sleep – Wetmachine

The Treachery of Names

Stearns September 23, 2009 - 12:23 am February 25, 2013Inventing the Future, Philosophical business mumbo-jumbo

Would any other smell as sweet?

We changed the name of the company today. The geeks formerly known as Qwaq are now Teleplace.

I like it. Qwaq was a kind of goofy Google/Twitter/Yahoo sort of thing into which you could project whatever you wanted. At first it was (theoretically) just as plausible that something would be made for kids as for companies. But the Qwaq named didn’t really play well. It was too empty a vessel — not suggestive of anything we did. Even our friends spelled it wrong. I often told people it was the corner letters of their keyboard, but they tended to just tilt their head at me like a confused dog. We have a great set of photos in the office of David, Andreas, and the gang discussing potential names with Alan Kay. “Oink? No. Too obvious.” Anyway, now we’re respectable, and the name suggests something about what we do.

Oh, and the new client is out, too.

And the new server.

Off to sleep.

So much for my career as a professional prognosticator

Harold November 3, 2004 - 6:38 am February 24, 2013Tales of the Sausage Factory

Well, the only thing I can say in my defense is that a fair number of oher folks believed the same thing on Tuesday afternoon. At 5 p.m., exit polling looked very good for Kerry in almost all battleground states.

While something may turn around in OH, I admit I don’t expect it. It appears that a small but sizeable majority don’t care about economic issues nearly as much as keeping gay people from marrying. Not sure how we survive the next four years economically, but right now, I’m off to get some sleep.

“Patriot” Act used to supress news of lawsuits against it

Gary May 4, 2004 - 9:05 am February 24, 2013General Exception

I hadn’t heard about this when it happened a few days ago (but then, I’m out of touch, so maybe everyone has heard about this). The ACLU filed suit over certain provisions in the Patriot Act, and were slapped with a gag order based on… The Patriot Act itself.

Nightmare

John March 1, 2004 - 8:40 pm February 24, 2013General, My Thoughts Exactly

My nightmare started out last night with an image of a woman sitting by the grave of her recently deceased husband. She was one of those people who don’t (can’t, won’t, etc) understand that dead people are dead, and so go to gravesides and talk to their dear departed ones.

She was describing to me her husband’s attitude about this and that, as if he were still alive. She was happy and playful, teasing him as if he were there. She made some remark about his hair. And then he was there, lying in an open casket. His head was towards me and his feet towards her. He had a big pompadour of gorgeous hair (I’m practiacally bald, so figure that fact into any analysis).

I did not recognize either the husband or the wife..

And then his casket disappeared, and he was lying on a bed of ice, like a fish in a fishmarket. And then we were in a room of similar wives, all sitting by their dead husbands cooling on beds of ice. And then my dream got weird.