No Payola Here

Over at the new Valleywag, there's a post titled Microsoft Search Champs: Payola or just a good conference?:

And even if many attendees weren't journalists, many were bloggers: [bunches of names, none of which were mine]. All have a genuine interest in Windows' new products and services, and all were apparently free to speak their minds. Maybe an all-expense-paid trip could cloud even the purest minds, or maybe it's just the equivalent of an awesome sponsored conference.

As mentioned here previously, yes, I was invited to and attended Search Champs. While it was pretty darn cool, it certainly wasn't what I would think of as "all-expense-paid" (wanna see my credit card bills?). They were very generous, and the swag was very nice, but I felt like their money went towards getting honest feedback, and if you read this site regularly, you know that that's not something I have a problem giving. Yeah, it cost me a smallish chunk of money, and a good-sized chunk of my time, but if asked, I like to put my two cents in, and that was what they asked for. They certainly didn't buy a "Windows all the way!" from me.

And as for someone giving a positive review to a CD that they were given? Give me a break! We've been getting free software and books around here for ages — it's part of the glorious life of a freelance journalist. If you give positive reviews to everything you get for free, you won't be hired back by any reputable outlet for long. I've trashed bad software, as has Tom, and that's just the way it goes.

Productive words to live by

Wise words from Merlin Mann over at 43 Folders:

Well, if you're feeling really ballsy, you could just Quit [your email application] for a few hours and, uh, just go work. Yeah, I know: your world would implode if you had two hours without email. You'd be fired, jailed, or might even miss that whole thread about lunch at Chili's vs. Applebee's. Friend, someday you will actually hear yourself defending your email addiction as a necessity, and it will seem very very weird to you. Bet me on it.

Seriously, though, suck it up and just check for new mail as seldom as your job and your patience will possibly permit. Really push the envelope on this, even just for half a day, and see if you don't notice a difference. The world actually can spin without you for a while (but just a little while).

Because I promise you there's always. more. email. coming. You are the single individual in this entire universe who gets to decide how often you deal with an inbox that is utterly bottomless. Own that, and you've taken the most important step toward using email as a tool (instead of the other way 'round).

I did a bit of this a few months ago; I reset Entourage so that instead of checking email every 5 minutes, it now checks every 20 minutes. I was surprised at how much positive difference it made to my productivity. When I'm on deadline, or otherwise need to focus, I quit Entourage altogether, and switch my iChat message to "Working - IM with care" or "Away." So much of learning to work more productively just turns out to be reducing distractions.

Current College Status

Someone asked me today what was up with Sean and his college applications, and after I answered that email, I realized that other people who read here might also be interested. So, here's what I wrote:

We're insane with waiting on college acceptances/rejections. Sean has applied to six schools and heard back from none of them.

My fantasy is that they're all on the fence about him and waiting to see his 1^st semester grades before making a decision. And given that he got straight As — and that's with 5 of the 6 being AP classes! — that would have to put him in the yes category. Or so I like to imagine.

I feel like I'm in the last hundred yards of the Jewish Mother Marathon. Or maybe the tenth event in the Jewish Mother Decathlon. "If he's accepted to a good school, I win!"

Of course, the lowest school on the list is UC Santa Cruz, which is still a darn good school, particularly for the major he wants. And his GPA and test scores are high enough that he ought to be an easy acceptance there (although possibly not for that particular major).

But I still fret.

Where The Women Aren't

No, this isn't another rant about how conferences should hire more women speakers. This one's about the BlogHer tag line: "Where the women bloggers are".

Answer: not at this blog, evidently.

I followed a link from Anne that said she's helping put together BlogHer's blogroll of women's technology blogs. That link led to How do I list a blog in BlogHer's blogrolls? where I found out that we don't count. Or more precisely, we might count if an editor determines that Tom's "blogging is of particular quality and relevance to the women who participate in and read BlogHer".

See, this is what I was talking about in my Ain't I A Woman? post. When a site labels itself as "where the women bloggers are," it explicitly says that every blog they don't include is where the women aren't. But I can only be included if someone there approves of my choice in spouse? Give me a break. "Where some women bloggers are," sure. But not all of us.

State of the Union - HSA Followup

As you might have read, spin from the White House prior to the State of the Union was that Bush was going to tout major improvements to Health Savings Accounts, and act as though it would go a long way towards solving the US health care crisis. This, of course, would be lying. Looks like pre-speech pushback pointing out the bullshit had an effect, because here's all that Bush actually said about health care:

Keeping America competitive requires affordable health care. Our government has a responsibility to help provide health care for the poor and the elderly, and we are meeting that responsibility. [Not very well; 46 million Americans have no health insurance at all!] For all Americans, we must confront the rising cost of care … strengthen the doctor-patient relationship … and help people afford the insurance coverage they need. We will make wider use of electronic records and other health information technology, to help control costs and reduce dangerous medical errors. We will strengthen Health Savings Accounts – by making sure individuals and small business employees can buy insurance with the same advantages that people working for big businesses now get. We will do more to make this coverage portable, so workers can switch jobs without having to worry about losing their health insurance.

There are details of the actual proposals on the White House site. There's nothing earth-shattering there; it's just fiddling around the edges, and won't make a significant difference to the overall problem. Think Progress has details on the problems with HSA's: Health Savings Accounts Fail To Provide Savings Or Address Costs. Check it out.

Atrios' commentary on this is right on the money, I think:

4 seconds in any hospital and you've blown through your deductible. The fact that your deductible is deductible doesn't actually save you that much money. That fact that your out of pocket expenses are deductible doesn't actually save you that much money. Making things deductible only saves you whatever your marginal tax rate is. So, what, 15% discount? 20% discount? Big whoop!

I have no idea why the idea that you get to save money tax free so that you can spend it when you get sick is appealing. I have no idea why going to see medical personnel without the bargaining power of your insurance company behind you is appealing.

New Conference, No Women, Part 2

Last month, in New Conference, No Women, I wrote:

I'm tired of writing this same damn post over and over again, and I'm perfectly willing to stop writing it if people would just stop provoking it. Yes, it's another new conference where only men have what it takes to be invited to speak: The Ajax Experience 2006.

It's May 10-12 in San Francisco. I could go, but I'll probably stay home instead and work on my Ajax chapters, as they'll be due right around then.

If you followed that post, you saw in the comments that the organizers had approached me about speaking there. My response was along the lines of "Hell yeah!" and I pitched them a few ideas. They got back to me and said, "these all sound great" and "thanks for raising the issue."

Well, yesterday the conference details were announced. Here's the speaker list. I count 31 men. And no women.

If they'd gotten back to me about speaking there and said, "sorry, it doesn't work" for whatever reason, I wouldn't be so annoyed. If they didn't get back to me, but instead hired another woman or two, I wouldn't be so annoyed. But this just pisses me off, both personally and professionally.

BTW, The Ajax Experience has, as one of its producers, the No Fluff Just Stuff conferences. Here's their speaker list. Damn, that's a lot of testosterone, there.

I'm trying to focus more on the positive these days, so I should mention here that I'll be speaking at SxSW in March as part of a panel on "AJAX: What Do I Need to Know?", and at Webstock in May, where I'll be talking about both JavaScript and Ajax (in two separate sessions). It should be clear where I recommend that you spend your conference budget.

No Money For NARAL

NARAL (variously, the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws, the National Abortion Rights Action League, and the National Abortion & Reproductive Rights Action League) put out a press release today titled President Packs the Court with Another Nominee Who Will Put Fundamental Freedoms, Liberties at Risk:

Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, called the Senate's confirmation of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court a blow to the ideals of freedom and privacy that Americans value.

What NARAL leaves out of this is one of the reasons that Alito got this far in the first place, which is that NARAL-endorsed Lincon Chafee voted against yesterday's filibuster. So, while I've donated to NARAL in the past, they're not getting any more of my money until they stop supporting people who talk pro-choice, but vote anti. Sorry, folks, but it's actions, not words that really matter.

Oh, and he voted for John Roberts, too. I'm not giving NARAL any of my dollars when they're passing 'em on to people like him.

Hot curl on curl action!

A few months ago, we got an HDTV cable box, which allows us to get HD from the local NBC affiliate, among other channels. Unfortunately, it's not an HD DVR, so we won't be able to record events in HD (and skip the commercials). Because the Winter Olympics is coming up, I was looking at the NBC site and discovered a horrifying fact: there is no curling scheduled to be broadcast in high definition. What was NBC thinking? And it's not in primetime, either. Instead, we'll have to be satisfied with off-hours curling action on the NBC cable networks (USA, CNBC, and MSNBC).