ve got is a tiny rowboat and the sun is high overhead and I can’t see any land in any direction. Looks like I’ve got me some rowing to do.

Which brings me to the question: if, when driving on a stretch of blacktop on a sunny day you always see a shimmering pool of water up ahead, does that mean when you’re in the middle of the ocean on a sunny day you see a patch of paved road up ahead?