Mitch Wagner's posterous

About Me

Professional blogger, husband, science fiction fan. I hide from direct sunlight in San Diego. I'm editor in chief of The CMO Site and my main personal blog is Copper Robot.

My Other Sites
FlickrTumblr
Archive
2011 (11)
2010 (132)
2009 (9)
 

RIP William Campbell, Star Trek's Squire of Gothos and the Klingon Koloth

Media_httpstartrekcom_erizf
via startrek.com

He also sang with Elvis Presley in "Love Me Tender" and starred in Roger Corman's "Dementia 13."

Posted
 

Watching "Downton Abbey"

I like Downton Abbey. This surprises me, because usually I don't go in for historical British costume TV shows. I leave those to Her Ladyship, who is mourning because she has just finished watching Lark Rise to Candleford, and now there ain't no more.

Downton Abbey has all the virtues you'd expect of a British costume TV show set in a manor house in the Edwardian period. Great costumes, great sets, great acting, good writing. It also manages to both celebrate the elegant lives of the aristocracy, while also pointing out the unfairness that, by birth, some are born to serve and some are born to be served. Almost all the characters are sympathetic, but they are all flawed as well. Also, there are two outright villains so far--Thomas the conniving footman, and Mrs. O'Brien, his conniving ally. Boo! Hiss!

Maggie Smith stands out even in a great cast as the Dowager Countess, as does Jim Carter, as the butler, who heads up the household. 

Hereditary class systems are terrible things, but in Downton Abbey you also see security in being part of a community, where, if you do your job -- and it's a do-able job -- you'll be welcomed and respected I wonder how much of this is nostalgic bullshit? Certainly it seems that in America today, so many of us have neither the security of a class system or the rewards of a completely free society; you can do your job diligently and have it outsourced to India.

 

Posted
 

Coming in for a soft landing after weight loss

I hit my goal weight, rounding out 90 pounds of weight loss, Dec. 29.The software I use to track calories and exercise (which is called Lose It) told me I could now add 900 calories a day. So I did, and promptly gained three pounds in two days. And it's taken me this long to take it off again. But this morning I weighed in at under my goal weight. 

This time, I'm following a more sensible path and adding 250 calories per day to my eating. I'll continue weighing myself weekly, and adding or subtract 250 calories per day depending on whether I need to gain or lose weight that week. I expect my weight to fluctuate a bit. 

It takes 3,500 calories to gain or lose a pound in a week. Since I lost three pounds last week, an additional 250 calories per day -- 1,750 calories per week -- should give me a nice buffer to play with. I figure I'll lose a couple of more pounds before I figure out how many calories to consume to maintain my weight. 

I was worried about gaining weight back after losing it, which most people do. But now I'm less worried because I gained a little and then lost it, and I know I can do it again when I need to. 

Posted
 

Why you should subscribe to PRWeek

If you want them to charge your credit card a half-dozen times, spend a lot of time exchanging email with their customer service department, get your credit card frozen, and STILL be unable to access the Web site, then go for it. 

Posted
 

We're hiring an editor

Just a reminder for those of you who missed it over the holiday break: I recently started as editor in chief of The CMO Site, a community and group blog for high-level marketing executives at big companies. We're looking for a senior editor to work with me. The work is challenging and rewarding, and the pay is competitive. You'll be involved in building a new model of business-to-business tech journalism. Find out more and apply here. 

Posted
 

In which I attempt to rehabilitate my reputation with the neighbors

Our neighbor across the street was having some Internet problems. Their granddaughter is staying with them a while, and she needed to connect her MacBook to the Internet to do a class project, but she couldn't do it. So I came over and connected them. Turned out to be a simple fix: I unplugged the Ethernet from the grandparents' PC, and plugged it into the MacBook. 

The MacBook still didn't see the Internet at that point and the kid and her grandparents started to get alarmed, but I said, "Don't worry, I haven't tried everything yet." 

I tried refreshing the DHCP on the network settings, and that didn't work either. The kid and her grandparents got even MORE alarmed, but I said, "Don't worry, I haven't tried everything yet." 

Then I powered down the cable modem and the MacBook and went in the other room to chat for five minutes. When I came back, I powered on the cable modem first, waited until all the lights were steady, then powered on the MacBook Pro and it connected to the Internet. The kid gave me a high five and I left the house covered with glory. 

This should help me rehabilitate my reputation among the neighbors. They're all good, solid, blue-collar folk, many of them retired. I sit in my home office at the back of the house all day at the computer doing things they don't understand. They probably think I'm sending child pornography to terrorists.

Posted
 

Fix for the iPhone alarm bug

I got nailed by the iPhone alarm bug this morning. My alarm didn't go off. Fortunately I got up anyway. 

I think I found a fix, though -- delete alarm, then re-create it. I tried that for a new alarm five minutes in the future. Then I deleted all my alarms. We'll see what happens tomorrow morning. 

Posted
 

A sniglet for the 21st Century

Remember sniglets? There must be a word for the apprehension that you accidentally posted a snarky comment to a corporate Twitter account you manage, rather than to your own personal Twitter account. 

Posted
 

Addendum to the Mitch Wagner Decade In Review

I forgot something very important in my post earlier today: Julie and I lost all four of our parents in the 2000s. My Mom died in April, 2000, followed about six week's later by Julie's father, then Julie's mother, then my father in 2004. 

I miss my Mom very often. She was fat when we were children and teen-agers, then she got into Weight Watchers and lost weight when she was not that much older than I am now. She became a little obsessive about Weight Watchers. I think you have to be obsessive to kick a compulsion or addiction, you have to be as obsessive about kicking the habit as you were about maintaining the habit. I know she was concerned about my weight gain, which was already well under way by the time she got sick, and she'd be proud of my weight loss now. 

As for my Dad: We had a difficult relationship, and I can't say I miss him. I think most men have difficult relationships with their fathers, and I'm no different. Still, by example, he taught me the value of hard work, intelligence, honesty, integrity, decency and loyalty. He was born to poor immigrant parents, served his country in World War II, raised himself and his family -- us -- to upper middle class suburbs, and sent three kids off to college. I'm proud of him. 

I didn't know Julie's parents very well, except secondhand through Julie's stories. I think they were fine people and I have enormous respect for them. They were the best that 20th Century Middle America had to offer the world. I fear Julie might find that characterization patronizing but I do not mean it that way.

Posted
 

The Mitch Wagner decade and year in review

The decade for me was mixed. I started out much where I ended up: Still married to the same woman -- hooray! -- still working as a business journalist writing about the Internet, working for the same company. But I've certainly taken a roundabout path to get back to where I started. I got laid off twice, and spent 22 months freelancing. Both of those times I thought I was pretty much done with journalism, but it pulled me back in again. 

Journalism has changed enormously in the decade. In 2000 I primarily wrote for print, with a lot of web writing too, but it was definitely secondary. Now, I write pretty exclusively for the web; I haven't had anything in print for years. And I've gone from a senior staff position on a small publication, to a brief stint in a senior management position at a major publication, to now being editor-in-chief of a startup publication. I think this is a good move for me, I think I've been happiest and most successful working for startup publications at this company. I like startups, you can do whatever you're good at. Established organizations have specialization. And you end up doing the same thing every day, and if you try to do something else, you get in trouble. At a startup, if you see a problem, you solve it, and it's all good. 

I'm healthier physically and psychologically than I was in 2000, though I'm still wrestling with a reclusive nature at war with desire to be around people. When I'm out with people I want to be home alone, and when I'm home alone, I'm often dissatisfied. I'm working on that. 

I'm still married to the best wife in the world. In 2000 we'd been married seven years. Now, we've been married 17, which means we've been married a long time. People with teen-age children have been married less time than we've been. 

2010 was a good year for me. I got laid off in December, 2009, so that doesn't count. I started 2010 self-employed, and rounded out Thanksgiving successfully self-employed. I think I finished the draft of my first novel in 2010, although that might have been 2009. I thought it was ready to go out to publishers and agents right away, but this summer, a friend gave the beginning a close read and demonstrated I still have a lot of work to do on the novel. But, still, that's a plus, right, because the novel will be even better when I finally finished that work. 

I started work on my second novel and now I'm within sight of the end of the first draft of that too -- although it's still a long way off. 

Note to my employers, both current and future: The odds that my fiction will ever take off to the point where I can support myself at it are pretty slim. And even if it did happen, I don't think I'd like being a full-time fiction writer. It's too lonely. I like working as part of a team. 

I lost 50 pounds in 2010, on top of 40 pounds I lost in 2009, and hit my goal weight a few days ago. But then I gained three pounds and lost one so now I'm back on my weight loss program to shed two pounds. 

I've been walking five days a week. 

This year I turn 50. Holy crap. 

Posted