Effective at the stroke of midnight, January 1 I will no longer be blogging here. I will also disable comments on existing articles on that date.
I’ve been thinking about this for some time now. The reason for disabling comments is primarily because of the increased amount of “comment spam” and the inability to deal with it effectively using the controls WordPress offers (allowing the URL field to be disabled would stop 99% of it dead in its tracks). Once I stop posting here, I don’t want to have to deal with comments.
Tonight was the final straw. I posted a how-to article (which I have since removed) and the comments I received so angered me that I took it as a sign that it’s really time for me to quit. They were not personally insulting, but rather just demonstrated to me how fucked up things are in the United States nowadays (due to the influence large corporations hold over our government), and how blogging is not nearly as rewarding as it used to be. Again, I took this as a sign — sometimes things happen for a reason, and I think those particular comments reminded me of why it’s time for me to bow out.
I’ve been threatening to quit blogging for some time, and I have always come back, but not this time. If, for some reason, I feel I absolutely, positively must continue to write, it will be in a different forum with a different name (and no, I will not post that information here). But frankly, I’m just tired of dealing with assholes, and even some formerly reasonable people seem to be turning into assholes lately. And even technology is not nearly as much fun to work with as it used to be, and I simply don’t enjoy working with it or writing about it anymore.
Plus, I am getting old. Imagine your parents or grandparents trying to write about technology. At some point you fall out of the mainstream. There are probably people one quarter my age that are writing better blogs than this one. My day in the sun was during the days of the TRS-80, and while it hasn’t been completely downhill since, I do think that in some respects technology has started into a downward spiral, in that you can’t depend on anything working as it should anymore, nor that the developers will give a damn when it doesn’t.
The only thing I had been looking forward to writing about, MAYBE, was the new version of the blue.box PBX software that is supposed to come out in the first quarter of 2013. So I will just say that it is coming and when it arrives you may want to check it out.
I ask you to please respect my decision here. Please do not write and ask me to change my mind; I REALLY need to do this. Please do not try to guilt me or flatter me into writing more. Let someone younger than I have a chance to do this. It is their world now, and I’m very sorry it’s in this shape.
To those who have followed this blog for a long time, thank you for putting up with me. I hope you can find peace and happiness in the new year, just as I intend to try to do. If you need a blog to read, I once again recommend Stop the Cap — he’s doing what I used to do, and he does it better than I ever did!
katakefalos said
It feels like losing a friend
Charles Young said
Thanks for all your thought-provoking articles. I like figuring out what all can be done with technology, although I am not as good at it as you. I share your frustration with increasingly stupid government regulations and incompetence, but I try not to let the frustration ruin my life. I do the little bit that I can to change things, and then try to stop worrying about it. I will miss your blog. May you find more peace and less anger.
Jeromy L (@luke911) said
Sorry to see you go but I understand where you are coming from. Just wanted to say thanks for your posts since i’ve been following you the last year and a half or so. I’ve enjoyed everything from the how-to articles to the rants even if i may not have agreed with them. Good luck to all you do in the future.
Jungle-Boogie said
Thank you for quitting. Most of your posts in the past six months have expressed nothing but hatred towards some group of people. Maybe you’ll feel better once you stop writing about people and how much you hate them.
Godspeed to you in 2013.
michigantelephone said
Jungle-Boogie, that is exactly one of the reasons I am quitting. While I would not take back anything I wrote, including the “venomous” posts, in the end they weren’t at all productive, and did not accomplish anything positive. Sometimes there are things that need to be said, and that should be said by someone, but if ultimately those those posts don’t inspire someone to think that maybe they are doing things wrong and try to change for the better, then what’s the point? Then I just come off like a bitter old man, and that’s not the way I want to be remembered.
Also, not to put too fine a point on it, but I try not to hate anybody. That’s very counterproductive. However, with increasing frequency I find myself hating the things that people do and the positions they take. I really hate the fact that when something is working well and everyone loves it, the people behind it can’t seem to leave it alone until they break it and turn it into a steaming pile of poo. And that does not apply only to things I have written about in this blog, but other things I have used, and to things other people have told me about that I have no personal experience with (and I actually hear that sort of complaint more frequently than you might think). I hate it when developers do that, but there seems to be an epidemic of that these days, and especially if it’s free software most of those developers have the “my way or the highway” mentality. So, there’s really nothing you can do but complain, and apparently that doesn’t work either since developers just don’t seem to care anymore. I don’t know if it’s a generational thing or what, but I just don’t get the mentality that says “I have written this great software or have developed this great product that everyone loves, and now I’ll mess it up and make it less functional or less useful or harder to use, just because I can”.
Kevin O'Reilly said
thanks for creating and keeping this blog going. I was attracted to it a while ago regarding the idea of a bridge over Lake Michigan.
I don’t blame you one bit for shutting it down, based on your experiences.
thanks again for having the blog and good luck in the future
Jay S said
Thanks for helping me discover Obihai voip adapters.